Whose Religious Freedom?

Ryan Walters has drawn some more press in Oklahoma over a trip to DC to appear at the Family Research Council Summit in DC. Say one thing for Oklahoma's education dudebro-in-chief; while there may be plenty of officials out there who want to see the nation's education system christianized, Walters is plenty clear about what he wants.

There should be no separation of church and state. "We will bring God back to schools and prayer back to schools in Oklahoma and we will fight back against that radical myth," Walters said.

The Family Research Council was founded by James Dobson and is currently led by Tony Perkins, and they're an explicitly evangelical activist group. They've been designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Policy Law Center and a source of considerable misbehavior. FRC is an exemplar of that saying, "When you mix religion and politics you get politics."

These are the folks that are pushing for what they call religious freedom. These are the folks who are looking to smash the wall between church and state even as they argue that any such wall is a myth.

But if the wall is destroyed, exactly which religion is supposed to come strolling through the rubble. Religious freedom for whom, exactly?

Walters is one of those advocates who likes to pretend that "religion" and "Christianity" are synonyms. It's a rhetorical sloppiness with a purpose, a recognition that we are not, as a nation, quite ready to propose that the First Amendment is for Christians only (yet). And some conservatives understand that once that wall is gone, all manner of beliefs can waltz through. 

We don't even have to talk about Sharia Schools and Satanic Temple Academy to see how fraught this question is, how filled with danger for both state and church.

Consider this statistic from The Great De-Churching, a book by two evangelical pastors trying to understand why people are leaving the Christian church in record numbers; one quarter of the dechurched evangelicals in their survey believe that the United States should be declared a Christian nation—but they don’t attend church.

And they are a big part of this. Inside a New York Times article about Iowa pastor reactions to the "God made Trump" video, in which Trump is discussed in messiainic language, we find this line about the guy who created the video:

The group’s leader, Brenden Dilley, describes himself as Christian and a man of faith, but says he has never read the Bible and does not attend church.

What brand of Christianity is that, exactly, other than one that apparently leaves room for the literal worship of Trump and what Dilley calls his "God-tier genetics." Is that what Walters demands should be in the classroom?

Whose faith are the taxpayers supposed to finance? Which church should the government choose to support? When the United Methodist Church breaks apart over LGBTQ issues (sadly, the issue up for debate is "should the UMC discriminate against LGBTQ persons, or really really discriminate against LGBTQ persons), should the government side with both sides, or just one? And what happens when some evangelicals start to bristle at paying taxes to support the nation's primary provider of religious education, the Catholic Church, or, as some evangelicals like to call it, the Whore of Babylon?

"Well, they don't have to side with any of them," you may say. "Just leave them alone to freely worship as they will." Except that under the Supreme Court's current version of the First Amendment and the dreamed-of future of folks like Walts and FRC, they can't freely worship unless they are free to discriminate as they wish and be subsidized by taxpayers to do it. 

Walters is confident that once the wall is gone, only favored "Judeo-Christian" churches will stroll through. This is a silly thing to think (and former history teacher Walter should know better). "Church" means hundreds of different denominations in the United States, not counting guys like Dilley who, I guess, each represent a "church" of one. Oh, and also, all those other religions.

It would be hard enough to parse all this if it were just about faith. Trying to lump a boatload of faiths together by talking pretty about "Judeo-Christian tradition" may sound nice, but anyone who has worked in any kind of community ministerial forum knows, differences in faith traditions are not so easily papered over.

And it's not just about faith. The Catholic Church loves school choice because they need the money. For many others its about power, the power to impose their will on the education system. 

When churches are turned loose to scrabble over the power and money involved in schools and other parts of society, what can be the result except for more squabbling and fighting and maneuvering and--well, you know. Politics. And who is going to settle this other than the government. 

Walters and the folks at FRC may not see this as a problem, because they keep making the same mistake, which is imagining themselves and their allies holding the reins, thereby guaranteeing that when those difficult calls have to be made, they will end up on the winning side. This is a failure of imagination, a failure to learn the lessons of history. This is picking a fight based on an unrealistic belief that you will kick everyone else's collective keisters. 

When someone starts making noise about getting rid of the wall so that there can be religious freedom, ask these questions:

Will that be freedom for all faiths? And if not, who will decide who wins and who loses? And if yes, how do you plan to make taxpayers pay for it?

Denver Archdiocese Sues For Right To Discriminate On Public Dime

If you're tracking the various lawsuits trying to remove the last few bricks from the wall between church and state, here's one more that should be on your radar.

Colorado launch a universal Pre-K, allowing eligible parents to send their littles to any preschool program they choose. Except that to participate, schools are required “to accept any applicant without regard to a student or family’s religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

"Wait a second!" declared the Catholic Church. "That's discrimination against us!" So they sued for the right to collect taxpayer dollars while refusing admission to any children from LGBTQ families. 

This argument is a rehash of the same one being made in other cases. It argues that in order to exercise their First Amendment right to discriminate against certain groups, the Catholic Church preschools must be given taxpayer dollars to help fund their discriminatory practices. 

You might have thought that infringing on the First Amendment rights of these schools would involve, say, forcing them to close down entirely, telling the church that it may not operate discriminatory pre-schools, and that the First Amendment would be satisfied by simply leaving them alone and allowing them to practice discrimination privately. But no--the argument of the Carson decision is that if the state gives taxpayer money to other secular schools that are following the rules, they can't rule out religious schools just because they won't follow the same set of rules.

Justice Breyer called this one in his dissent on Carson,

What happens once ‘may’ becomes ‘must’? Does that transformation mean that a school district that pays for public schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to send their children to religious schools? Does it mean that school districts that give vouchers for use at charter schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to give their children a religious education? What other social benefits are there the State’s provision of which means—under the majority’s interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause—that the State must pay parents for the religious equivalent of the secular benefit provided?

Some folks have been clear about this goal for years-- a Christian school system funded by taxpayers, either by demolishing the public system and replacing it with Christian schools, or by injecting Christianity into the public system, or some combination of the two.

The lawsuit was filed last August and the trial began last week in U.S. District court, one of several similar suits in the state. One principal of one of the schools involved in the suit described turning away a student from a same-sex couple because "school officials worried Catholic teachings would cause confusion and conflict in the family." It's language that reminds me of my friend who was turned away from enrolling her children in a Catholic elementary school because the officials thought that, as children from a "broken" home, they might not be a good fit.

Mr. Shearer, my Fourth Grade Sunday School teacher, had us all memorize the Great Commission. I keep looking at these Christian schools demanding the right to keep children out and collect taxpayer dollars for it and waiting for just one of them to realize that they've lost the plot. 

Oh, well. The case is being handled by senior judge John Kane, who was originally appointed by Jimmy Carter. We'll see what he comes up with.

More Child Labor

One of the big under-covered stories of 2023 was the rolling back of child labor laws. 

The major restrictions on child labor were part of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and from there the states passed their own versions of protections for children. Many of these laws distinguish between agricultural labor and other sorts, in part so that junior could work on the family farm without getting Ma and Pa fined or arrested. But the idea was that maybe putting children in harm's way or depriving them of the chance to get an education was a Bad Thing and maybe as a nation we should knock it off. 

We didn't get those laws easily. Lots of folks thought that child labor was double plus good. Opponents of the laws denied the existence of a problem, argued that work was good for the young 'uns. "I am really tired of seeing so many big children ten years old playing in the streets," was a real thing that a real "prominent lady citizen" said in opposition to child labor laws. And of course the ever-popular complaint-- "How can we stay in business and remain profitable if you pass these rules?"

The Camella Teoli Story

I'm going to digress for a second to tell a lesser-known story that illustrates what the need was.

Camella Teoli went to work in a Lawrence, MA mill at the age of 11. Early on in her career, a machine used to twist cotton into thread caught her hair and ripped off part of her scalp. At the age of 14, she was standing in front of Congress in March 1912. The conditions in the mill were famously horrific; low wages and a life expectancy of 39.6 years, with one third of workers dying before age 25. If your workforce is going to die off in their twenties, of course you need to start them young. 

Teoli was in front of Congress in March because in January, a new law had reduced the legal hours for women and children from 56 to 54 per week. The pissed off mill owners responded by speeding up the machines; so harder work, less pay. That kicked off the Great Lawrence Textile Strike, in which adults and children walked off the job.

The strike got ugly. Workers sent their children out of town, both for safety and as a publicity move, and the city officials decided to counter the bad publicity by deploying police and soldiers at the railroad station to keep children from getting in trains out of town, ultimately physically attacking the group of children. And Congress called a hearing, and Camella Teori, a 14 year old Italian immigrant testifying before First Lady Helen Taft, who invited Camella and other child laborers to lunch at the White House and contributed to the strike fund. Teoli became a national sensation, the face of our labor problem. 

Massachusetts passed some child labor laws that were aimed not so much at the inhumane conditions of the work, but at the fact that child workers were being deprived of any chance for education. But the states (particularly the southern ones) dragged their feet hard, because for a huge part of US history, lots of people have been okay--even more than okay--with child labor, as long as it's Those People's Children.

Teoli went back to work in the mill. She was never promoted. She never told her own children about her role in labor history, even as her daughter had learned to help her arrange her hair to cover a large bald spot.

So here we are again

My point? The desire to use young bodies as part of the industrial machinery of our country is not particularly new, nor has it always been obvious that children should not be required to work in dangerous conditions or to the detriment of their own education. 

In 2023, around a dozen states rolled their child labor protections back. 

Some, like Arkansas, teamed up the gutting of child labor protections with laws set to kneecap public schools. Iowa removed protections that kept young workers out of more physically dangerous jobs while expanding the hours they could be asked to work. Missouri similarly shot for increasing working hours for teens. Minnesota said yes to teens working in heavy construction. 

Many off these rollbacks have especially troubling features. Arkansas removed the requirement for age verification. Many of the states have eliminated the requirement for a work permit. The work permit is dismissed as a piece of troublesome paperwork, but it is also the checkpoint at which the school or some other responsible adult can say, "I'm not sure this is such a great idea for this particular teen." 

In some cases like Arkansas, the permits had a requirement for parents to sign off, but now Arkansas doesn't care to give parents a voice in this particular decision. Ohio's Senator Bill Reineke expressed a similar concern over child labor, arguing that kids who really want to work shouldn't be hampered because "they can't get their parents to cooperate with them." Parents--they only matter sometimes.

Also, "child labor" sounds so rough. When Indiana tried to pass a bill to roll back protections in 2020, it included a provision to rename the Bureau of Child Labor as the Bureau of Youth Employment. Arkansas called its law removing child labor protections the "Youth Hiring Act of 2023." See, the trouble with child labor is just bad branding. 

Who is pushing this stuff? Employers. In Iowa, a lobbyist for the Iowa Grocer Industry Association told the senate "Everyone has a worker need right now." And as for working later on a school night, Jessica Dunker, president of the Iowa Restaurant Association and the Iowa Hotel and Lodging  Association testified.

“Nine o’clock for a 15 year old sophomore in high school, you know, I’m sure they’re doing something already and probably it’s a school opportunity,” she said, “but if it isn’t, having kids get the opportunity to work is important.”

Covering a similar push in Tennessee, Stephen Elliot at USA Today noted in April, "The unemployment rate sits at 3.5% – a level last reached in 1969 – and businesses of all types, from factories to restaurants to retail stores, are struggling to find workers."

"C'mon, let the kids make some money and earn valuable experience," argue the usual suspects. When David Koch ran for Vice-President as a Libertarian in 1980, part of the platform included abolishing child labor laws. 

In 2014, Benjamin Powell wrote a piece for CATO arguing the case against child labor prohibitions with some really twisty reasoning. Looking internationally, he argued that although the "thought of children laboring in sweatshops is repulsive," that only happens because of poverty and the solution to poverty includes--well...

As countries become rich, child labor virtually disappears. The answer for how to cure child labor lies in the process of economic growth—a process in which sweatshops play an important role.

And yet, somehow, we have a wealthy nation and lots and lots of child poverty.

But if you really want to see cheerleading for child labor, check out a piece at the Foundation for Economic Education, the pioneer Libertarian thinky tank and advocacy group. A 2016 piece by Jeffrey Tucker argued that work would be so much better for children's inner lives than school, and some jobs might be dangerous, but kids love danger, and more...

If kids were allowed to work and compulsory school attendance was abolished, the jobs of choice would be at Chick-Fil-A and WalMart. And they would be fantastic jobs too, instilling in young people a work ethic, which is the inner drive to succeed, and an awareness of attitudes that make enterprise work for all. It would give them skills and discipline that build character, and help them become part of a professional network.

A century ago, children were "civic soldiers." We should be ashamed that we ever took the opportunity to work away from kids, suggests Tucker. That piece spawned another at the Acton Institute entitled "Work is a gift our kids can handle" by Joseph Sunde, which offers more of the same. Considering the question of household allowances:

What if we were to be more intentional about creating opportunities for work for our kids, or simply to more closely disciple our children toward a full understanding of the role of their work in honoring God and serving neighbor? In our schools and educational systems, what if we stopped prioritizing “intellectual” work to the detriment of practical knowledge and physical labor, paving new paths to a more holistic approach to character formation?

So where is this headed?

When rich folks like Betsy DeVos talk about letting children get education anywhere, including outside school, and  talk about children finding the place that best suits them in life, and also talk about how child labor laws should be ended, believe that those three things are related. When Pennsylvania attorneys argued that there was no need to bring equity to school funding because “What use would someone on the McDonald’s career track have for Algebra 1?” you're seeing another piece of the same puzzle.

Just look at Florida.

Florida, somehow, is bringing up the rear on this one. They have two interlocking bills poised this session to gut child labor protections. Some of the stipulations are standard for these laws-- lowering the age limits, increasing the work hours, removing work hour limits for non-school nights. But beyond these tweaks, there's one all-new provision. Among those now exempt from all limitations of the child labor laws are:

Minors 16 and 17 years of age who are in a home education program or are enrolled in an approved virtual instruction program in which the minor is separated from the teacher by time only.

Withdraw your child and homeschool them, and they can work as many hours as you wish.  Because if they're working on the "McDonald's career track," how much education do they really need? 

The other ugly piece of this is migrant children used as workers. Interviewing 100 migrant children in 20 states, New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier found

These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.

Are they being ennobled by this gift of work? I have my doubts. Much like the children working meatpacking jobs in Kansas and Nebraska, for whom a meatpacker paid a whopping $1.5 million fine. Boy, I bet that company wishes that, somehow, they didn't have to pay that fine.

Underneath all of this is an ugly set of assumptions. Companies need workers more than Certain People need an education, because after all, Certain People are really best suited to serving the Greater Good via a life as meat widgets. That's really all the education Certain People's Children ever really need, and besides, how else are we supposed to turn a profit. 

Meanwhile, agitators are far more concerned that a child will catch sight of an inappropriate book than get lost in an inappropriate job.

Look

I am a big fan of work. My perfect world is not one where someone just sits on their butt all day. Meaningful work is good for the soul. 

But robbing children of a chance to get an education and move up in the world so that some corporation doesn't have staffing problems (that they might have to address by offering better wages) is not okay. And putting them in dangerous situations just to make a buck is inexcusable. And justifying all of this by convincing yourself that these particular children are Less Than, so it's okay to use up their lives and bodies like this--that's inexcusable.

Grownups have a simple charge--to watch over, take care of, help, protect, and nurture young humans until they are old enough to go their own way. To strip away some basic protections and claim that you're doing the children a favor is just wrong. To argue that being a young meat widget is so ennobling that formal education is really not needed is silly. To argue that some young humans are to be pre-judged to be on a worker bee track for their lives, and so rob them of the opportunity to chart their own path is unAmerican.

We talk a big game in this country about how much we value Family and The Children, but the stripping of child labor protection, like the failure to seriously address school shootings, like the crusade to empower some parents to tell other parents how to raise their children, like our continued failure to provide paid parental leave-- all these things are a reminder that for some folks, children and family are not nearly as important as corporations. 

 

OK: Freedom and Rights Only For The Chosen

It takes someone with no shame to really show how intellectually and morally bankrupt some rhetoric can be. And that someone is Oklahoma's Education Dudebro-in-Chief Ryan Walters, aided by his very special crew. 

Walters wants to see the state "champion religious freedom," like the Catholic "public" charter school that the state is trying to launch (and their Republican attorney general is trying to stop). Somehow, "religious freedom" means to Walters that the Ten Commandments should be posted in every single classroom in the state. 

They should be on display as "a founding document of our country" because our country is "founded on Judeo-Christian values and we should place a priority on learning about this important historical precedent." This will part of his fight against "state-sponsored atheism," a thing that doesn't actually exist. But it's pretty clear that Walters means that religious freedom is actually only for Christians (with some Judeo- thrown in there). Oklahoma students should not have the freedom to have their religious values posted in the classroom if those values aren't "Juseo-Christian," nor do they have the freedom to avoid having the Ten Commandments imposed on them.

But the real display of bullshittery dropped today, thanks to Tyler Kingkade at NBC News.

Here's a real Ryan Walters quote from an interview on far-right Real America's Voice:

Parents absolutely know what’s best for kids, and anyone who doesn’t understand has no business being involved in education whatsoever,

As we've seen repeatedly, parents are only entitled to these kinds of rights if they're the right kind of parents. And nothing displays that like this story. Read Kingkade's full write-up, but here are the basics: 

16 year old trans high school student J. Doe went to court to obtain an order to update his official records to reflect his chosen gender. The state Board of Education caught wind of it and passed a special emergency rule just to stop him. Then they voted unanimously to require J. Doe's records to continue listing him as a female. 

Mind you, at every step of the way, J. Doe has had the support of his parents. But the board not only stepped in to stop them, but took the action without notifying the parents or giving them a chance to have their say. Because the parents who absolutely know what's best for their kids are only those parents that Walters and the board agree with.

Walters, at least, was direct, saying "We're going to stand against this. We're not going to do the transgender game of back and forth, back and forth," imagining, I guess, that transgender persons like to switch genders back and forth repeatedly as part of the evil "transgender ideology." The board offered some sort of half-baked baloney about "accuracy of historical records." Sure.

So once again, we learn that parental rights are only for certain parents, and that those certain parents also have the right to impose their values on Those Other Parents who belief Wrong Things. It's a shame, because parents really should have rights when it comes to their children--but that's all parents, not just a select few.

But now the emergency rule has been solidified, and no transgender student will ever be able to update their records without permission of the Oklahoma Department of Education. 

One wonders what other objectionable actions Walters feels the state should repress. Should students be prohibited from attending non-Judeo-Christian places of worship? Should 18-year-olds still in school be forbidden to register Democrat without Department of Education approval? If it's okay to use the power of the state to repress "transgender ideology" and "atheism," what other sorts of Wrong Thinking should be subject to state oversight, and would it be too on the nose to call these transgressions Thought Crimes? And if all these restrictions are appropriate for students, how much longer before a call to implement them for adults? 

Wouldn't it be interesting to hear Walters answer the question, "The parents that you are certain are dead wrong--what rights do they have?"

J. Doe's family is taking the state to court. Here's hoping, please, that the court calls Walters and his crew out and correctly sees that you can't get away with stripping freedoms and rights by just saying "freedom" and "rights" over and over while you do it.

AZ: Reining In The Vouchers

Arizona has always been a privatizing paradise when it comes to education. They were leaders in charter profiteering and have worked hard to create an inhospitable atmosphere for teachers. They also have led in the rush to make school vouchers universal so that everyone, no matter how wealthy, no matter that they had always been in private school, would get a chunk of taxpayer money, which has in turn led to them being one of the first states to demonstrate how a universal voucher program can bust a budget. 

Arizona's legislators, by combining huge tax cuts and school voucher costs, have managed to dig a $2 billion dollar hole in just a year. And in return, Arizonans have received a voucher program with little transparency or oversight (or, as the Koch organization likes to put it, "permissionless").

Governor Katie Hobbs has announced a plan to make the ESA-style taxpayer-funded vouchers more accountable and transparent. Here are the highlights:

Staff at private schools that accept the taxpayer-funded vouchers will have to pass a fingerprint background check. What? You thought any place that worked with children must require some sort of rudimentary background check of employees? Silly you.

Private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers cannot simply throw out the IEPs or Section 504 plans for students with special needs. What? You thought that a school that accepted a student with special needs and a plan for meeting those needs couldn't just ignore the plan? Silly you.

Increased accountability for taxpayer dollars. Parents can't just spend voucher money on ski vacations. Someone will have to actually approve that large purchases are for actual educational items. Not only that, but the Auditor General will have the power to monitor and report on how the private schools spend the taxpayers' money--just like public schools.

No price gouging. Just as in other voucher states, in Arizona the advent of vouchers was met by a bunch of private schools raising tuition costs. When vouchers go to people who were already paying tuition for a private school, the vouchers amount to a taxpayer-funded windfall for both the school and the parents. 

Private schools accepting taxpayer-funded vouchers have to set some minimal standards for people put in teaching jobs. Parents and students must be informed of the rights they give up to attend a voucher-accepting private school, and that school must also report things like graduation and absenteeism rates. You know--the kind of stuff that is a basic expectation for a public school.

Also, Hobbs would re-instate the requirement that students getting taxpayer-funded vouchers must have attended a public school at some point. 

It's all pretty basic, common-sense stuff, most of it requiring basic safety standards and the same kind of transparency that taxpayers expect when they fund a public school.

Who could object to that? Heck, it might even keep the voucher program from self-destructing.

Voucher fans in Arizona, led by the far-right Goldwater Institute, are having a cow.

Calling the regulations a "bizarre attack on esa families," the Goldwater Institute has a list of terrible, awful features of Hobbs' proposal.

First, the requirement to provide special education services is "insulting." Private schools have been using vouchers to sign up for private schools that have done a super-duper job, so this is... unnecessary? They seem to be arguing that private schools already do this, but if that's the case, then I'm not sure why making it a requirement is so terrible. 

Or maybe it's that only some private schools actually do it. 

Gov. Hobbs seemingly wants to force every educational provider to scale up its offerings of special education services or else close its doors. How exactly is it that Arizona’s children will benefit when a small school in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood without the capacity to hire the proper dictated cadre of special education teachers is suddenly shuttered?

How exactly is it that students with special needs will benefit if such a school that can't handle them is kept open? Teaching students with special needs is part of the job. If you can't do the job, don't get into the business--that's the free market, isn't it? And what about the small schools in economically advantaged neighborhoods that don't provide services because part of their appeal is that your students won't have to deal with Those Children there?

Second--and I can't believe this one--is an objection to background checks for staff. Is Goldwater seriously trying to defend a private school's ability to hire felons? Their argument is, again, some of our schools already do that, and also, public schools have examples of classroom teachers disciplined for inappropriate behavior. True, but so what? Does Goldwater intend to argue that when a public school teacher is fired and punished for illegal activity, it should be okay for a private school to hire them?

Third, the whole accountability for tax dollars spent offends them. Vouchers are for fewer dollars than the public system receives per pupil, which I guess means "This is a bargain so don't dare ask what you're actually getting for your money because it's cheap!" 

Fourth, the price gouging thing sends them into a paroxysm of bold print. Private school rates are going up slowly, and public schools are expensive, so how dare you!

Fifth, they should not have to hire certified teachers. After all, charters don't have to (which is a fair point except for citing CREDO's bogus report about charters outperforming public schools). Anyway, certification isn't worth anything, anyway.

Sixth, the requirement to spend three months in public school is an "arbitrary obstacle." This naked attempt to prop up enrollment" for district schools would get in the way of the naked attempt to prop up the finances of private schools. 

Finally, that auditing and transparency stuff. Goldwater says that the proposal amounts "to little more than an attempt to undermine state law and subjugate parents and private school operators to the bureaucratic compliance machinery of public education." They are really committed to the idea that education should not only be a privately procured marketplace commodity, but that that marketplace should be unregulated. 

Goldwater has continued to broadcast its great alarm on the dead bird app, insisting that these rules will somehow "ROB FAMILIES OF SCHOOL CHOICE" as if it will cripple school vouchers to involve accountability and background checks and special ed. It's a high level of panic for what are a modest and minor set of reforms. 

OH: New Education Czar Does Not Impress

One of the more baldfaced power grabs of 2023 was the Ohio GOP's decision to strip power from the department of education and cut the elected state board or education off at the knees, shoving all the power into the new Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and its governor-appointed director, who is already showing less-than-stellar abilities.

Look, sometimes democracy is a pain because people won't just fall in line. But there are ways around it, and this power grab was one example. In this approach, you just keep taking power away from any part of the government that might not do as you wish. In Ohio's case, that has meant commandeering the Department of Education and putting it directly under the governor's control. The old state board of education included 11 elected members (the governor got to appoint 8), and that's just too much democracy for Governor DeWine.

To run this new fiefdom, DeWine tapped Steve Dackin. What a choice.

Dackin has been a district-level school administrator. In 2015 he was put on the board of KnowledgeWorks, a big Gates-funded reformy monstrosity ("I had the opportunity of working with EDWorks and KnowledgeWorks at a local level, and am looking forward to sharing those experiences as a member of the board of directors.") He's not there now.

But his most infamous activity comes from his time on the state board of education. He was vice-president and in charge of developing a job search for the next state superintendent. After he had determined what the best candidate should look like, he resigned from the board and applied for the job. Then he got the job. Then a large number of Ohioans raised their eyebrows so hard that Lake Erie's water level rose ten inches. So after about eleven days on the job, Dackin resigned, citing that "concerns have been raised" and he didn't want questions about "revolving doors" to distract "from the important work ahead for schools, educators, and especially children." Setting aside the prediction of children having important work ahead, the resignation seemed pretty clear cut.

Now Dackin is head of the new department, and "state superintendent" is a guy who answers to him. See, the trick is in applying for a job where just one guy does the hiring. Revolving door, indeed.

The new department has been up and running for three months. Dackin just talked to Karen Kasler at Statehouse News Bureau about how things are going, and the results are uninspiring.

The write-up is brief, but Dackin packs it with one howler after another.

Department of Education and Workforce director Steve Dackin said he likes the priorities of the new cabinet-level agency, which "happened to be the priorities of the governor. And so that's a good match and that's a good alignment. And that's one of the reasons I chose to pursue this opportunity."

Yes, it's some sort of serendipitous fluke that the group created and staffed by the governor reflects the governor's priorities. It's almost as if the governor forced the bodies dealing with education policy to come under his control so that he could force them to implement his chosen ideas. Maybe Dackin is trying to pretend that that's not what happened and that Ohio's GOP didn't turn state-level education control into a political patronage job. But he knows why he's there, who hired him, and what that person expects. This is like walking into a bar, sitting down and observing, "Man, lucky for me I walked into a place that serves beer!"

Here's an even better one

"It is critical for us to have protocols in place where we get the kind of feedback that we need to hear directly from parents and other constituents. So we we're required by law to have a public meeting at least once every two months," Dackin said. 

You know a good way to get feedback from parents and other constituents? Hold elections. What use is feedback to a department that is there to implement the governor's policy choices?

It is barely noticeable that Dackin does not include actual teachers and school staff on the list of people he wants feedback from. No surprise there. 

It fits in with his big priority, which is the "implementation of the Science of Reading program." First, there's no such thing as a particular singular Science of Reading program. And while we could get side tracked on the many reasons to greet SOR with distrust and disbelief, I'm going to skip that, because there is no instructional or pedagogical program that I believe in so much that I would like to see a state mandate it.

State mandates for particular instruction are doomed. First, politicians do not get their information from experts in education, but from experts in lobbying and advocacy. Second, the face of education is constantly changing and the program that you are so certain of today will inevitably become the washed-up thing that needs to be jettisoned a few years from now. Reading in particular is an area marked by only one instructional piece of advice that is always being given-- whatever you're doing now, you should do less of that and more of that other thing.

SoR advocacy is more tied up with politics and culture then some of the earlier pendulum swings, but one thing remains the same-- the best teaching for this complicated and complex human activity will always be a teacher who has a vast array of tools in her instructional toolbox. 

You know who probably won't be required to implement Science of Reading? The many private schools collecting taxpayer-funded vouchers. Public schools in Ohio still haven't seen fair funding goals met, but expanding Ohio's vouchers toward the universal, so now wealthy families that already have their kids in private schools can get a sweet rebate from other taxpayers via the state, while public schools watch mountains of money head out the door. 

Dackin thinks that's just swell. 

"The expansion of scholarship programs and availability of educational options to parents is something that I embrace and something that the agency will continue to embrace and build on," Dackin said.

So low-income taxpayers get the chance to fund private school for the wealthy while their own schools lose resources. 

If you're in Ohio and you are not impressed by the sorts of things Dackin wants to embrace and build on you can--well, not much, actually. He works for the governor, not you. 

ICYMI: Getting Up To Speed Edition (1/7)

Picking up after the holidays, the twelfth day of Christmas, and Benedict Arnold Day, all in one week. Plus that cough that everyone has? The Board of Directors and CMO are both fighting it all week. But the weather has been nice and getting back to school has been largely enjoyed by everyone at the Institute who gets to go back. 

This is as good a time as any to mention that you can find me on Bluesky and Threads, if you are emigrating from the dead bird app. Also, Curmudgucation has its own Facebook page. (I'm also on Instagram, but after all these years I still can't really get a handle on what to do with it.)

At any rate, it's not a big list this week, but still some worthwhile reads here. 

Hoover Institute 2023 "A Nation at Risk" Address

Thomas Ultican looks back at the end of the 40th anniversary of that miserable hit job on public education.

Tired of Being Tired

Jose Luis Vilson's site was down last week when I was putting the weekly list together, but it's back and if you're behind reading there, I suggest starting with this list of ideas for how teachers can revitalize and revive in the new year. 

Welcome to the New SC Legislative Session

If you're not in South Carolina, let this be a reminder that your legislature is getting powered up for the new year, complete with lousy ideas for laws. If you are in South Carolina, this post from Steve Nuzum will let you know what some of the lousy ideas in your state are.

Legislative Session Starts Next Week in Florida 

Meanwhile, if you're in Florida, here's what's on tap for your legislature, courtesy Sue Kingery Woltanski.

Will Far-Right Money and Influence Decide Whether States Can Have Explicitly Religious Charter Schools?

Jan Resseger looks at some of the forces mustering money and power to push through the public religious charter school in Oklahoma.

Moms for Liberty members say parental rights have limits with reading rule

Sue Kingery Woltanski picked this story up, and now the Tampa Bay Times is running with it (and talking to her about it). Turns out M4L only wants parental rights some of the time...

Two of my favorite writers have looked at Tim Alberta's new book about American evangelicals-- The Power and the Glory. So read what Nancy Flanagan (who lived through much of it) has to say, and catch the indispensable Mercedes Schneider has to say as well. The book is on my stack, and it should be on yours, too. 

The Right Is Winning Its War on Schools

Melissa Gira Grant at the New Republic has a not-very-uplifting look at the work of Heritage Foundation, among others.

Disgraced Ousted Moms 4 Liberty PA School Board 'Hosed Down' Superintendent Crony With $700,000 Cash

Always interesting when someone outside the education bubble notices education shenanigans, and Moms for Liberty has generated a lot of that attention. Here's Doktor Zoom at Wonkette on the latest Bucks County M4L scandal.

Saving Public Schools: 23 Issues (At Least) to Ponder for 2024

Nancy Bailey has the list of Important Stuff for 2024. 

Librarians, who lost jobs for not banning books, are fighting back

Piece, with transcript, from NPR reporter Matt Bloom.

Why Parents Struggle So Much In The World's Richest Country

Stephanie Murray at The Atlantic with a thoughtful look at how, for all our talk, our country doesn't really isn't that helpful in raising kids.

The Claudine Gay Debacle Was Never About Merit

I haven't spent much time on this flap, but I also never pass up a Tressie McMillam Cotton piece, and her take at the New York Times is just excellent.

Texas board rejects many science textbooks over climate change messaging

Oh, Texas. The Texas Tribune has the coverage (again), including the part where one member of the board wants to know why more creationism isn't included.

This week I also dropped a piece at the Bucks County Beacon about how the First Amendment is being rewritten to eliminate the wall between church and state (and why that's a bad idea). 

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