Back in the day, when I served in the Hudnut Administration, I marvelled at the persistence of some issues. The city battled over drainage, for example, year in and year out. And while the particulars have changed, Hoosiers–and all Americans–have engaged in pitched battles over education policies as long as I can remember. Can children be required to pray in the classroom? Is racial segregation constitutional? Can universities engage in affirmative efforts to diversify their student bodies?
What about privatization–aka “school choice”?
Many of these issues have more in common than appears at first glance. “School choice” programs, for example, especially appeal to parents who want their children ensconced in classrooms occupied primarily by others who look and pray like them.
I have frequently posted about the importance of public schools and the damage done to those schools and to civic cohesion by Indiana’s costly voucher program. That damage is one reason among many to vote for gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McCormick, our former Superintendent of Public Instruction, and not Mike Braun, who wants to make Indiana’s vouchers universal.
We now have enough experience with vouchers to assess the original claims made for privatizing our schools.
We know, for example, that vouchers don’t improve educational outcomes, that they are used primarily by wealthier families, that they increase racial segregation, and that they are particularly harmful to public schools in rural areas that lack sufficient population to support private competitors. There has been less attention focused on the educational deficits of a large number of participating private schools, although we do know that many religious academies substitute creationism for science and deliberately whitewash American history.
A few years ago, a colleague and I wondered how many of Indiana’s voucher schools taught civics. Did they teach about America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights? About democracy? The structure of government? Was civics instruction a condition of their receipt of public money? After all, the civic mission of public schools is central to their importance.
The (depressing) academic article reporting our research is here. Here’s the abstract:
America’s public schools have not been exempt from the enthusiasm for “privatization” and contracting-out that has characterized government innovations over at least the past quarter century. A number of the issues raised by school voucher programs and to a lesser extent charter schools mirror the management and efficacy questions raised by privatization generally; however, because public education is often said to be “constitutive of the public,” using tax dollars to send the nation’s children to private schools implicates the distinctive role of public education in a democratic society in ways that more traditional contracting arrangements do not. We explore the unique role of primary and secondary public schools in forging a broad consensus about the nature and importance of America’s constitutional ethic, and growing concerns that vouchers, in particular, are failing to address, let alone facilitate, an ethic of citizenship.
As we noted, arguments about providing educational competition ignore both the civic mission of education and the multiple ways in which education differs from ordinary consumer goods.
The civic mission of public schools includes the teaching of America’s history and the transmittal of the country’s core constitutional values, what I call the “Constitutional ethic.” A sound and accurate civics education provides students with an understanding of the genesis and evolution of the rules that shape and constrain public service in the United States. The public mission of the schools requires teaching students about this country’s approach to and experience with the principles of democratic self-governance. As we wrote,
When citizens lack a common understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of America’s approach to governance and fail to form an ethical commitment to those common undertakings, a diverse polity inevitably fragments into tribal components contending for power and influence.
Indiana has very good standards specifying what our public schools must teach. As we discovered, however, oversight of the private–overwhelmingly religious–schools receiving vouchers runs from minimal to non-existent. As a result, the past few years have seen several scandals, including “virtual” schools that falsified enrollments, defrauding the state of millions of dollars.
There has been little to no research investigating the impact of voucher programs on civic knowledge and cohesion. There are no standards or procedures for assessing whether individual schools are even trying to create knowledgable, responsible American citizens.
It’s telling that Mike Braun’s pitch for a universal voucher program is “parental choice”–not educational outcomes and certainly not fiscal prudence.
Early voting in Indiana starts today. I will cast my early vote for Jennifer McCormick, who understands that reproductive choice is good, and educational “choice”–aka vouchers–isn’t.
Join me.
My wife and I voted by mail and the process is very easy. No running of the gauntlet at polling stations, no waiting in line, and no rearrangement of one’s schedule to vote. It is one of the few benefits of turning 65 I enjoy!
I almost had to laugh yesterday at the front page article in the Indianapolis Star. It was about a new charter school proposed in the Hamilton Southeastern school district, which is Fishers. The new school was proposed to be a vocational school. HSE has a strong vocational program and many parents were upset because they believe that the competing vocational charter would suck dollars and students away from the already strong vocational programs that HSE ran.
HSE has a very strong and high-performing school system. It was pointed out by the opponents that the idea of allowing Charters was to put them in poorly performing or rural districts where competition was “needed” to improve education levels.
I think they’re starting to realize that the Republican idea of Charters is just to privatize the school system and suck taxpayer dollars toward private enterprises. At least the people in the public hearing realize this. I think few other people in the state have figured this out and Republicans are counting on that.
Vouchers and the like are code for “we don’t want to pay for public anything.” These “movements” are nothing more than right-wing ideologically centered actions to use tax money from everyone for self-centered reasons. As a former public school educator, the financial starvation of public schools is more than just insidious. It is subversive, destructive and anti-community.
If part of a child’s socialization is to come from schools attended, the white-breading of their lives via charter/private schooling prepares them for only one thing: being just like their parents’ community. That’s a one-way train ride to backwardness … just as the right-wingers intend. Educated, diverse adults tend not to vote for Republicans.
It continues to disgust me that large groups of Americans are eager and willing to degrade their children’s education for the sake of not just religion, but for “community” ideology. Maybe those voucher parents didn’t do so well in school, or were asked to actually work toward learning something that would benefit society. Heaven forbid!
Milton Friedman in 1958 began the current campaign to privatize elementary and secondary education. We are faced with a 66 year head start of this pernicious idea. A leader of immense power must arise to lead the opposition.
With Trump blaming everyone who is not him for everything his old and demented mind can manufacture, his followers ignore that it’s mostly lies and think he must be right about something, so let’s not pay for anything from government. We’d be wealthier.
Of course, they usually think that from their recliners in the safety of their living rooms, absolutely immersed in the unprecedented cradles that make us the safest, most comfortable humans ever.
Because government extraction from their wallets is almost invisible except for the drain on their savings, it isn’t like going to the store and getting their wallet out right on the spot.
Most could think better than that, but why bother? Let Trump do it for them.
Dan Mullendore, I had to check on the charter you referred to in Fishers. The article in the IndyStar is behind a paywall, which I won’t read. Even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t read it because their website shuts down Chrome due to all the ads and videos. Anyway, I found the nonprofit wanting to open a charter in Fishers, and it’s run by a billionaire, Joe Ricketts, from TD Ameritrade. Not sure what the IndyStar reporter wrote, but it looks like this is a partnership between HSE and Joe’s nonprofit. Check it out:
https://opportunityeducation.org/joe-ricketts/
I thought we had federal laws, including constitutional amendments, against school segregation. How are charter schools working around these laws because segregation is a clear result?
We had a charter school and a Catholic School in our community. I know many Democratic leaders sent their kids to Catholic Schools because they were just as racist as the redneck Republicans. It was strange when they advocated against using public monies for religious and charter schools. They still used the term “Negroes” which I thought went out decades ago. These white Democratic aristocrats just pretended to help the Negoes so they could get their political support.
Jennifer McCormick knows how my community works because she and her husband lived in our county while she was a Superintendent, and her husband was a great wrestling coach. Kids were transported to the county schools for sports, while their parents transported many to remove their kids from the blackness of inner-city facilities—white flight. Our county schools have around 5-10% minority students, while the city schools have between 40-50%.
The numbers don’t lie, but many parents who advocate for “parental choice” do!
pro publica. NoDak leads the way to graft by running for gov.
K Armstrong, u.s. congress, is running for gov of NoDak. story on his attachment to private oil/gas investments and sits on its oil and gas boards. he isnt going to blind trust if elected. taking after trumps buisness model..
imwonder where this will go in America if trump is re elected.
also the wilks/dunn religious takeover of tx politics. by Ava Kofman.. seems a detailed and time line story. punch line, they are only wanting to dominate the people by religous means..any way possible.
It seems that the lack of a method to get the facts to and into the public’s minds might be the key. Right wing media is widespread and nearly impossible to penetrate. They would never carry, much less feature a story that would not help the right.
Is there a list composed of year, number of students in public schools, and academic achievements vs voucher schools? If that could be a TicToc feature or even an above the fold feature story in a good newspaper it would help. It’s not the message, it’s the medium.
Ah, yes, another plan to steer us away from the dreaded socialism, simultaneously – in most cases – eroding the sacred divide between church and state. The easiest way to sell this bad idea – which has been poisoning our public education system for over a quarter of a century now – is to convince voters that it is all about parent’s rights, or parental control, over where their children go to school and as a result, how and what they are taught. The resulting explosion of school vouchers has decimated the public school system as far as I can see. Just another Project 2025 plank that takes us further and further away from The Great Experiment, The United States of America. Harris may have her flaws, but one thing is for sure: she is absolutely, positively intent upon maintaining and improving on this great country’s aspirations, and I don’t think disregarding public education is on that agenda. Her opponent lacks even one redeeming quality, making him supremely inadequate to be considered for the highest office in the land.
Gubmint is just a big pile of money to these people. They are never going to stop looting the treasury. In their corner they have the ignoramuses of our country and state, who for obvious reasons do not see the value in actual education (civics and liberal arts).
One of the most pernicious cons in our country is “customer focus.” Our agencies should be “customer focused.” Already intensely consumption-focused Americans demand service! My favorite example of this is student feedback collected at the end of the semester to judge professors. Because of course who would you turn to as experts than people who knew so little about the subject that they had to take a class to learn it? It’s like someone with no medical training scoring his surgeon on yelp for the quality of his stitches.
But here we are. It’s a democracy. The GOP have succeeded in stupidifying (that’s my new word) our electorate, and now they have 150 Million turkeys voting for the guy with the axe.
As has been the case with all sorts of issues that might have been especially beneficial had there not been financially incentivized blowback to cloud those issues, regarding acid rain, smoking, DDT, etc. We would be in a different situation now. The current education, climate change and lead ammunition issues will be the future’s “Why the hell did they not take fast action?” stories.
Tom and I were delighted to vote for Jennifer McCormick when we mailed in our absentee ballots. Voucher schools–some of them–violate separation of church and state–and most do not get better educational results. We need to spend our educational dollars on the public schools.