Below is my column in the Hill on moves by some states to create greater choice and control for parents over the education of their children. The move to use funding to change the status quo could soon be used in higher education. Not only are alumni beginning to withhold contributions to schools with little or no diversity or tolerance on their faculties, but states could reduce their levels of support.
Here is the column:
What if they offered public education and no one came? That question, similar to the anti-war slogan popularized by Charlotte E. Keyes, is becoming more poignant by the day.
This month, Florida is moving to allow all residents the choice to go to private or public schools. Other states like Utah are moving toward a similar alternative with school vouchers. I oppose such moves away from public schools, but I have lost faith in the willingness of most schools to restore educational priorities and standards.
Faced with school boards and teacher unions resisting parental objections to school policies over curriculum and social issues, states are on the brink of a transformative change. For years, boards and teacher unions have treated parents as unwelcome interlopers in their children’s education.
That view was captured this week in the comment of Iowa school board member Rachel Wall, who said: “The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community.”
State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Wis.) tweeted: “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should home school or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.”
Now legislators are moving to do precisely that — but with public funds. It could be a game-changer. Parents overwhelmingly appear to support a classical education focused on core subjects rather than “social change.” They overwhelmingly support parental notice when their children engage in gender transitioning or other major decisions.
Many parents also are angered by teachers, unions and boards shutting down schools during the pandemic despite other countries keeping them open and studies that showed children were not at high risk. The United States experienced soaring mental illness rates and plunging test scores.
Parents who questioned those policies were treated as extremists.
Michelle Leete, vice president of training at the Virginia PTA and vice president of communications for the Fairfax County PTA, said parents would not force them to reverse their agenda: “Let them die. Don’t let these uncomfortable people deter us from our bold march forward.”
Many of us have advocated for public education for decades. I sent my children to public schools, and I still hope we can turn this around without wholesale voucher systems. Yet teachers and boards are killing the institution of public education by treating children and parents more like captives than consumers. They are force-feeding social and political priorities, including passes for engaging in approved protests.
As public schools continue to produce abysmal scores, particularly for minority students, board and union officials have called for lowering or suspending proficiency standards or declared meritocracy to be a form of “white supremacy.” Gifted and talented programs are being eliminated in the name of “equity.”
Once parents have a choice, these teachers lose a virtual monopoly over many families, and these districts could lose billions in states like Florida.
While I remain concerned how vouchers could be the death of public primary and secondary education, I believe states need to use the power of the purse to reform higher education.
Despite years of complaints over a rising orthodoxy at schools, most universities have reduced conservative and libertarian faculty to rare oddities. Some schools have virtually no Republican faculty. Faculty have created political echo-chambers that advance their own views while excluding alternative voices. As a result, polls show a high number of students are fearful about sharing their views in classes.
I oppose laws prohibiting certain theories from being taught in universities, but I also believe academics can no longer show open contempt for the half of this country with conservative, libertarian or independent views. At many public universities, the message is that you need to give universities not only total deference but total support in excluding conservative views and maintaining intolerant ideological environments.
It may be too late for private universities, which are likely to continue to exclude all but a tiny number of conservatives or libertarians. They have the support of many in the media. Above the Law’s senior editor, Joe Patrice, defended “predominantly liberal faculties” and argued that hiring a conservative academic is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism — the idea that the sun orbits the earth — to teach.
While some private schools like the University of Chicago have stood firm in support of free speech, most of the schools on the top of a recent ranking were public universities. That is no surprise. As state schools, these universities are subject to First Amendment protections and there is greater ability to contest the current academic orthodoxy. Indeed, courts repeatedly rule against universities. Yet administrators have an incentive to yield to the mob, even at the cost of millions in litigation costs. And few academics have an incentive to fight for greater political diversity on campus and risk being tagged in cancel campaigns.
This is why public universities could be the final line of defense for free speech in higher education.
States are no more captive to these schools than are parents. Why should conservatives and independents continue to pay taxes for universities that actively exclude faculty who share their values or viewpoints? Half of this country funds schools that have little tolerance for their values or voices; they can reduce their support and let such universities seek private funding if they insist on making a “liberal education” a literal goal.
We need public universities to offer a free-speech alternative. If we can maintain that protection, we may find that public universities become the primary choice of many who want to learn in politically diverse, tolerant environments.
For elementary, middle and high schools, voucher programs may allow parents to speak with their feet. I hope we do not come to that — but the opposition to vouchers is telling. The alarm is based on the recognition that, given a choice, many families would not choose what public schools are offering. This includes many minority families who want to escape from a cycle of education that leaves many students barely literate and lost. They likely would prefer an alternative to a system like Baltimore’s, where a student failed all but three classes and still graduated in the top half of his class.
I worry about how voucher systems will impact public schools because many districts would fare poorly in a competitive market. However, these proposals are a shot across the bow to all such districts. They could easily find themselves with an agenda-packed curriculum but far fewer students to teach.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
“The move to use funding to change the status quo could soon be used in higher education.” (JT)
If there is such a thing as a righteous “defund” movement, that is it.
Seems like the “extremists” control the multiple choice options:
Option#1 is to only grow government bureaucracies – government only grows larger and never shrinks even when the evidence requires reform.
Option#2 is to only cut or abolish government. Simply defund an entire agencies or entire divisions.
I’m guessing most voters would prefer “performance based incentives” to reward good government and shrink bad government policies. Neither party seems to support what most Americans likely support, the common sense path.
One major reform could be to stop penalizing “efficiency” in government programs. If a bureaucracy does a great job and spends less money – the bureaucracy is penalized for that. Maybe let them keep part or all of the money saved, to be used for bonuses, etc.
Ronald Reagan once pointed out that the federal agency designed to help farmers, had more government employees than there were actual farmers. “Farm Aid” launched by Willie Nelson was a response to this broken bureaucracy, where hundreds of farmers committed suicide due to neglect by federal agencies to help them. It likely helped elect Trump also, since little government help was given to farmers in about 40 years since “Farm Aid”.
There is already a blueprint to do this designed by W. Edwards Deming in his book “Deming at Work” by Mary Walton.
Deming was an American statistician that went to war torn Japan in 1950 and taught companies like Toyota how to build quality automobiles at competitive prices. Deming first tried to help Detroit automakers but was outright rejected by American auto CEOs, so he taught the Japanese how to do it. Today Toyota has the top “Resale Value” beating all other auto makers. This started with an American teaching the Japanese how to produce quality cars.
Deming was also a federal bureaucrat and expert in improving government bureaucracies. In his book listed above, he actually worked with the U.S. Department of Navy improving their bureaucratic issues. His plan let the Navy keep much of the money saved through efficiency – rewarding good government initiatives.
Maybe both parties should do less electioneering and start adopting solutions that actually work to fix these problems? There are existing and proven solutions already out there.
Yes, there’s lots of room for creativity in this area.
Public education was created by the real progressives of my grandfather’s era to create equality of opportunity. Under the faux progressives of today, that effort has since transmogrified into equality of outcomes with the predictable result that public education is unraveling. Urban schools are already a disaster and liberal-arts colleges are closing at an accelerating rate.
Sooner or later, leftists always destroy the institutions they inherit.
It would be nice if Barack reminded them, “You didn’t build that!” Not holding my breath on that one.
And ever since we ejected religion from the schools, we have no sentinels to keep the real-live communists under scrutiny. Diversity of opinion matters, especially in K-12 education.
The answer to all education problems is to move to subsidized private education.
Parents get money for their student.
They chose what accredited school they send their kid to.
The school teaches whatever it wants and the parent is free to go to another school.
Since the money follows the students – schools will be inspired to cater to the demands of parents.
If you wish to send your kid to Woke High or Drag Queen Elementrary – your business.
If your neighbor wants to send their child to our lady of perputual help or Joseph Smith elementary – their business.
We appear to be moving that direction albiet slowly.
A division of society.
Be interesting to see what grads from Woke High or Drag Queen Elementrary are like when compared with those who focus on the basics, STEM, critical thinking.
Amen!
Responding to Diogenes:
It’s perfectly legal and constitutional for any student to wear any religious symbols to public school – including jewelry, clothing, hats, etc.
If a school, locality or state created such a law it would be unconstitutional and would be overturned.
The only exception would be a school where 100% of the students were required to wear the same uniforms or a total ban on tee-shirts, hats, etc. A public school can’t cherry-pick what to censor, especially religion.
What is illegal is if the public school officials [government entity] imposes one particular religion over another onto a student (citizen) under the First Amendment. The officials (government officials) can’t legally put up a Christian poster and not allow other religions.
If that were constitutional, a school district in Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma, etc could force Christian students to say prayers to a Native American God (or multiple gods). Christian students would have a First Amendment right of freedom of religion in that school district.
America has the greatest religious freedom in the world because we prohibit government from imposing a favorite religion onto it’s citizens – which includes public school students!
Zerzetsung wrote, “America has the greatest religious freedom in the world because we prohibit government from imposing a favorite religion onto it’s citizens…”
Zersetzung, I understand what you’re saying, but as a practical reality, wokism is becoming a state religion in our schools, enforced by teachers and administrators. If you allow what amounts to a secular religion to operate in our schools, you’re making a distinction about religion that is somewhat arbitrary.
If you bar any ideology from the schools, then there is no civics, no pledge of allegiance, no prayer, etc. for anybody because some crackpots will object to anything. The only solution I see is to let parents decide where to send their kids without being penalized by the state. That’s school choice.
If you don’t want school choice, then the only correct solution is to bar nothing or to bar everything in the public schools. This has always been the ineluctable contradiction of public education.
“If you bar any ideology from the schools, then there is no civics, no pledge of allegiance, no prayer, etc. for anybody because some crackpots will object to anything.”
Not true and even if True – so what ?
Civics is not ideology – how our government is actually structured, what our basic laws are – there is no problem teaching these.
I do not care much about the pledge of allegiance. But it si not really all that ideological either. If you are elected to office – you swear and oath,
if you become a citizen you swear and oath.
As to Prayer – and other actual ideology – there is a difference between teaching and allowing students some freedom.
But lets say we ban all that – and focus on the 3R’s. Something weong with that ?
Seriously ? If we can not graduate kids that are proficient in reading, writing and arrihmatic – Who gives a Schiff if they are profificent in gender ideology ?
“The only solution I see is to let parents decide where to send their kids without being penalized by the state. That’s school choice.”
In my perfect world we would get rid od school taxes and have 100% private schools paid for by parents.
We are nto getting that.
The next alternative is to tie public education finds to students and allow parents to decide where to send their kids.
“If you don’t want school choice, then the only correct solution is to bar nothing or to bar everything in the public schools. This has always been the ineluctable contradiction of public education.”
This problem goes beyond schools – it is throughout the myriads of stupid things government buts into.
Generally if you have a fight over culture or ideology it is because Government is in a domain it does not belong.
Government education joins communism, socialism, Nazism, and Fascism as another disastrous idea from Europe.
The most impactful post I’ve ever read on this blog was the one in which Turley highlighted data showing virtually no 8th grade student is proficient in math and reading in Detroit’s K-12 government schools.
https://jonathanturley.org/2015/11/03/study-virtually-none-of-eighth-graders-in-detroit-meet-proficiency-levels-in-math-and-reading/
It was beyond infuriating to read and think about. Those children are the future. Yet the parents, teachers, students and administrators all failed them. You’d think there’s be a huge demand for change. But apparently special interests are too powerful to allow the kind of change necessary to fix the system.
It’s time to blow it up.
Sweden is leading the way with an extensive voucher system. Sweden!! Right on covid and right on education.
Maybe we should outsource the CDC, FBI, and CIA to Sweden.
Nope, Sweden’s experiment with school vouchers failed to produce the results claimed they would produce.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/is-sweden-proof-that-school-choice-doesnt-improve-education
Sweden’s scores dropped dramatically once the voucher system was implemented.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/07/sweden-school-choice-the-countrys-disastrous-experiment-with-milton-friedman-and-vouchers.html
Here are other conservative sources which dispute your leftwing sources:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/sweden-school-choice
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-agenda/sweden-has-education-crisis-it-wasnt-caused-school-choice-tino-sanandaji/
The question then is who is right? The conservatives are right because Sweden still has school choice. The Swedes would know better than PBS or Slate whether school choice was beneficial. Sweden has kept school choice for thirty years, even during leftwing administrations, and long after any of these articles were written.
Digenes,
I disagree about the vouchers. Taxpayers are losing control of the use of their money. There is no representational oversight. That breaks down the structure of our republic. Ben Franklin had a comment on that once upon a time…
And, it will increase the power of corporations in the education and governance of our citizenry. No conflict of interest there, right… That ugliness is already being exerted in public schools if the citizenry does not speak up to stop it.
Prairie, what would you suggest instead?
Diogenes,
I will answer as soon as I can. I have been kid juggling and events since this afternoon and still need to get kids to bed.
Diogenes,
I suggest taxpayers pay attention to the use of their tax dollars (e.g., Are you happy with the curriculum you are paying for? Do you know what the curriculum is? Do you like what professional development you are paying for? Do you want children’s education to be focused on becoming “career ready” as if that was their primary goal, to be a worker bee?).
I suggest that everyone pay attention to the education of the children who will be the future of our constitutional republic–NOT just parents. Whether those kids are your progeny or not, they will be our future citizenry, leaders, etc. What kind of education should we have as Americans? NOT as “global citizens”, as Americans. They will be making decisions for you when you are old and infirm–should they decide it is a good idea to return COVID patients to nursing homes?
Are they getting the education that will provide them with the necessary wisdom and understanding for such leadership and responsibilities?
Are they getting the education that will help them more broadly understand the world, past and present, since this relates not only to their personal interactions with the world but also the legislation that is likely to come up on all matter of subjects?
As sovereign individuals we all must act as leaders in some capacity–we must read legislation, consider it, debate it with ourselves and those around us, comment on it in public forums, and, most especially, with our elected representatives who must vote yea or nay on it.
Who do you want to be in charge of our governance? Our neighbors, our fellow citizens, or for it to be essentially handed over to corporate bodies who are unelected and unaccountable to we the people?
“The primary benefit of charters is perpetual versus political governance; the opportunity that all non-governmental organizations have to recruit a board to a mission gives a charter school a chance to create and sustain a focus over time compared to the oscillating elected leadership of school districts.
Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO and former chair of the California State Board of Education, makes the case that education reform is treating symptoms–the real problem is politically elected leadership. Reed notes that, “Oscillating political leadership in the nation’s urban centers has wiped out promising reform agendas in San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle, Houston, and other cities.” He makes the case that it takes decades to achieve excellence and that requires perpetual governance—a board recruited to support a mission. Reed would like to see all schools operated by nonprofit boards and cities supported by a portfolio of multiple operators.”
https://www.gettingsmart.com/2013/04/03/whats-the-point-of-more-charters/
Tom Vander Ark is the Learning 2025 Commission, attempting to persuade superintendents:
https://www.aasa.org/docs/default-source/resources/reports/commissionreportfinal-040821.pdf?sfvrsn=ae95668f_4
Can political leadership create and sustain a focus over time? Yes. It can be done. It helps if you understand your big picture mission.
Despite a more socialistic safetynet. Sweden is overall more capitalistic and free today than the US.
That’s because most Swedes are smarter and better informed than most Democrats. I’m serious. We can thank American public education and MSNBC for that.
I am altogether shocked at the lack of critical thinking demonstrated by some of the smartest people in our world – particularly the left.
It should not be hard to grasp that
if you demonize police – you will get less police and more crime.
If you “print more money” – the price of nearly everything will rise.
That you can only consume if you produce as much or more value than you consume.
That if you produce less of something – like energy, the price will rise.
That if the whole world needs something – like energy, that is in short supply, that we will see conflict, possibly war in countries that are rich in what we want and weak in self defense.
Special interests are a problem. But..
Such parents are uninvolved and not paying attention and appear to not have much of a perspective on what sort of education produces a free, independent, and productive citizen of a constitutional republic.
The left does not seem to grasp that if we do not produce – we die.
If we produce poorly – we are poor.
If we raise kids who conform to the gender and race nonsense of the left, but can not read, write, or perform math.
then we can not build homes, bridges, cars,
To the extent that the values of the left have any value at all – they are luxuries.
Our children can survive and thrive in a world that is more racist, more hostile to the multiplicity of genders, than the world we currently have.
The may not survive and will not thrive in a world where math is a social construct.
I suspect that one reason why the teacher’s union refuses to teach a classical education is because a large percentage of those practicing “educators” are incapable of doing so. They have been miseducated themselves and many are ignorant of the basic knowledge and skills they were hired to impart on their students. Public education is a dismal failure in so many places. In Baltimore, not a single student in one-third of the high schools was found to be proficient in math. This not entirely the fault of the teachers but the priorities of the radical and demented union led by Randi Weingarten make matters worse.
“I suspect that one reason why the teacher’s union refuses to teach a classical education is because a large percentage of those practicing “educators” are incapable of doing so.”
Teachers unions are not in charge of curriculum. The Curriculum Director, an administrator, is.
“In Baltimore, not a single student in one-third of the high schools was found to be proficient in math.”
I’d lay this mostly at the feet of parents. Are there things schools (and universities that prepare teachers) can do better? Absolutely. But *nothing* replaces parents that support education.
“I’d lay this mostly at the feet of parents.”
Really?! You’re blaming the consumer for the incompetence of the provider?
Yes. Parents have a responsibility here. It is their district and their children. They have a responsibility to turn off the TV, video games, and take away cell phones if they are distractions. They have a responsibility to make sure the kids are doing their homework. They have a responsibility to make sure their kids are going to school and behaving well.
Taxpayers have a responsibility, too.
If they see inadequacies in teaching, curriculum, etc, they need to speak up and advocate for improvements. They should look into the effects of State and Federal programs on their local districts. They should look to see what NGOs are pushing.
It is their school–their tax dollars pay those salaries, pay for the curriculum and professional development, pay for special ed, pay for the condition of the buildings. And if they are poor and do not pay taxes towards the school, it is still their school. It is public. It is in their community and belongs to the community. The community, in so many ways is responsible for the quality of their own school district. If they ignore it or do not educate themselves on what is required for excellent education–that is on them.
“Above the Law’s senior editor, Joe Patrice, defended ‘predominantly liberal faculties’ and argued that hiring a conservative academic is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism — the idea that the sun orbits the earth — to teach.”
LOL — I don’t know whether that sentence was supposed to be funny, but in a discussion about the future and methods of education, it was hilarious that in the year 2023A.D, a law professor felt the need to define “geocentrism.”
That simple effort represents a presumption of scientific and linguistic ignorance which the professor has no doubt learned from years of experience in attempting to educate law students — aka people who first flunked science classes, then flunked history classes, and finally flunked Engish classes on their way to discovering their natural vocation.
https://cosmolearning.org/documentaries/the-ascent-of-man-bbc/6/
What Joe Patrice was saying was that many conservative ideas are not viewed favorably or are relentlessly mocked because of how bad they are. It’s the mockery and dismissal of such ideas that are akin to taking geocentric theory seriously despite the ample evidence to the contrary. Conservatives are complaining that their views are being censored because they are conservative when in reality they are being dismissed because they are mostly stupid and silly enough to garner ridicule. They can be ridiculed and they should be. Conservatives espousing such ideas are demanding respect for such stupid ideas. They can demand it. But it won’t stop the ridicule and mockery that comes with expressing them.
https://youtu.be/CkNen8dnqBA
11:35 – 13:45
A gentle chastisement of political conservatism from the late, yet still great, Sir Roger Scruton.
If teachers really believed that kids should be taught “what society needs them to know,” they’d be focusing on the sciences and grammar instead of pronouns and gender ideology. The education level of many K-12 teachers is minimal, and clearly they were not the best thinkers on campus. If they had been better educated maybe they’d see through the junk science they’re indoctrinating kids with. But clearly it’s easier to get a K-12 teaching job if you have purple hair, multiple face piercings, and 10 pronouns after your name than if you had a solid scientific background. Schools brought this on themselves. Extremism eventually burns itself out and creates its own powerful resistance. The Democratic party must be the next casualty of this totalitarian social movement.
“maybe they’d see through the junk science they’re indoctrinating kids with”
Many States have adopted the Next Generation Science standards, which means teachers have to teach towards them. If the science is junk, look no further than the State and the corporation promoting the NGSS (Achieve, Inc, I think?).
Iowa Governor Reynolds, Just last week signed into law, tax $ following the child into private tuition. Quite the feat, considering the Legislature does not come into session until the first full week of January.
I repeat my dismay yet again. School administrators have Doctorates, multiple administrators with multiple degrees, are so blind they could not hear the voices of their customers.
Public schools started with a huge advantage. No Private school can compete. Yet the Smartest people in the room, pissed it all away. For what exactly?
That breaks my heart, in so many ways. 🙁
Even the Shire was not left undespoiled.
“For what exactly?”
Cui bono?
Schools should not simply let parents determine the curriculum. This concept is so fundamentally wrong that I find it difficult to understand why any educated person could make this claim.
Suppose School District X is majority white and predominantly racist. A majority of parents want the schools to ban any reading material concerning the civil rights movement or the civil war. They want to replace this with racist material such as screenings of A Birth of a Nation.
Suppose School District Y and Z are majority black and Latino, respectively. A majority of parents in each district want to replace the history curriculum with the 1619 project and a People’s History of the United States. They want to teach students that race is real and that other races are inferior to theirs, etc.
This is what happens when school district let misguided parents control. Public education should not be beholden to the tyranny of the parent majority.
The parents are demanding age appropriate curriculum.
Public schools are being run by over educated idiots. If these ideas were so great, the Phd’s would brag and highligt there message. But no. The go to great lengths to hide all of it from its customers….parents.
“Public education should not be beholden to the tyranny of the parent majority.”
But should be beholden to a Leftist mob?!
Public education is by its nature political. If you don’t like politics in education, then get government out of education.
I didn’t advocate for the status quo. My argument was simply against majoritarian rule by parents, whether the parents are liberal or conservative.
Anonymous wrote, “…when school district let misguided parents control.”
This is kind of what’s happening right now.
There are misguided and pompous-ass “progressive social justice warriors” parents, teachers, administrators and board members in control of the schools and they’ve turned them into social indoctrination camps instead of centers for education that focus on teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science and history plus have the courage to actually fail those students that can’t meet the standards.
Anonymous wrote, “Public education should not be beholden to the tyranny of the parent majority.”
See there’s the real problem, people like you tar and demonize opposing opinions as tyranny while condoning the pure social indoctrination that happening right under your ignorant nose in our education system. No you fool, We the People have the power in the United States of America not the totalitarian minded “progressives” that have seized an illusion of power; they answer to us, we don’t answer to them.
I don’t want my tax money to pay for schools at any level where relgious fanatics, flat earthers and those who worship money and power decide what gets taught. We’ve seen that before in Europe with scientists imprisoned because they dared to suggest that the earth was not the center of the universe and Kings were not enthroned by God and women were property with no voice and no freedom.
People can wax poetic about parental control but we all know who will really be in control. The result will be that we will be marching back into the Middle Ages with flags flying.
And I don’t want my tax money to pay for schools at any level where the kids are groomed to become sexual deviants and the parents are kept in the dark about it, where Howard Zinn’s book is the only textbook on American History, where the fallacious 1619 project is taught as fact, where Ibram X. Kendi is required reading and “Gender Queer” is in the library but Tom Sawyer is banned, where anti-semitism is tolerated and where any religion (except Islam) is considered to be “fanaticism” or a “cult”.
Can we agree on that?
We already are marching back to the Middle Ages, with wokeism flags flying high.
By lowering or even eliminating standards, teaching to the lowest common denominator, focusing on social justice rather than reading, writing, math, the sciences, public education is producing students who cannot read, write or math at the level they should be.
I want my tax dollars going to educate children, not indoctrinate them.
I want my tax dollars going to educate children to have critical thinking skills, to reason objectively, and to ready them for the real world.
Just as with all but a few colleges and universities, teachers are ramping up their hard-line, communist, anti-family, censorship agenda in America’s high schools, middle schools, and even elementary schools. Convert them while their young. You might even win a prize if you turn in your parents for subscribing to the Epoch Times ! Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
Parents have tried and tried to get the public school systems to move away from their social justice indoctrination shift and move back to simply teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and science and having the courage to fail those students that fail the standards. But they continue to indoctrinate and deliberately dumb down the entire educational system to the lowest common denominator so no ones fails. The pressure from parents over the last 30+ years has not worked. The schools simply demand, and demand, and demand more and more money to “fix” the problem, but the problem gets worse and worse every year. You’d think these people were insane because they keep doing the same damn things over and over again expecting different results.
It’s time to hit these public indoctrination camps where it really hurts, in their greedy pocket books and give parents the ability to move the tax dollars slotted for their children away from a school that’s fail the student body to a school that’s not failing the student body.
I’d like to take my annual tax dollars that are used towards “schools” and use it towards something that will actually improve my grandchildren’s lives but those dollars are extorted by the government to support social indoctrination in public schools and if I don’t pay it the government what they demand they will throw me in jail for tax evasion. It really has become a form of pure extortion, which is the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.
Public schools are not supposed to be tax funded social indoctrination camps but that is exactly what they have turned them into.
We were warned over twenty years ago by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt about The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by our education system; Iserbyt wasn’t wrong.
“Parents have tried and tried to get the public school systems to move away from their social justice indoctrination shift and move back to simply teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and science and having the courage to fail those students that fail the standards.”
Have they? What pressure?
I have attended many school board meetings. Hardly a soul there. Lately there are more of the activist-types, but really, I see very little physical presence of parents or other citizens at school board meetings. Maybe they watch online–but does that count as pressure? Does anyone even request to see the curriculum? Or read the policy manual? Or look at the agendas?
Prairie Rose wrote, “Have they? What pressure? I have attended many school board meetings. Hardly a soul there.”
So what you’ve seen at your school board meeting is representative of the entire USA? Also, what you’ve seen at your school board meetings does not include all the other kind of communications between parents and representatives of the school systems.
Prairie Rose wrote, “Lately there are more of the activist-types, but really, I see very little physical presence of parents or other citizens at school board meetings. Maybe they watch online–but does that count as pressure? Does anyone even request to see the curriculum? Or read the policy manual? Or look at the agendas?”
Apathy can be, and has been, a real problem because it fertilizes a breeding ground for stupidity to rise and gain power. Apathy from parents about what’s going on in their children’s’ schools is becoming a thing of the past and I think we can thank COVID shutting down schools and parents finally getting to see what’s going on thus ringing their proverbial bells and now they’re saying WTF are our schools doing indoctrinating students.
When parents, or activists as you just called them, that don’t take kindly to social justice indoctrination over education take and active role in their students education they’re tarred as not knowing what they’re talking about, extremists, or even terrorists, that are sticking their nose in where it doesn’t belong. Doesn’t belong, BALDERDASH, it’s their children that are being indoctrinated instead of being educated.
School systems have built a monopoly wall between them and parents where those that are part of the system seem to think that parents shouldn’t be involved in what goes on at school, parents are an imposition. Many years ago I faced this kind of wall from my son’s High School but I stuck to my mission and threatened a law suit and eventually the problem teacher was forced into early retirement, she was literally nuts talking to imaginary people in class and I witnessed it for myself. The school brushed me off and not knowing what I was talking about and that didn’t go over well with me.
That monopoly wall is beginning to be torn down and I say THAT’s GREAT!
Steve,
“So what you’ve seen at your school board meeting is representative of the entire USA?”
No, but it is a data point. I have watched other schools’ board meetings online and there, too, depending on the camera angle, they also seems sparsely attended. I agree with you–I want more parents to voice their concerns–preferably visibly so the whole board and administration has a sense of the tenor of the community.
“When parents, or activists as you just called them, that don’t take kindly to social justice indoctrination”
Activist-types tend to be those who chain themselves across roads, throw ketchup on paintings, and run around chanting slogans. They also are generally not opposed to social justice. As far as I can tell, the main people actually paying attention to education by attending board meetings are folks on the left. Maybe folks on the right prefer watching online or prefer calling their school board members privately. That’s not visible interest. I have not seen much presence by conservative or classical education-oriented people actually AT school board meetings. That would be wonderful if a bunch of classical education proponents came to discuss the oddities of the current curriculum as compared to a classical curriculum. Where’s the Ancient History? Where are the Greeks? Where are the Great Works?
Unless the UNIONs are abolished, how can any reform ever happen? It can’t. Let’s stop dancing around the issue. The experiment is hopelessly, irreversibly off the rails. The patient has died. The FREE MARKET has earned a chance to provide education as a SERVICE, with the parent as the customer. There are so many online and in-person education companies that are doing a great job, the time to phase out the broken government schools is NOW. Education can be affordable, competitive, accountable, apolitical, religious or agnostic and most importantly: measurable. There should also be a formal accredited apprenticeship program with industry sectors in local markets. College isn’t for everyone and a skilled tradesperson can do very well for themselves, often with little to no debt, while simultaneously increasing their skill set and paycheck. If parents aren’t happy with their purchase, they can choose a different vendor. ALL of .edu that takes even $1 of public money needs to be shuttered. If the ivory towers want to finally use their huge endowments to run a school of their choice, have at it. We the People deserve freedom from these goons once and for all. Uncle Sam needs to get out of the education scheme, once and forever.
“ALL of .edu that takes even $1 of public money needs to be shuttered.”
I don’t mind state colleges so long as they are prudent and thoughtful in their use of taxpayers’ money. Most were, I think, at one point.
I too am perplexed by Turkey’s comment “While I remain concerned how vouchers could be the death of public primary and secondary education, I believe states need to use the power of the purse to reform higher education”
He fails to explain why public schools would not benefit from competition. Or why the demise of a field system is bad for the country. He merely just laments the prospect.
Public schools do not have the same playing field. And, I think it is disrespectful towards taxpayers to compete with their hard-earned money.
They should be in charge of keeping the use of their tax dollars in check by paying attention and keeping their elected representatives on a short leash.
What teachers, school board members and some politicians (quoted by Turley) demonstrate is the arrogance of a monopolist. The idea that if you want a say in the education of your kids, you should pay for private education from your family budget, denies the reality that we all already pay for public education through taxation, i.e., from our family budget. A free market approach to education would actually work. Turley is afraid that public schools will fare poorly in a competitive market, but that is no argument against a free educational marketplace at all. Competition guarantees that we will get the best product for the lowest possible price. The same is true if education were made into a market product. If public schools cannot deliver good quality eduction for an acceptable price, they deserve to become obsolete and to be replaced by better alternatives. A free educational market would force public schools to cater to their constituents or lose market share and perhaps vanish as so many businesses every year have to close doors because they sell a product that nobody wants. Vouchers are a good idea, or reduce our (federal and local) taxes with what is used to fund education, so we can decide for ourselves. The fiasco with public education shows the need for more direct involvement of taxpayers in how tax money will be spend.
‘Competition guarantees that we will get the best product for the lowest possible price.”
I doubt it. We will get the cheap Walmart grade stuff. Plastic clothes, plastic toys, plastic education.
“We will get the cheap Walmart grade stuff.”
And yet people are not forced to pay for Walmart’s products. And they are not forced to shop there. And yet they do — in droves.
For all your scolding that parents need to make better choices, you are remarkably restrictive in what those choices ought to be.
They don’t get to make choices with other people’s money unless they have been elected to the school board to do so, which has been authorized by the community to make said choices.
Taxpayers need to retain control of the use of their money. They lose that control if parents get to take their neighbor’s money and spend it as they choose. Taxpayers retail control of the use of their money at public schools.
No taxation without representation!
“Taxpayers need to retain control of the use of their money. “
In the context of your arguments, you are dead wrong. The INDIVIDUAL needs to retain control and use of their money. How are you desires working out obtaining a Vit D level. It isn’t. Someone else is making a decision of how you should spend your money and you are not getting your money’s worth.
Look at my response to you earlier where you complained about your inability to get Vit D levels paid for, despite the fact that you paid far more money into the system than you and everyone else will take out.
S. Meyer,
“The INDIVIDUAL needs to retain control and use of their money.” ““Taxpayers need to retain control of the use of their money. ”
Same difference so long as the money is the individual’s own. Each individual taxpayer needs to pay attention to how well their tax dollars are spent.
“How are you desires working out obtaining a Vit D level. It isn’t. Someone else is making a decision of how you should spend your money and you are not getting your money’s worth.”
I can get my vitamin D levels checked. And I have. I have used my own money, and, I have had doctors use the appropriate codes. I have simply found it quite odd that vitamin D levels are not checked routinely when its status is so crucial to health. Insurance companies advocating “preventative care” are full of it; they don’t actually want preventative care. If they did, they’d make sure your vitamin D levels are solid.
Kind of like The Powers That Be saying they care so much about the planet and climate change and we just gotta save the earth but have planned obsolescence and make it very difficult to get older appliances repaired because they have been “outmoded” and those parts are not longer available. They don’t care diddly-squat.
” I have simply found it quite odd that vitamin D levels are not checked routinely when its status is so crucial to health. Insurance companies advocating “preventative care” are full of it; they don’t actually want preventative care. If they did, they’d make sure your vitamin D levels are solid.”
Insurance companies are too much under the thumb of government which has some control over most medical expenditures. It government were not there, insurance companies would be offering vitamin D testing as a way of promoting their company as a caring one. We would be better off, but you are fond of citizens watching their tax dollars being spent.
““The INDIVIDUAL needs to retain control and use of their money.”
““Taxpayers need to retain control of the use of their money. ”
“Same difference”
Not so.
Turley,
I understand the focus on universities…
Yet we have a dichotomy.
While you can argue for public schools to be the last line of defense for free speech, there’s the issue of indoctrination within public schools and school choice for children. (Note: I have to argue against the public universities too.)
The issue of school choice is that they take a false metric or rather a misleading metric of cost of running a school per student and parents demand that credit so that they can choose private or alternative schooling.
There’s a sunk cost and a variable cost per student. Suppose that X is the current cost per student. If we decrease the number of students, we see that the overall cost per student goes up, even though the variable cost per student may remain the same. So when you pull students out, take the money out that would cover the fixed costs of running a school, things have to give. This is why just giving school credits to families for alternative schools… not good.
The other problem is that we’ve seen indoctrination occurring at all types and price points of schools. (Base on the incomes of the population of the taxpayer base). Even elite private schools are doing this.
Want to fix it?
Remove the public schools teacher unions.
Then focus on the Universities.
THIS IS A MULTIGENERATIONAL PROBLEM TO SOLVE.
-G
American colleges and universities should certainly become open to diverse points of view in all aspects of their operations. They should then fire half of their administrators and impose a one-third pay cut on those who remain.
VOUCHERS, VOUCHERS, and VOUCHERS!
Democrats have spent 60 years….failing inner cities….while skimming trillions
Many progressive European countries…allow you to send your kids to the school of YOUR choice…whether religious, private or public. Vouchers for ALL!
My undergrad alma mater, James Madison University, just saw a group of alums form an organization to protect free speech and diversity of opinion on the campus. It’s the fourth group in the Commonwealth with chapters at UVA, VMI and W&L. I’m all in for that. It’s the Madison Cabinet for Free Speech and Accountability. Bravo!
https://www.madisoncabinetforfreespeech.com/
“My undergrad alma mater . . .”
About time! Hopefully, the trend spreads.
In case they don’t know, please tell them to be on the lookout for “stealth curricula.” It’s often in the guise of: Docs (e.g., syllabi) for public consumption, versus what’s actually taught and assigned in the classroom. For example: A course on Shakespeare with the standard description — which in fact is just a vehicle for, e.g., feminist propaganda.
God help them in sifting through all that nonsense, academic jargon.
“I oppose such moves away from public schools, but I have lost faith in the willingness of most schools to restore educational priorities and standards.“
Much as I respect your opinion I believe you’re wrong on this. The central and vital insight of our Founders was the vital and critical role of competition in public policy. We have two houses of Congress, we have executive and legislative branches, we have an independent judiciary, we have 50 independent states, and so on. Our Founders believed, correctly, that each of these power centers would be jealous of their prerogatives and would work to keep the other branches honest. What our public education system needs is a healthy dose of competition. Public education won’t go out of business, but it have to reform, and it will.
Power centers. Like corporations?