In Praise of Waffling

If there are any continuing threads at this blog, one is certainly that education in general and teaching in particular are about balance, about managing the tension between a wide variety of conflicting forces and ideas. Students need direction. Students need freedom. Direct instruction. Discovery. Learning mastery takes whatever time it takes. Students must make it to certain goals by the end of the year. Teachers can't work with no standards at all. Teachers can't work with standards that are like straightjackets. Students should be lovingly nurtured. Students must be held to high standards. Students with special needs. Teachers bringing their own values into the classroom. Parent involvement. Culturally sensitive instruction. SEL. DEI. Etc. Etc. Etc.

There isn't an issue in education that doesn't involve multiple, contradicting points of view.

Balancing them as we move from circumstance to circumstance, from class to class, from student to student-- it looks a lot like waffling.

For many of us, waffling is suspicious behavior, a moral failure to identify a particular position as the One True Answer, and then stick to it. The way to develop policy, to teach a class, to properly pedagogify, is to identify the One True Answer and then tie off the steering wheel and put a brick on the gas pedal.

This is baloney. It's attractive baloney. Lord knows I was, decades ago, deeply attached to it. I set some conclusions, welded the steering wheel in place, nailed the gas pedal to the floor, and went to sit in a comfy seat in the back of the bus, which is where I was when the vehicle that was my marriage ran off the road and hit a tree. And even then I didn't get it. Even then I thought my mistake was in where I welded the wheel, and I just had to weld it in the correct direction. Uncounted arboreal impacts later, it finally dawned on me that I had to actually drive the bus.

Pick your metaphor. The classroom is a bus and you have to steer it as you go, responding to twists and turns in the roads, the demands of your passengers, and even the occasional person who darts out in front of you. You have to adjust the seat and the mirrors to your own particular personal shape. Do you have to have some idea of a general direction? Sure--but you can't simply steer directly toward it blindly (again, the balance is somewhere between the extremes).

Or maybe the classroom is an actual balancing act, and you just have to keep shifting and adjusting as the weights you're carrying shirt, the wind blows, and the tightrope wobbles beneath your feet. No, you can't just walk heedlessly forward, but you can't ignore the conditions of the moment, either.

There is lots of very specific teacher advice to be had, and every last bit of it is only useful in specific circumstances. "You must not get personally connected to the students" and "You have to forge more of a personal connection with the students" are both perfectly solid pieces of advice in entirely different specific circumstances. "Tighten up and act more like the adult in the room" and "loosen up and don't be so strict" are both great pieces of advice in the right moment, and terrible pieces of advice in the wrong moment.

"Use a hose to shoot thousands of gallons water at the house" is great advice when the house in on fire. It is terrible advice if the house is caught in rising flood waters.

Education has always been plagued by people who hop way too quickly from "This is an answer that works some of the time under certain conditions" to "This is the answer that works all the time for everybody." They once saw a house fire put out by a tanker spewing a ton of water, so now they want to hose down everyone. Education also suffers from people who, having seen their flooding house ruined by an application of even more water, now insist that hoses should be kept away from burning buildings as well. 

One of the greatest fallacies in education is some variation of "This works/doesn't work for me, therefor it must work/not work for everyone."

Classrooms are not always complicated, but they are always complex. If you accept, for instance, the notion that humans are a pastiche of 400 psychological traits, then multiple 400 by the number of humans in the classroom, plus the varied versions of lived experience, plus the dynamics that emerge in the interactions between the individuals in the room (any teacher can tell you about a class where the absence of one particular student changed the dynamic of the entire class), plus the dynamics around the material itself, with all of that slathered over with whatever has happened to those individuals in the past 12-24 hours. And what each of the students needs, and what the course is supposed to require. And all of that has to be boiled down, by the teacher, to a very specific action at a particular moment in time. Your deep-felt pedagogical philosophies are very cool, but the teacher is facing a certain student with a specific situation at Tuesday at 10:27 PM and she has to decide what exactly to do right then.

A teacher is on a high wire holding a ten foot pole that has, on each end, a twenty foot stack of cages with various wild raccoons and ferrets running around inside, and the teacher is on a bicycle, and the bicycle's tires aren't round, and there's a gusty wind, and a flock of geese flying at her. And she is adjusting and shifting every step of the way. Anyone who wants to tell her "Just do it exactly like this. Just hold this exact pose all the way. Then you'll be okay."

Certainly not all advice is created equal-- some techniques or grips or methods will serve better than others (which is part of what I'm talking about, because the sweet spot in teaching on any given day also lies somewhere between "You must do exactly this every time" and "Just pull whatever out of your butt on a whim"). And individual teachers will find certain techniques that work better FOR THEM.

The best teachers drive the bus. They shift the load as they move. They smoothly juggle dozens of possible tools to deploy the right one at the moment it's needed. They waffle. They waffle like a boss (even as they manage the tension between consistency and flexibility, because various tensions underline every single part of the job).

It is hard to overstate just how completely and thoroughly those who propose a Single Magical Solution simply don't understand how a classroom works or what teaching is. Scripted programs are absurd. A universal set of standards is absurd. Mandating a particular pedagogical approach, either by district policy or legislative edict, is absurd. Can some of these things contribute useful tools to a teacher's kit? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean they're the one tool that should be used every single time.

Waffling is a good and necessary thing in education. Teachers have to be adaptable and flexible, neither an iron rod or a floppy dishtowel, but somewhere in between. So much of the debate in education is commandeered by people out on the extremes, but the answer is almost always somewhere in the middle, and exactly where in the middle (which matters because, remember, teachers run on specific choices in the moment, not sweeping generalities) varies from day to day, moment to moment. If that looks like waffling, so be it. Or as that great waffler, Walt Whitman put it:

Do I contradict myself? 

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large. I contain multitudes.)

A classroom is large. It contains multitudes. And backseat drivers on the educational bus, hollering out "Hey, first you steered one way and then you steered the other way. Don't you know what you're doing?" are no help at all.

h/t TC Weber who started me down this particular path.

ICYMI: Father's Day 2023 Edition (6/18)

Did you know that the President who finally signed Father's Day into national holiday status was-- Richard Nixon? Yeah, go figure. Happy Father's Day to those who celebrate it. Here's some reading for the day.

'Bankrupt our state': Expected school voucher surge to cost Arizona taxpayers a lot more money

This is the story, over and over-- universal voucher programs cost way more than anyone pushing them predicts. 

Iowa could pay millions more than budgeted to help families pay for private school

Yup. Everywhere there are vouchers, states are coming face to face with a huge price tag.

Indiana’s school voucher program use at all-time high, but there are fewer low-income families

Indiana's program continues to bring financial relief to the well-to-do and not-particularly-needy.

Literacy and NAEP Proficient

This time it's Tom Loveless trying to explain to people what NAEP proficiency really does and doesn't mean. 

DeSantis kicks off feud over College Board's AP psych class

Lots of versions of this story out there, but thanks to MSN here's the Politico story without a paywall. DeSantis's Florida wants AP Psych without the gay, but the College Board says they learned their lesson from the Black History debacle, and they aren't going to budge. 

Testing Vendor Scores $40 Million Contract Increase in Tennessee

Pearson scores big in Tennessee. Andy Spears has the story.

Kentucky school district considering bringing back remote learning

Interesting tale of a district that can't compete for teachers financially with its neighboring district, so instead of thinking outside the box. Teachers, we can't pay you more, but how would you like a four day live work week with one cyberschool day?

School board must find new insurance provider or take guns away from staff

Insurance company decides that having a bunch of armed amateurs in a building is a liability. Who would have guessed? Okay, just about anyone, but here we are. Jay Waagmeester reports for Iowa Capital Dispatch.

CREDO Charter Study Shows Trivial and Inconsistent Gains

Yes, if you read here, you probably also read Diane Ravitch, but this one is too important to miss. The CREDO study and its claims of charter awesomeness are being reported everywhere. Carol Burris has looked at the real numbers-- and not so fast.

DEI education in America actually dates back to the 18th century

At the Washington Post, Penn State professor Bradford Vivian reminds us that DEI is not actually all that new.

Soon We Won’t Have Enough Kids to Fill Our Schools. That’s a Problem.

Jessica Grose at the New York Times on a demographic trend that may spell trouble for some school districts.

Central Bucks seniors don’t want officials ‘who have made high school harder and more painful’ handing them their diplomas

Maddie Hanna at the Philadelphia Inquirer goes to a county where district leaders have been all about book bans and gag rules, and its graduating class is unimpressed.

Controversial book policy in Ludlow fails

In Massachusetts, a school board suggests that book ban supporters go home--to whatever place outside the district they live.

Inside Florida’s ‘underground lab’ for far-right education policies

Sarasota County in Florida is Ground Zero for far right anti-inclusive policies. Kathryn Joyce looks at this very Florida place for Hechinger Report. 

LA Lawmakers Force “In God We Trust” Signs Down Public Classroom Throat

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at a new Louisiana plan to get a Godly poster in every classroom. Good luck with that. 

Drummond: Approval of Catholic charter school drove a stake in the heart of religious liberty

One of the most vocal opponents of that new religious charter school in Oklahoma is-- the Republican Attorney General of the state, who wrote a whole op-ed to further explain why he thinks it's a bad idea. 

Do the homework on Moms for Liberty-affiliated school initiatives

The York Dispatch in York PA is a smallish paper in a smallish place, but they know enough to recognize a "right-wing fever dream" when they see one. A whole editorial board wrote this take-down of the Moms.

Did a North Carolina Democratic lawmaker throw the party under the bus for the charter school industry?

Jeff Bryant looks at the defection of Tricia Cotham, and how it is tied to charter school politics.

I'm an educator and grandson of Holocaust survivors, and I see public schools failing to give students the historical knowledge they need to keep our democracy strong

Boaz Dvir, a Penn State professor, looks at the cost of shortchanging the teaching of history.

Rethinking Localism in Education Law and Policy

Okay, maybe a little wonky, but this is an interesting conversation with Derek Black about the problems of local approaches to education.

Things that Make Teachers Go Hmmm

Nancy Flanagan on Teach for America's newest recruitment drive.

Mississippi Malarkey

Nickolas Kristoff thinks Mississippi pulled off a miracle. Thomas Ultican is unimpressed. 

As always, you're invited to join me on substack for a more reliable in-you-inbox reading experience for whatever I've cranked out lately.

NC: Vouchers For Ghost Students

In 2017, a Duke Law School study looked at how North Carolina's voucher program was going. Here's just a slice of what they concluded:

In comparison to most other states, North Carolina’s general system of oversight of private schools is weak. North Carolina’s limited oversight reflects a policy decision to leave the quality control function primarily to individual families. Under North Carolina law, private schools are permitted to make their own decisions regarding curriculum, graduation requirements, teacher qualifications, number of hours/days of operation, and, for the most part, testing. No accreditation is required of private schools.

Those first three of the voucher program also saw 93% of voucher students attending private religious schools. 2017 was also the year that the legislature set out to pump millions more into their voucher system, and this year they've been working at expanding it even more by expanding it to include the wealthy and those who already send their children to private school. 

So it's worth noting the analysis just released by Kris Nordstrom, senior policy analyst at the Education & Law Project at the North Carolina Justice Center. 

Nordstrom checked some simple figures. How many students did the school report enrolling? How many vouchers did the state send them?

In 62 instances, the state sent schools more money than the school reportedly had students. 

Some of these could easily be clerical quirks, particularly in some of the tiny schools involved. Increase Learning Center Rockingham (faith-based daycare) reports an enrollment of 4 and received vouchers for 5. Okay. There are lots of explanations for that.

But here's Brittain Academy Guilford reporting 72 students enrolled and 87 vouchers. North Shore Academy Onslow in 2020 reported 14 students and received 17 vouchers; then in 2021 they reported 14 students and received 38 vouchers! Riverside Christian Academy-- 16 students enrolled, and 55 vouchers! At $6492 per student, that's a heck of a windfall. Mitchener University Academy reported an enrollment of 72 and collected 149 vouchers-- so about $230,000 of taxpayer money handed over for non-existent students.

Those voucher dollars add up. Nordstrom figures about $2.3 million in fraudulent payments of taxpayer money to private schools.

And that's not counting the 23 schools that kept receiving vouchers even though they stopped reporting to the state (DNPE) altogether. As Nordstrom notes in one example, Crossroads Christian School of Statesville stopped reporting in 2020, but still collected $57,300 in voucher money that year.

If you're a person who cares about accountability for taxpayer dollars spent or someone who wants to see greater transparency and efficiency in education spending, this can't be the sort of thing you have in mind. 

 

Can All Culture War Combatants Agree On This?

Earlier this week, I posted this thread on Twitter, and it drew an interesting assortment of reactions.

The issue of teachers' beliefs in the classroom looks a lot different in a small town/community setting. A thread. 1/

 
There's a popular notion that teachers shouldn't bring their beliefs into the classroom. In my neck of the woods, that's virtually impossible. For example: 2/

 
For roughly half of my career, I was also a columnist for the local newspaper. My personal beliefs are not exactly a well-kept secret. 3/

 
For all of my career, I taught the children and grandchildren of people I grew up with. I taught my own children, and my children's friends. It is unlikely that my personal beliefs and values could be a well-kept secret. 4/

 
For many years, a history teacher in my school was also the mayor of the town. In a neighboring district, a teacher is the head of the county Democratic party. 5/

 
The small town thing about few secrets is real. Single teachers can't hide who they date, or where, or when. Everybody knows where you go to church (or if you don't). 6/

 
The multiple connections are endless. You spend time with students' parents in the church choir, the grocery store, the community organizations. I cannot set foot in a local business without encountering students or their families. 7/

 
In short, the notion that a teacher could keep their personal life and the beliefs that go with it somehow walled off from their classroom, that they could present in school as a blank, belief-free "professional" is a non-starter. 8/

 
All that said, I absolutely agree with those who say that a teacher is not hired by the public to preach a particular set of beliefs to students. 9/

 
It's not only wrong, but in high school at least, highly counterproductive (just ask my 10th grade social studies teacher, who tried to convince us that the war in Vietnam was immoral). 10/

 
So what do you do? First, own who you are while remembering always that your classroom is not about you. It's about the students. 11/

 
It's not great to model pretending that you don't believe what you believe. It's bad practice to do any version of "But enough about prepositions. Let's talk about me." 12/

 
My practice (not that I'm the God of Teaching) was 2 insist on a classroom rule of respect, an atmosphere in which it was safe to think whatever you thought. In that context, it was okay 2 challenge what other people said (including me), but not simply attack it or the person 13/

 
My ideal was a classroom in which students could learn how to have productive and useful conversations with people with whom they disagreed. 14/

 
And as an ELA and writing teacher, it was absolutely critical to foster an atmosphere of free exchange and expression. You can't do that if only some students are allowed to say some things. 15/

 
As a teacher, you have to know and be aware of your own stuff, to know where your personal triggers are so that you're prepared to step back and take a breath--because your personal stuff can come in the classroom, but it can't overrule professional judgment. 16/

 
(And yes, I'm aware of the irony here--that my pluralistic respect-required classroom reflected my own set of values, and I'm okay with that) 17/

 
The goal is a classroom in which all students are safe to be who they are and express who they think. There are many paths to that classroom. 18/

This thread was, for me, a pretty popular one. And what struck me was the range of people chiming in in agreement, from many camps in the culture debates. 

Could this be an area in which we all have a broad agreement, I thought. Well, okay-- I thought that for about three seconds. 

We have some broad agreement on the principles (well, those of us participating in these discussions in good faith, which is unfortunately not all of us), but we have some pretty serious disagreements about what the principle looks like in practice.

For instance, I do not think that Jenna Barbee, the teacher who showed some fifth graders a movie with gay characters in it, crossed the line I described above. In fact, I'd argue that banning the movie is the greater offense. How do all students feel safe in a classroom if their own (or their family's) identity is rendered invisible or declared? And yet, for some on the anti-inclusion side, any acknowledgement that LGTQ persons exist is "ramming it down our throats." 

I don't think the AP teacher in South Carolina who has been slammed for teaching a unit around Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me crossed the line either the reporting may be incomplete, but in what I've read, there is room for discussion of the works and ideas. The key question is not "did the teacher bring up a topic I don't like or which makes me uncomfortable." The key question is, "Is it safe to disagree with the idea in this work?"

The lady who wanted Amanda Gorman's poem banned? She's on the wrong side of this. A Christian teacher who wants to convert her students is on the wrong side, as is the atheist teacher who wants to disabuse their students of faith of their ideas. I don't know what we do with people who insist that a pride flag is a "symbol of aggression against straight people." 

So while we can agree that the classroom should be a safe space for students, we have little agreement on what safe means. I'd say there's a big difference between "place where you can question what other folks say" and "place where nobody can question what you say." There's a big difference between "free to speak out" and "free from having to hear anyone else speak out." There's a big difference between "I can challenge other peoples' beliefs" and "Nobody can challenge my beliefs."

"I'm right, so my way should get to control the conversation," is not a useful approach. The notion that there should be different rules for people who are right and people who are wrong is not a useful--or a principled approach. 

There is a huge gulf between "this value should not be required" and "this value should not be presented at all." And yet some folks are unable (or unwilling) to make that distinction. 

Ultimately, I think the issue comes down to conflicting views of reality, twice over. First, there is the conflict between differing views of what is true (e.g. flat earth vs. globe). Second, there is the conflict between differing views of how to handle differing views (e.g. discussion and exploration allowing persons to make up their own minds vs. shout down, repress, silence, obliterate any expression of the "wrong" view). It is no surprise that we are having this conflict in schools, because schools exist downhill from the culture, and that's where we are as a society. 

All of this, it should be exacerbated by opportunistic bad actors that see benefits in pouring gasoline on all of these fires.

Nor is the discussion made easier by people who are not consistent within their own belief system. Some folks argue both that adult concerns should not take priority over student needs and also that parental rights must be prioritized. You can't do both. Nor is there any question at this point that the parental rights movement is concerned only with certain select parents. It's hard to have any kind of meaningful discussion with people whose words don't really mean what they say.

So I know what I think the words above mean-- that we allow students to safely discuss and encounter any and all ideas in an atmosphere based on respectful treatment of all. But I suspect some of the people who liked it were thinking, "Yeah, get those guys over there to knock it off so students can be taught The Truth," which is counter to what I wrote. 

In the end, I believe that the whole "Only teach students the One Truth so that they grow up to view the world the way I want them to" is not just immoral and unethical, but it just plain doesn't work. One way or another, reality wins; even when someone seems to be beating it away, the cost of denial is steep. 

And this ought to be good news, because if what you've latched on is true, then sooner or later, allowed the chance to discuss and explore and puzzle, people will converge on that truth. Conversely, if your truth has to be protected from every single piece of dissent, every piece of contrary evidence, every contact with a larger world, then what kind of weak, fragile truth is it? Reality is made of sterner stuff.

Well, I'm wandering. The bottom line is that if you are trying to promote a singular view in a classroom, either by barring Certain Ideas from entering or forcing Certain Ideas as requirements, you're messing up. If you are privileging the promotion or prevention of Certain Ideas over the growth and nurture of young minds, then those young minds are not really your primary concern, no matter what you say. 

Feds Tells SCOTUS To Let Charter School Remain Public

I have written more than I care to about the Peltier v. Charter Day School case, a case that is nominally about an antediluvian dress code but has ended up hinging on a bigger question-- are charter schools really public schools? 

Charter Day School says no. After the case worked its way up through the court system, with rulings to and fro, it finally arrived before the full panel of the U.S.4th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the word was that yes, charter schools are public schools--and therefor don't get to violate things like Title IX.

That view very much gets in the way of things like the hope of some to establish religious charter schools (and in fact this whole business may be tested via another avenue) as well as just generally allowing charter schools to ignore certain laws when they're in the mood. And so the multinational law firm backing this case immediately asked to take their show before the Supreme Court.

The Supremes have shown a bit of reluctance to leap right onto the case (a surprise, given their willingness to just make shit up in order to okay staff-led public prayer in public schools) and asked the Biden administration to offer their opinion on whether or not SCOTUS should take up the case. 

That was back in January. In May, the feds offered an answer.

They say "the writ of certiorari should be denied," which means "don't take the appeal" which means the 4th Circuit decision that the charter school is a public school (and therefor has to follow the rules) should stand.

Their brief's argument comes in three parts:

A) The court was right to decide that the school's enforcement of its dumb dress code was, in fact, a state action.

A holding that CDS is not a state actor would allow States to evade constitutional constraints by delegating core governmental functions to private entities. West specifically addressed this concern, noting that a State cannot relieve itself “of its constitutional duty to provide adequate medical treatment to those in its custody” by “[c]ontracting out prison medical care.” 487 U.S. at 56. As the court of appeals noted below, that concern applies equally here, because a finding of no state action would mean that “North Carolina could outsource its educational obligation to charter school operators, and later ignore blatant, unconstitutional discrimination committed by those schools.” Pet. App. 17a.

Calling a charter school "not really a state actor" would allow charters and indeed the state itself to do all sorts of naughty things by simply hiring someone else to do it. "Yeah, we know we can't deny Black children an education, so we just hired Aryan Nation Charter Chain to handle it for us."

Nor was the court impressed by the argument that a "public charter school" is pretty much like a "public utility" or a "public access channel" on cable. 

B) The decision does not warrant review. 

Lots of lawyerspeak in this one, but I did pick out that the feds say that the petitioners are big overdramatic snowflakes when they claim that the decision of the 4th Circuit poses an existential threat to charters everywhere, that it will expose charter operators to "the slow strangulation of litigation." 

This is a baloney argument that amounts to a claim that charter schools could not possibly function if they were forced to live under the same rules as every single public school in the country. Or as the brief puts it, "there is no incompatibility between encouraging educational innovation and respecting students' constitutional rights."

Also, the feds point out, it's not like court cases haven't called charter schools public schools before. It's just that this time it's inconvenient for the charter school involved.

C) The case would be a poor vehicle for considering the question presented.

It's not entirely clear that reversing the decision would solve anything--the charter school might still lose any attempt to maintain its ripped-from-the-1950s dress code.

So the feds say to SCOTUS, "Don't bother. Just let the ruling stand." 

It remains to be seen what SCOTUS will decide to do (or not do), and hard to divine what they might decide if they do hear the case, even as there's plenty of disagreement about what the preferred outcome might be. Stay tuned. 

Koch's West Virginia Voucher Mountain

In Education Next, Garrett Ballengee offers a metaphor for the pursuit of vouchers, and in doing so gives us some practically-honest hints about what a voucher-based education system would look like. The summit of Mount Everest, he says, saying that passing a universal education savings account (aka voucher) law is just setting up the base station. 

Well, no.

First, a little background on Ballengee himself, and the outfit he's attached to. 

He's the inaugural grand poobah of the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy. The right wing thinky tank was founded in 2014. Board chairman is Keith Pauley, an engineer who has worked from Beijing to Houston. Vice chair is Karen Bailey-Chapman, who has worked for Americans for Tax Reform (Grover "Drown government in the bathtub" Norquist) and the Center for Individual Freedom (she commutes between WV and DC, which is where LinkedIn lists her home). She's a coms and lobbying pro. 

The board also includes former senator Bill Cole, the guy who made West Virginia a right to work state, Jim Shaffer, who led WV welfare "reform," and Ed Gaunch, former senator and secretary of the WV Department of Commerce. You can see which way this wind is blowing.

The actual staff includes Adam Kissel, senior fellow. Kissel was a deputy assistant secretary for higher ed under Betsy DeVos, defense director for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and a senior program officer at the Charles Koch Foundation. He's also a visiting fellow in higher ed reform for the Heritage Foundation these days, as well as the chairman of the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board.

Policy Analyst Jessica Dobrinsky Harris only graduated from WVU in 2020 (Bachelor's in Criminology), but she's been busy-- Charles Koch Institute internship and healthcare reporter for the Washington Examiner.  Kyle Hanlin, director of development, has worked for the North Carolina Republican Party, Nevada Policy Research Institute, Citizens Against Government Waste and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Comms and Social Media guy Nathaniel Phipps has a 2021 MBA from Regent University (formerly known as Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network University) where he worked in admissions before getting into campaign work. He just started in May. Amanda Kieffer, communications director, was another Koch Associate after she graduated from Liberty University.

Jesi Troyan, Director of Policy and Research, is about the only staffer who wasn't hire in the past couple of years. The rest were hired in the last three years; back before 2018, Sourcewatch found Ballngee as the sole employee. Why did they go on a hiring spree? Where did they get a bunch more money? Their 990 forms report that in 2021 they took in $786,037--roughly double of any previous year since 2017 (prior to that, they took in even less). But I will note that West Virginia's education savings account voucher program, one of the most massive in the country, was approved in 2021-- and their origin story is all about pushing ESA vouchers. 

Ballengee has the kind of conservative credentials one would need to run with this crowd. American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network. BS in Finance from WVU. Former KIP and KAP (that's Koch Internship and Associate Programs) and a Stand Together Fellowship (new brand name for Koch Institute) alum. Here he is plugging choice in an op-ed co-written by the Stand Together executive director. And what book does he say "opened my way to a different way of thinking"? Why, Atlas Shrugged, of course.

So we've got the picture now-- Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy (which belongs to the State Policy Network) is a Koch organization. 

Cardinal Institute is all for the usual Koch version of liberty. They are pushing a West Virginia Miracle, and the four pillars are "Economic Freedom, Labor Freedom, Education Freedom, and Montani Semper Liberi - a culture of freedom." They would like to promote "limited government, economic freedom, and personal responsibility." They've got a podcast-- "Forgotten America." And they promise a "new paradigm"--

An “island” of poverty in the wealthiest country the world, West Virginia’s brighter future depends on a new paradigm – a new way of looking at the world with new ideas and a philosophy built on innovation, human flourishing, and a recognition that freedom is the greatest alleviator of poverty the world has ever seen. Ours is a philosophy built on the entrepreneur, the tinkerer in the garage, and the idea that small government means more room for people to create and build their own futures.

It's a curious pitch in a state that is not exactly known for government overreach. West Virginia is a state with a history of labor struggles and a history of state government that exerts its power mostly to aid guys like Charles Koch. Regular people have always had plenty of room in this state that is renowned for its poverty-- worst health, worst education levels, worst employment, and geography that makes it hard for basic infrastructure like roads and water and electricity and internet to reach some citizens. (And at least one community gutted by the departure of its WVU college campus--but hey, they're free now.) It's hard to imagine that any of these problems would be solved by less government, but libertarians gotta libertarian.

So what does Ballengee say about Mount Everest?

In his Education Next piece, Ballengee comes close to honesty about the larger goals of his particular arm of the school voucher movement. 

There is a common misconception among education reform advocates that passing universal choice legislation is akin to summiting Mount Everest. Upon universal choice’s enactment into law, it is done. Time to exhale and pop the champagne, for the mountain has been scaled.

In other words, voucher laws are not the end game. Simply making a voucher program available is not enough.

Next, the program has to be pushed and promoted. There will be a surge, then a steady growth "as families become aware of the program and hear from neighbors, fellow church attendees, and other connections about their new options" (just in case you had doubts about voucher ties to religion). But awareness must be built and PR must be provided to popularize the program.

Failure for an education choice program does not often come in the form of mistakes, fraud, or incompetence. More frequently, the problems are apathy and ignorance.

I don't know. There's an awful lot of fraud and incompetence in the school choice world. Nor am I sure how the lack of interest in a choice program is not the same thing as a lack of market demand. But of course modern marketing means creating a demand for your product. So, Ballengee asserts, somebody will need to work on that.

Someone will also need to build/attract a supply of educational "providers." "Help private schools sign up," he says, skipping over the question of why a successful private school would want to sign up. Somebody has to reach out to edupreneurs and get them signed up, too. Basically, be an education broker.

Now that choicers need to spend less time lobbying legislators, "the nexus of a successful program [he means a privatizing program, not an educational program] will shift somewhat from legislative considerations, lobbying, and bill design towards family outreach and relationship cultivation, specific government agency relationships, and broad marketing campaigns."

Also, you'll have to prepare for those "legions of entities" looking to "besmirch" the program (public education establishment, unions, union-friendly media). 

 

And this--

You have to figure out how – not if – to help the families about to embark on this journey for the first time...

You must figure out how to manage each “case” not only for the sake of the family and child but also for the overall health of the program.

There will be grandparents who have never used a computer now asked to upload a birth certificate on their grandchild’s behalf. There will be parents with limited education who know only one thing when it comes to navigating this fresh bureaucratic concoction: “my child needs something different.” Be sympathetic, but, more importantly, develop competence.

Learn the law and accompanying statutes backwards and forwards or find someone who does. You must have a path or contact for families to use. “I don’t know the answer, but I know someone who might” will become one of the most useful phrases in your reform handbook.

In short, Ballengee is outlining all the new business opportunities available on the mountaintop voucher peak. The only one he left out was the booming business in K-12 education loans for all those parents for whom state's voucher won't cover the cost of their education provider. Not only will government stop providing public education, but there are many opportunities to make a buck or ten in the newly free and unregulated marketplace of education stuff.

The Koch mountaintop

Because here's what "freedom" means on Koch mountain-- you are free to try to get to the top if you can, and I am free to ignore any of your problems (unless you pay me to help you), because the dream remains a world in which I have no responsibility to my fellow travelers on the earth (and certainly don't have to pay taxes to provide services for Those People). 

Ballengee isn't going to have any discussion of how well vouchers work as far as education goes (hint: not very well). But that's okay, because, as he says, "education choice is good and a moral necessity." I'm of the opinion that guaranteeing each child a decent education is the moral necessity, and, as always, I question the assumption that "education choice" must somehow involve the free market, one of the great unexamined assumptions of the modern choicer movement. Are choice and freedom important values in life? Damn right they are--which is why we as a society bear a responsibility for getting every child an education that will help them freely access more choices.

In the end, Ballengee's mountain is one that Ayn Rand would probably approve of.

Though the last few steps up the mountain are the steepest and most difficult, they are also closest to what we are looking for when we embark on our journey: helping children find their own path to their own personal summit.

In other words, I've got my summit, Jack. Go find your own. 

"Helping" I suppose could mean choice advocates just helping out of the goodness of their hearts (though their hearts, bless them, don't know much about actual education). But I suspect that help will be provided, for a price (or a cut of your voucher), to those who can find it and access it while navigating a sprawling unregulated complicated marketplace. It's funny, because another thing we could do is collect all the experts in delivering education under one roof, where they'd be easy to find. And we could pay them with public tax dollars, and recruit and hire them with the understanding that they are there to help students climb their own personal mountain. But then some of us would have to pay taxes to fund it, and they might not be willing to make it all about christianist ideas. 

So instead, Koch-trained folks imagine a mountain, an Everest. By the way, do you know what Everest looks like these days? It's a crowded mess of wealthy, resource-rich tourists who are hiring someone else to guide them. Well, that's Everest.

The peak of the school voucher mountain looks a lot like wealthy, well-resourced folks looking down at the folks struggling on the slopes of other mountains and saying, "Well, don't they look free. I wonder if they'll make it."

The Two Faces of Hillsdale

Hillsdale has conflicted ideas about money--specifically money that has been handled by the government.

Oh, no. I just couldn't

Hillsdale College, Michigan's favorite right wing christianist private college, sends out regular e-mail messages from its president, Larry "Teachers Are The Dumbest" Arnn, and I'm no that list. 

In his latest missive, Arnn underlines one of the colleges signature features-- they don't accept federal money in any way, shape or form, including aid to students. They have their reasons.

The kind of education offered at Hillsdale College is rare in America today. There are several reasons for this. Let me mention two important ones.

One reason is that, since the 1960s, radical Leftists have come to dominate many American colleges and universities. They reject the classical liberal arts curriculum and instead seek to promote a progressive ideology.

Another reason is the massive amount of taxpayer funding of colleges and universities—funding that comes with regulatory strings attached.

By contrast, ever since direct federal taxpayer funding first became available to colleges and universities in the 1950s, Hillsdale has refused to accept such funds.

Over the years, our Board of Trustees has pledged several times to resist any attempts by the government to regulate its internal affairs. Hillsdale was almost alone in seeing the dangers posed by federal funding.

So, there will be no money following the student onto Hillsdale's campus. (Instead, they need supporters to open their checkbook to help provide their own student aid.)

When it comes to K-12 charter schools, Hillsdale has different feelings about accepting taxpayer money that has passed through government hands. 

Okay, maybe I will.

For just one example, their intent to put five charter schools in Tennessee could involve them siphoning something like $35 million in taxpayer dollars from the state (with dreams of ten times that). 

I'm not aware of any instance where a Hillsdale charter was proposed or opened with the caveat "we will not accept any taxpayer funding." And really, if that were the goal, it would be much easier to set up private schools that operated outside of the public school funding system (and refuse, of course, to accept any taxpayer dollars packaged as vouchers). Hillsdale does a tiny bit of that (but not the voucher refusal part).

Of course, some "Hillsdale charters" are owned and operated by other folks who are just using the Hillsdale materials for their school. And it's entirely possible that Hillsdale has greater trust is state-level government to keep its mitts off theirs school; a reasonable assumption, given that many states have enshrined a mitts-off clause in voucher laws. 

Still, it's hard to see how exactly the creation of schools that depend on taxpayer dollars for their very existence squares with Arnn's promise to "remain a beacon of genuine independence." Because Hillsdale's charter schools are not particularly independent at all.