Network for Public Education Goals

By Thomas Ultican 11/10/2023

Network for Public Education (NPE) issued two agendas at the conclusion of the October Washington DC Conference. NPE Director, Carol Burris, announced, “A Resolution in Support of Community-based Public Education, a Pillar of our Democracy” and Julian Vasquez Heilig, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Western Michigan University, put forward “Freedom to Learn,” a kindergarten through university agenda.

Freedom to Learn

Since “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, public education has been under serious attack. In the 21^st century, the attacks have become well-financed, deceptive and mean-spirited.

Christopher Rufo became the darling of autocracy with his attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In 2017, he was working at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington which focuses on intelligent design and opposes Darwinian-based biology. When President Trump decided that DEI training for federal workers was deeply infected with critical race theory, Rufo, now at the rightwing Manhattan Institute, stated on the Tucker Carlson show, “It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government.”

 He trained his sights on public schools, disingenuously claiming they were teaching critical race theory (CRT). Soon CRT became the name for anything bigots did not like. Billionaire-funded think-tanks, Manhattan Institute, Heritage Foundation and CATO Institute beat homophobia drums and blew bigotry trumpets against DEI.

Hostile state legislatures enacted laws that undermined public schools, community colleges and universities. They instituted curriculum bans, eradicated DEI programs and attacked science, as well as public health programs. Laws were passed allowing terrorist groups, like Mom’s for Liberty, to push mindless, censorship agendas while attacking librarians and teachers, branding them as groomers and child molesters. They also cut public school funding while promoting vouchers and other privatization schemes.

Time magazine ran an opinion piece by American Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten, and Stand for Children’s CEO, Jonah Edelman. They observed:

“In a recent lecture at ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, culture war orchestrator Christopher Rufo detailed the strategy for replacing public education with a universal voucher system. ‘To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust,’ Rufo explained. Earlier in that same lecture, describing how to lay siege to institutions, he noted the necessity to create your own narrative and frame and advised his audience they ‘have to be ruthless and brutal.”’ (Emphasis Added)

Interestingly, the closer to the classroom, the better the image of public schools will be. In the 2022 Gallup survey, 84% of the general public rated their district’s public schools as passing. Parents gave them an 89% passing rates while they rated the entire nation at 73%.

The steady drumbeat of attacks on public education, starting with 1983’s “A Nation at Risk,” has harmed peoples’ view of public education but less than one might imagine. 

Professor Heilig introduced three targets:

1. Promote “freedom to learn and access to education through working with coalition partners to support bills to increase federal and state funding for all levels of public education and protect the freedom to teach and the freedom to research.”
2. Fight back “against legislative bans on the teaching of U. S. history, science and psychology, and other educational gag orders, and by defending individual educators who face harassment, discipline or termination as a result of these laws.”
3. Support “efforts to provide more resources to our public schools, colleges and universities and the students who depend on them every day, resisting efforts to defund our preK-12 and higher education systems.”

Community-based Public Education

Carol Burris stated public education is the pillar of democracy and should be based on the common school design originally envisioned by Horace Mann. Public schools teach all who live within their boundaries, “regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, LGBTQ+ status, or learning ability.”

It is taxpayers who bear the responsibility for funding such schools and have the right to examine how tax dollars are used to educate children. Schools should be accountable to community residents who have the right and responsibility to elect those who govern them.

Extreme Instability of Charter Schools from NPE’s Broken Promises

In 2019, Jeff Bryant and Carol Burris co-authored “Asleep at the Wheel,” about the federal Charter School Program (CSP):

“We estimate that program funding has grown to well over $4 billion. That could bring the total of the potential waste to around $1 billion.”

This claim by NPE was widely criticized as an over-statement. Carol Burris and her small team made a very detailed study of the CSP program producing “Still Asleep at the Wheel.” They discovered the estimates were low and 40% of charter schools receiving CSP grants had closed or did not open.

Charter schools were introduced in the 1990s as an education experiment with the potential to significantly improve American education. Since then, there were no positive changes, including no significant improvement in standardized test scores. On the other hand, they have divided communities, undermined public schools and driven up segregation.

It is legitimate to conclude the charter school experiment has been a three-decade failure but the federal government continues lavishly funding the CSP.

Burris shared a growing concern with efforts to privatize public education, remove governance from school communities and divert power to private boards, religious institutions, and both nonprofit and for profit corporations.

Therefore, NPE calls for a series of reforms to “preserve our public education system and protect the students who attend public schools.”

Recommended reforms include:

• An immediate moratorium on creating new charter schools, including no replication or expansion of existing charter schools.
• End CSP that subsidizes and encourages charter expansion.
• Require certification of all charter school teachers and administrative staff in accordance with public school requirements.
• All properties and equipment owned by charter schools become the property of the local public school district if the charter closes.
• Prohibit charter schools from refusing transfer students mid-year if they have available space.
• Pro rata reimbursement for school districts (or states) when students leave a charter school during the school year.

In 2018, the Center for American Progress, who would never be mistaken as hardcore lefties, wrote about the first five large scale voucher studies ever. They summed up the report stating:

“How bad are school vouchers for students? Far worse than most people imagine.”

Josh Cowen, University of Michigan, has studied vouchers for close to 30 years. At the conference, he stated, “If we were using evidence informed education policy, vouchers would have died 5 years ago.” Cowen also noted test score losses from voucher students are as large as or larger than those experienced in either Katrina or Covid-19. Data since 2013 shows that vouchers have been catastrophic.

Nevertheless, Carol Burris said, “We support a parent’s right to educate their child in a private school; however, we believe that private services should be funded privately and not by the public.”

Vouchers were originally the choice of southern segregationist in the late 1950s after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruling in the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case held that publicly funded vouchers could be used to send children to religious schools. It was a 5-4 decision, authorizing state legislators to force taxpayers to send their dollars to religious schools.

Voucher programs are always instituted by legislative bodies. There has never been an education voucher program voted for by the public.

Carol Burris stated, “We advocate for the phase-out of all voucher programs.”

Until that happens, NPE is calling for several legislative actions including:

• An immediate moratorium on the creation of new voucher programs or their expansion.
• Require private schools that receive vouchers cannot discriminate in any form, including based on religion, gender, marital status, disability, achievement and LGBTQ+ status.
• Mandate financial audits of voucher programs, participating private education providers and third-party voucher-granting organizations.
• State to collect data on voucher school closures and year-to-year changes in tuition.
• Require certification of all school teaching and administrative staff in schools that receive vouchers in accordance with public school requirements.
• Require that voucher students, including micro and homeschool students, participate in the same state testing programs as public and charter students and the results be made publicly available.
• Voucher school facilities are obligated to meet building codes.
• Require pro rata voucher funding be returned to local, state, and federal sources if a student returns or transfers to public school.

Wrap-Up

Ever since the Clinton administration, there has been a well-financed attack on public education. Much of this has come from billionaires and the Catholic Church has played a key role in advancing the voucher movement. Ten years-ago NPE was formed by mostly educators to save public schools. During its first decade, NPE fought against the privatization movement through social media by raising awareness and giving teachers a voice.

As it heads into the second decade, NPE is promoting an agenda to undo the recent damage to public schools, calling for the common sense changes listed above.

Let’s do it!

Tags: Carol Burris, Christopher Rufo, Jeff Bryant, Jonah Edelman, Josh Cowen, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Randi Weingarten