I have been writing and sharing on Facebook about education policy and my fears for a Department of Education under Betsy DeVos. Now that some real legislative proposals are coming out
regarding education, I want to re-state some important points. I'll come back to DeVos and her desire to return Christianity to our public schools in a future post. Today: legislation and vouchers.
On January 23,
Representative Steve King (R, Iowa) introduced H.R. 610: "To distribute funds for elementary and
secondary education in the form of vouchers for eligible students and to repeal
a certain rule relating to nutrition standards in schools." According to the official record (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/610),
"This bill repeals the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act of 1965 and limits the authority of the Department of Education (ED) such
that ED is authorized only to award block grants to qualified states."
Let's unpack that, as we academics say too
often in our seminars: First, The Department of
Education will now give all federal moneys as block grants to the states. Advocates of block grants argue that they
give more autonomy to the state government.
This is true, but there are two things to know about this autonomy:
1.
It is autonomy with reduced funding. Block grants for Medicaid, for example, would
likely reduce the federal Medicaid payments to every state except South Dakota
(http://www.ajmc.com/newsroom/5-things-to-know-about-block-grants-in-medicaid). I'm guessing that education block grants
would be similar; that's one reason federal conservative politicians like them
so much. This will give your state a
choice: raise state taxes or cut
education funding. Which will then give
your municipalities a choice: raise
municipal taxes or cut education funding.
2.
It is autonomy that
states could abuse. If past history is
any guide, some states would be real happy to be free of all those pesky
federal limits on how they can spend the money. You know, like the stuff about
providing extra help for poor and minority children in high-needs
districts. Or all the stuff about
providing equal treatment for girls and boys.
Second, although the bill's sponsor and others
claim that this is all about state autonomy, in fact the bill would REQUIRE
states to set up a voucher program.
Conservatives (and some non-conservatives) argue that vouchers are about
"school choice" and giving students in "failing" schools
the right to move to other schools.
Studies have shown, however, that this wrong in a number of ways:
1.
Vouchers take money from public schools whether said schools are failing or not. Religiously conservative people, for example,
may choose to remove their children from a blue-ribbon school district and
place them in a school matching their values or home-school them. Voucher programs then require that local
school district to pay the people who have chosen a private school or
home-schooling. In many instances,
people who are already paying for their children to go to private school, and
who can afford to pay, will, under a voucher system, also get some of their
tuition money refunded by the school district in which they reside. Again, the local school district suffers,
with no appreciable increase in "choice."
2.
Vouchers do not
improve academic achievement. http://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/public-policy/aauw-issues/vouchers/
3.
Private school
vouchers increase choice for the private schools more than they improve choice
for parents. In all but 4 states with a
voucher program private schools are allowed to turn away students with vouchers
on account of their academic achievement, their religious affiliation, their
disciplinary history, and many other reasons.
http://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/public-policy/aauw-issues/vouchers/ In other words, the children who may most
need to get out of a "failing" public school are left behind, making
the burden on that public school heavier.
4.
Students in private
schools have fewer protections (sometimes virtually no protections) for their
civil rights. At various times private
schools have been declared exempt from Title IX enforcement, "even when schools fail to create climates safe from sexual
harassment and assault, discriminate against pregnant and LGBTQ students,
discriminate in hiring teachers, limit or deny women and girls athletic
opportunities, and more. The government should not support private schools that
are allowed to ignore students’ civil rights." http://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/public-policy/aauw-issues/vouchers/
5.
Vouchers route public money to religious
institutions. The First Amendment
forbids Congress to make any law regarding the establishment of religion. School vouchers take money from the public
purse and give it to religious schools.
According to the summary I have been quoting throughout this statement,
80 percent of schools currently using vouchers are religiously affiliated. This federal legislation will extend voucher
allowances for parents who home-school—also a heavily religious group.
6.
And now we get to a point that is more my own
and less the result of others' studies:
I maintain that one of the huge problems we have in the United States
right now is the persistent mis-education of a large section of the population
who are being taught errors and lies about science, history, religion, world
events, and more. I am NOT saying that
all religious schools do this, but many do, and many home-schoolers are also
indoctrinating children in this way.
Perhaps there is no way to stop this kind of indoctrination; it may be
the First Amendment right of ideologues to teach their children what they
want. But we can certainly resist
spending public money on it. Schools
that receive public money should have to obey civil rights laws. They should have to meet rigorous curricular
standards for accreditation. Their
teachers should have to be licensed by the state. Their children should have to take the same
standardized tests as public-school students, and their results should be
published as public-school results are.
After all, the conservative idea is that this is a "market"
where parents choose the best school for them.
If that is the case, then parents ought to have access to the same
information about private schools that they have about public schools. If schools do not want to follow civil rights
laws, allow government investigation of their curriculum, and be accountable in the same ways as public schools, they don't
have to take the government money.
Finally, on that last
point, I would recommend again to any of my liberal elitist friends who is
interested that you read The Anointed—I'll
add the full reference below. We haven't
been paying attention to how a large segment of the American people are being
vaccinated against truth, convinced that creationism is the only true science,
that the founding fathers were all Christians and intended America to be a
Christian nation, that the constitution was not supposed to change, that liberals
are godless servants of Satan out to destroy their faith and the nation. If we do not confront this problem, I fear
for our future.
Randall J. Stephens and Karl W. Giberson, The Anointed. Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age (Bellknap Press, 2011).
