OK: State Issued Prayer And True Threats To The Church

Oklahoma continues it unsubtle slide into theocracy, with this memo from State Superintendent Ryan Walters issues this week:

It recommends a moment for students this week, and offers a "sample prayer" for them to pray during that moment. Some educators are pretty cranked up about this, as well they might be. There are many reasons to be bothered by this memo. I'm going to focus on just one.

Walters also issues a warning to districts this week that he'd damned well better not hear about any school that folds to pressure (in this case, from some unnamed "secular organization" in Wisconsin. The group, he charges, is opposed to the Constitution and is pushing "state-sponsored atheism." also, Walter says, "I feel pity for these woke, elitist lawyers who have decided that there is no greater calling in life than to make sure teachers aren't practicing their Faith." 

I have to observe, once again, that this guy once taught history. You'd think he would know better. 

I would also think that he's smart enough to know that "this school will not promote a single religious view" is not remotely the same as "this school suggests you become an atheist."

The implication here (and many other Walters pronouncements) is that instead of state-sponsored atheism, we should have state-sponsored Christianity. 

Which is a terrible idea.

For Christianity.

Seriously. At least the voters of Oklahoma elected Walters as chief education honcho. But nobody at all elected him a religious authority. Nobody gave him the authority to craft prayers for all the children in Oklahoma. 

The folks who crafted a wall between church and state did so not just to protect the state from the church, but to protect the church from the state, at least back to Henry VIII declaring, "I'm now the head of the church and I'll be telling you what God wants you to do." When you mix religion and politics, you get politics. When you make politicians the voice of the church, you get political pronouncements cloaked in religious garments.

We get led back to this time and again by Worshippers of the Tiny God. Their conception of God is of something small and weak. If God is not being explicitly promoted by humans in particular settings, their reasoning goes, then human beings will become atheists or humanists or maybe even something worse. If institutions leave an empty space where religion can go, so that folks may fill that space in according to their own faith, Worshippers of the Tiny God see atheism, because their conception of God is so small and weak it can not overcome silence. 

It is a special kind of theocratic hubris-- "God is great and powerful, but God cannot work in this world without Me to do the heavy lifting. God needs my protection, because otherwise these other humans would somehow chain God into silence and ineffectualness. Good thing I'm here to make this part of the world safe for God."

Walters, and other like him, who claim to be preserving some sort of American tradition, are doing the opposite. 

Imagine it's Sunday morning. You're in church, and during the service a local politician, an official with political authority, gets up and announces, "I have written the prayer for you to use today, and every Sunday." 

Imagine it's a Wednesday morning, and your child is called into a school assembly, where an elected official announces, "I have brought an official prayer for all of you students to recite today."

Does that feel like religious liberty? Does that feel like citizens being allowed the freedom to worship as they choose? 

You cannot put the weight of the state behind religious worship without also giving the state some say over what form that religious worship will take. People who want to put prayer into public school are advocating a choice that is not just bad for schools, but bad for the church as well. They should be among the loudest voices telling Ryan Walters to knock it off. God does not need nor benefit from Walters self-aggrandizing "help."

ICYMI: Bad Week For The World Edition (10/15)

As social media continues to demonstrate its brokenness, I encourage you to be hugely cautious about what you repost, amplify, or just plain believe. It's a bad time for fraud and fakery. Currently I'm testing the waters at Bluesky and Threads (I gave up on spoutible) and I'll be happy to see you there. It's just hard to spread the word these days, and there is so much word to be spread. Here's some reading from the past week.

Moms for Liberty: Where are they, and are they winning?

A bunch of people at Brokings did a truckload of data crunching to generate a picture of where M4L is busy, and how they're doing. Very worthwhile read.

Moms for Liberty attempt to remove books from Charlotte high school fails

Justin Parmenter reports on one attempt to ban some books, and how it was handled by the district.

Tennessee charter school commission takes marching orders from Lee in privatizing schools

In Tennessee, one more tool the governor uses to push charter schools over local objections.

Charter CEOs Collecting High Salaries, Benefits and Bonuses

Great piece that includes a breakdown of charter CEO salaries in Philly area (including how many students they are actually working with). So much for the whole "choice will save money because public schools spend too much money on administrators" argument.

Texas Took Over Its Largest School District, but Has Let Underperforming Charter Networks Expand

In Texas, public schools that underperform must be taken over, but charters are free to stink as much as they want to. From ProPublica

Charles Koch's audacious new $5 billion political scheme

Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria at Popular Information. When you're really rich, you can order up your own tax loopholes, and then use them. Makes it easier to keep pushing the privatization of public ed.

Nonprofit near Kansas City seeks to become ‘epicenter of the school-choice movement’

Annelise Hanshaw at the Missouri Independent writes about Stanley Herzog, one more rich guy who wants to retool the US, including expanding "Christ-centered K-12 education."

Mark Zuckerberg tried to revolutionize American education with technology. It didn’t go as planned.

Matt Barnum has moved on from Chalkbeat; he's taking a job as an ed reporter at the Wall Street Journal. I'll miss him, and I'll hope that he brings a little more quality to that operation. In the meantime, here's one of his last pieces, looking at the tale of Zuck's attempt to fix education, and how it didn't work.

A transgender student, her crusading mom — and an English teacher caught in the middle

"A teacher turned my child trans" says a parent. Not the story at all, says the child, the child's father, and the teacher. This is a gut punch of a story from a pair of reporters for NBC News, thoroughly reported.

Moms for Liberty meets its match: Parents in this swing suburban district are fighting back

Amanda Marcotte at Salon does a great job of pulling together the full story of the attempt by MAGA Moms to commandeer Pennridge Schools, and how that has energized an opposing group.

The Mystery of Ryan Walters: How a Beloved History Teacher Became Oklahoma’s Culture-Warrior-in-Chief

Linda Jacobson at The 74 digs into the mystery of how Ryan Walters transformed from a respected history teacher into Oklahoma's performative MAGA dudebro of education. 

Substitute teachers are in short supply, but many schools still don't pay them a living wage

Somebody at CBS noticed that there's a sub shortage, and they put Aubrey Gelpieryn on the story. 

Sylvia Allegretto Documents Large and Persistent Teacher Pay Penalty

Jan Resseger looks at the annual report on the teacher pay penalty, the amount of money teachers could have earned if they had used their college education in other fields.

Why what looked like good news for charter schools actually wasn’t

Last summer CREDO cranked out a report that "proved" that charter schools get better results than public schools. Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post has put together all the pieces that show how those conclusions were not really accurate.

Testing for Perpetual Education Crisis

Speaking of unwarranted conclusions, Paul Thomas writes about the latest round of chicken littling over ACT scores.

Whatever Happened to School Dress Codes?

Larry Cuban takes a look at the world of dress codes, including some lowlights from, a GAO study.

A Shameful History, Part 3

Jess Piper's series on teaching the hard history looks at the lynching of Raymond Gunn. 

Of Clear Eyes and Pure Hearts

Tennessee is going to revamp its school evaluation system. TC Weber is skeptical.

Has F.A.S.T. Testing Lived Up to Its Promises

You may recall that Florida was going to fix the problems of time-consuming high stakes testing by using a new system, with more testing. How has this been working out? Sue Kingery Woltanski has the unsurprising results.

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in My School Orchestra

John Bohlinger in Premier Guitar. He could just as easily have said band, but the idea is sound.

At Forbes, I wrote about the successful attempt in Nebraska to make the government put vouchers to a vote. 

Join me on substack. It's free!

Dear Voters: Please Pay Attention

It's an off year, with mostly just boring things like school board seats and judgeships up for election. Maybe some local municipal stuff. All really dull. 

I am begging you. Please pay attention.

Over the past couple of years, I have ploughed through story after story about local school boards that had acquired a new ultra-conservative majority that proceeded to do everything from firing superintendents and central office staff to creating new policy to rooting out imaginary CRT and various Naughty Books to going after the budget with a meataxe. 

These actions are often followed by community outcry, sometimes productive but often to no avail. And  they all tell a similar story about how things got to this point. 

People weren't paying attention. People just kind of slept through the board election. People didn't bother to vote because they assumed the usual reasonable people would win in a walk. 

People tend to imagine that who actually sits on the school board doesn't matter that much. Unless there's some pressing local issue like bus stops, sports uniforms, or a teacher contract under negotiation, folks assume that board members fungible, that they can be swapped out without much effect on anything. Heck, in regions like mine, it's not unusual to have too few people running to fill all the seats, which really helps reinforce a habit of ignoring board elections.

If there's anything to be learned in the last decade, it's that elections have consequences. 

When it comes to school boards (and courts), there are a whole bunch of folks who are involved in a concerted, and often well-funded effort to commandeer these positions (whatever "well-funded" means in your neck of the woods). There are christianists who want to insert their religion into the public sphere. There are MAGA members who want to gut the curriculam and replace it with their own. There are culture warriors who want to tear up the rules by which your district operates and create their own. There are dominionists who want to take back schools. There are people who want to root out "indoctrination" (aka "making students aware of anything these folks disagree with") and replace it with "proper thinking" (aka "making sure students are led to believe what these right-thinking folks believe"). 

What's more, at this point many of these folks understand that saying out loud that they are, say, Moms For Liberty endorsed or running specifically to get their personal faith made school policy--that might not be a winning campaign, and it might be best to keep the quiet part quiet. At least until after you've won. And when it comes to judgeships--well, in Pennsylvania we have Carolun Carluccio running for State Supreme Court, heavily financed by Jeff Yass and carefully scrubbing her materials of reference to her strong anti-abortion stance.

If you assume that how (or if) you vote on a school board election (or judge) election doesn't really matter, I am here to tell you that you are deeply and truly wrong. It may take some legwork and study to figure out who's who (and if you have done that work, please share it), but it is far easier to do this kind of work before elections than it is to try to protect your school district from duly-elected vandals. 

If far out there candidates are elected because a community knows what they stand for and elects them, that's one thing. But when radicals are elected because the community is napping, that's a big mastake with serious consequences.

Please pay attention. 

TX: How Bad Is The Newest Voucher Proposal

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is finding democracy a huge pain in the butt these days. Democratically elected legislators will not let him have his way, so he has called the legislature back once again to consider his dream of education savings account vouchers, or else. He has threatened to primary rural GOP House members who (once again) thwart him. He is holding teacher pay hostage unless he gets his way. He is not, it should be noted, taking his voucher proposal to the voting public (because the voting public has never approved a voucher program).

In short, he is pulling every lever of power he has at his command in order to circumvent any sort of democratic process.

That's an appropriate tactic for installing vouchers, which themselves short-circuit democratic processes. Vouchers disenfranchise taxpayers with no school age children; in voucher world they get no say in how their education tax dollars are spent. Vouchers cut local elected school boards out of the funding (or defunding process). 

And despite all the talk about education freedom for families, vouchers create a system in which schools--not families--get to choose who has access to the best education. 

When we look into SB 1, the latest voucher proposal that has already sailed past the state senate to the rocky waters of the house, where Texas voucher bills go to die, we find most of the usual stuff. A little more auditing of parents than some bills, but no real oversight or accountability for "education service providers," who require no serious vetting to get on the pre-approved vendors' list.

Modern voucher bills routinely include a hands off clause, a promise that they will be allowed to conduct business as they wish, with no interference by the state. Don't want the state bringing up pesky issues of discrimination or teaching that dinosaurs and humans strolled the earth together about 4,000 years ago.

SB 1 includes hands off language, and very specific language at that. Starting out with the usual language about how accepting voucher money does not make the recipients state actors (a phrase that has caused some legal choice trouble in the past). Then, under Sec. 29.368, we get very clear:

A rule adopted or other governmental action taken related to the program may not impose requirements that are contrary to or limit the religious or institutional values or practices of an education service provider, vendor of educational products, or program participant, including by limiting the ability of the provider, vendor, or participant, as applicable, to:

(1) determine the methods of instruction or curriculum used to educate students;

(2) determine admissions and enrollment practices, policies, and standards;

(3) modify or refuse to modify the provider’s, vendor’s, or participant’s religious or institutional values or practices, including operations, conduct, policies, standards, assessments, or employment practices that are based on the provider’s, vendor’s, or participant’s religious or institutional values or practices; or

(4) exercise the provider’s, vendor’s, or participant’s religious or institutional practices as determined by the provider, vendor, or participant

Note in particular item 2-- nobody can tell the private school how to decide which students to take, or not. Religion, behavior, grades, hair style, family background, basically any damn thing that the school wants to offer as a reason not to accept a particular student is untouchable by the state. And I'm pretty sure that they could get around any pesky federal rules about race. 

For the moment, let's look past the issue here of quality, of a law that would require taxpayers to support a school that does a lousy job, that discriminates in ways that most Americans would find odious, that is a transparently crappy school that taxpayers have no say in funding. Oh, and that requires students with special needs jettison their rights at the schoolhouse door.

Let's look past all that at the central pitch of the fans of SB 1. 

From Mandy Drogin the head of the Texas branch of Betsy DeVos's American Federation for Children lobbying group, lobbyist, and previous Heritage Foundation event planner:

With today’s announcement, Governor Abbott has made clear that Texas will prioritize student-centered educational policies that ensure that money will follow the student to any school their parents choose – this includes high-quality public schools, public charter schools, private schools, and more.

Except, no, it won't. It will prioritize private-school-centered policies which will allow private schools to pick and choose, as they wish, from among the applicants (who may or may not be able to afford the gap between their voucher amount and private school tuition). It will prioritize private-school-centered policies that allow taxpayer subsidies for students who were already in private schools.

If these people were serious about school choice, they would address the real barriers to getting students into their choice school--cost and discrimination. But they won't. 

By allowing taxpayer subsidies to go to students who were already in private schools (aka could already afford it), SB 1 funnels dollars collected from low-wealth taxpayers to subsidize wealthy families, even as it empowers private schools to refuse to admit any of Those Peoples' Children. 

It's bad policy. Here's hoping the state house once again holds the line, no matter how hard Abbott tries to twist their arms.

OK: Trump Judge Stalls Decision On Gag Law Injunction

Way back in September of 2021, in the height of the CRT panic, Oklahoma jumped on the gag law bandwagon with HB 1775. The bill included the usual list of Naughty Things Teachers Must Not Say, the same list in most of these laws and copied from Donald Trump's executive order to clamp down in CRT (whatever that might be), all vague and unclear enough to exert a chilling effect on teaching about race in the US.

It's HB 1775 that has given Oklahoma such special moments as Education Dudebro Ryan Walters explaining that the Tulsa Race Riots can be taught, just don't say they were racially motivated. And then try to take it back, sort of. This, mind you, from a guy who was an actual honest-to-goodness history teacher.

The ACLU and some other folks including students and teachers filed a lawsuit against the new law in October of 2021. They asked for an injunction to block the bill. Both sides had finished filing written arguments 19 months ago. 

And since then, nothing but the sound of the wind sweeping down the plain.

What's the holdup? Nobody knows. The plaintiffs have attempted to encourage the court to cough up a decision, but it hasn't helped.

The judge who is apparently pondering the issue at considerable length is U. S. District Judge Charles B. Goodwin, a Trump appointee. It took two tries; Goodwin was part of Trump's string of judge nominees rated "unqualified" by the American Bar Association. Goodwin at least had previous judge experience. The unqualified rating was apparently because of "work ethic" e.g. his habit of not showing up at court until noon. Goodwin protested that he was just a guy who liked to do a lot of his work at home. 

So who knows. Maybe there's a ruling tucked under a coffee table in his home somewhere. Maybe I shouldn't criticize, since the Institute operates out of a corner of my residence. Of course, I'm not a federal judge, and it doesn't take me two years to get my work done. 

What Koch Wants From Candidates

The Very Rightward Washington Examiner just ran an op-ed from Craig Hulse entitled "How GOP candidates can win on education." Like most such pieces, it would be better titled "These are policies we want these guys to support, so we're going to argue that supporting them is a way to win elections." It's marketing, not analysis, but in this case it's worth looking at for a second because of Hulse's job.

Craig Hulse is the executive director of Yes Every Kid. He's been a busy guy. He's been back and forth through the revolving public-private door. Staff assistant for Congress, legislative liaison for Nevada governor, state policy advisor in Nevada, Nevada state director of StudentsFirst, director of government relations for Las Vegas Sands, public policy/public affairs manager for Uber, the Ready Colorado choicer advocacy group, state government affairs for JUUL, policy and government affairs for Tesla--most of them for a little over a year. His job is to oversee "the lobbying team with efforts across the United States to direct education and influence campaigns to shape education policy that is open to the free flow of ideas and innovation."

Yes Every Kid is the education wing of the kinder, gentler Kochtopus. It was a sort of prequel to Koch's 2020 announcement that the country was too partisan and he was, by golly, going to stop contributing to that. He followed that announcement up by throwing a giant pile of money behind GOP candidates, including those endorsed by Trump. A cynic might conclude that Koch's change of heart was just a rebranding exercise, a shiny coat of lipstick on the same old pack of porcine politics.

So what does this arm of Kochtopus want the GOP to do?

2023 has been a banner year for education freedom, with nearly all families in nine states now empowered to direct education funding in a way that best meets their kids’ needs. These state laboratories of democracy are innovating, and voters are responding. With all this progress, it’s no surprise that Republicans are seen as more trustworthy than Democrats on education — a development that will have major implications for next year’s presidential election.

"Voters are responding" is a cagey way of framing voter response. Voters, who have never passed an "education freedom" program at the ballot box, have been kicking back at the MAGA takeover of school boards. I have no idea what Hulse's basis for saying that the GOP "are seen" as more trustworthy. Are seen by whom, exactly? And that last line hints at what the current culture-war-based MAGA Moms assault on public education is about--activate the base and win some elections.

Hulse was unhappy with the GOP debates, and he singles out DeSantis as the one guy who has fallen in line with the desired ed policy. Hulse would like to see all candidates seize "the opportunity to illustrate a future where educational decisions are made by families." AKA a future in which families are on their own in trying to get their children an education.

What would this future look like? We must reaffirm what we mean by “public education.” It means curating educational experiences that best meet each student’s needs — regardless of where and how they take place. The traditional brick-and-mortar school building filled with rows of desks is an outdated idea.

Um, yes. That's why so many people were delighted when the bricks-and-mortar buildings were shut down during the pandemic and families were forced to curate other educational experiences wherever and however they could. Could it be that the idea that Koch et al find outdated is the idea of a system in which people with money pay taxes in order to finance education for those people with less money.

Hulse has three specific proposals.

First, "Empower families to direct funding." In other words, vouchers. He says some nice things about the potential of children and how the system is set up to push a "one size fits all system," because education reformsters love to rail against the schools of sixty years ago. The fact that he praises nine states suggests that he wants full-on ESA vouchers, so that families can spend it on public, private, micro or home schools (see once again how microschools help plug the hole in this pitch). 

Second, allow families to enroll students in schools outside their attendance zone. And he offers this striking analogy. "Imagine if, on a hot summer day, you could be denied access to a public pool or park because you live in the wrong neighborhood." I'm pretty sure lots of folks have no trouble imagining what that would be like, and that experience of Those People's Children being chased out of local facilities tells you something about the actual obstacles that this idea would face. Or history from Little Rock. Or the many post-Brown stories of cities where white students were allowed to switch schools, and Black students were not. Not saying this is the worst idea; I am saying that it would take a lot of thought and enforcement to keep it from being anything other than another mechanism for white flight.

Third, unbundle education. This is an old favorite, but his examples are uninformed. Why can't a homeschooled kid play on his local school's football team? No reason. My rural-ish school district has been doing that sort of thing for years and years. But his reasoning is a bit askew. They should be able to pick and choose bits of public education to access because "public schools are public institutions funded by taxpayer dollars" so "why should students have to enroll full time to participate." Except that if he gets his way on vouchers, that students' "share" of the taxpayer dollars will have gone elsewhere. 

But the whole "part time public school" idea is one more way to plug the problems with choice. Can't find a microschool or software program or faux teacher who can teach your kid calculus? Just go back to the public school to pick that up. Which seems like a backhanded way to admit that public schools are the best one stop shop to meet whatever educational needs you might have.

Hulse wraps up with some unsourced poll numbers about choice, and can we all just agree that what the public "wants" when it comes to school choice is pretty much a function of how the question is worded? 

Final pitch?

Candidates can unite the nation with a vision to promote freedom, empower families and improve public schools. On such a crowded debate stage, those who champion families will make a real impression on voters.

Really? Because DeSantis, the second Florida governor to pin his Presidential hopes on bold education policy, doesn't seem to be making much of a unifying visionary impression on voters. Koch certainly has money to throw at this dream of a pig and its wish for lipstick; we'll see what it gets him. 

How Vouchers Bust State Budgets

One of the consistent features of voucher programs is that they grow, sometimes rapidly, to suck up huge chunks of the state budget. Nobody understands this better than Arizona's Governor Katie Hobbs. She posted this memo on the Dead Bird app yesterday:

Hobbs has rung this alarm bell before. Back in July, her office noted that the price tag for the state's education scholarship account voucher program would be over $943 million, leading to a $320 million shortfall. And that doesn't just represent moving money from public schools to voucher programs. Hobbs says that the vouchers benefit 8% of the state's students, but account for more than half of the state's education spending.

How can that be? And why is it happening in other universal voucher states as well?

Two simple things.

First, universal vouchers expand the pool of students that the public pays for. Let's say that West Egg High School has 100 students, and East Egg Private Academy has 20. After universal vouchers become a thing, five public school students take their vouchers and head for EEPA (five others applied and EEPA refused to take them). At the same time, all 20 EEPA students--who have never set foot in a public school--also sign up to get their vouchers. 

So, pre-vouchers, taxpayers were covering the costs for 100 students. After vouchers, the public is footing the bill for 120 students. Costs go up. Arizona opened up universal vouchers, and the vast majority of applicants were families with students already in private school. True in Iowa and Florida, as well.

Second, pro-voucher folks consistently under-estimate what the cost of the program will be (in New Hampshire they were off by over 11,000%). This is puzzling, since the question involved is "If we offer free government money to everyone who homeschools or has a child in private school, how many do you think will take it?" and that doesn't seem like a hard one to figure out.

Universal ESA vouchers like those in Arizona and Florida add a whole other level. Unaccountable voucher dollars disappear into a void, paying for all sorts of extras like big screen TVs and Disney tickets. Meanwhile, we're seeing private schools in places like Des Moines raising tuition costs because vouchers mean they can do it to increase their own revenue (increasing tuition is also a great way to keep Those Peoples' Children out). 

This is how a program billed as rescue for poor families becomes an entitlement for wealthy families. And it's a reminder that a voucher pitch claiming that vouchers will somehow save tax dollars is just not true, no matter how many times voucher advocates repeat it. 

Looking way down the road, I expect this will lead us to a battle between different flavors of choicers. For those who like vouchers because they are one step on the road to getting government completely out of education, the long term dream is a world in which few or no tax dollars go to education, and families have to scrape together what they can afford on their own. Those folks are going to reach a point where they want to shrink voucher sizes. But for those who like the idea of turning on the state money faucet and flooding private religious (okay, Christian) schools with free tax dollars, voucher shrinkage will be an unwelcome change that they will fight tooth and nail.

That's some years away, but we've seen previews. Croydon, NH, had a true voucher program that paid full tuition to send any student to the school of their family's choice, public or private. It was expensive, so the local Libertarians tried to scuttle it by reducing the money by half. 

But that's further down the road. Right now we are on track to see more Arizona-style financial issues for states that decide to go all in on vouchers for everybody. If states are smart enough to pay attention, the lessons are there. Voucher programs inevitably grow, as advocates and legislators (but never the actual voters) try to open the money faucet wider, and as the programs grow, they become increasingly expensive.