School deformer arrogance took a hit in 2021

I saw about the SCOTUS call on Maine. Not good, but it was no surprise, and it probably won't have wide practical effect. Opposition to school privatization in fact runs wide and deep.

But what voucher proponents had not counted on was the pushback—not just from the usual coalition of teachers’ unions, progressives, and grassroots public school advocates, but from bipartisan lawmakers in politically “red” states...

“The fact that private school voucher bills fail even in states where Republicans have full control shows that these schemes are not nearly as popular as Betsy DeVos and others say they are,” says Jessica Levin, the director of Public Funds for Public Schools, a national campaign that uses litigation, advocacy, and research to oppose vouchers and other forms of school privatization.

“There are multiple reasons for these failures,” she says, “including that Republicans representing rural areas know vouchers won’t benefit their constituents because of the lack of private schools in these areas and because public schools often are important for jobs and community-building.” - Jeff Bryant/The Progressive

There's nothing "empowering" about "school choice"

A thorough takedown.

Furthermore, school choice likely won’t empower parents because the parents are making these choices without being able to access all of the relevant information. This is a clear example of asymmetric information, a phenomenon in marketplace transactions where a seller knows more than the buyer.

In theory, consumer regulations are designed to balance this division. But, in the world of school choice, there’s almost nothing in place to require a charter school to disclose how it compares to other schools—other than, of course, school-wide scores from the annual Big Standardized Test. For private schools, the information gap is even wider, as what they choose to disclose is usually crafted by the school itself. Plus, third-party rankings for both, such as the list put out by GreatSchools and U.S. News & World Report, typically nudge families toward whiter, more affluent schools.

Parents, as a result, have few sources of reliable information when making a choice that is supposedly transparent. This is especially true in states like Michigan, where there are fewer rules around what charter or private schools need to disclose.

School marketing is also largely unregulated, allowing charter and private schools to make whatever claims they choose about everything from programming and the financial stability of the school to the very use of the word “public” in their title. Public schools, by contrast, may be reluctant to be as transparent as parents would like, but the law is on parents’ side when it comes to requirements for district transparency. - The Progressive

Biden has a great chance, on public schools

Elements of the proposed rescue/stimulus package are a good start. But there needs to be a lot of effort and resources beyond that. And the opposition is given to a plethora of classless, underhanded, cowardly tactics.

After decades of federal legislation that emphasized mandating standardized testing and tying school and teacher evaluations to the scores; imposing financial austerity on public institutions; incentivizing various forms of privatization; and undermining teachers' professionalism and labor rights, there is a keen appetite for a new direction for school policy.

Due to the disruption forced by the pandemic, much is being written and said about the need to "restart and reinvent" education and a newfound appreciation for schools as essential infrastructure for families and children. With an incoming Biden administration, Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, and the influence of incoming first lady Jill Biden, a career educator, we may be on the cusp of a historic moment when the stars align to revitalize public schools in a way that hasn't happened in a generation.

Among the promising ideas that appear to have growing momentum behind them are proposals to fund schools more equitably, to expand community schools that take a more holistic approach to educating students, to create curriculum and pedagogy that are relevant to the science of how children learn and the engagement of their families, and to reverse the direction of accountability measures from top-down mandates to bottom-up community-based endeavors. - Jeff Bryant/AlterNet

Worse than Betsy DeVos, for public schools?

Believe it or not, such a thing is possible.

When a Biden victory in the 2020 presidential election became certain, supporters of public education gleefully took to social media to say good riddance to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. DeVos came into office with an agenda to further the privatization of public education by expanding charter schools and by encouraging families to opt out of public schools by any means possible. During her tenure, she effectively used her bully pulpit to cheer on efforts by Republican state lawmakers to expand various forms of voucher programs that give parents public money to homeschool their children or send them to private schools. She awarded many of the nation's largest charter school chains with millions in federal funding, and she used the pandemic as an opportunity to redirect emergency funds for public schools to private schools and internet-based instruction—all the while refusing to even visit struggling public schools.

Biden is expected to oppose voucher programs and limit the growth of the charter school industry. But despite the promising prospect of a transition from DeVos to a Biden administration, progressive public school advocates can't afford to overlook a threat to democratically governed schools that preceded DeVos and will continue when she is long gone.

In midsized metropolitan areas like Indianapolis and Stockton, California, parents, teachers, and public school advocates warn of huge sums of money coming from outside their communities to influence local politics and bankroll school board candidates who support school privatization. In phone conversations, emails, and texts, they point to a national agenda, backed by deep-pocketed organizations and individuals who intend to disrupt local school governance in order to impose forms of schools that operate like private contractors rather than public agencies—an agenda not dissimilar from that of DeVos. - Jeff Bryant/AlterNet

School privatization movement looks to go shock doctrine

Entirely predictable, but nonetheless disgusting.

COVID-19 has shuttered public schools across the nation, state governments are threatening to slash education budgets due to the economic collapse caused by the outbreak, and emergency aid provided by the federal government is far short of what is needed, according to a broad coalition of education groups, but the charter school industry may benefit from its unique status to seek public funding from multiple sources and expand these schools into many more communities traumatized by the pandemic and financial fallout. - Jeff Bryant/Raw Story

Voters rejected the school deformer agenda

At least, majorities of them did, in a number of places.  Good deal.

The blue wave that swept the nation in the recent midterm elections was also a broad rejection of recent trends to privatize public education through school voucher programs and privately operated charter schools. From New York to California, new candidates ran and won on platforms opposed to privatization, big-money backers of charter schools suffered humiliating losses, and voters trounced efforts to expand voucher programs that drain public schools of the funding they need.

This spring’s teacher walkouts that made news across the country can take some credit for propelling the anti-privatization message to voters and prompting educators to take their support for public schools to the ballot box. But opposition to the privatization industry was also strong in states that did not experience teacher walkouts, and public education advocates are vowing to take their cause to state capitals and Congress to curb the flow of public money to unaccountable, privately operated education providers. - Jeff Bryant/AlterNet