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One Strategy for Saving our Country: Save our Schools
We have been debating private schools versus public schools in this country for years. Finally, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation shortly after he was elected called the Florida Empowerment Scholarship program. Even better, he offered up a new program that expands the original program, making vouchers available to 29,000 more students above the 18,000 offered last year. Perhaps the best part of this law is that although private and charter schools have to meet basic criteria for curriculum, the state and local school districts do not have the authority to oversee or control the curriculum or academic programs of private schools or home instruction programs.
Maybe we will begin to take back the curriculum of our schools.*
Before I delve into the curriculum question, let me address the resistance against establishing private and charter schools, in no particular order:
- Funds that would otherwise go to public schools will follow the students to private schools — the amount of money lost to public schools is substantial: an annual cost of $1 billion. The potential loss of these funds might provide incentives to public schools to improve education for their students.
- Education provided by private schools is sub-standard — all private schools are required to perform to a certain standard; if they don’t, their charters can be revoked. Parents can also choose to move their children from failing schools. Several studies comparing public and private schools have resulted in mixed results for performance.
- Private schools can discriminate against LGBTQ students — an Orlando Sentinel investigation found 156 private Christian schools “with anti-gay views” offering tuition paid for by these state scholarships.
- Private schools often employ non-unionized teachers.
- Religious education in private schools is part of the curriculum. It’s not clear if all students must attend religious classes if they are not members of the school’s faith. A number of organizations, including Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center, have threatened to challenge the program legally, claiming violation of the separation of church and state (which is an incorrect interpretation of the Constitution).
- Teachers know better than parents what should be taught to their children. I must admit that I have not seen this claim in writing, but the anger and rejection of parent choice by the teacher unions lead us to wonder about their motives.
Gov. DeSantis, through his actions, is providing us the opportunity to create schools that have the potential to teach a traditional curriculum, including the standard history of the United States, not the propaganda and anti-American studies that the Progressives have been teaching for many years. I’m not aware of any public schools that have turned back the efforts to distort American history on their own; the political pressures to do so are overwhelming. And there is no guarantee that private or charter schools will teach students a more representative version of history. But this is certainly a valuable step in the right direction.
Let’s take back our schools.
*Thomas Sowell addresses the issue of charter schools in his new book, Charter Schools and their Enemies, available for pre-order on Amazon.
Published in Education
A waste of time?
Fight fire with fire. A proportionate response. A fair fight. Compromise.
Does anyone believe we’re in a fair fight?
He is an enemy to all he claims to stand for. He is the worst sort of enemy, the one who shoots you from behind. The Benedict Arnold.
I don’t.
But I am “Eeyore”. I am being unreasonable.
Ho hum. Nothing to see here.
Hm. No-o-o. I see what Bryan is saying. And I’m not ready to go that far. But I think we all see the rising brutality — not just lawlessness and the loss of order with looting and fire bombings, but tauntings, threats and murders. Nailing police stations shut with both workers and prisoners inside and setting the building on fire. And to top it off the active dismembering of police forces, which is our only means of civil order — or rather of preventing full civil disorder.
Good people are getting guns.
And we’ve got, what, four months to get the US back on any sort of right footing, or else — I really believe — that we will be going the way of Venezuela. After a certain point power to corrupt the press (which has already been done in the US), cleanse the court system of conservative judges (which is well underway in the US — by whatever means it is being done), a public increasingly calling for socialism (even though they don’t know what it means), the purging (or at least polarizing) of the military, and increasing voter fraud, will be unstoppable. We’ve all seen this before. In our lifetimes.
The one thing that could have most surely stopped Venezuela’s decline into the abyss would have been an armed populace. If you accept this as true, then it is that that will be the only sure means of preserving our republic. And guns don’t mean anything if they know they will never be fired. So if the US is following Venezuela’s model, shooting will very likely begin in the US; maybe not this year, but at sometime before they are taken away.
It’s logical, and barring a miracle I think it’s very likely.
And to further answer your question, what Cotton and Barr are doing, no matter how resolved they are, seems like standing in the tracks and waving your arms to stop an on-coming train.
Yes. I am ready for a citizen to stand up and say ‘This is our America, and we are taking it back”. that can’t be me, as I don’t have the Charisma for it. But we need a leader who will love America and lead the population.
Caesar was loved by the people because he restored order. The political class murdered him. That is where were are. Like Rome, the political class support mobs to terrorize the people. We nee Caesar.
Julius is in our midst. Who will be our Augustus?
Oh that! Seriously, you and Bryan both have good arguments about the desperate times, but if I let myself be pulled down into hopelessness, I will be good for nothing. I feel I have a responsibility to try to maintain some balance and perspective, if not for my own good but for what I might be able to offer (although I’m not sure yet what that means) . Trying to take action out of desperation is pretty darn hard.
I am not living an illusion. I have a gun, I am getting training for concealed carry and already have my permit. I’m prepared as best I can.
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K-12 is the beginning of the assembly line. The line workers and managers are virtually all products of the higher education system. The curriculum that teaches them was built under the influence of the Frankfurt School.
College is the next step on the assembly line; overtly race based admissions are on the way (unfortunately the diversity bureaucracies will likely still be around.) California is leading the way:
This is in advance of the vote on ACA 5, which if passed amends the state constitution and ends the ban on race as a permissible criterion in hiring and college admission (the Regents of UC favor ACA 5.)
But college became important since college graduation became a job requirement with the ban on IQ tests and other means seen as having disparate impact on blacks.
Over the last half century, there has been massive grade inflation, which helps cause
The last is from the WSJ in a piece recommending on hiring for skills, not degrees.
Unless we see some FBI and DOJ officials in prison and more fired, that’s what is going on.
It’s amazing to watch all the things CA continues to do to self-destruct. Just one disaster after another.
Whole heartedly agree. It’s needed now more than ever.
I seem to recall that we have an election in a few months. Maybe the outcome of that election will influence our future?
Has not seemed to work so far. I voted for the GOP again and again, on promises they would make a difference. That was lie after lie. Trump has at least tried, but the GOP is more establishment than they are conservative.
Here’s a great article from the Federalist on the Supreme Court decision regarding state funds for religious schools.
We sent our three daughters to private, parochial schools through 8th grade. When we first started, my wife asked one of the teachers why the students were so much better than those in public school. The teacher said something like, “It’s not the students, it’s the parents.” In my own words: There are involved parents even if their kids go to public school. However, parents who pay out-of-pocket for their children’s education have the added incentive of getting their money’s worth. Likewise, parents of children who win the charter school lottery (notice there’s always more applicants than slots) have the incentive of not wasting their children’s opportunity, even if they’re not paying for it directly.
I have heard that the developers of Common Core are moving to make the SAT match their curricula. Once that’s done then all schools will need to have Common Core, whatever that may become.
How many Republican mayors are caving into the street radicals?
I haven’t read through the comments yet, but I have to comment on these points:
Point 1: I find the funding argument exasperating and absurd. What entitles public schools to funds for students they’re not serving?!!! Charters run bare bones because they don’t get all the extra “perks” of serving special needs students who the states typically fund at at least twice the rate of regular ed students.
See the logic? Regular public schools aren’t being funded for students they don’t serve; (public) charters aren’t funded for special needs students they don’t serve. Regular ed public schools should stop their whinging about funds.
Point 2: There’s a confusing use of terminology here. Charters =/= private schools and private schools =/= charters. Charters are public schools. I don’t believe private schools are “chartered” by the state (or local district). I think what you mean is private schools can lose their accreditation. And the accreditation system is a whole ‘nother corrupted “public” scheme — ask Hillsdale College.
Whether charters are “successful” or not depends on the criteria used for measuring success and, by decent measures, the education philosophy/curriculum set out in the charter. My girls’ high school using Hillsdale’s curriculum prepared its graduates magnificently to enter postsecondary schooling. However, the school was downgraded because only about half of entering freshmen make it to graduation (it’s a tough school, but there are other factors involved, including that we live in a military town where students move when a parent gets a new assignment).
Classical education charters using E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge approach and/or a Hillsdale-type curriculum are very successful by measures of academic excellence and, for example, scholarship earnings of their graduates. The Cesar Chavez (PC, social justice emphasis) school that was up for charter renewal at the same time as my kids’ middle school? Not so much.
I don’t want to “save” our public schools. I want to massively reform them into something practically unrecognizable to what they are today. Destroy public unions. Give education back to the lowest level possible where parents and teachers who have the greatest interest in success are in control and are ultimately responsible for success or failure.
This is a very interesting video.
I had not heard of Eva Moskowitz before. But I am impressed.
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So who’s responsible for teaching the kids the important things?
Thanks, WC. Yes, they’re not the same. Thanks for clarifying that. And everyone should know that Hillsdale is doing a great job of educating our young at charter schools they set up–even in the public school arena.
Can’t lose quoting the Shema!
Charters have the potential to do better than regular public schools because they’re that much closer to parents and administrators. Subsidiarity at work.
My kids’ elementary/middle charter school was state-chartered (rather than district), so its board was populated with parents (and a few outsiders, like local business leaders) and it only reported to the state (which only seriously paid attention when the charter renewal was due). District-chartered schools have to report to the local, elected school district. Most district officials come from the union/teacher/administrator population, and are therefore deep-staters. Their interest is in preserving the system, not providing top quality education to our kids.
It’s not just the lefty indoctrination content that’s the problem, although that’s yuuuge! It’s the whole rotten, centralized, bureaucratic, unionized system.
Public education delenda est.
It’s much simpler, or at least should be. New Zealand public schools were at the bottom of the developed world. Lange, a socialist PM, bought off the left with an attack on American ships landing in New Zealand ports, then transformed the entire economy with market reforms including the school system. They fired all the administrative educational overseers, turned schools over to parents and teachers, made all public schools independent of each other, and allowed students to go to any school in the country. To attract students schools fired bad teachers. Parents and good teachers know who the good ones are, and were they to fire the wrong ones, they’d loose students and budget. In one year they transformed their public schools and within two were right behind Singapore and way ahead of ours. Our states who cared could do something similar. Schools run by the centralized bureaucracy would fail, those who brake with them will succeed. We’re trying to live within the union rules and that simply cannot succeed. Why on earth should public schools enjoy public school unions especially when it’s obvious they fail at education.
Love it, love it, love it!
I think the reason why the public unions have been able to withstand criticism is, in part, because if you ask most parents of school aged children most are satisfied with the job their public schools are doing. Obviously, there are lots of exceptions.
Also, a minority of voters have children in public schools. Many have already raised their children and are therefore disconnected with how those schools are performing. Also, many parents, including many liberal parents, send their children to private schools.
So, the people who really have their focus on the public schools are the teachers unions.
It’s sort of like why American sugar farmers do not get competition from Caribbean sugar farmers. The sugar consumer doesn’t know or doesn’t care. But the Americans sugar farmers care and are organized.
Maybe things are slowly changing in certain parts of the United States, such as Florida.