When There's No Support From The Front Office

The main function of a manager is to create and maintain the conditions that make it easiest for the worker bees to do their very best work. 

That is also true--especially true--of school district administrators. At the heart of so many education issues, you will find administrators.

Take the ongoing flaps over Naughty Books and Controversial Topics. In many communities around the country, complaints large and small are being lodged against teachers and librarians. In some states, laws have been passed. School administrators can send their staffs one of a couple of messages:

1) As long as you are using your best professional judgment, I will have your back. Just get in there and do the work and let me worry about cranky parents.

2) It'd be great if you just don't do or say or read anything remotely controversial, because at the first phone call I am going to fold like a wet paper back full of bricks. 

Don't Say Gay laws are about creating a chilling effect, and that chill starts in the front office. The chilling has been so effective that even in states that have no actual DSG or Anti-Controversy laws, you'll find plenty of administrators who are trying to keep their cold tootsies safe from any angry phone calls. All of this trickles down to the classroom; if you've got to watch your own back and teach at the same time, you'll be more timid, more cautious, less engaging and creative-- or you'll be that teacher who's considered a Problem, because you are constantly fighting to be allowed to do your job.

Or take the ongoing struggles with post-pandemess student behavior. This is not a new issue-- students have presented behavior challenges since before the invention of dirt-- but numerous reports tell us that since 2020, behavior issues have increased.

Support from the front office is critical. Without it, a teacher's hands are tied. It's a frustrating scenario-- you may have one student who consistently acts out, even after you've tried all the available interventions, and who makes it that much harder for the other twenty-some students in the room to get an education. But the office provides no support, no assistance, no relief. You can also have the opposite issue--an administrator whose only technique is to run roughshod over the student, backing them into a corner and trying to dominate them, all of which means that the student who returns to your classroom is just angrier and more disengaged.

Again, there's a trickle-down effect. If you know the office is not an available tool then you have to pick your battles very carefully, which can often mean a steady degrading of the atmosphere in the classroom. 

Can teachers be part of these problems? Of course. If you are sending kids to the office every hour of every day, something is wrong on your end. If you are using your classroom as your own personal soapbox every day, you are asking for angry parent calls. I rarely used the office, but when I needed it, I absolutely needed it. And I learned early on the value of pre-informing my boss if I was about to do something that might prompt a phone call; you can't expect an administrator to defend you from an angry phone call when they have no idea what the parent is talking about. 

But if there's a just-plain-not-up-to-it teacher in the building? Well, I am reminded of the Edward Deming insight-- if there's dead wood in your organization, was it dead when you hired it, or did you kill it? Bad employee problems are also ultimately management failures.

District administrators set a tone and mission for the school. Words don't mean much here; those things are set by the day to day operations. Your mission statement may not say "Our mission is to minimize the number of angry phone calls we get from parents," but your administrative behavior makes it loud and clear. Administrators show through action whether the district is supposed to run on fear or trust, personal responsibility or enforced compliance, focus on education or obsession with test scores. 

School administrator is a miserable job. Great responsibility that comes without great power. In some districts, not even great money; promoting from within is a great idea, but in my old district, a seasoned teacher stepping into an assistant principal job would take a pay cut to work more hours. And administrators themselves have to depend on others for the tools and support they need to do their jobs well.

But it's a critical job in every school in every district. Somehow, in the modern reform era, we haven't talked much about administrators. Who knows why not (hard to assess them via test scores with a straight face, don't have a large union some folks want to depower, fewer targets?) We don't know how many mediocre administrators are out there; certainly many are well-hidden by highly effective teaching staffs that have learned to work around them. And they can get better, like this guy who figured out that maybe he needed to listen to his staff. 

But to work for an unsupportive administration is isolating and demoralizing, making it that much harder for a teacher to do her best work. 

Who's Behind The Stripping Of Child Labor Protections?

We know that a trend sweeping the country is the trend of getting rid of child labor protections, lowering age limits, increasing allowable hours, and opening up dangerous workplaces to teen laborers, because it's important to protect children from seeing drag queens, but not from working in a meatpacking plant or working long hours on a school night.

We know that businesses are pushing much of this, even writing bills, but it turns out that there's a big fat dark money lobbying group that is "helping out" in many states.

Meet the Foundation for Government Accountability.

FGA was founded in 2011 by CEO Tarren Bragdon, who himself highlights a quote that gives us a good idea of who he is:

I greatly value the ability to provide for my wife and children and want more Americans to experience the freedom that work brings. I founded FGA to pursue good policy solutions that will free millions from government dependency and open the doors for them to chase their own American Dream.

Bragdon was the youngest guy to be elected to the Maine Legislature (1996-2000), right after he graduated from college. He has a BS in Computer Science (University of Maine) and a Master of Science of Business (Husson University). He was next Director of Health Reform Initiatives then CEO at the Maine Heritage Policy Institute (before it became the Maine Policy Institute), a free market advocacy shop. Bragdon made plenty of connections; he was co-chair of Paul LaPage's transition team Bragdon moved to Naples, Florida when he set up FGA; his LinkedIn page says that he finished with MHPC in May of 2011 and opened up FGA in June.

Bragdon took some of his Maine tricks with him to Florida, like setting up an online database of state employees. He was registered as a lobbyist in Maine and went to Florida to continue that work. He hit the ground running, cranking out a pair of reports backing up Gov. Rick Scott's ill-fated welfare drug test policy. 

But Bragdon had his sights on a profile far beyond Florida's borders. They've been a major player in movements like the drive to throw millions off of food stamps. FGA sold its work requirements for SNAP benefits plan to multiple states. And their lobbying branch, Opportunity Solutions Project, has pushed for other swell ideas, like blocking Medicaid expansion or attaching a work requirement to it. 

FGA has been tied to ALEC and the State Policy Network since Day One. They get money from the Kochtopus, the Bradley Foundation, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, and giant whopping piles from DonorsTrust, the "dark money ATM  of the conservative movement."

Goven all that, it's no surprise that FGA has been working hard to make sure that teenagers can chase their own American dream by having the chance to become unprotected meat widgets. 

In March, when Arkansas's legislature scrapped work permits and age verification, the bill's sponsor Rep. Rebecca Burkes said that the legislation "came to me from the Foundation [for] Government Accountability."

In Florida, records reveal that FGA helped write the legislation to roll back child labor laws, along with some handy talking points for the bill's sponsor to use (that bill is being considered in the current session). FGA has been working the Florida legislation for a while.

In Missouri, the FGA helped a legislator draft and revise to loosen child labor restrictions, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post. Ditto for Iowa. 

And FGA has also created a handy white paper that offers all sorts of talking points to help sell these policies, particularly the abolition of working permits. "Streamline the process" of hiring teens. "Empowering teenagers through the power of work." And of course, having noticed which way the wind is blowing, "parents, not schools, should have decision-making power over whether their children get a job." 

Is it reasonable to have conversations in the states about exactly what the restrictions and protections for young adult labor should be? Absolutely. But that's not what is happening here. Bottom line: as always, when similar legislation appears at the same time in numerous states, start looking for the lobbying group working for a bunch of low-profile rich guys who are ordering up a serving of legislation to suit them. 

"Evidence Based" Does Not Mean What You Think It Does

Your district is out there looking for a program for your school, but you want one that will actually work. So you go to a education clearinghouse to sort through what's out there, to look for one that's effective, that is "evidence-based." This turns out to be a challenge.

Sarah Sparks, writing for Education Week, asked the question: "What Does 'Evidence-Based' Mean?" She had a particular reason for asking, and we'll get to that in a second, but first...

The federal government has an actual answer to that question, and as one might expect when it comes to the feds, the definition turns out to be not very useful.

We can find it buried in Title VIII (General Provisions) under Sec. 8101, bottom of page 129, we find a definition:

Evidence-based.--
                    ``(A) In general.--Except as provided in 
                subparagraph (B), the term `evidence-based', when used 
                with respect to a State, local educational agency, or 
                school activity, means an activity, strategy, or 
                intervention that--
                          ``(i) demonstrates a statistically significant 
                      effect on improving student outcomes or other 
                      relevant outcomes based on--
                                    ``(I) strong evidence from at least 
                                1 well-designed and well-implemented 
                                experimental study;
                                    ``(II) moderate evidence from at 
                                least 1 well-designed and well-
                                implemented quasi-experimental study; or
                                    ``(III) promising evidence from at 
                                least 1 well-designed and well-
                                implemented correlational study with 
                                statistical controls for selection bias; 
                                or
                          ``(ii)(I) demonstrates a rationale based on 
                      high-quality research findings or positive 
                      evaluation that such activity, strategy, or 
                      intervention is likely to improve student outcomes 
                      or other relevant outcomes; and
                                    ``(II) includes ongoing efforts to 
                                examine the effects of such activity, 
                                strategy, or intervention.
                    ``(B) Definition for specific activities funded 
                under this act.--When used with respect to interventions 
                or improvement activities or strategies funded under 
                section 1003, the term `evidence-based' means a State, 
                local educational agency, or school activity, strategy, 
                or intervention that meets the requirements of subclause 
                (I), (II), or (III) of subparagraph (A)(i).

To break that down and render it in plain English, there are three definitions that are good for federal funding, and two more that... just exist?

Evidence-based means:

1) Shows a statistically significant effect on student outcomes via strong evidence from at least one well-designed and well-done study. You've got at least one study, and it seems like a decent study, and it gives solid evidence.

2) Shows a statistically significant effect on student outcomes via moderate evidence from at least one well-designed and well-done study. Your decent study shows some meh evidence.

3)  Shows a statistically significant effect on student outcomes via promising evidence from at least one well-designed and well-done study. Your study evidence is not great, but it can be massaged into looking like maybe better things are coming.

It can also mean (ii) something you kind of think probably could work. Maybe a shade better than an educated guess.

So if you were thinking that "evidence-based" means "we have some solid proof that this actually works," well, no. Just one study that provides any sort of results that don't actually clearly disprove your idea--that's close enough for government work.

Which may be why we end up with the study that gave Sparks her question-- a paper from February of 2023 by Mansi Wadhwa, Jingwen Zheng, and Thomas D Cook entitled "How Consistent Are Meanings of “Evidence-Based”? A Comparative Review of 12 Clearinghouses that Rate the Effectiveness of Educational Programs." 

I can't access the paper (well, I could, if I wanted to spend $37.50 to peruse it for 24 hours--one more clue to the Mystery of Why Educators Don't Spend More Time Studying Education Research). But the abstract tells us plenty. The researchers looked at 12 education clearinghouses to see how they measured effectiveness and to see how consistently the measures were applied.

They looked at 1359 programs. Of the programs rated by more than one clearinghouse, only about 30% got similar ratings. In other words, the answer to "Is this program effective," depends pretty much on who you're asking.

As Bill Dagget, founder of the clearinghouse Successful Practices Network, told Sparks:

“If you’re trying to define ‘evidence-based,’ it’s very difficult to incorporate any of the skills that are harder to measure,” like critical thinking, collaboration, or social-emotional development, Dagget said.

Right. You need one good study. And many, many, many, many, many aspects of education are very hard to design decent research for. Particularly when your measure of "success" is nothing more than "did it raise student test scores." 

"Student outcomes" is, as always, doing a lot of work. What outcomes? Test scores? Employment? Deeper understanding and comprehension? Happy life? Spoiler alert: way too many researchers go with "test scores" because that's a simple, easy measure. 

But if we're going to try to find programs that are evidence based--well, what kind of evidence? Evidence of deeper learning? Evidence of long-lasting comprehension? Evidence of improved skills? Or are we just going to go with test scores again because they make nice numbery data? Do we just end up in the educational version of this conversation?

District attorney: You've been on this case for a while. Do you have anything for me?

Detective: You betcha. I have evidence. Boxes full of evidence.

DA: Great! Evidence of what?

Detective: You know! Evidence! A whole bunch! Loads of it!

DA: Of what?! Of what??!!

Detective: Soooooo muuchhhh evidence!

"Evidence-based" as defined by the law is so broad that it could mean almost anything. But then when we start looking closer, it becomes clear that sometimes it means nothing at all. 

Does The New Mean Girls Get High School Right?

Watching tv and movie teachers at work is always a fraught exercise, because so many movies and tv shows get so much so very wrong. So how'd the new Mean Girls do?

The Chief Marital Officer and I went to see the film last weekend. I have never seen the original. I was already familiar with the score of the Broadway version (courtesy of the CMO--we were among the fifteen people who knew it was a musical going in). So I'm going to skip over questions about the quality of the film itself (weirdly uncomfortable with just being a musical) or the performances (all quite fine) or comparisons to the original (no idea). 

We'll just deal with one question--how much effort will actual high school teachers have to muster in order to suspend disbelief while watching this? And there may be spoilers, though how one spoils a twenty year old story, I don't know.

The film captures much of the tense anger of intra-teen battling. If anything, these mean girls are not as brutal as many mean girls I've seen in action. And this is where the musical helps (and could have helped more), by elevating the drama as it seems to the characters themselves. It's all the kind of low-stakes stuff-- potential boyfriends, alliances, seats at cafeteria tables--that looms large to the teens themselves. 

There's a through-the-day montage that introduces the teachers, most of whom are cartoons, but their time is mercifully brief. However, Tina Fey as the math teacher and especially Tim Meadows as the principal do a good job of capturing the resigned exasperation of adults dealing with This Stuff. They aren't clueless, and they aren't as heavily invested in the drama as the students, but they recognize that it's their job to deal with all this.

The film also gets some things right that I'm not sure it means to get right. Janis, one of main character Cady's first friends, is an angry outsider who is just as judgy and mean. She reminds me of a conversation I had with an arts-oriented student that stuck with me for years ("All of those jocks treat us like we're all big wimps. They can't even tell us apart." All of them? "All of them. They're all the same." Never teach high school if you are allergic to irony). She does some awful stuff, and the movie doesn't hold her accountable for any of it. 

There are some odd notes. Are we following Cady on the first day of the year? Is she the only new student in the building? That seems... unlikely.

And for a story focused on the social ins and outs of high school, the film has little or nothing to say about grades. In high school, the distinctions between grade levels matter socially. Seniors and freshmen are a lifetime apart (In any high school, you can find seniors complaining that Freshmen these days are so disrespectful and do things "we never would have done back in my day," just like a bunch of old guys getting the morning coffee at McDonalds and complaining about Kids These Days). And after decades of teaching juniors, I became familiar with the Great Friend Shift, that thing that happens around 10 or 11 grade when folks look around and decide that the people they've been hanging out with since sixth grade actually kind of annoy them.

Cady is definitely a junior (so why is she on the Spring Fling court), but the rest are a bit fuzzy. But if she were hanging out with seniors, that would be noticed. And where are the seniors who are freaking out over next year. Is Regina a junior who somehow dominates seniors? 

The film had me reflecting on how cliques work in a small school (which the school in the film apparently is). Very often, the rulers of the school are not the leaders of a particular clique, but the students who are floaters, who move between several different groups. Most of my students were multitaskers, because in a small school, people running sports and activities are all drawing from the same tiny pool. Confidence is the currency of power in the teen social economy, and the best way to build confidence is to be good at something. Maybe Fey wrote the story in a way that deliberately avoided making Regina a particular type (cheerleader, athlete, etc), but it's hard to believe she could be a queen bee if she doesn't actually do anything at the school. 

These are all quibbles, not noticeable to people whose picture of high school is memory based.

The real missed opportunity of the film is social media. In a story all about social ups and downs and infighting and drama, there is no greater factor in 2024 than social media. These days, teens are cast out and torn down not with snarky comments in the cafeteria, but by brutal social media campaigns. I'm betting every school in this country has regularly dealt with a physical fight in school that started on line. 

I don't want to give the impression that the movie gets more wrong than it gets right. Held up against some other movies set in high schools (looking at you, Twilight), it's practically a damned documentary. And it's a comedy (though it can't decide exactly how cartoonish it is). And it probably won't give a teacher a Nobody Understands My World headache.

A Rockwell Anniversary

From Facebook, this morning.

The Problem We All Live With was originally published as a centerfold in the January 14, 1964 issue of Look. It was Rockwell's first year after ending his long partnership with the Saturday Evening Post. 

He was 70 years old at the time, and after being a "moderate Republican: his whole life, the widowed artist had been slowly waking up. He had voted for JFK in 1960. His parting from the Post not just over the issue of political views, but because of other restrictions as well--he was not allowed to depict Blacks in anything other than menial roles. Rockwell pushed the limits with The Golden Rule in 1961, which depicted a group of people of all races, including a Black man in a middle class shirt and a Black girl holding school books. He got his first hate mail for that. 

It took Rockwell a couple of years to conclude that "the work I now want to do no longer fits into the Post scheme."

His audience was not ready for something as direct and blunt as this illustration, right down to the title which clearly stated that segregation and racism were not simply a Southern problem. Rockwell got tons of hate mail over this painting calling him, among other things, a race traitor. 

There is a fascinating article about Rockwell's "awakening" and this painting from Vox a few years ago. I recommend it. 

The painting was hung in the White House by Barrack Obama from July to October of 2011 at the suggestion of Ruby Bridges. He told her, "I think it's fair to say that if it hadn't been for you guys, I might not be here and we wouldn't be looking at this together."

Well, sitting here in 2024, I have to wonder who can actually look at this together. In many classrooms in many states, this would simply be too "divisive" to be allowed, to "controversial" to expose children to. Sixty years on and some of the audience still isn't ready to see this image, to face a historic truth that even America's most folksy, homespun artist was unwilling to look away from. How weird to find that 60 years later this image would not just be controversial, but actually illegal to show in classrooms. "poignant and relevant to this day" indeed.

ICYMI: All The Weather Edition (1/14)

Let this weekend be remembered for starting off with a weather alert in every single contiguous state. Hope you were safe from whatever calamity was visiting your neck of the woods. 

We've got plenty to look at this week. I'll remind you that sharing is caring, and if you find something here that speaks to you, do the original writer a solid and push that piece out on your networks. It's hard to penetrate the interwebs these days, and if we want the message to get out, we have to do our part to boost the signal (which is exactly why I put up this digest of worthwhile reads every Sunday). 

Some weeks I try to subtly organize the readings on the list, but this week the list is big, so I'm just going to turn on the firehose and let it rip.

Do Arizona school vouchers save taxpayer dollars?

Short answer: no. The longer answer can be found in this coverage of the research by 12News.

Arizona’s school vouchers are helping the wealthy and are widening educational opportunity gaps

Jennifer Jennings, a Princeton professor and Director of Education Research Section, lays out how the Arizona vouchers are making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

MCPS made him reverse Beidleman sex harassment finding—and then retaliated, he alleges

Alexandra Robbins is an award-winning reporter who last year published an awesome book about teaching. She's also a substitute teacher in Montgomery County VA, and she turned her reporting skills to a local story of administrative harassment and how the district handled it. 

Moms for Liberty wants funds cut to Alabama libraries that let kids check out ‘pornographic material’

AL.com reporter Williesha covers one more variation on the recurring theme. Note this is not just school libraries, but all libraries under attack.

NC may raise requirements for charter school renewals. Critics say it’s ‘draconian.’

North Carolina is one more state where authorities are questioning the low accountability of charters and proposing tighter rules. Cue the squawks of outrage. By T. Keung Hui at the News Observer (waring--it has one of those "answer a question and give us your email" walls).

South Western seeks out legal advice as it pursues anti-LGBTQ+ policies

Far right school board candidates didn't lose everywhere, and this rural PA district is getting ready to implement some anti-LGBTQ policies, and they're giving the Independence Law Center another chance to pull the same old song and dance.

Looking Ahead in 2024: Scanning the Predictions for Education in the New Year

If you are a huge fan of pieces predicting stories for the upcoming year, International Education News has collected a ton of links to all the best ones for 2024.

Texas' Greg Abbott goes after fellow Republicans

Greg Abbott's voucher love is a deep and wide thing, and he is willing to finance election attacks on the fellow Republicans who thwarted his voucher dreams. Asher Price at Axios Austin.

Librarian faced spate of insults. Thousands of people came to his defense.

At the Washington Post, Sydney Page offers an encouraging profile of Mychal Threets, super-library fan and internet-famous librarian.

County Teachers To Submit Nicknames For Parental Permission Following Board Passage Of Model Policies

Just one on-the-ground example of what dumb policies look like. Ashlyn Campbell at the Daily News Record looks at what the policies adopted in the Rockingham County School District (Virginia) look like for teachers and students. Mostly they look like a mountain of paper. 

Connecticut Board of Education Adopts ‘Bill of Rights’ for Non-English Speakers

Jessika Harkay at the CT Mirror reports on a new parental rights bill that could actually do some good.

Star Tech: The Next Generation of Record-Keeping

Nancy Flanagan on the illusory efficiency of high tech classroom tools.

Florida school district removes dictionaries from libraries, citing law championed by DeSantis

Escambia County in Florida has been leading the state in Dumb Things, and they just made more news by purging all sorts of Naughty Books, like the dictionary. Judd Legum at Popular Information has the story.

A 'major win' for PEN America, publishers, and parents in book ban lawsuit

Speaking od Escambia County, some good news in the lawsuit filed against them for First Amendment violations. Jennie McKeon reports for WUWF.

The Mass. teacher who had the cops called on her over ‘Gender Queer’ has an attorney and wants answers

Remember that teacher in Massachusetts who was visited by police looking for a Naughty Book? She's still pissed, and she'd still like some answers. Abby Patkin at Boston.com with the story.

Science of Reading and EL Education: What is It?

How exactly does a specific program deliver Science of Reading swellness? Nancy Bailey looks at one particular program to try to find the answer.

Support Black IL Teacher Targeted By Moms4Liberty

I don't generally link to GoFundMe pages, but this one comes with a good summary of the story involved, and a chance to do something about it. 

The anti-DEI movement has gone from fringe to mainstream. Here’s what that means for corporate America

Joelle Emerson writing at Fortune. This focuses on the corporate world rather than education, but it's all the same debate.

LSU’s “Diversity and Inclusion” Language Erasure on *New Gov Eve*

Apparently Louisiana State University has scrubbed away its DEI. The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has the story.

How a true believer’s flawed research helped legitimize home schooling

Laura Meckler ran this story in the Washington Post a month ago, and I missed it then, But it's an important one. All that stuff you hear about how homeschoolers do better academically than public school kids? That's one guy's research, and it's rather iffy stuff.

How one north Minneapolis elementary school cut disruptive behavior calls by 75%

Mara Klecker at the Star Tribune reports on how they did it--and it wasn't one weird trick. Turns out it helps to let the littles have some active time, among other things.

Pitch AI Education

Thomas Ultican looks at the folks trying to sell AI to education, and look-- it's many of the usual suspects.

Scholars Aren’t Studying the Questions Education Leaders Care About Most

Rick Hess at Education Week talks about why there can be such a disconnect between education research and actual classrooms.

Why I Changed My Mind about Tecachers and Education Research

Can education research actually be useful in the classroom? Jose Luis Vilson has some thoughts about how and why that can work out.

"How Can I Know What I Think Till I See What I Say?"

I'm including this Teacher Tom piece strictly on the weight of the title, because that is a process I recognize from many many of my students.

Playing Jazz, Rebounding Basketball Shots, and Teaching Lessons: Instant Decision-Making

I've played traditional jazz trombone most of my life, and I can't begin to explain just how much teaching in a classroom and playing jazz feel, on some gut level, exactly alike. This piece gets at it. Great insights from Larry Cuban.

Cutting Through the Culture War Distractions to Preserve Public Education

Jan Resseger looks at the important stuff being hidden behind the culture wars.

The better off in Florida are homophobic, racist adults, Gov. DeSantis, not kids

Ron DeSantis has taken to claiming that kids are so much better off in Florida now that he has fixed education. At the Miami Herald, Fabiola Santiago begs to differ.

Portland teacher ‘Bob’ recounts finding Alaska Airlines door in yard

Sometimes you just have to pause your regular lesson plans to incorporate something you have to share--like the time a piece of a Boeing 373 fell into your back yard. Such a fun story from Maxine Bernstein at The Oregonian.

At Forbes this week, I looked at a report showing just what a hot mess Arizona's universal voucher program has turned out to be.

If you haven't already, please join me on substack. It's free (and always will be), and keeps you updated in the convenience of your email inbox.

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?