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"Fourteen states and counting have now passed legislation creating voucher (or education savings account) programs that share some key properties. They are universal (or nearly universal), meaning that all families are eligible. They involve no meaningful public accountability or way to judge their success. They allow private schools to charge tuition over and above the voucher amount. And, finally, they are flexible in that funds can be used even to cover homeschooling expenses and other educational goods and services, such as computers and tutoring." -- in The new and radical school voucher push is quietly unwinding two centuries of U.S. education tradition by Douglas N. Harris at the Brookings Institute.
VOUCHERS HURT PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The Evidence Continues To Mount
"[The] majority of the families in the Indiana voucher program today were previously paying for private school on their own...Yet the state stepped in to offer a financial subsidy to parents who didn’t need it ― a costly decision critics say is hurting public schools, which educate more than 90% of the approximately one million K-12 students in Indiana."
From Sheila Kennedy
Inequality.org recently took an in-depth look at the Right-wing’s increasingly successful effort to destroy public education. In an article titled “Private Fortunes Vs. Public Education,” the article began
The United States essentially invented public education. Back in the 1780s, notes the Center on Education Policy, federal legislation “granted federal lands to new states and set aside a portion of those lands to be used to fund public schools.” By the 18th century’s close, most Americans had embraced the notion of “using public funds to support public schooling for the common good.”The article went on to report that, during the last decade, funding for the nation’s public schools has “barely increased,” while “state spending on tax breaks and subsidies for private schools has skyrocketed by 408 percent.”
In the mid-20th century, amid growing levels of economic equality, that public financial support for public schools would expand mightily. The results would be impressive. By 1970, graduation rates from American high schools — institutions, notes historian Claudia Goldin, themselves “rooted in egalitarianism” — had quadrupled over 1920 levels.
But that era of growing equality and expanding public education would start fading in the 1970s. Over recent years, a new U.S. Senate report makes clear, that fade has only intensified.
A report from the Brookings Institution found that universal voucher programs “are unwinding two centuries of tradition in U.S. public education” and that the programs “violate basic traditions of church-state separation, anti-discrimination, and public accountability.” As the researcher concluded, even if the courts -ignoring over fifty years of precedents–rule that these voucher programs are constitutionally permissible, “we should assess them against our principles as a nation.”
HOW MUCH DID VOUCHERS HURT YOUR PUBLIC SCHOOL?
Voucher Cost to Local Public School Districts
How much money has your local school district missed out on because of vouchers?
From the Indiana Coalition for Public Education
Indiana is a radical state when it comes to education funding. It now offers a handful of different types of K-12 education vouchers. The Indiana Choice Scholarship—a subsidy for families by which they use public funds to help pay for private school tuition—is the largest and oldest voucher in the state (existing since 2011).
IF the state K-12 funding had remained the same and IF this large voucher program didn’t exist, how much additional funding would your community school district have had?
FEDERAL ROLE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
In 2020, President Trump Set Out to Impose His Own Preferred U.S. History Curriculum on All U.S. Public Schools
Can a President who tried to rewrite the public school history curriculum can be trusted today to avoid adopting Project 2025’s radical destruction of the federal role in education?
From Jan Resseger
In a blockbuster story last week, the Washington Post’s Laura Meckler recounts how Donald Trump’s anger about Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project—emphasizing the history of slavery as part of the nation’s founding—grew into Trump’s infatuation with the political possibility of appointing his own commission to develop the kind of national public school history curriculum Trump believed his supporters would prefer. This is clear case of a politician creating public policy as an ideological reaction to our society’s growing acceptance of our nation’s diversity.
Meckler quotes Trump in a pre-July 4th speech in 2020, lashing out at the way public schools were teaching American history: “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children… Children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe the men and women who built it were not heroes but… villains.”
Meckler reports: “During most of his presidency, Trump had showed little interest in education, but now, as he campaigned for a second term, he cast the movement (spawned by the 1619 Project and the reaction to George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota) as something sinister infecting American education. He began to describe schools as ground zero in the fight over how to see America and its history.” Meckler adds that in the fall of 2020, Trump appointed his own 1776 Commission, declaring: “Many of America’s schoolchildren are tragically being taught to hate our founding, hate our history and hate our country. This must stop… The 1776 Commission will help ensure that every American child learns that they live in the greatest and most exceptional nation in the history of the world.”
Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, disdained by public school supporters for her devotion to and massive personal investment in promoting school privatization, stood behind the principle that public schools are established in the state constitutions and operated by locally elected school boards, and that the President and the federal government cannot impose a national curriculum. Meckler quotes Betsy DeVos recounting her conversation with Trump in the summer of 2020: “I had to remind him that the United States does not have a national curriculum, and for good reason… The federal government can’t ban the 1619 Project.”
THE THEORY IS SCIENCE
Teaching evolution is still constitutional in Indiana
What is a theory?
"...A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts. The theory of gravitation, for instance, explains why apples fall from trees and astronauts float in space. Similarly, the theory of evolution explains why so many plants and animals—some very similar and some very different—exist on Earth now and in the past, as revealed by the fossil record."
From the National Center for Science Education
The plaintiffs contended that the district schools teach "the state-sponsored, atheistic, religious Theory of Evolution ... under the guise that that it is 'science,'" that what they regard as various components of evolutionary theory have been scientifically disproven, and that "the atheistic Theory of Evolution specially attacks the Judeo-Christian origin story."
...The court found that the plaintiffs failed to allege an Establishment Clause violation because, in the words of McLean v. Arkansas (1982), "it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause."
ABSENTEE RATES ARE IMPROVING
Indiana officials say chronic absenteeism rates are improving, but there’s still more work ahead
From the Capital Chronicle
Indiana’s top education officials applauded the state’s improved chronic absenteeism rates on Wednesday but conceded that too many Hoosier students are still missing a “significant” number of school days.
The latest attendance numbers released by the Indiana Department of Education reported that 17.8% of K-12 students — roughly 219,00 kids — were “chronically absent” during the most recent 2023-24 school year, meaning they missed at least 18 days.
It’s the second year in a row that the number of chronically absent students went down, dropping from 19.2% in 2023, and 21.1% in 2022.
“It’s an improvement — and we always want to celebrate improvements and data moving in the right direction— but we still have some work to do,” said John Keller, IDOE’s chief information officer, during Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting.
LEGISLATORS AND CONSTITUENTS MUST COMMUNICATE
Education policy is missing feedback and collaboration
Educator and former State Representative Melanie Write explains how basic communication skills are missing between our legislators and constituents.
From Melanie Wright in the Capital Chronicle
Meaningful dialogue with education experts: superintendents, administrators and educators is essential to identifying issues that should be addressed in schools. Fewer debates and forums occur during the election process. Once elected officials are established, they are hesitant to meet with educators due to contentious bill policy. Bills tend to be passed in Indiana before input is sought. When the Indiana State Board of Education attempts to implement policy, stakeholders testify with concerns. By no longer having an elected Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Department of Education struggles to find neutrality while navigating proposed legislation and what will truly benefit our students.
The Science of Reading was recently passed as a method to ensure that Indiana students could be kept on grade level. After a drastic and last-minute strategy, it was set to roll out this past summer. Without input from stakeholders, the various course offerings were put into place. Many educators had to readjust summer plans to acquire the training, some needed to complete the training for financial and/or licensure opportunities and some were so frustrated by this that they opted to wait and see if it would change, as education policy does so often.
Simple conversations within House and Senate districts could have prevented such turmoil. Instead, schools are once again greeted with the implementation of new laws, but very little guidance on how to achieve such.
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An Evening with Jennifer McCormick
NEIFPE is proud to co-sponsor this event featuring Jennifer McCormick, candidate for Governor of Indiana. We hope you can attend.
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