PA: Bad Voucher Bill on Fast Track

The folks at Education Voters of Pennsylvania report that GOP leaders have made a voucher plan one of their big priorities for the 2023-2024 state budget. It's a bad bill.

HB 795 is the latest version of the Lifeline Scholarship Program, a bill that has been kicking around Harrisburg for several years. But the new version includes some significant changes from past years.

Last year, it was HB 2169. That version of the Lifeline voucher was an education savings account, a chunk of money that parents could spend on all sorts of education-flavored products and services. HB 2169 was a bad idea for many reasons (for one thing, the dollar amount was based on state-wide average spending per pupil, meaning many districts would have lost way more money than their usual cost per pupil). But the bill also had a few safeties in place, like a requirement that every single account must be audited every two years and a restriction that families couldn't double dip by taking both a Lifeline scholarship and a EITC voucher (the state's long-existing tax credit scholarship voucher program).

The new version of Lifeline vouchers is a traditional voucher; it's money that can be spent on tuition at a private school and "school-related fees." Getting accepted by that private school is, of course, your problem.

The restriction against double dipping is not in this bill; families would now be free to grab multiple piles of taxpayer dollars. Nor are there any income requirements; if you're wealthy, you can still grab a voucher or two. The voucher is still designated for all students in schools at the bottom 15% of schools, a super-cynical approach, since no matter how well schools are all doing, there will always be a bottom 15%.

The "nonpublic" schools accepting vouchers do not have to be vetted in any way; it just has to notify the state, promise to be non-profit (it can, of course, still be run by a for-profit entity), and comply with non-discrimination laws. It can thrown out of the program if it "routinely" fails to comply with those requirements and if it fails "to provide a scholarship recipient with the educational services" the voucher paid for. 

The bill does have the usual non-interference clause-- the nonprivate school is declared absolutely not a state agent, and nobody in Harrisburg "may regulate the educational program of a participating nonpublic school that accepts money from a scholarship recipient beyond what is necessary to administer the program." So if they want to teach flat earth or creationism or the inherent superiority of the Aryan race or that LGBTQ persons are evil deviants, they can still collect those tasty public taxpayer dollars.

The dollar amounts are tiered:

For a student in ½ day kindergarten: $2,500.

For a student in full-day kindergarten through grade 8: $5,000.

For a student in grades 9-12: $10,000.

For a student with special needs (regardless of grade): $15,000.

Pennsylvania is, of course, facing a court-ordered requirement to fix their unconstitutionally inequitable school funding system. Diverting more taxpayer dollars to private schools, including schools that can indoctrinate and discriminate, hardly seems like a great way to go about fixing the problems. 

But lobbyists are working Harrisburg hard to push this private school taxpayer subsidy plan, trying very hard to sell the idea that "fully fund your public schools" somehow means "send more funding to private schools." If you are in Pennsylvania, phone or email your local lawmaker or the governor himself, who unfortunately appears to be a fan. Maybe point out that it was indeed great that the state was able to pull together the resources to fix I-95 so quickly, and that the solution to that problem was not to give every driver a voucher to go set up a private road of their own. 

Moms for Liberty and Hitler

Let's just collect the pieces of this story, because there's plenty to unpack, and it will be hard to retrieve it all from Twitter by tomorrow.

Yesterday the Indy Star caught a story (since pulled and replaced) about the new Hamilton County Moms for Liberty chapter posted their brand new newsletter--using a quote from Adolf Hitler-- "He alone who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future" (To their credit, they did at least properly attribute it).

It's there right over the part about how they won't be intimidated by the Southern Poverty Law Center calling them an extremist group. As you might imagine, many people had feelings about this.

Then later in the day, they replaced the front page with an attempt to create context:

"The quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert. If the government has control over our children today, they control our country's future. We The People must be vigilant and protect children from the overreaching government"

So see--they weren't admiring Nazis. They were just saying that the government and public schools are a bunch of Nazis. All better yet? 

No? Well, next they tried an apology to replace the front page.

"We condemn Adolf Hitler's actions and his dark place in human history. We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology."

So, it's not that they're sorry they called everyone a Nazi. They're just sorry they quoted Adolph in their newsletter.

And to show how not-sorry they were about the Nazi-namecalling thing, M4L leader and co-founder Tiffany Justice reminded Twitter that they really meant to call government folks Nazis. 

So I guess it wasn't just a local chapter chair who went off-message. 

Also, not the first time M4L folks have tossed this quote around. Not by a long shot. 

Also, just to keep things even...

Fun times all around. If more hijinks shenanigans follow, I'll add them to the post. In the meantime, we can discuss what the best way to use Hitler as part of an argument might be (spoiler alert: never).

Why Bother Accrediting Colleges

Ron DeSantis filed yet another lawsuit against the feds today. This time his team has cranked out a 41 page argument against the very idea of college accreditation.

Congress shouldn't "delegate its legislative authority to trade or industrial associations or groups," the suit argues, yet "under the current scheme, private accreditors act '[a]s gatekeepers to $112 billion in annual federal student aid.'"

The DeSantis beef boils down to being required to get accreditation in order to collect that federal aid, including aid to students, who can only get college dollars if they're attending an accredited institution. 

The lawsuit nods at the reasoning behind this, the reasonable idea that students shouldn't be able to use taxpayer dollars to attend "Bob's Underwater Basket Weaving University." But having nodded, it moves quickly on. If Ron DeSantis wants his state to launch "Ron's College Of Aryan Knowledge," who are hte feds to tell him he can't get federal tax dollars, directly or indirectly, to support it?

DeSantis is not the only person railing against the "accreditation cartel." That phrase also appears in a "report" issued earlier this week by the Heritage Foundation, announced with a post entitled "It’s Time for Congress to Dismantle the Higher Education Accreditation Cartel."

Their aim is much the same. Colleges and universities should be able to get their hands on that money without having to convince some accreditation cartel member that they are "woke" enough or "follow regulations" or are, you know, "any good." 

This is, in short, another version of the same policy pursuit that we see with folks who want school vouchers to allow money to go to private schools without any regulatory strings attached. 

There is a certain level of irony here. This is a lawsuit saying, "Hey, you can't withhold funding from a school just because they don't do things the way you want them to," coming from a guy who has been very clear that he will withhold funding from any school that doesn't do things the way he wants them to. Unfortunately, I'm betting that this is not going to be the last we see of this particular dodge. 

PA: Penncrest on PBS NewHour (with Penncrest Reader)

Judy Woodruff took a trip to Penncrest school district (right up the road from me) where the culture wars have been raging for a while now. I've been writing about their reading restrictions for a while, part of their attempt to imitate Bucks County and just generally stamp out those "evil" LGBTQ persons and that naughty CRT (whatever it is). 

The report is pretty well balanced. You will note that member David Valesky, who in print comes off like some cranky old fart, is actually more in the Chris Rufo-Corey Deangelis cranky young white guy mold. If you want to read up on the district to go along with the piece, here's the Institute Reader for these folks:

PA: Another CRT Panic Tale

In which an English teacher is denied the opportunity to represent the district as a presenter at an NCTE conference because a board member thought there might be CRT cooties there.

PA: Another District Clamping Down On Reading Rights

In which two board members become alarmed that there are "totally evil" LGBTQ books in the library, and they decide to Do Something about it.

PA: Penncrest Passes Reading Restrictions

In which the newest version of the reading restrictions pass, because that's what God wants.

PA: Board Member "I don't care what the law says."

In which the board says the law doesn't matter, but they're looking for a good conservative lawyer, anyway.

And here's the Judy Woodruff report, which puts some faces and voices with those names, and captures to some extent how the community wrestles with this stuff.

Teach For America Is Rebranding Again (Again)

Teach For America is announcing its new "brand identity," and it's...well, not great. 

The announcement, nominally by TFA honchos Elisa Villaneueva Beard, is a word salad with a dressing of corporate argle bargle:

This view is moving and remarkable, and it has called us to launch a new way of presenting ourselves to the world: a new brand identity to embody the work of this moment and the enduring values of equity, excellence, and leadership that underlie it. This includes a new look, a new logo (for the first time in 25 years), and a new tagline that concisely states what animates our work at its core: “Illuminate every learner.”

Illuminate every learner?

Our hope is that out in the world, our new brand identity will illuminate our work and ignite a spark in others, inspiring them to share our vision for the future. It’s rooted in hope, grounded in reality, and accountable to our kids and communities. While a brand is more than just a look, a logo, a color palette, or a tagline, those things are one way we shine a light on who we are today and who we aspire to be.

Illuminate every learner??

TFA has changed its corporate identity multiple times over the past twenty-five years (see here, here, and here, for a few). It is an exercise that only makes sense if one assumes that TFA, like any other corporate institution, considers its primary goal to be its own preservation. If I start WidgetCorp to make widgets, and it turns out that either widgets become obsolete or WidgetCorp is bad at making them, then I have two choices. I can A) say "Well, that's that" and go get into another business or B) decide that keeping WidgetCorp alive, so I'll rebrand it as a lemonade manufacturer.

TFA has steadily moved away from "teaching" and toward the creation of an alternate universe of education separate from the public education system. Over time, its cavalier idea that the Right Kind of People can learn to teach in five weeks (and do it better than the so-called professionals) has turned out to be far less damaging than its steady production of clueless amateurs who use their two year vacation in the classroom to slap "former teacher" in their CV as they head off into leadership or edupreneurial roles (ka-ching). Some very fine actual teachers with actual teaching careers have come out of TFA, but I can't think of a single TFA-trained "education leader" who has helped make public schools work better. Nor do they even pretend that teaching is their main focus. Under "What we do" on their website:

Teach For America is a diverse network of leaders who confront educational inequity by teaching for at least two years and then working with unwavering commitment from every sector of society to create a nation free from this injustice.

As educators, advocates, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and community members, we fight for the aspirations of students and families.

TFA is a corporate producer of education-flavored products and resumes. An expressed concern about teaching provides cover for the rest of its work. And this rebranding is such a corporate exercise. There's a whole FAQ about the rebranding with explanations like:

Early research and testing validated that our current logo is not providing lift or recognition. Our current logo, which is simply a type treatment of our name, was created more than 25 years ago, at a moment when we were an emerging nonprofit. Although the logo was not hurting the organization, testing validated that it also was not providing brand lift or differentiation in the marketplace. Importantly, it was not designed for the type of digital landscapes in which people today consume information and content—so a thoughtful evaluation and refresh were clearly needed.

They added the symbol "to add deeper meaning and support brand clarity by adding a symbol that would speak to our mission and purpose." And if you're wondering what the hell that thing is "It's a spark! It's a sun!! It represents the light and potential that lives in all our students." In other words, they don't really know, either (Actually, by their own account, folks made guesses all over the map until they were told what the logo was for.) It's purple because "the vast majority of similar organizations primarily use blues and/or greens in their logos." Also, for what it's worth, it's much like a logo for Pharmaceutical Bank and Religion in Society.

Illuminate every learner.

I'm still stuck on that part. Illuminating something usually means reveal parts of it, make parts of it visible (e.g.illuminate the solution). Or we illuminate something so we can find our way, like turning the lights on in a room. So why are we illuminating learners? Aren't we, as some of their material suggests, illuminating paths for learners? I'm sorry, but whoever workshopped this slogan for them did not workshop it enough. 

The old logo, just in case you were wondering

Who knows. TFA has been shrinking for a while now, and have decided to try to recruit and retain through the time-worn technique of throwing money at people. Beard writes that it is clear that "more of the same in education isn't working," but in 2023 "more of the same" means the same old reformster policies that TFA and its edu-adjacent grads have been pushing for two decades.

Back in April she was making noise about how they were changing the way they operate, noting they needed to do things like "leveraging a digital approach to delivering our program to corps members and alumni"-- so, more TFA training via Zoom meeting? They built a tutoring program. They doubled down on recruitment efforts. And they intend to "double the number of children who are on a pathway to economic mobility and improved outcomes," which would be a really neat trick, as nobody really knows for sure how to tell if you've done all that for a child (or maybe that makes it a simple trick.)

So definitely a logo change is needed. And a new slogan that doesn't actually make sense. 

The breathless announcement highlights one other long-standing feature of TFA. They have always, always understood that it is at least as important to look like you're doing the work as it is to actually do the work. They depend on lots and lots of contributors who don't think much more deeply than "Helping teach poor kids! Well, that's a good thing, right?" or even just "Well, it has 'teach' and 'America' in the title so it must be good." 

Oh well. Making an overthought logo change and a misses-the-mark slogan may be the least damaging thing that TFA has done in the last 25 years. It's hard for me to take these folks seriously, but I respect the amount of damage they've done to education, under any logo. I can believe that once upon a time they meant well, but even with a cool new logo, I'm not sure what the heck they mean today. 

NC: Charter Fires Teacher For Teaching Book About Race

This story carries so many reminders. This is why you need employment protection. This is why you need a union. This is why it's bad that charter schools put students and teachers in a rights-free zone. And this is why CRT panic laws hurt education.

Charlotte Secondary School is a 6-12 charter school in North Carolina, a "diverse middle and high school community that focuses on college and career preparation and individually tailored learning opportunities to empower all students to reach their full potential." The school has an 88% minority student body, with about 50/50 White/Black faculty. They've been at it for around fifteen years; their test scores aren't so hot, but their lacrosse team was on ESPN once. They use a no-frills block schedule.

And they're being sued.

Last October the school hired Markayle Gray to teach seventh and eighth grade English. The hiring was "on a contract basis" meaning he has no job protections or guarantee of year-to-year employment. And in February, he was fired. And now he's suing the school.

Gray chose to teach the novel Dear Martin, a YA book that follows a Black high school student as he deals with a violent encounter with the police. After being thrown to the ground and handcuffed, the teen writes ten imaginary letters to Dr. Martin Luther Kingh, Jr.

The school requires teachers to clear materials with the principal before using them. In his lawsuit, Gray says he not only did so, but that the principal not only approved the novel, but she recommended the novel to him as a “challenging but age-appropriate work that promoted a discussion of core American values like justice and equality.”

But then white parents complained. According to the lawsuit:

on February2, 2023, Gray was informed by the school’s principal Keisha Rock that his contract was being terminated effective immediately. The ostensible grounds, he was told, was the emergence of parental opposition over “Dear Martin” and other aspects of Gray’s teaching content related to racial equality. As Rock stated, “I cannot address complaints made by parents all day.”

Rock also told Gray that she had been in constant communication with the Board of Directors,“all day long”, as she put it, which had also received parental complaints regarding Gray, and that the Board had authorized his immediate termination.

According to a press release from Gray's lawyers:

White parents complained that the critically acclaimed novel injected what they regarded as unwelcome political views on systemic racial inequality into their children’s classroom. In its published core principles, Charlotte Secondary, whose student population is 80-85% Black, Hispanic or biracial, claims that “Diversity is not merely desirable, it is necessary for the accomplishment of our mission.”

According to the lawsuit, Rock also saw firing Gray as the only way to avoid pressure from North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) as a complaint had been circulated to DPI that a Charlotte Secondary teacher was teaching Critical Race Theory.

North Carolina's House passed a teacher gag bill back in March, after failing to get an identical bill past the governor's veto in 2021. HB 187 does specifically include charter schools in the requirement to avoid teaching any naughty topics; like many anti-CRT bills, it doesn't mention CRT by name but instead offers a large, vague list of characteristics that legislators imagine might describe CRT.

That bill was filed in late February, after Gray had been fired, but some version of it has been around for a while. This is the state where Lt. Governor Mark Robinson set up a McCarthyish tip line in 2021 so that citizens could report teachers for teaching naughty things. Any school-- including a charter school--has to know that this sort of state-sponsored intolerance is in the air.

The school's attorney has the predictable response:

"Since this is a personnel matter, we are limited in what we can say about the reasons for Mr. Gray's termination," attorney Katie Weaver Hartzog told ABC News in a statement. "However, I can say that the termination of Mr. Gray's employment was based on legitimate, nondiscriminatory, non-retaliatory reasons. The school denies any and all allegations of wrongdoing and intends to vigorously defend the suit."

Dear Martin has been banned elsewhere. Haywood County schools in North Carolina pulled it from 10th grade English classes after one parent complaint. In Georgia, Columbia County schools banned the book from classes and libraries for reasons that are unclear (read The Root's account of that flap). And Monett High School in Missouri yanked the book and replaced it with To Kill a Mockingbird. 

As the book's author Nic Stone put it, “I think there’s an overall discomfort with facing up to the fact that racism is still a thing that we need to be talking about. But I don’t think it’s possible to talk about it without people being uncomfortable.” 

Gray's actual complaint hinges on the charge that his firing was a product of race discrimination. Gray is suing for back pay, front pay, lost benefits, punitive damages, and compensatory damages. 

So many layers here. So many things missing. Job protections, so that a school can't just fire someone because they find him annoying. Laws that actually defend against discrimination. A union to defend Gray's right to due process. And just generally not bending to the will of White folks who don't want to even discuss the idea that racism is a thing. I guess we'll see how Gray's lawsuit turns out. 

Aldeman Tries Making a Progressive Case for Choice

Chad Aldeman, one of those people I consider a serious grown-up in the reformster camp, is in The 74 this morning seeing if he can make a case for school choice, or at least counter what he sees as 

warnings coming out of the political left that educational choice programs will “destroy public schools” or “harm our society,” and that calls for more educational choices represent an “assault on American democracy.”

Instead of painting the movement to provide more educational choices for families as a right-wing bogeyman, progressives would be better off understanding that voters, especially Black and Latino parents, support greater options within the public schools.

Emphasis mine. 

Aldeman makes some very valid points. The public system we have has huge room for improvement when it comes to equity. Other countries do have some variations on our basic set up that work. 

And he offers five questions that "progressives should ask as they evaluate K-12 educational choice programs." And they are five questions, not all bad. Let's take them one at a time.

Are programs allowed to discriminate?

Aldeman notes that we have some segregation problems in our current system, and choice systems will allow a certain amount of self-segregation. Both true. But he hits the mark here:

States should protect against bad actors by requiring that any school accepting public money be prohibited from discriminating based on a student’s national origin, race, color, religion, disability, gender or familial status. If public money is going to private educational programs, they must be open and accepting of all students, and there must be protections and avenues for students and families to resolve conflicts. This should be a minimum bar to accepting public money.

Yes, yes and yes. Unfortunately, this gives us a problem right off the bat. The newest round of voucher (education savings account) laws not only allow discrimination, but specifically forbid any sort of state interference with the voucher-accepting school. And Aldeman has left out the right-wing elephant in the room, which is that voucher programs are largely about steering public dollars to private christian schools for whom discrimination is kind of the whole point. 

I absolutely agree with him--but the voucher wing of the school choice movement emphatically does not, and if Oklahoma has its way, the charter wing may soon follow. 

Is there a real check on quality?

I could quibble here that we haven't come up with any very good checks on public school quality, but I'll agree with Aldeman that whatever hoops public schools are jumping through, choice schools should jump through as well. 

However, again, we are going to run over the religious right's desire to teach that the Earth is 4000 years old and that Black folks "immigrated" to the US. But Aldeman is right:

Anyone who cares about program quality should insist that all kids be tested against the same statewide standards.

Unfortunately, as I suspect Aldeman well knows, plenty of choicers have taken the position that program quality A) is far less important than the moral imperative to offer choice and B) states don't have to do anything because the invisible hand of the market will take care of all quality issues.

Are the funding programs progressive?

Aldeman allows that fears that voucher programs are just handouts for wealthy families are "well-founded." He suggests that states could issue vouchers of higher amounts to students with higher needs.

Is the program actively supporting disadvantaged families?

Aldeman says that transparency and accountability would help families make good choices, but I'll argue it's unlikely that any choice system will not suffer from asymmetrical information issues, and it is not in the vendors' interest to fix that. This is what you get when you unleash the free market--marketing in place of transparency. 

Aldeman's solution is for the government to fund "choice navigators" aka a whole other level of bureaucracy to help families navigate the level of choice bureaucracy. I'm trying to imagine who these people will be and where we'd find them all (would this be a full time job? part time? minimum wage?), but there's another problem here-- many schools use the red tape and bureaucracy to weed out the families they don't want (see for example Sucess Academy). 

Does the state treat existing providers (traditional school districts) fairly?

Aldeman makes some weak claims that competition improves public schools and the financial hit isn't all that bad, though he acknowledges that some folks are "justifiably concerned about what happens to traditional districts if they lose students, especially the most active and engaged families. They could become the school of last resort for the most expensive, most disruptive kids" even as he calls the concerns "overblown." But he does argue that states will have to figure out a lot of funding questions, and I would certainly welcome an end to the era in which the choice argument was based on the absurd notion that we can run ten schools for the same money we used to spend to run one.

Questions he left out.

I am never entirely certain whether I am a progressive or not, though I know that's the bin I'm generally tossed into. But here are a couple of other questions that this public school supporter thinks need to be answered when choice turns up.

Who actually owns the facilities?

Schools involve real estate--often highly desirable real estate. Who owns the building, the facilities, the ground on which they're located? As a taxpayer, am I owning something, or am I paying taxes so someone else can get rich?

Who is actually in charge?

Are the people at the top elected representatives of the taxpayers who have to conduct business in a public meeting, or a bunch of unelected officials who can meet in private elsewhere?

Is this a business or a school?

Is this business run for profit, either directly or indirectly? I'm not asking because I have some philosophical objection to businesses because I think making a profit is dirty and evil. I'm asking because businesses make decisions for business reasons, and I don't want to send my child to a school only to have the school yanked away at some point because the business case for the school no longer makes sense to the owners/investors.

Is it a religious school?

Public taxpayer dollars should not be going to private religious schools for all the usual reasons, but also because the mission of a religious school is inherently incompatible with the mission of public education (see Question #1 above). It's not a matter of one mission being good and the other being evil; they just don't fit together. 

Finishing up

I appreciate Aldeman's offering what I read as a thoughtful take. I believe there are ways to incorporate choice ideas into the public education system (that's a whole other post), and it's worth it to have versions of that conversation wherever it crops up. It's never a bad time to have a deeper conversation about what "public education" means.

And while I understand why Aldeman would have an aversion to apocalyptic right wing boogeyman talk from public ed defenders, folks in the choice camp have to have noticed that they are currently allied with a lot of right wing boogeyman-looking folks who do, in fact, want to see public education either destroyed or converted. So I do want to see the grownups keep talking about the important stuff, but those conversations have to take place with an awareness of what's going on around them.