On Discriminatory School Vouchers, Democrats Divide the Party to Appear Unified!?

Most Democrats oppose school vouchers.

In fact, the national party officially opposes them as part of its stated platform.

However, the national party warned Pennsylvania State Democrats against adopting a formal resolution opposing vouchers because the Democratic Governor, Josh Shapiro, supports them.

The national party was afraid of appearing divided going into the 2024 election.

But it IS divided!

Stopping this resolution is what divided it.

If the Democrats wanted to actually be unified, they should have pushed for Shapiro to get on the same page as the rest of them. The national party’s position is X. He is pushing for Y.

The fact is Shapiro already broke with the party earlier this year by working with Republican senators to craft a $100 million school voucher program. However, after a tidal wave of Democratic push back, he eventually rejoined the group and vetoed that same program.

So – despite Shapiro’s grumblings – Democrats actually were united again against vouchers before the national party got involved.

The national Dems could have put pressure on the Governor to keep with the group. Instead they asked the majority of Democratic lawmakers to just hush until Donald Trump was defeated and Sen. Bob Casey was re-elected.

That’s not unity. It’s deception.

They’re cynically hoping no one reads the news and folks just button their lips about the continuing disagreement over this wasteful and discriminatory policy that they have allowed to fester.

Several Democratic committee members introduced the anti-voucher resolution at the party’s September meeting in order to both chastise the Governor and clarify the party’s continued commitment to public schools. They agreed to table it so the authors of the resolution could work with committee staff to remove direct criticisms of Shapiro.

However, the committee members who brought this forward said they’d continue to push for the state Democratic Party to affirm an explicit anti-vouchers stance at all future state committee meetings – even those during the Presidential election year. They did not consider this controversial because they were merely asking the state party to align its stance with the national party’s official platform.

Unfortunately, the problem goes much deeper.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have trouble supporting public schools while perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy of academic struggle.

The overwhelming majority of children in the state (and throughout the country) are public school students, but legislators will not adequately fund their schools.

Instead they waste $470 million every year on private and religious schools.

Lawmakers are Constitutionally required to fund public schools – not private and parochial schools – yet Democrat and Republican legislators BOTH support throwing your tax dollars away on something that isn’t their responsibility or yours.

The problem is there are at least two ways of doing this.

There are hush hush programs called Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs – school vouchers in everything but name.

Then there’s the idea first floated by Republican Gov. Tom Ridge in 1995 that every student should get a school voucher that could be used at a private or parochial school.

The low key programs are tax-credit scholarships that allow donors to pay less in taxes if they fund tuition for low income students at private schools. The full throated program could go to students regardless of parental income.

The former program already exists and is supported by nearly all Republicans and some Democrats. The later program is supported by nearly all Republicans and very few Democrats. It is the later which actually goes by the name of school vouchers.

So as nice as it would be to have all Democrats on the same page being against school vouchers, that would really just mean they were against anyone above the poverty line getting a voucher. Many of them would still be fine with poor kids getting subsidized to go to private and parochial schools.

In fact, just this year the General Assembly approved a 40% increase, or $150 million, to the state’s existing tax-credit scholarship programs as part of an expansive budget deal.

Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court ruled the legislature wasn’t meeting its Constitutional obligations to public schools due to inadequate funding.

Republicans, angered by Shapiro’s veto of the voucher program he helped create, refused to go along with Democrats and add a single penny in funding to the Commonwealth’s impoverished public school system – Supreme Court ruling be damned!

PA lawmakers are determined to waste taxpayer dollars on private and parochial schools while starving the public school system they are required to support.

School vouchers are not a new idea. They’ve been tried and failed over and over again.

If we look at the facts, using a school voucher to go from a public school to a private one actually hurts kids academically.  


  
Large-scale independent studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show that students who used vouchers were as negatively impacted as if they had experienced a natural disaster. Their standardized test scores went down as much or more than students during the Covid-19 pandemic or Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  


 
This should come as no surprise. When we give children school vouchers, we’re removing their support systems already in place.

 
 
They lose the friends, teachers, and communities where they grew up. It’s like yanking a sapling from out of the ground and transplanting it to another climate with another type of soil which may not be suited to it at all.

Moreover, vouchers have nothing to do with helping kids escape struggling public schools.  


 
  
School vouchers overwhelmingly go to kids who already attend private or parochial schools.  


In the states that have released their data, more than three quarters of families who apply for vouchers for their children already send their kids to private schools. That’s 75% of voucher students in Wisconsin, 80% in Arizona, and 89% in New Hampshire. So these kids didn’t need our tax dollars in the first place.  We’re just paying for services they’re already receiving.


 
Moreover, the very idea is absurd. If the school where the student is enrolled is struggling, why wouldn’t you simply invest in that school to make it better and fix the underlying problem? Why disrupt children’s educations by moving them to another school in another system that is entirely unproven, itself? 




Vouchers are about exclusion – who gets to attend these PRIVATE schools –  and indoctrination – what nonsense they can teach that public schools cannot.  


  
 
Private schools can and do discriminate against children based on religion, race, gender, sexuality, special needs – you name it – even if those schools take public money.  
 


For example, in Florida, Grace Christian School, a private institution that refuses to enroll LGBTQ kids has received $1.6 million so far in taxpayer funding. In Indiana, more than $16 million has gone to schools banning LGBTQ kids—or even kids with LGBTQ parents! That’s roughly 1 out of every 10 private schools in the state with just this one discriminatory enrollment.  


  
 
Meanwhile thousands of parochial schools that receive public funding use textbooks provided by The American Christian Education (ACE) group. This includes the A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press textbooks. A Beka publishers, in particular, reported that about 9,000 schools nationwide purchase their textbooks.  


 
   
In their pages you’ll find glowing descriptions of the Ku Klux Klan, how the massacre of Native Americans saved many souls, African slaves had really good lives, homosexuals are no better than rapists and child molesters, and progressive attempts at equal rights such as Brown vs. Board of Education were illegal and misguided. You know – all the greatest Trump/MAGA hits!  


  
Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s a curriculum worthy of taxpayer dollars. I think if you’re going to take public money, you should have to accept all of the public, and you shouldn’t be allowed to teach counterfactual claims and prejudice as if they were fact.  

That’s why Democrats should unequivocally oppose school vouchers of all types!

If lawmakers were making decisions based on facts instead of which policies will get them the most donations from wealthy special interests, this would be a no brainer.

As usual it is campaign contributions that are dividing the party – not popular policy.

State Democrats should pass an anti-voucher resolution today!

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Teaching in Pennsylvania’s Unconstitutional School Funding System

It’s hard not to wonder about things in my new basement classroom.

I kill what bugs I can, wipe away the damp from the desks and try to think over the rattling hum of the ancient overhead heating and cooling system.

The room is about 1/3 smaller than the space I had last year and the class size is about that much larger.

I smile for a moment remembering that after nearly a decade of litigation, Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court ruled in February that our school funding system violates the constitutional rights of students in poorer school districts like where I teach.

The deadline to challenge this ruling expired in July.

So where’s the additional funding?

I wonder about this as I prepare to teach classes at Steel Valley School District in the western part of the state near Pittsburgh.

Plaintiffs including six school districts, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools claimed that billions more dollars in state aid are necessary to meet the state’s constitutional obligation.

And the judge agreed, but why didn’t she direct the state legislature on exactly how much more state aid to distribute and how?

I mean even Judge Judy would have done that! She would NOT have said, “You owe him money! Now figure out how much and pay him somehow!”

I wonder about that as I get sick from the damp and the mold in my new classroom space.

I wonder about it as I see the school library in my alma mater of McKeesport Area High School permanently closed, the books given away years after the librarian positions were eliminated and the space now becomes a large group instruction room.

I wonder about how students at Steel Valley will access their library now that the sole librarian for the high school and middle school has to teach additional classes reducing the library’s hours almost to nothing.

I wonder about teachers (some retired, others forcibly moved) whose positions were eliminated and the resulting impact on class size and resources.

I wonder about the increasing number of special education students, emotional support students, and English Language Learners all squeezed into larger and larger classes (often with less and less physical space) who are forced to vie with each other for a single teacher’s limited attention.

I wonder about my own daughter in McKeesport sitting in stifling hot classrooms and eating increasingly disgusting lunches.

I wonder about the thousands of experienced teachers who have left the profession for good because of poor salary, poor working conditions, heavy expectations and lack of tools or respect. In McKeesport the school board can’t even agree to the contract its business manager negotiated with its teachers because they think the business manager somehow misunderstood what the district could afford.

I wonder about school boards filled with volunteers who are charged with the task of making water into wine and often end up turning water into vinegar.

I wonder about our legislature mired in a more than two-month-old partisan budget stalemate between Gov. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate.

Republicans (and even the Democratic Governor to some extent) want to use taxpayer dollars to pay for students to attend private and religious schools. GOP operatives have signaled that any discussion about meeting the judge’s order to increase funding will have to involve spending more on school vouchers lite (tax deferment scholarships) or the full fledged variety.

I just don’t get it. The Supreme Court case was about public schools – not private and parochial ones. Taxpayers have no obligation to pay for people to send their kids to schools that aren’t governed by elected school boards, that won’t accept all students regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. Why are Republicans putting their ideological priorities in front of the law? If they want to use taxpayer money for this stuff, just make it a voter referendum. Ask taxpayers if they want their money spent this way. And change the constitution so that it’s legal to do so.

Compliance with the judge’s ruling should have nothing to do with it. Instead we should look to ensure every public school district has enough staff to keep class size low and constructive. We should ensure all schools have safe buildings and grounds. We should make sure all schools have broad curriculum with plenty of extracurricular activities and opportunities for students to learn. We should make sure all students have the services they need and the opportunities to access those services.

But we’re not doing that.

We’re just playing politics as usual.

Meanwhile in classrooms across the state the situation gets worse every day.

Parents, students and teachers waited almost a decade for this ruling. And it looks like we’ll have to wait even longer for anything of substance to actually happen because of it.

Our schools are drowning and our kids inside them. No one is even looking for a life preserver.

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I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Absurd School Voucher Proposal Stalls PA Budget

How do you stop the other team from making a goal when you aren’t even sure your own team’s goalie will try to block the shot?

Pennsylvania House Democrats find themselves in that uncomfortable position as they refuse to pass a Republican supported 2023-24 budget on time.

The problem? School vouchers.

Democrats generally oppose them and Republicans love them. But in the commonwealth, new Gov. Josh Shapiro, ostensibly a Democrat, has let it be known that he likes vouchers under certain conditions.

So Republicans designed a bill exactly along those lines hoping that if they can get it through both legislative bodies, the Governor will give it his signature. (Under the previous Democratic administration, Gov. Tom Wolf blocked the worst the GOP could throw at him, stopping all kinds of horrible policies from getting through.)

A budget encrusted with voucher giveaways passed the Republican-controlled Senate on Thursday, but the House – where Democrats now hold a slim majority – refused to go along with it.

So Republicans are holding the entire budget hostage. As usual.

In a time when the state is flush with cash from inflation-juiced tax collections and federal pandemic subsidies, legislators still couldn’t pass a budget on time.

And it all comes down to our schizophrenic education policies.

Fact: the Commonwealth shortchanges public school students.

The state Supreme Court said so after an 8 year legal battle.

Now lawmakers in Harrisburg are rushing to fix the problem by tearing public schools apart and giving the pieces to private and parochial schools.

It’s called the Lifeline Scholarship Program – throw a lifeline of $100 million to failing edu-businesses and religious indoctrination centers on the excuse that that will somehow help kids from impoverished neighborhoods.

You could just increase funding at the poorest public schools – but that would make too much sense.

Better to give taxpayer money to private interests with little to no accountability or track record and just hope it works!

During the election, Shapiro admitted he liked the concept of these kinds of vouchers, but back then the only other choice was Doug Mastriano, a raving MAGA insurrectionist Republican. The Democrat could have said he had developed a taste for human flesh and he would have been the better alternative.

This means only the slim Democratic majority is left to uphold public schools over this wrongheaded policy nightmare.

House Democrats swear the bill is destined to fail.

House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery, put it this way:

“There are not the votes for it. It’s not coming up, and if it comes up, it will be defeated.”

This seems to be the case. Yesterday, the House Rules Committee voted against sending the tuition voucher bill to the full House for a vote. So it is not scheduled for a vote at all.

However, now that the June 30th deadline has been blown, lawmakers probably will try to use this newest school voucher bid as a bargaining chip to get a spending plan – any spending plan – passed. This could drag on for months – it certainly has in the past.

The current voucher iteration is a taxpayer funded tuition subsidy for students attending private schools.

Under this bill, students in the lowest 15% of schools in the commonwealth (as determined by standardized test scores) would be eligible.

So what’s wrong with school vouchers?

  1) Vouchers have nothing to do with helping kids escape struggling public schools.  

   School vouchers overwhelmingly go to kids who already attend private or parochial schools.

This is true even when the law explicitly stipulates the money should only go to poor and needy children.  

In the states that have released their data, more than three quarters of families who apply for vouchers for their children already send their kids to private schools. That’s 75% of voucher students in Wisconsin, 80% in Arizona, and 89% in New Hampshire. So these kids didn’t need our tax dollars in the first place.  We’re just paying for services they’re already receiving.

 Moreover, the very idea is absurd. If the school where the student is enrolled is struggling, why wouldn’t you simply invest in that school to make it better and fix the underlying problem? Why disrupt children’s educations by moving them to another school in another system that is entirely unproven, itself? 

2) Using taxpayer money to send your child to a private or parochial school has got nothing to do with getting a quality education.  

  If we look at the facts, using a school voucher to go from a public school to a private one actually hurts kids academically.  

  Large-scale independent studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show that students who used vouchers were as negatively impacted as if they had experienced a natural disaster. Their standardized test scores went down as much or more than students during the Covid-19 pandemic or Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  

 This should come as no surprise. When we give children school vouchers, we’re removing their support systems already in place.

  They lose the friends, teachers, and communities where they grew up. It’s like yanking a sapling from out of the ground and transplanting it to another climate with another type of soil which may not be suited to it at all.  


 


   3) Vouchers have nothing to do with more efficient schools.  

  Let’s get one thing straight – voucher schools are businesses, often new businesses just opening up. And like any other start-up, the failure rate is extremely high. According to Forbes, 90% of start-ups fail – often within the first few years.  

 The same is true here. Like charter schools (another privatized education scheme), most voucher schools close in the first few years after they open. In Wisconsin, for example, 41% of voucher-receiving schools have opened and subsequently closed since public funding began in the early 1990s.  

  Yet when they close, they take our tax dollars with them leaving less funding available to educate all kids in the community.  

 Public schools, by contrast, are community institutions that usually last (and have been around) for generations. Their goal isn’t profit – it’s providing a quality education. 

  4) Vouchers have nothing to do with freedom or choice.  

   Unless it’s the choice to be a bigot and indoctrinate your child into your own bigotry. 

      Vouchers are about exclusion – who gets to attend these PRIVATE schools –  and indoctrination – what nonsense they can teach that public schools cannot.  

   Private schools can and do discriminate against children based on religion, race, gender, sexuality, special needs – you name it – even if those schools take public money.   

  For example, in Florida, Grace Christian School, a private institution that refuses to enroll LGBTQ kids has received $1.6 million so far in taxpayer funding. In Indiana, more than $16 million has gone to schools banning LGBTQ kids—or even kids with LGBTQ parents! That’s roughly 1 out of every 10 private schools in the state with just this one discriminatory enrollment.  

   Meanwhile thousands of parochial schools that receive public funding use textbooks provided by The American Christian Education (ACE) group. This includes the A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press textbooks. A Beka publishers, in particular, reported that about 9,000 schools nationwide purchase their textbooks.  

    In their pages you’ll find glowing descriptions of the Ku Klux Klan, how the massacre of Native Americans saved many souls, African slaves had really good lives, homosexuals are no better than rapists and child molesters, and progressive attempts at equal rights such as Brown vs. Board of Education were illegal and misguided. You know – all the greatest Trump/MAGA hits!  

  Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s a curriculum worthy of taxpayer dollars. I think if you’re going to take public money, you should have to accept all of the public, and you shouldn’t be allowed to teach counterfactual claims and prejudice as if they were fact.  

To be fair, this voucher program is not supposed to take money directly from the public system – one of Shapiro’s requirements for his support – but the money has to come from somewhere.

The state treasury would be responsible for managing the program, and it can’t just print money. This is taxpayer funding. We won’t allocate the money to support the schools we have, but we’re willing to send $100 million to schools we have no responsibility for now!? With no fiscal accountability!?

Lots of other states have enacted vouchers like this and surprise, surprise! The program expands enormously. For instance, in New Hampshire, voucher supporters predicted their program would cost taxpayers about $130,000, but within two years the cost had ballooned to more than $14 million.

Pennsylvania schools have monetary needs – but this voucher program is not one of them.

Lawmakers have been tasked by the state Supreme Court with increasing education funding.

That’s education funding for public schools – PUBLIC. Schools.

If they want to give away our tax dollars to their buddies in the private education industry or support religious indoctrination, that’s a different matter entirely.

And shame on Shapiro for giving the most reckless policymakers in the commonwealth on the other side of the aisle hope that these shenanigans will work.

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Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

 

Stop Giving Away Our Tax Dollars to Private & Parochial Schools, Matt Gergely & James Brewster!!!

 
 
I got an email from my state representative the other day, and what did I see?  

 
A picture of my smiling elected representatives to both the state House and Senate giving a check for almost half a million dollars to local private and parochial schools! 
 

What the beach sludge chewing GUM!!?  

 
Public schools in my home state of Pennsylvania just took the Commonwealth to the state Supreme Court and won because it wasn’t providing fair funding to students. And now my representatives are offering a novelty oversized check to religious schools and private sector academies!?  

 
This would be bad enough if they were Republicans who run their campaigns against public education and support only free market solutions to everything and White Christian Nationalism in all its forms.  

 
 
BUT THESE ARE DEMOCRATS!!!!!!! 

Democrats who somehow think that tromping onto the bleachers at Cornerstone Christian Preparatory Academy with a fistful of our tax dollars is a good photo opportunity!!!!?  

 
 
They think this is what they should share with constituents to show all the good work they’re doing!!!?  

 
Stealing our public tax dollars for schools that we have no business funding while our own schools that serve every child in the state go wanting!!!!!????? 

 
The email was from State Rep. Matt Gergely of McKeesport who just took office in February. Here’s the message from under the photo: 

 
 
“Yesterday, I was honored to help present $465,000 in scholarship funds to many students enrolled in the Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program. Congrats and best of luck to all who will surely benefit from the scholarships that will be provided! 
  
Big thanks to U.S. Steel and the Bridge Foundation for making these dollars a reality, to Sen. Jim Brewster for his continued collaboration, and to Cornerstone Christian Preparatory Academy for hosting the presentation.” 

 
 
The Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) was created in 2001 by Republican Gov. Tom Ridge. Here’s how it works. 

 If you expect a tax bill of $X at the end of the year, you can donate that same amount to the state for the purpose of helping parents pay off enrollment at a private or religious school for their children. Then you get between 75-90% of that donation back. 

  
So if your tax bill is $100 and you donate $100, you can get back $90 – reducing your total tax bill to a mere 10 bucks. 

  
Heck! Since this money is classified as a “donation” you can even claim it on your taxes and get an additional refund – even to the point where you end up making money on the deal! Pennsylvania even allows a “triple dip” – so you get the EITC tax credit, a reduction in your taxable income, and a reduction in your federal taxable income. We actually pay you to shortchange us on your taxes! 
  

Now I’m oversimplifying a bit since you can only use the EITC for up to $750,000 a year, but it’s still a sweet deal for businesses. It just really hurts nearly everyone else because it reduces the state’s general fund – by up to $340 million a year. 

  
When we give away hundreds of millions of dollars every year to religious and parochial schools, we have less money to spend on public schools, roads and all other services that benefit the majority of our citizens – especially the poor who rely more heavily on these services. 

 So why doesn’t the state just budget this amount of money directly to religious and private schools instead of ransacking the general fund after businesses donate it to the tax incentive program? 

 
Because it’s illegal to give taxpayer dollars to religious and private schools. The establishment clause of the First Amendment forbids it. 

  
The founders of our country didn’t want a state religion with schools teaching theological propaganda like we had in Great Britain. Moreover, they demanded tax dollars be spent with accountability to the whole public – something you cannot do in a private or religious school which isn’t set up for everyone but only those who choose and can afford to go there. 

  
However, some nefarious character in the Ridge administration (the Governor was pro-school-voucher but couldn’t get the policy passed in the legislature) thought up a loophole. He said that if tax money is turned into a tax credit, it’s no longer tax money and it doesn’t violate the rules to spend it on religious and private schools. 

  
So this is a fiscal sleight of hand meant to give businesses a tax break while boosting private schools. 

  
However, there’s an even more important reason they don’t call these things school vouchers. That term is extremely unpopular with voters. 
 

People don’t like school vouchers. But if you call it a “scholarship,” it’s more palatable. For instance, while school vouchers are mostly supported by Republicans, a substantial number of Democrats support education tax credit scholarships. 

  
 
 
I live in Allegheny County in the Pittsburgh region – the second highest area of the Commonwealth for these tax dodge…. I mean credits. The other is Philadelphia. 

 
Defenders of the project claim this money goes to fund “scholarships” for poor children to help defray the costs of enrollment at these schools. 
  

However, a family making as much as $100,608 per year can qualify for an EITC scholarship for their child. A family with two children could make up to $116,216 and still qualify. 

  
According to the law, the state is not allowed to collect income information about people using these vouch… I mean tax scholarships. However, we know that a significant number of them are being utilized at private schools with average tuitions of $32,000 – far more than the few thousand dollars provided by the scholarships. They are apparently being used by wealthy and middle class students who can already afford private schools but are using public tax dollars to reduce the cost. I wonder how many already go to these schools before even taking the scholarship. 

 
Consider this: one of the largest single recipients of this money in Allegheny County is the exclusive Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh where tuition ranges from $56,495 for boarding students and $32,995 for day students. The private secular school takes in around $1 million annually from this program so that its wealthy students don’t have to spend as much on enrollment. 

  
So we are subsidizing the rich. 

 
And we are robbing the poor to do so. 
  

Even worse we’re using public money to fund the teaching of climate denial, creationism, indoctrination in religious and political ideologies! 
 

 
The state Budget and Policy Center estimates that about 76% of these “scholarships” go to religious schools. Many of these educational institutions are explicitly fundamentalist. This includes the 155 schools in the Association of Christian Schools International (ASCI) where they boast of “the highest belief in biblical accuracy in scientific and historical matters.” It also includes at least 35 schools in the Keystone Christian Education Association. 

 
And you don’t even have to be a business to divert your tax dollars into the program. 

 
The largest and shadiest group donating to the EITC Program are Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs). 

  
These “special purpose entities” are set up to represent individual donors so they can more easily divert tax dollars to private and parochial schools. 
  

LLCs represent hundreds of individuals who allow the LLC to donate on their behalf and then they get the tax credits passed back to them. It’s a way to encourage the wealthy to get the tax cut and support school privatization without all the hassle of doing the paperwork themselves. 
  

And most (if not all) of these LLCs are set up by religious organizations to boost their own parochial schools! 

 
For instance, Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools is perhaps the largest LLC receiving EITC funds. 
   

In Allegheny County, the largest are CASTA-SOS LLC and Pittsburgh Jewish Scholarship LLC. 

  
CASTA was set up by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Jewish Scholarship benefits Jewish schools in the city. 

 
Bridge Educational Foundation, a Harrisburg-based scholarship organization, operates the same way. On its Website, the organization claims to have provided $1,000 scholarships to more than 32,000 students in 61 state counties. 

 
 
I just cannot understand why Gergely and Brewster are not only supporting this program but think that it will generate good will among voters. 

 
 
They should be fighting to end this gaping hole in the state budget. They should be out there working their butts off to get adequate, equitable and sustainable funding for our public schools – not sitting on their butts congratulating themselves for helping religious and private schools get away with our hard-earned money! 
 

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Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

 

 

School Vouchers Don’t Increase Academics; They Increase Bigotry

  
  
Let’s be honest.  

  
At best, school vouchers are a failed education policy experiment.  

 
At worst, they’re an attempt to normalize bigotry. 

  
Using taxpayer money to send your child to a private or parochial school has got nothing to do with getting a quality education.  

  
If we look at the facts, using a school voucher to go from a public school to a private one actually hurts kids academically.  

  
Large-scale independent studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show that students who used vouchers were as negatively impacted as if they had experienced a natural disaster. Their standardized test scores went down as much or more than students during the Covid-19 pandemic or Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  

 
This should come as no surprise. When we give children school vouchers, we’re removing their support systems already in place.

 
 
They lose the friends, teachers, and communities where they grew up. It’s like yanking a sapling from out of the ground and transplanting it to another climate with another type of soil which may not be suited to it at all.  

 
  
Vouchers have nothing to do with helping kids escape struggling public schools.  

 
  
School vouchers overwhelmingly go to kids who already attend private or parochial schools.  

In the states that have released their data, more than three quarters of families who apply for vouchers for their children already send their kids to private schools. That’s 75% of voucher students in Wisconsin, 80% in Arizona, and 89% in New Hampshire. So these kids didn’t need our tax dollars in the first place.  We’re just paying for services they’re already receiving.

 
Moreover, the very idea is absurd. If the school where the student is enrolled is struggling, why wouldn’t you simply invest in that school to make it better and fix the underlying problem? Why disrupt children’s educations by moving them to another school in another system that is entirely unproven, itself? 

 
  
Vouchers have nothing to do with more efficient schools.  

  
Let’s get one thing straight – voucher schools are businesses, often new businesses just opening up. And like any other start-up, the failure rate is extremely high. According to Forbes, 90% of start-ups fail – often within the first few years.  

 
The same is true here. Like charter schools (another privatized education scheme), most voucher schools close in the first few years after they open. In Wisconsin, for example, 41% of voucher-receiving schools have opened and subsequently closed since public funding began in the early 1990s.  

  
Yet when they close, they take our tax dollars with them leaving less funding available to educate all kids in the community.  

 
Public schools, by contrast, are community institutions that usually last (and have been around) for generations. Their goal isn’t profit – it’s providing a quality education. 

 
 
Lastly, vouchers have nothing to do with freedom or choice.  

 
  
Unless it’s the choice to be a bigot and indoctrinate your child into your own bigotry. 

 
  
 
  
Vouchers are about exclusion – who gets to attend these PRIVATE schools –  and indoctrination – what nonsense they can teach that public schools cannot.  

  
 
Private schools can and do discriminate against children based on religion, race, gender, sexuality, special needs – you name it – even if those schools take public money.  
 

  
For example, in Florida, Grace Christian School, a private institution that refuses to enroll LGBTQ kids has received $1.6 million so far in taxpayer funding. In Indiana, more than $16 million has gone to schools banning LGBTQ kids—or even kids with LGBTQ parents! That’s roughly 1 out of every 10 private schools in the state with just this one discriminatory enrollment.  

  
 
Meanwhile thousands of parochial schools that receive public funding use textbooks provided by The American Christian Education (ACE) group. This includes the A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press textbooks. A Beka publishers, in particular, reported that about 9,000 schools nationwide purchase their textbooks.  

 
   
In their pages you’ll find glowing descriptions of the Ku Klux Klan, how the massacre of Native Americans saved many souls, African slaves had really good lives, homosexuals are no better than rapists and child molesters, and progressive attempts at equal rights such as Brown vs. Board of Education were illegal and misguided. You know – all the greatest Trump/MAGA hits!  

  
Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s a curriculum worthy of taxpayer dollars. I think if you’re going to take public money, you should have to accept all of the public, and you shouldn’t be allowed to teach counterfactual claims and prejudice as if they were fact.  

  
 
You want freedom? Fine.  

 
  
You are free to be as intolerant as you want to be, but do it on your own dime.  

 
  
If racism, homophobia, classism or xenophobia is your thing, you can jolly well pay for it, yourself.  

 
  
But biased, partisan and sectarian education isn’t in the interest of the public good.   

  
We should reserve our tax dollars to pay for things in the common interest. Not Klan camp.   

 
 
 Don’t get me wrong. 

 
 
Every private or parochial school isn’t like that.  

 
 
But a heck of a lot of them are! 

 
 
We shouldn’t be wasting our time trying to sort through other people’s businesses when we have our own educational enterprise – public schools – which cumulatively do a much better job. 

 
 
And our public system would do an even better job than that if instead of trying to “save kids” from underfunded public schools, we simply funded them enough to meet student need and beyond.  

 
It should come as no surprise that removing students from public school and sending them to a private or parochial school doesn’t work to help them academically.  

 
 
 
It would be much more effective to provide support where students are than make them undergo the trauma of uprooting.  

 
 
Finally let me say something about the issue of standardized testing.  

 
I still believe that standardized test scores are a terrible way to try to assess student learning. And the fact that voucher students tank their tests – by itself – does not prove to me that private and parochial schools provide a substandard education compared to public schools.  

 
It is the surrounding factors – like that most voucher schools don’t have to use certified teachers with the same quality degrees as public schools, that they don’t have to use the same kind of high-quality curriculum or pass the same kinds of public scrutiny.  
 

 
However, test scores do matter to policymakers. They are using the same test scores to disparage public schools and then in the same breath ignore the scores when they delegate more taxpayer funding for school vouchers.  

 
This is hypocritical. We need to demand more from our lawmakers in this regard.  

 
 
The same far right ideologues that support Trump and the MAGA fascists are the driving force behind the push for more school vouchers.  

 
 
Undoubtedly, they are helped by unscrupulous Democrats, but at least the Dems CLAIM to still believe in facts and representative government. 
 

 
It’s time they paid heed to the facts and represented us by ending their support for school vouchers and the MAGA factories most of these vouchers go to support. 

 
 
Bigotry is a losing proposition in a democracy where you need as many votes as possible to get elected to office.  

 
 
And dressing up indoctrination as if it were just freedom and economics only works if we’re foolish enough to let it. 

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NOTE: In this article, I am indebted to the work of Josh Cowen, a professor at Michigan State University who has been studying school vouchers for more than two decades.

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An Open Letter to Josh Shapiro Asking Him to Reject School Vouchers

 

Dear Josh Shapiro, 

 
Are you for public education or not?

I only ask because as the Democratic candidate for Governor in Pennsylvania, you come off as the savior of schools and children on the campaign trail.

You say you want to increase state funding to public schools. Wonderful!

You say you want to reduce standardized testing. Excellent!

You want to guarantee every student has access to technical and vocational courses and make sure every school building has at least one dedicated mental health counselor on staff. Outstanding!

But in interviews and on your campaign Website, you say you’re in favor of school vouchers!

Wha-Wha-What!?

Did Charles Koch just hack your election headquarters? Is Betsy DeVos impersonating you in the media?

Because supporting school vouchers does not fit in at all with someone who claims to champion public education.

Public education means public schools. It means tax dollars being used to fund public schools and those schools being run by elected school boards.

It does not mean tax dollars going to private and parochial schools. It does not mean our money going to institutions where we get no say in how it’s spent. It does not mean circumventing duly elected school boards. It does not mean the public paying for religious indoctrination or the kind of right wing biased education routinely provided at private schools.

But that’s what school vouchers do.

They steal taxpayer dollars from authentic public schools and allow them to be wasted on private and parochial schools. They destroy any accountability for how our collective money is spent and do serious harm to thousands of the most struggling authentic public school students while lining the pockets of private companies and religious institutions.

And the separation of church and state – forget about it!

This doesn’t sound like the candidate teachers like me have been backing since before this election cycle began. Frankly, it’s almost what your gubernatorial opponent, MAGA Republican Doug Mastriano, champions.

Mastriano – a Trump insurrectionist – says he wants to use state education funding to give EVERY student a school voucher they can use at almost any school in the Commonwealth – public, private or parochial.

You seem to want vouchers ONLY for students at the most underfunded and struggling schools.

Well that’s some distinction!

Instead of providing more support to the most inequitably funded schools, you want to slash their funding even more in the name of some old time Republican plan to let a few escape a bad situation while the rest all drown!?

That is repulsive!

On your your campaign Website it says: 

 Josh favors adding choices for parents and educational opportunity for students and funding lifeline scholarships like those approved in other states and introduced in Pennsylvania. 

 
In an interview in the Patriot News you say: 

 “And I’m for making sure we add scholarships like lifeline scholarships to make sure that that’s additive to their education. That it gives them other opportunities…to be able to help them achieve success”  

These so-called Lifeline Scholarships are a Republican lead measure to give direct-to-student tax-funded scholarships that parents and guardians in the state’s most neglected public schools could use for a variety of options including going toward tuition at a different school.

The GOP sponsored bill passed the state House of Representatives in April on a 104-98 vote and cleared the state Senate Education Committee in June. However, because of an amendment to protect low performing charter schools from losing their funding, it would still need final passage votes in both chambers before getting to current Gov. Tom Wolf’s desk where he would almost certainly veto it.

It would affect about 191,000 students in 382 schools, across 76 of the state’s 500 school districts. However, Two-thirds of the cost of the program (63.1%) is born by four districts – Philadelphia (43.9%), Reading (8.9%), Allentown (5.8%) and Pittsburgh (4.5%).

This would create another taxpayer funded system of education. Affected districts would lose so much funding it would ultimately force them to reduce programs, services, and staffing and/or raise property taxes to compensate.

Moreover, these would be the most neglected districts, and thus the least able to support the cost.

It’s a terrible idea, and I can’t understand why you would buck the overwhelming majority of your party and would-be constituents to support it.

Is it because you send your own kids to a faith-based private school, and that you are the product of just such an education, yourself?

This is how you lose votes, Sir.

Your opponent is perhaps the most odious person to ever run for Governor in the state. He looks to usher in an era of theocratic fascism, curtail human rights and take the Commonwealth back to the Middle Ages.

But that doesn’t mean you should run closer to his positions in the vain hope of stealing some of his base.

The MAGA Republicans will never vote for you. Dressing yourself up in their clothing will not help you do anything but disgust your own supporters until some can’t bring themselves to vote at all.

As election day nears, the polls get closer and closer between Mastriano and you.

Pennsylvanians can’t afford losing their only chance at self rule because of demoralization and despair at a candidate too weak to support the platform he began this campaign on – championing public education.

I urge you to reconsider this flirtation with Republican values and school vouchers.

I hope you are better than this.

We deserve a governor who is better than this.

Please have the courage to stand by authentic public schools.

Yours,

Steven Singer

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Tell Josh Shapiro what you think. Email him here: contact@joshshapiro.org

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I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Covid Has Hobbled Public Schools. Here’s Why They’re Worth Saving

 
 
 
Is public education worth saving? 

 
That’s the question in the air these days.  

 
In the last century, the US academic system helped us reach the moon, defeat Communism and become the world’s largest super power.    

 
However, today our public schools are more damaged than ever before.  

 
An increasing number of families are leaving them for charter and voucher schools.  

 
Teachers are quitting their jobs in droves with few people willing to fill the vacancies they leave behind.

 
 
And above all, many people seem to think the schools, themselves, are failing. 

 
Isn’t it time to move on to something else? 

 
I’m here to tell you – no, it is not. 

 
In fact, we need to guard and cherish our public schools more than ever before. Because we face the real possibility of losing them for good.  

 
The Covid-19 pandemic on top of years of corporate sabotage and propaganda have obscured what public education really means and why it is absolutely necessary to the functioning of our society and any possibility of social, racial or economic justice. 

 
Let’s begin by looking at how the current disaster exacerbated an already difficult situation and then consider why we should care enough to fix the mess. 

 
 
The Pandemic Effect 

 
 
Public schools got a bloody nose from the Coronavirus crisis.

 
 
After decades of segregation, inequitable funding, incentives to privatize, and federally mandated standardized testing, it took a deadly virus to finally hobble the system.  

 
Being forced to contend with the uncertainties of Covid-19 damaged people’s faith in public education more than anything that had come before it. 

 
Issues of masking, contact tracing, safety of immunocompromised students and staff, and when to open or close buildings (among other issues) lead to inevitable dissatisfaction from all fronts.  

 
However, none of these issues should have been decided at the local level in the first place.  

 
These were issues of national significance. We needed a unified strategy to fight a global pandemic as it washed over our shores – not scattershot policies by part-time officials unequipped to deal with them. 

 
These problems should have been tackled by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and enforced by the federal government without deference to big business.  

 
Instead, the CDC made conflicting decisions based more on the needs of the economy than public health (many of which were roundly ignored anyway). Then federal and state governments either refused to decide safety protocols leaving it up to individuals or municipalities, or when they did decide matters, they were embroiled in partisan battles over any kind of restrictions.  

 
In fact, it was the failure of federal, state and even local municipal governments that often made public schools the de facto legislators of last resort. And this is something they were never meant to be. 

 
Public health should be decided by scientists not school directors. 

 
The result was widespread dissatisfaction no matter what school boards decided and an exodus of students and faculty. 

 
Many families, upset at local school board decisions, enrolled their children in charter, cyber or voucher schools.  

 
Overall, charters saw a 7% increase in enrollment – an influx of roughly 240,000 students -during the 2020-21 school year, according to a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. This is the largest increase in five years. By comparison, public school enrollment dropped by 3.3% – or 1.4 million students – in the same period. 

 
The biggest increases were in cyber charter schools. For example, in Pennsylvania 99.7 percent of the charter enrollment growth occurred in virtual charter schools. Enrollment at the Commonwealth’s 14 cyber charter schools swelled from about 38,000 students in October 2019 to more than 60,000 students in October 2020, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. 

 
But it wasn’t just students leaving our public schools. It was staff, too. 

 
Teachers and other school employees who felt unsafe or were crushed by the incredible pressure thrust on their shoulders either quit or retired in droves.  

 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 567,000 fewer educators in our public schools today than there were before the pandemic. And finding replacements has been difficult. Nationwide, an average of one educator is hired for every two jobs available. 

 
 
This has left us with a weakened system suffering from more problems than before the pandemic hit.

 
 
 
Why Are Public Schools Important? 

 
 
Because of what they are and what they represent.  

 
We hear about public education so often – usually in deprecating terms – that we forget exactly what the term signifies.  

 
A public school is a school meant for everybody and anybody.  

 
It is a school where any child can go to get an education.  

 
You don’t have to pay tuition. You don’t have to have a special ability or qualification. You don’t have to be neurotypical, a certain race, ethnicity, belong to a certain faith or socioeconomic status. If you’re living in the US – even if you’re here illegally – you get to go there.  

 
That may seem simple, but it is vitally important and really quite special.  

 
Not all nations have robust systems of public education like we do in the US. 

 
This country has a commitment to every single child regardless of what their parents can afford to pay, regardless of their access to transportation, regardless of whether they can afford uniforms, lunch or even if they have a home.  

 
We simply define education differently. We look at it as a right, not a privilege. And for a full 13 years (counting kindergarten) it’s a right for every child, not just some. 

Perhaps even more significant is our commitment to children with special needs. 

We have developed a special education system to help children at the edges that many other countries just can’t touch. In some nations these students are simply excluded. In others they are institutionalized. In some countries it’s up to parents to find ways to pay for special services. The United States is one of the only countries where these children are not only included and offered full and free access, but the schools go above and beyond to teach these children well beyond their 12th academic year. 

In every authentic public school in the United States these students are included. In math, reading, science and social studies, they benefit from instruction with the rest of the class. And this, in turn, benefits even our neurotypical students who gain lessons in empathy and experience the full range of human abilities. 

That isn’t to say the system has ever been perfect. Far from it. 

 
There are plenty of ways we could improve. Even before the pandemic, we were incredibly segregated by race and class. Our funding formulas were often regressive and inadequate. Schools serving mostly poor students didn’t have nearly the resources of those serving rich students.

 
 
But at least at the very outset what we were trying to do was better than what most of the world takes on. You can’t achieve equity if it isn’t even on the menu. 

 
Without public schools, equity is definitely not on offer. 

 
 
 Public is Better Than Private 

 
 
That’s really the point.  

 
Charter, cyber and voucher schools are not set up around this ideal.  

 
They are not instruments of inclusion. They are instruments of exclusion.  

 
They are about who is sent away, not about letting everyone in.  

The United States is a big country – the third most populous in the world. We have 332,630,000 people and growing. That’s about 50 million students in public schools. 

 
No private system in the world has ever been able to work at that scale. If we lose our public schools, many kids will be left wanting.  

The market-driven approach does not guarantee an education. It guarantees competition for an education. 

 
It forces students to compete to get into schools and schools to compete for their very existence. Think of how that affects instruction. Schools have to spend a considerable amount of time and money attracting students to enroll. That’s time and money that doesn’t go to education. It goes to advertising. 

  
Moreover, any school that attracts a surplus of students can choose which ones its wants to enroll. The choice becomes the school’s – not the parents’ or students’. In fact, administrators can turn away students for any reason – race, religion, behavior, special needs, how difficult it would be to teach him or her. This is much different from authentic public schools. There, any student who lives in the district may attend regardless of factors such as how easy or difficult he or she is to educate. 

  
Another major change with this approach is how privatized schools are run. Many are operated behind closed doors without the input of a duly-elected school board, without transparency for how they spend tax dollars, without even the guide rails of most regulations. 

  
Like in the charter school sector, these schools get almost free reign to do whatever they want.  

This means corporate interests get to run charter schools while cutting services and increasing profits. In fact, administrative costs at charter schools are much higher than at traditional public schools. Students lose, the market wins. 

  
Moreover, many charter schools provide a sub-par education. To put it more bluntly, they do things that would be impossible for public schools to do. One in Philadelphia literally transformed into a nightclub after dark. Another funneled profits into the CEO’s personal bank account to be used as a slush fund to buy gifts and pay for rent at an apartment for his girlfriend. Another CEO used tax dollars to buy a yacht cheekily called “Fishin’ 4 Schools.”  

 
And virtual charter schools are even worse. A study found that cyber-charters provide almost less education than not going to school at all. Even brick and mortar charter schools can close on a moments notice leaving students in the lurch. 

  
It’s a Darwinian model made to benefit the predators, not the prey. It’s a boon for any unselfconscious businessman who doesn’t mind getting rich stealing an education from children. 

 
We Must Fight 

 
That’s why we must fight to keep our public schools.  

 
As flawed and bruised as they are, the public school model is far superior to the alternative.  

 
But many will look only at their own individual situation and stop there.  

 
They will say, “At MY charter school we do this…” Or “That’s not the way things are at MY voucher academy…” 

 
First of all, a well-functioning privatized school is like a castle built precariously on a cliff. Things may work well now, but they could change at any moment and there’s nothing you could do but vote with your feet. When authentic public schools go bad, you have a democratic process to fix the problem.

 
 
But you may luck out. Every privatized school isn’t a scam. Just most of them. So if you have found a charter, cyber or voucher school that is working for your child and doesn’t self-destruct in the time your child is enrolled, you may wonder why you should worry about the rest of us – the kids caught up in a web of privatized predation and neglect?  

 
Because it’s not all about you and your child. Selfishness cannot be the foundation of a just society.

 
 
Even a well-functioning charter or voucher school is publicly funded. It splits the funding that would normally go to one school and divides it among two or more. So students at both have to make do with less. 

You have to live in this society. Do you really want to live in a country with a large population of undereducated citizens who cannot figure out how to vote in their own interests? Do you really want to live in a society where crime is a better career choice for those who were not properly educated?  

 
That’s why we can’t let public education disappear.  

 
It is a necessary condition for democracy, shared economic prosperity and a just society.  

 
I know it may sound like an insurmountable task, but saving our public schools can be done.  

 
It will require collective action. 

 
We will need to actively participate in our school board elections, go to school board meetings and possibly even run to serve on the board, ourselves. 

 
Many people are upset with what local boards did during the pandemic, but the way to solve this isn’t to flee to schools without democratic principles. It is to seize those principles and make them work for you and your community. 

 
We will need to change the way our system treats teachers. If we want to encourage educators to stay on the job and even entice young people to enter the field, we need to make the profession more rewarding. That means higher salaries, more autonomy, more respect, smaller classes, less paperwork, and actually listening to educators on the subject of education.  

 
We also need to discontinue countless policies and programs that have been dragging our public schools down for decades. We need to eliminate high stakes standardized testing. We need to ensure every school is adequately, equitably and sustainably funded. We need to actively integrate our schools and classrooms. We need to stop supporting privatization through charter and voucher schools and instead support authentic public schools.  

 
And to do that, we need real political change at every level of government – local, municipal, state and federal.  

 
None of this is easy. All of it takes work.  

 
But it is the fight we must wage if we are ever to keep our democracy.  

 
It is the fight we must win to create the better world our children deserve.  

 
Public schools are worth saving, but it is up to you and me to do it. 

 

 

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Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

 

If Standardized Tests Were Going to Succeed, They Would Have Done So By Now

 
 
 
Standardized tests were supposed to be the magic remedy to fix our public schools.  

 
 
They were supposed to make all students proficient in reading and math.  

 
 
They were supposed to ensure all students were getting the proper resources.  

 
 
They were supposed to ensure all teachers were doing their best for their students.  

 
 
But after more than four decades, standardized tests have not fulfilled a single one of these promises.

 
 
 
In fact, all they’ve done is make things worse at public schools while creating a lucrative market for testing companies and school privatization concerns.  

 
 
So why haven’t we gotten rid of them? 

 
 
To answer that question, we have to understand how we got here in the first place – where these kinds of assessments came from in the US and how they became the guiding policy of our public schools. 

 
Standardized testing has been around in this country since the 1920s.  

 
It was the product of the pseudoscientific eugenicist movement that tried to justify white supremacy with bad logic and biased premises.  

 
Psychologists Robert Yerkes and Carl Brigham invented these assessments to justify privileging upper-class whites over lower class immigrants, Blacks and Hispanics. That was always the goal and they tailored their tests to find that result. 

 
From the very start, it had serious consequences for public policy. The results were used to rationalize the forced sterilization of 60,000 to 70,000 people from groups with low test scores, thus preventing them from “polluting” the gene pool.  

 
However, Brigham’s greatest claim to fame was the creation of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) to keep such undesirables out of higher education. These tests were not central to school curriculum and mainly used as gatekeepers with the SAT in particular still in wide use today. 

 
The problem then – as now – is that standardized tests aren’t very good assessments. They work okay for really simple things like rudimentary math. However, the more complex a skill you’re assessing, the more inadequate the tests. For example, imagine just trying to have a conversation with someone where your only choices of reply were limited to four canned responses. That’s a multiple-choice assessment. The result is a testing system that selects against the poor and minorities. At best, it reproduces the economic and racial disparities of society. At worst, it ensures those disparities will continue into the next generation. 

 
That isn’t to say the system went unchallenged. By the 1960s, the junk science and leaps of logic behind standardized testing were obvious and people began fighting back in court. Black plaintiffs began winning innumerable lawsuits against the testing industry.  

 
 
Perhaps the most famous case is Hobson v. Hansen in 1967, which was filed on behalf of a group of Black students in Washington, DC. The court ruled that the policy of using tests to assign students to tracks was racially biased because the tests were standardized to a White, middleclass group. 

 
 
Nevertheless, just as the tests were beginning to disappear, radical economists like Milton Friedman saw them as an opportunity to push their own personal agenda. More than anything, these extreme capitalists wanted to do away with almost all public services – especially public schools. They hoped the assessments could be repurposed to undermine these institutions and usher in an era of private education through measures like school vouchers. 

 
 
 
So in the 1980s, the Reagan administration published “A Nation at Risk,” a campfire tale about how America’s public schools were failing. Thus, the authors argued we needed standardized testing to make American children competitive in a global marketplace. 

 
 
However, the report, which examined test scores from the past 20 years, was misleading and full of statistical and mathematical errors.  

 
 
For instance, it concluded that average student test scores had decreased but didn’t take into account that scores had actually increased in every demographic group. It compared two decades worth of test scores, but failed to mention that more students took the test at the end of that period than at the beginning, and many of the newer students were disadvantaged. In other words, it compared test scores between an unrepresentative group at the beginning of the comparison with a more representative group at the end and concluded that these oranges were nothing like the apples they started with. Well, duh. 

 
Most people weren’t convinced by the disaster capitalism at work here, but the report marks a significant moment in the standardization movement. In fact, this is really where our modern era began.

 
 
Slowly governors and state legislators began drinking the Kool-aide and mandating standardized testing in schools along with corporate-written academic standards the tests were supposed to assess. It wasn’t everywhere, but the model for test-and-punish was in place. 

 
It took an additional two decades, until 2001, for President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation to require standardized testing in ALL public schools.  

 
With bipartisan support, Bush tied federal funding of schools to standardized test performance and annual academic progress. And from then on, the die was cast. This policy has been upheld through both Republican and Democratic regimes.  

 
In fact, standardized testing intensified under President Barack Obama and was continued with few changes by Donald Trump and even Joe Biden. Far from changing course, Biden broke a campaign promise to discontinue the tests. Once in office, he thought testing was so important that he forced schools to give the assessments during the Covid-19 pandemic when districts had trouble even keeping school buildings open. 

 
And that brings us to today.  

 
From the 1980s to 2022 we’ve had wide scale standardized testing in our schools. That’s roughly 40 years where the entirety of what is done in public school has been organized around these assessments. They drive the curriculum and are the ultimate benchmark by which success or failure is judged. If this policy was ever going to work, it would have done so by now.  

 
 
However, it has achieved NONE of its stated goals.  

 
NCLB specifically stated that all children would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. That has not happened. Despite spending billions of dollars on remediation and completely reorganizing our schools around the assessments, test scores have remained mostly static or even decreased. 

 
The law also justified its existence with claims to equity. Somehow taking resources away from districts with low test scores was supposed to increase funding at the neediest schools. Unsurprisingly this did not happen. All it did was further increase the funding gap between rich and poor schools and between wealthy and disadvantaged students.  

 
NCLB also championed the idea that competing for test scores would result in better teachers. However, that didn’t happen either. Instead, educators were forced to narrow the curriculum to cover mostly what was assessed, reduce creativity and critical thinking, and teachers who served poor and minority students were even punished for doing so.  

 
If the purpose of standardized testing was all the things the law purported, then it was a decades long failure. It is the policy equivalent of slamming your head into a wall repeatedly and wondering why you aren’t moving forward. (And where did this headache come from?) 

 
If, however, the purpose of standardized testing was to fulfill Friedman’s privatization dreams, then it was a resounding success. Public schools still persist, but they have been drained, weakened and in many ways subverted.  

 
Look at the evidence. 

 
Standardized testing has grown from a $423 million industry before 2001 to a multi-billion dollar one today. If we add in test prep, new text books, software, and consultancy, that figure easily tops the trillion dollar mark.  

 
Huge corporations make the tests, grade the tests and then sell remediation materials when students fail. It’s a huge scam. 

 
But that’s not the only business created by this policy. Test and punish opened entirely new markets that hadn’t existed before. The emphasis on test scores and the “failing schools” narrative stoked unwarranted distrust in the public school system and a demand for more privatized alternatives. 

 
 Chief among these was charter schools. 

 
The first charter school law was passed in 1991 in Minnesota. It allowed for the creation of new schools that would have special agreements (or charters) with states or districts to run without having to abide by all the usual regulations. Thus, the school could go without an elected board, pocket public money as private profit, etc. The bill was quickly copied and spread to legislatures across the country by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). 

  
Today, there are charter schools in 43 states and the District of Columbia educating nearly three million students. Charter schools enroll about 6% of the students in the country.  

 
 
However, charter schools are rife with fraud and malfeasance. For instance, more than a quarter of charter schools close within 5 years of opening. By year 15, roughly 50% of charter schools close. That’s not a stable model of public education. It’s a get rich quick scheme. And since these types of schools are free from the kinds of regulations, democratic governance and/or transparency that keeps authentic public schools in check, another charter school scandal pops up almost every day. 

 
 
But let’s not forget school vouchers. Before high stakes testing, the idea of using public money to pay for private or parochial schools was widely considered unconstitutional. Now about 4% of US students go to private and parochial schools some of which are funded with school vouchers. This is an option in 32 states and the District of Columbia, and more than 600,000 students participated in a voucher, scholarship tax credit or education savings account program last school year, according to EdChoice, a pro-voucher and school choice group.  

 
There is little evidence that school vouchers actually improve student performance, however, and there’s even evidence that students who receive vouchers to attend private schools may do worse on tests than they would have if they had stayed in authentic public schools.  

 
Moreover, the cost of attending one of these private or parochial schools isn’t completely covered by the voucher. On average, vouchers offer about $4,600 a year, according to American Federation for Children, which supports voucher programs. The average annual cost of tuition at a private K-12 school nationwide is $12,350, according to Educationdata.org, though that can be much more expensive in some states. In Connecticut, for example, the average tuition is almost $24,000. So vouchers only REDUCE the cost of attending private or parochial schools for a few kids while siphoning away tax dollars that should go to educating all kids.  

 
In short, they’re subsidies for wealthier kids at the expense of the middle class and disadvantaged. 

 
Without standardized testing, it is impossible to imagine such an increase in privatization.

 
 
 
High stakes testing is a Trojan horse. It is a way to secretly undermine and weaken public schools so that testing corporations, charter schools and voucher schools can thrive. 

 
 
Judged by its own metrics of success, standardized testing is an abject failure. Judged by the metric of business and school privatization it is a rousing success.  

 
And that’s why it has been so hard to discontinue.  

 
This is corporate welfare at its finest, and the people getting rich off our tax dollars won’t allow us to turn off the flow of funding without a fight.  

 
 
On the right, policymakers are often boldly honest about their goals to bolster privatization over public schools. On the left, policymakers still cling to the failed measures of success testing has not been able to meet time-and-again.  

 
However, both groups support the same system. They only give different reasons.  

 
 
It is past time to wake up and smell the flowers.  

 
 
If we want to ensure education dollars go to education and not profiteers, we need to end standardized testing. 

 
 
If we want to help students learn to the best of their abilities, we need to stop gaslighting them with faulty measures of success or failure. 
 

 
If we want to allow teachers to do the best for their students, we need to stop holding them back with antiquated eugenicist shackles. 

 
 
And if we truly want to save our public school system, we have to stop propping up privatization.  

 
 
In short, we need to end standardized testing.  
 

 
The sooner, the better. 

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Public Schools Are Not Indoctrinating Kids About Racism. Voucher Schools ARE

Republican frenzy has reached a fever pitch with attacks in at least 16 states on schools that allegedly teach Critical Race Theory.

Right-wingers claim public schools are indoctrinating America’s youth in lies and deception about race and racism – namely the “lie” that these things remain problems.

They grudgingly concede that racism was a (slight) problem in this country before the civil rights movement, but then Rosa sat down and Martin stood up and – POOF – racism was over.

End of story. Let’s move on.

However, there are several things wrong with this besides its basic reductivism.

First, no public school actually teaches Critical Race Theory.

Second, racism is not over in the US, and talking about the facts of history and how they led to our current situation is not indoctrination. It’s education – the job of public schools.

And finally, if you really want to see taxpayer funded indoctrination, look at private and parochial schools accepting taxpayer funding through voucher and tax credit programs.

Let’s start with Critical Race Theory.

It is entirely absent from public school curriculum.

Laughably so.

Critical Race Theory is a legal framework that’s been taught for decades in law schools around the country. And just like torts, contract law, civil forfeiture and a host of other valid topics in law school, the K-12 public schools really don’t cover them much.

But right wing lawmakers and the billionaire funded think tanks that provide their propaganda ideas want to turn Critical Race Theory into a scare tactic to close down discussions of race and racism in America’s classrooms.

Which brings us to the second point – racism is not over in America.

Facts are facts.

In a country where the average Black worker earns just 62% of what the average white worker makes, and where black people are 3.23 times more likely than white people to be killed by police – racism is not over.

One out of every three Black boys born today can expect to be sentenced to prison, compared to 1 out 6 for Latino boys, and one out of 17 for White boys.

Black people are convicted at higher rates and given longer sentences than white people for the same crimes – 5% of illicit drug users are African American, yet Black people represent 29% of those arrested and 33% of those incarcerated for drug offenses. Moreover, African Americans and White people use drugs at similar rates, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is almost 6 times that of White people.

And on and on.

One has to live in a factually neutral bubble to insist that racism no longer exists in this country, but that’s exactly where these right wing lawmakers are coming from.

The GOP is terrified they might actually have to protect voting rights or provide equitable school funding for black kids up to par with white kids, so they have to keep creating scary monsters to frighten the populace into believing their bogus world view.

After all, their base is almost exclusively White. If they can’t find something to rile up these people and make them feel unduly put upon, they won’t come to the polls. And nothing gets people more eager to vote than fear and anger.

Except maybe ignorance.

Which brings us to the third point – indoctrination doesn’t happen at public schools; it happens at taxpayer funded voucher schools.

The last decade has seen a steady, incremental increase in taxpayer funding in most states for private and parochial schools as public school budgets have been robbed and raided to pay for it.

In some states, this comes from outright school voucher programs. In others like Pennsylvania, this comes from tax credit programs like the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs.

In essence, they all do the same thing. They take taxpayer money that was (or would have been) put aside for public education and funnel it to parochial or private schools.

The schools that accept this money have little to no oversight in how they spend it nor do they have to follow any of the rules that public schools do.

And many of these schools actually do indoctrinate their students into untruths about science, history and politics. On our dime.

How do we know that? We know which books they use in their curriculum. And many of them are filled with factually incorrect bigotry and bias.

For example, here’s a few justifications of slavery from America: Land I Love, an A Beka Book:

“The slave who knew Christ had more freedom than a free person who did not know the Savior…”

“…Although the slaves faced great difficulties, many found faith in Christ and learned to look to God for strength. By 1860, most slaveholders provided Christian instruction on their plantations.”

“To help them endure the difficulties of slavery, God gave Christian slaves the ability to combine the African heritage of song with the dignity of Christian praise. Through the Negro spiritual, the slaves developed the patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is from the bondage of sin…”

And here’s a defense of the kindness of most slave owners from United States History for Christian Schools published by Bob Jones University Press (BJU):

“A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.”

And here’s another excerpt from the same book teaching that black people were just as responsible for slavery as white people and that white people suffered from slavery just as much:

“The story of slavery in America is an excellent example of the far-reaching consequences of sin. The sin in this case was greed – greed on the part of the African tribal leaders, on the part of the slave traders, and on the part of slave owners, all of whom allowed their love for profit to outweigh their love for their fellow man. The consequences of such greed and racism extended across society and far into the future. It resulted in untold suffering – most obviously for the black race but for the white race as well.” (emphasis mine)

Here’s another excerpt from the same book about the benefits of the KKK:

“[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.”

Meanwhile, the Teacher’s Resource Guide to Current Events for Christian Schools published by BJU wrote this about how liberal Democrats and desegregation were bad:

“While the end was a noble one – ending discrimination in schools – the means were troublesome. Liberals were not willing to wait for a political solution.”

As bad as these excerpt are, they focus only on racism.

The books are riddled with counter factual claims and political bias in every subject imaginable such as abortion, gay rights and the Endangered Species Act, which one labels a “radical social agenda.” They disparage religions other than Protestant Christianity and cultures other than those descended from White Europeans.

They teach that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, some dinosaurs survive into the present day (i.e. the Loch Ness monster), evolution is a myth disproved by REAL science as is the claim that homosexuality is anything but a choice.

Teaching these things in school is not just educational malpractice, it’s exactly the kind of indoctrination the right is claiming without evidence happens at public schools.

And this kind of brain washing is common at voucher schools.

Along with publisher Accelerated Christian Education, A Beka and BJP are being used in countless taxpayer-funded schools. Nearly 6 million students attend private schools in the United States and about three-quarters of those are Christian schools. And that doesn’t even count the roughly 1.7 million American children who are homeschooled many of whom use these texts.

These books are used almost exclusively at religious schools or through homeschooling. However, that’s the majority of the school voucher program – even the tax credit scholarship programs.

Nearly 80 percent of scholarship students attend religious schools, and most of those institutions are Christian, according to an investigation by the Orlando Sentinel. The books mentioned above all come from a Protestant point of view. However, roughly 16 percent of scholarship schools are Catholic and use their own curriculum as do other schools including Islamic or Jewish institutions (which combined make up about 5 percent of the schools).

It is clear then that this controversy is worse than a tempest in a teacup.

It’s misdirected anger.

Political indoctrination IS going on in the United States, but it is not happening at our public schools.

It is happening at our private and parochial schools through school voucher programs.

If we ban anything, it shouldn’t be Critical Race Theory – It should be school vouchers.

For more on this subject, see the short documentary film, “School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry and Bias” by Rachel Tabachnick.

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I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Why Does Trump Hate COVID Testing But Love Standardized Testing?

When it comes to COVID-19, Donald Trump sure hates testing.

But when it comes to public schools, his administration simply adores standardized testing.

Why the discrepancy?

Why is testing for a virus during a global pandemic bad, but giving students a multiple choice test during the chaos caused by that pandemic somehow good?

When it comes to the Coronavirus, Trump has made his position clear.

In a June 15 tweet, Trump wrote that testing “makes us look bad.”

Five days later at his infamous campaign rally in Tulsa, he said he had asked his “people” to “slow the testing down, please.”

At one of his White House press briefings, he said, “When you test, you create cases.”

In his infamous Fox News interview with Chris Wallace, he seemed to be saying that the U.S. had just as many new cases now as it did in May. However, since there were fewer tests done in May and more are being done now, it only appears that the infection is spreading when it actually is not.

It’s pure bullshit.

How would he know how many cases existed in May other than through testing?

He is simply trying to gas light the nation into believing that his abysmal job as Commander-in-Chief has nothing to do with the pandemic raging out of control on our shores.

He is trying to distract us from the fact that the US has only 4 percent of the world population but more than 25% of all COVID-19 cases. He wants us to forget that more Americans have died of COVID-19 than in any war other than WWII – 200,000 and counting.

So that, at least, is clear.

Trump hates COVID testing because – as he puts it – it makes him look bad.

So why is his administration pushing for more standardized testing in public schools as those same institutions struggle to reopen during the pandemic?

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – everyone’s favorite billionaire heiress turned public servant – sent a letter to state education leaders on Thursday saying high stakes testing probably would be required this school year.

They should not expect the Education Department to again waive federal testing requirements as it did last spring while schools were suddenly closing due to the outbreak.

The reason?

DeVos wrote:

“If we fail to assess students, it will have a lasting effect for years to come. Not only will vulnerable students fall behind, but we will be abandoning the important, bipartisan reforms of the past two decades at a critical moment.”

However, this is a rather strange thing to say if you think about it.

Standardized tests are just one of many kinds of assessments students take every year. At best they represent a snapshot of how kids are doing on a given day or week.

But since students are tested all year long by their teachers, they earn end of the year marks, pass on to the next grade or are held back, graduate or not – there are a multitude of measures of student learning – measures that take in an entire year of academic progress in context.

Waiving standardized testing would not make it impossible to tell who learned what. In fact, waiving the tests in the spring did not leave teachers clueless about the students in their classes today.

We still know which students are falling behind because we interact with them, give them assignments, teacher created assessments, etc. And when it comes to vulnerability, standardized tests show us nothing unless we read between the lines.

Students from poorer households tend to score lower on standardized tests. Kids who attend schools with fewer resources and larger class sizes tend to score lower. Minority children tend to score lower.

We don’t need any tests to tell us who these kids are. It’s obvious! Just look at who qualifies for free or reduced meals. Look at school budgets. Look at student ethnographic data. Look at seating charts. Look at classroom grades.

We don’t need standardized tests! We need resources to help these kids overcome the obstacles set before them or to remove those obstacles altogether.

Standardized testing does nothing to achieve this goal nor is there much help from the “bipartisan reforms of the past two decades.”

After all, which reforms exactly do you think DeVos is referring to?

It’s not hard to imagine since her letter was endorsed by far right and neoliberal organizations such as the Center for American Progress, the National Urban League, the Education Trust and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

DeVos is talking about charter and voucher schools – the same pet projects she spent her entire adult life either funding or trying to wrest funding away from public schools to fund.

In fact, she just had her ass handed to her for a third time by the federal court system for trying to siphon money to private schools that Congress explicitly earmarked for poor kids.

Congress set aside money in the CARES Act to be distributed among public and private schools based on the number of students from low-income families. However, DeVos said the funds should go to private schools BASED ON TOTAL ENROLLMENT.

Uh-uh, Betsy.

In her ruling this week, Dabney Friedrich, the U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia (and a Trump appointee) wrote:

“In enacting the education funding provisions of the CARES Act, Congress spoke with a clear voice… that cannot mean the opposite of what it says.”

So why does the Trump Administration support standardized testing?

For a similar reason to why it doesn’t support COVID testing.

Testing for the Coronavirus makes Trump legitimately look bad.

Testing kids with standardized assessments makes the public schools (during a pandemic or otherwise) illegitimately look bad. And that can be used as a justification to close those schools and replace them with private and charter schools.

It’s not about academia or helping vulnerable children.

It’s pure politics. The shock doctrine. Disaster capitalism.

This is another way the Trump administration is trying to rob the American public blind and get away with it.

When it comes to Coronavirus, there are a limited number of tests for infection. Trump is against all of them. He just wants to hide his head in the sand and pretend it will all go away.

When it comes to education, there are multiple measures of student learning. The Trump administration only champions one of them – the standardized variety.

Why? Because that is the assessment most inadequate to measure learning but it’s the easiest to spin into an anti-education narrative.

After all, you can’t use classroom grades or teacher-created tests to support the narrative of failing schools. Those assessments are in context and too clearly show the link between poor achievement and things like lack of resources and inequality. If kids are failing their classes, it’s too obvious when schools are trying to help but stymied by a lack of resources and countless social issues. Shining a light on that will only lead to solving these very real problems.

But if we put the spotlight squarely on standardized test scores, we can spin the narrative that it is the public school system, itself, that is at fault and thus we can better sell the need for privatization in all its profit-driven forms.

That’s the whole reason DeVos took this job in the first place.

And shame on Democrats like Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) who praised DeVos’s testing pronouncement.

Scott, who serves as chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, said in a statement:

“There is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic is having severe consequences for students’ growth and achievement, particularly for our most vulnerable students. We cannot begin to address these consequences, unless we fully understand them.”’

Um, we do understand them, Congressman. You don’t need a multiple choice assessment to see who is failing or why. It’s due to targeted disinvestment of the poor and children of color.

Murray, the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee, said:

“Especially when it comes to the disparities that harm so many students of color, students with disabilities and students whose families have low incomes, we’ve got to have data that shows us where we’re falling short so we can better support those students.”

How does a single test score from a corporation like Pearson show you more than a year’s worth of academic assessments from a school?

Standardized tests convey ZERO to us about students falling behind or vulnerable students that we don’t already know. And Murray is engaged in pure theater by framing her concern as an issue of racial justice while actual racial justice groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Black Lives Matter movement have explicitly condemned standardized testing.

An assessment system literally designed by eugenicists and pushed by segregationists is NOT a remedy to racial inequality – unless you’re proposing getting rid of it.

In short, Trump and DeVos are two peas in a pod committed to avoiding accountability for themselves but determined to destroy public services like public schools based on bogus accountability measures like standardized testing.

Hopefully the American public will boot them both out on their asses in November so that rational leadership in the Department of Education and elsewhere will do what should have been done years ago – waive standardized testing for this year and every year that follows – Coronavirus or not.

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Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

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Just CLICK HERE.

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!