Education / Youth – Page 14

The Heckler’s Veto

Speaking of “framing,” as I did a few days back, Jamelle Bouie had a recent column in the New York Times that addressed Republican efforts to re-brand censorship as “parental rights.”

The official name of Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, prohibiting “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity,” is the Parental Rights in Education Act. And the state’s Stop WOKE (short for Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, which outlaws any school instruction that classifies individuals as “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” was framed, similarly, as a victory for the rights of parents.

As Bouie points out, these bills certainly do empower certain parents–those who want to remove books, films, and even whole classes that they believe will expose their children to material with which they disagree, or to those parts of history about which they’d prefer their children remain unaware.

In Pinellas County, for example, a single complaint about the Disney film “Ruby Bridges” — about the 6-year-old girl who integrated an all-white New Orleans school in 1960 — led to its removal from an elementary school.

Lest we shake our heads and mentally write off Florida as an aberration, Bouie reminds readers that these efforts are not limited to Florida under the increasingly autocratic rule of the appalling Ron DeSantis.

In his 2021 campaign for the Virginia governor’s mansion, Glenn Youngkin made “parents matter” his slogan, and he has asserted “parents’ rights” in his effort to regulate the treatment of transgender children and end “divisive concepts” such as “critical race theory” in schools. His early moves included new history standards that removed discussions of racism and downplayed the role of slavery in causing the Civil War.

And at this moment, Texas Republicans are debating a bill — backed by Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — that, according to The Texas Tribune, “would severely restrict classroom lessons, school activities and teacher guidance about sexual orientation and gender identity in all public and charter schools up to 12th grade.” Texas parents, The Tribune notes, already have the right to “remove their child temporarily from a class or activity that conflicts with their beliefs or review all instructional materials.” This bill would further empower parents to object to books, lessons and entire curriculums.

These efforts certainly do “empower” a subset of racist and homophobic parents. They don’t empower the majority of parents who want their children to learn about–and learn from– accurate American history. And they run roughshod over the rights of parents who want schools to educate their children by offering them a wide library of thought-provoking, age-appropriate books and materials.

Bouie says these laws amount to the institutionalization of the “heckler’s veto,” an observation with which I fully agree.

What is the heckler’s veto?

The term originated as a judicial response to arguments often made when unpopular speakers came to town–think Martin Luther King in the South during the Civil Rights movement, or the KKK planning an “event” on Indiana’s Statehouse steps, or similarly contentious presentations that raise a non-trivial possibility of violence and protest. Those who wish to shut the speaker down use that threat of conflict to argue that allowing the speech to take place will be too dangerous.

If successful, that’s an argument that permits the “hecklers”–those who disagree with the message– to mute the speaker, to “veto” his First Amendment Free Speech rights. The Courts have seen through that tactic, ordering localities to respond to the threat by deploying a police presence sufficient to ensure the public safety– not by disallowing the speech or rally.

“Parents’ rights,” is just another form of the heckler’s veto, giving some parents the right to deny a similar right to the parents who disagree with them. It is, as Bouie writes, a movement is that is meant “to empower a conservative and reactionary minority of parents” allowing them to dictate education and curriculums to the rest of the community.

It is part of a wider assault.

The culture war that conservatives are currently waging over education is, like the culture wars in other areas of American society, a cover for a more material and ideological agenda. The screaming over “wokeness” and “D.E.I.” is just another Trojan horse for a relentless effort to dismantle a pillar of American democracy that, for all of its flaws, is still one of the country’s most powerful engines for economic and social mobility.

The only parents these hecklers are “empowering” are the parents who are soldiers in the GOP’s war on intellectual honesty and public education.

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Who’s Winning The War?

The title doesn’t refer to the Ukraine versus Russia war–instead, I want to talk about a far more protracted conflict: America’s culture war.

A few days ago, I shared my opinion that culture will ultimately overwhelm politics. A few days after that, a Washington Post column by Eugene Robinson highlighted a relevant University of Chicago survey of that culture. It appears–and the op-ed is titled–that “wokeness is winning.”

“Wokeness” is winning, according to an illuminating new poll that should — but probably won’t — make Republican politicians wary of hitching their wagon to the anger-fueled culture wars.

The survey — conducted this month by the nonpartisan research institute NORC at the University of Chicago, with funding from the Wall Street Journal — found that on several hot-button issues related to “wokeness”, substantial majorities of Americans believe our progress toward inclusion and diversity is on the right track.

Given the ferocity of current attacks on trans people, it was comforting to learn that 56% of respondents thought that social acceptance of people who are transgender, “has been about right” or “has not gone far enough.” The opposing view– that we have “gone too far” in accepting transgender people–was held by 43 percent of those surveyed.

And as Robinson noted, the results just got “more woke” from there.

On “promoting equality between men and women,” 86 percent took the woke “about right” or “not gone far enough” positions, as opposed to 12 percent who espoused the anti-woke “gone too far” view. On “accepting people who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual,” the poll found respondents to be 69 percent woke versus 29 percent anti-woke. On “businesses taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity,” woke beat anti-woke, 70 percent to 28 percent. And on “schools and universities taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity,” wokeness ruled once again, 67 percent to 30 percent.

Even on the subject of pronouns, which GOP demagogues have sought to shift from the grammatical realm to the political, 58 percent of respondents were neutral or favorable toward the practice of specifying “he/him, she/her or they/them” in emails, on social media or in conversations; 42 percent were unfavorable. And on the narrower question of “being asked” to address someone with gender-neutral pronouns such as “they/them,” those polled were evenly divided.

When the survey asked about the GOP’s current effort to ban “inappropriate” materials from the nation’s classrooms, the results were gratifying: 61 percent of respondents were concerned that “some schools may ban books and censor topics that are educationally important.” Only 36 percent worried that “some schools may teach books and topics that some students or their parents feel are inappropriate or offensive.”

Of course, 36% is still a troubling number, especially since these are the people most likely to be making noise and challenging educational choices. As Robinson notes, the poll results are unlikely to deter MAGA activists from “hectoring school boards to yank classics such as Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” from library shelves.”

And don’t get me started about the parents who got a Florida school principal fired because a teacher in the school showed students “pornography”–aka Michelangelo’s David.

The least surprising finding of the survey was its confirmation of the partisan divide– a divide Robinson characterized as stark.

Seventy-five percent of respondents who identified as Republicans said we have “gone too far” in accepting transgender people, as opposed to just 15 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independent voters. Majorities of Republicans also took the “gone too far” position on gay, lesbian and bisexual acceptance, and on promoting diversity in businesses, schools and universities — versus minorities of Democrats and independents who hold those views.

As other media have reported, the one area in which the survey showed less of a partisan divide was on the issue of gun control. It found

“broad public support for a variety of gun restrictions, including many that are supported by majorities of Republicans and gun owners….71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats and a majority of those in gun-owning households.”

Overall, the survey confirmed what most Americans understand: American citizens’ partisan affiliations are no longer based primarily on economics or policy preferences. Instead, they reflect profoundly different values, and contending perspectives on Americanism and the common good.

The good news is that Americans who are “woke”–who value inclusion and respect for individual rights– are in the majority. The bad news is that–thanks to gerrymandering and outmoded electoral structures– MAGA Republicans and White Christian Nationalists retain far more positions of authority than they should be entitled to hold in a democratic system, given their minority status.

The silent majority has evolved, and it’s woke. Now its members need to get out the vote.

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That Pesky Thing Called Evidence

The World’s Worst Legislature is barreling toward the session’s finish line, and the Republican super-majority shows no sign of moderating its war on public education, despite recently emerging evidence that several of the most enthusiastic proponents of vouchers have disturbing conflicts of interest, not to mention overwhelming evidence that privatizing schools leads to poorer educational outcomes.

Of course, Indiana’s lawmakers are impervious to evidence of all kinds. (Look at Indiana’s gun laws, disregard of environmental impacts…the list goes on.)

I know my periodic posts on the subject are the equivalent of “whistling in the wind,” but as the research continues to pile up, I find it hard to restrain myself.

So…

In the Public Interest recently shared “a clear and concise breakdown of the problems of vouchers,” written by a Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University, and titled “There is no Upside.”

Here’s the lede:

What if I told you there is a policy idea in education that, when implemented to its full extent, caused some of the largest academic drops ever measured in the research record?

What if I told you that 40 percent of schools funded under that policy closed their doors afterward, and that kids in those schools fled them at about a rate of 20 percent per year?

What if I told you that some the largest financial backers of that idea also put their money behind election denial and voter suppression—groups still claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election? Would you believe what those groups told you about their ideas for improving schools?

What if I told you that idea exists, that it’s called school vouchers, and despite all of the evidence against it the idea persists and is even expanding?

The article followed up with a compilation of independent analyses drawn from both the research community and “on the ground” reporting by journalists. You need to click through for the details, but here are the “top level” findings:

First, vouchers mostly fund children already in private school. Seventy to -eighty percent of kids using vouchers were already in private school before taxpayers picked up the tab.
Among the relatively few kids who did use vouchers to leave public schools, test scores dropped between -0.15 and -0.50 standard deviations.
The typical private school accepting vouchers “isn’t one of the elite, private schools in popular narrative.” The typical voucher school is “small, often run out of a church property like its basement, often popping up specifically to get the voucher.”
Understandably, many kids leave those sub-prime schools. (In Wisconsin, about 20 percent of kids left their voucher school every year and most transferred to a public school.)

Then there is the issue of transparency and oversight.

All of the above evidence should already tell you why it’s critically important that states passing voucher laws also include strong academic and financial reporting requirements. If we’re going to use taxpayer funds on these private ventures, we need to know what the academic results are and what the return on government investment is.

And of course, we don’t.

Then, of course, there’s discrimination.

We know that in Indiana, where one of the largest and lowest-performing voucher programs exists, more than $16 million in taxpayer dollars went to schools discriminating against LGBTQ children. Similar story in Florida—and that includes kids whose parents are gay, regardless of how the children identify.

Given the fact that Indiana’s legislature is advancing other discriminatory measures aimed at the LGBTQ community–especially several ugly measures targeting trans children–I’m sure our lawmakers consider that documented bigotry to be a feature, not a bug.

The article also traces connections I’d not previously been aware of between the most active voucher proponents and far-right organizations engaging in efforts to suppress votes and reject the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Interestingly, the article doesn’t highlight one of my main concerns: that vouchers are an end-run around the First Amendment’s Separation of Church and State. Here in Indiana, over 90% of voucher students attend religious schools, a significant percentage of which are fundamentalist. The children who attend overwhelmingly come from the corresponding faith communities. Even the religious schools that don’t actively discriminate do not and cannot provide the diverse classroom environment that prepares children for citizenship in increasingly diverse America.(Most don’t teach civics, either.)

It also doesn’t address how vouchers disproportionately hurt rural communities.

The article concludes:

So there you have it: catastrophic academic harm. A revolving door of private school failures. High turnover rates among at-risk children. Avoiding oversight and transparency. Overt, systematic discrimination against vulnerable kids and families. Deep and sustained ties to anti-democratic forces working in the United States today.

That’s school vouchers in 2023.

That’s the “system” Hoosier lawmakers want to greatly expand–with funds stolen from the state’s already under-resourced public schools.

It’s indefensible.

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It’s Not Just Gerrymandering

Give credit where it’s due–Republicans are so much more strategic than Democrats. Of course, maintaining minority control requires certain…techniques.

Talking Points Memo recently reported on Texas’ state takeover of Houston’s schools , in an update of an academic article that was first published in The Conversation by an NYU political science professor.

School takeovers are supposedly efforts to improve public school performance. (Although thirty years of that pesky thing called evidence says takeovers fail to do so.) In Texas, however, the usual justification for takeover–that the school district is failing–was absent; the district was actually doing reasonably well.

It seems that in 2015, Texas’ Republican-dominated legislature granted the state authority to take over an entire school district if a single school in that district failed to meet state standards for five or more years.

Although the state has given the Houston Independent School District a B rating, it plans to take over the Houston schools because one school, Wheatley High School, has not made sufficient progress since 2017.

Houston has 280 schools serving over 200,000 students. It employs roughly 12,000 teachers. Wheatley High School serves some 800 students, and employs 50 teachers. Why take over an entire system based on the performance of fewer than 1% of the district’s student/teacher population?

Good question, and that NYU professor has an answer.

In order to understand the logic of the planned state takeover of the Houston schools, it pays to understand the important role that schools have played in the social, political and economic development of communities of color. Historically, communities of color have relied on school level politics as an entry point to broader political participation. School-level politics may involve issues like ending school segregation, demanding more resources for schools, increasing the numbers of teachers and administrators of color, and participating in school board elections.

The process of gaining political power at the local level – and eventually state level – often begins at the schools, particularly the school board. For instance, before Blacks and Latinos elect members of their communities to the city councils, the mayor’s office and the state legislatures, they often elect members to the school board first.

In virtually all Red states, Republicans are heavily dependent on White rural voters to retain power, and they gerrymander accordingly. But in states like Texas (and even, in some analyses, Indiana) population shifts mean that in a few years, racial districting won’t be sufficient. Houston is the largest urban center in Texas; it’s at the forefront of the growing demographic challenge to the GOP’s grip on state power.

The nine-member Houston school board is reflective of the community it serves. It has three Latinos, four African Americans and two white school board members. This, in my view, is what has put the Houston public school system and school board at the forefront of a battle that is really about race and political power.

The Houston public school system is not failing. Rather–according to the article– Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, together with Education Commissioner Mike Morath and the Republican state legislature, has manufactured an education crisis to prevent people of color in Houston from gaining the sorts of experience and exposure that could eventually translate into statewide political power. (Immediately after the takeover, Abbott and his gang threw out all the board members.)

Takeovers aren’t as effective as gerrymandering, but ulterior motives are far less visible…..

What makes this scenario seem so improbable is that it requires considerable strategic smarts; from my Indiana vantage point, Gregg Abbott is a lot meaner than he is smart. But then I think about the massive gerrymandering that Republicans managed to pull off in 2010, extensively detailed in the book “Ratfucked.” There were highly sophisticated–and undoubtedly highly paid– political consultants who managed that very successful multi-state operation.

Maybe the Texas takeover is just part of the GOP’s unremitting war on public education, but the article makes a pretty compelling case that it’s part of the party’s ongoing effort to retain political control–control that is threatened by demographic shift.

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Once More, With (Angry) Feeling…

In case you doubt my repeated assertions that the Republicans controlling Indiana’s legislature are waging all-out war on the state’s public schools, take a look at the current status of bills heading for passage this legislative session.

The budget bill has a 5% increase for public schools in the first year of the two-year budget. That minor increase, however, has to cover the newly “free” textbooks–a requirement that reduces funds left for everything else (including teacher salaries) by 1.5 to 2%.

Contrast that with the planned raise in virtual charter school funding in the first year– 18.3%, despite the state’s past unfortunate experience with “virtual” schooling. Or with voucher schools funding, which is getting a 70% increase, despite the fact that those schools have failed to improve educational outcomes and increased social divisions.

That enormous increase in funding doesn’t come with any increase in accountability–far from it.

The budget also includes $10 million each year for “Education Savings Accounts” (a/k/a vouchers) plus $1.5 million each year for the State Treasurer, to cover program administration. (Interesting that oversight of a purportedly educational program isn’t handled by the Department of Education…)

Then there are the brand-new “Career Scholarship Accounts” that will pay private companies to employ students who will “learn” while they work: $7 million in year one, $14 million in year two. I’m sure it is just a coincidence that one of the sponsors of that particular boondoggle runs a company that stands to benefit handsomely from it….

A recent article from Talking Points Memo pointed out that vouchers are popular with legislators, but not with the public. The author wanted to understand why voucher programs continue to grow despite evidence they do not improve, and often even impede, students’ educational achievement.

Rather than put the question of whether to use public money for private schools before voters, advocates for choice almost always want state legislatures to make the decision instead. That may be because a careful look at the efforts suggests that if it were up to voters, school choice proposals would rarely succeed.

The article went on to describe past results in states that –unlike Indiana–allow citizens to vote on such issues via initiatives and/or referenda. In Indiana, our excessively gerrymandered legislature is not “hobbled” by a mechanism that might allow citizens to weigh in.

A new report by Public Funds Public Schools—a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Education Law Center (ELC)—has documented a massive increase in public spending on voucher programs in the decade following the Great Recession.

The report, The Fiscal Consequences of Private School Vouchers, examines the growth in voucher programs and spending in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2019. For comparison, the report provides data for per-pupil expenditures on public education in inflation-adjusted dollars for these seven states, as well as the nation’s 43 other states, over this same period.

But it isn’t just money.

Lawmakers aren’t just defunding public education–they are passing bills that make teaching hazardous. In Indiana, Senate Bill 12 will remove the legal defense currently available to school teachers and librarians (who they evidently believe are handing out porn to kindergarten students) and adds yet another mechanism through which parents can challenge school library materials.

House Bill 1407 is one of the numerous, misnamed “parental rights” bills targeting trans children; it opens the door for litigation against schools, teachers and other government employees who might exhibit a modicum of compassion for these children.

Then there’s House Bill 1608, providing that “no employee, nor a third-party school vendor may provide any instruction to a student in K-3 on human sexuality.”

An employee or staff member of a school may only use a name, pronoun, title, or other word to identify a student that is inconsistent with the student’s biological sex as either male or female based on genetics and reproductive biology at birth if the student is emancipated or a parent requests in writing the use of the specific name, pronoun, title or other word to identify the student.

There’s much more, but you get the gist: our state lawmakers–few of whom have any background in education (or medicine, when it comes to issues of gender dysphoria)–are engaged in an all-out war on our public schools and the people who teach in them.

Hoosier Legislators are pouring our tax dollars into the coffers of religious schools–and now, “connected” businesses–despite years of evidence disproving the original justifications for vouchers. They are weaponizing state laws in order to provide legal tools to the rightwing activists working to overrule the documented preferences of large majorities of parents who have children in those schools.

These culture warriors don’t care what their constituents think, but you should call them anyway.

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