Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.
"...the main tactic of privatizers remains getting friendly legislators to ignore the voting public and just go ahead and create voucher programs. Just look at Texas, where the now years-long fight by Governor Greg Abbott to get vouchers in the state has not hinged on changing the public’s mind or arguing the merits of vouchers, but on using a mountain of money to tilt elections so that he can get enough voucher-friendly legislators in place to give him vouchers." -- Peter Greene in NPE blog post, Even in a Red Wave, Voters Reject School Vouchers
VOTERS REJECT VOUCHERS
Even in a Red Wave, Voters Reject School Vouchers
When vouchers are put to the vote, Americans reject them. This year's election was no different. Voters rejected vouchers in three states.
From Peter Greene in the NPE Blog
...Colorado tried to amend the state constitution to put in place a right to school choice. The amendment was spectacularly awful, creating the potential for endless lawsuits and unmanageable demands by parents. Even the Christian Home Educators recognized that it was a spectacularly bad idea.
...In Kentucky, choice fans were miffed that the state supreme court could actually read and understand the plain language of their constitution, which says
No sum shall be raised or collected for education other than in common schools until the question of taxation is submitted to the legal voters, and the majority of the votes cast at said election shall be in favor of such taxationSo the court rejected various attempts to use public tax dollars for private school vouchers, and voucherphiles decided they’s just have to get the constitution rewritten.
Kentucky went 65% – 34% for Trump, and swept all sorts of MAGA officials back into office. Pretty much those exact numbers went the other way for the amendment, sending it down in flames.
Nebraska had perhaps the longest row to hoe, as the legislature passed a voucher law in 2023. Voters successfully petitioned to put a repeal of that law on the ballot, so the legislators repealed and replaced it themselves in an attempt to do an end run around voters. So a second petition was circulated, and repeal of the new law was placed on the ballot.
That repeal passed, and Nebraska’s voucher law is now toast.
ASSAULT ON EDUCATIONAL SPEECH
The Right’s ‘All-Out Assault on Educational Speech’ Continues Unabated
Book banning and curriculum restrictions have spread to post secondary education.
From The Progressive
A recently released report from PEN America, titled America’s Censored Classrooms 2024, tells a grim story about the right’s ongoing legislative attacks on inclusive public education.
According to the 102-year-old group, the steep rise in the number of book bans during the 2023-2024 academic year—more than 10,000 at last count—and educational gag orders to limit what topics K-12 teachers can teach and what books they can use has now spread to public colleges and universities. In the higher education sector, gag orders intersect with other worrying trends—including the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and constraints on college curricula and shared faculty governance—leading to what PEN calls “an all-out assault on educational speech.”
Jeremy C. Young, director of PEN’s Freedom to Learn program, tells The Progressive that six rightwing think tanks—The Claremont Institute, The Ethics and Public Policy Center, The Goldwater Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Manhattan Institute, and the National Association of Scholars—are largely responsible for the expansion of book bans and gag orders from K-12 to colleges and universities.
 |
GOP spends big to keep rural legislative seat
[Editor's note: Republican incumbent Dave Hall has retained his seat in Indiana’s 62nd House District with 51.1% of the votes, a difference of about 800 votes.]
From School Matters
This year, Democrat Thomas Horrocks is challenging Hall. Horrocks is a church pastor and an Indiana National Guard chaplain. He has raised money and campaigned energetically, including with TV ads. On his campaign website, he lists supporting public education as one of his priorities. “This means universal pre-k, keeping public dollars in public schools, and paying teachers what they’re worth,” he says.
Hall, a farmer and the owner of a crop insurance business, seems to be a congenial and civic-minded person who takes being a legislator seriously. Unlike his fellow Jackson County Republican, Rep. Jim Lucas of Seymour, he doesn’t gratuitously threaten people or pick fights over guns and culture-war issues. His campaign website doesn’t mention education. A cute TV ad says he’ll protect public schools like his daughter’s, but he voted for the 2023 budget bill that expanded vouchers.
If Hall wins, he will owe his seat not only to the voters but to the organizations that paid for his campaign: the House Republican Campaign Committee and its deep-pocketed donors, including groups that promote vouchers and charter schools. Hall has raised over $600,000 this year, and more than half came from the HRCC.
When the time comes for tough votes on expanding “school choice,” a perennial priority for Republican leaders and their pals, you can bet he’ll be reminded of that.
LOCAL NEWS
Good news on teacher salaries -- sort of
From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
An Indiana state government report on teacher salaries reveals an average pay exceeding $60,000, which might seem promising at first glance. However, this number conceals troubling realities: Our educators earn well less than the median salary for degreed workers and are paid less than their neighbors and nationally.
Released on Nov. 1, the 2023-24 Teacher Compensation Report by the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board provides a critical reference point for understanding current teacher pay. The average annual teacher salary has increased significantly, from $51,500 in 2019-20 to more than $60,000. But this figure represents a state average, masking substantial pay variability across districts, with many educators earning well less than this benchmark.
Adding to these concerns, a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, published this past August, highlights a longstanding decline in interest in teaching. The share of bachelor’s and master’s graduates has sharply declined since the 1970s, when a quarter of college graduates earned education degrees.
**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]
†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.
###
No comments:
Post a Comment