Federal Education Policy and Vouchers

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).