On Tuesday, January 28, 2020, Vice President Mike Pence accompanied by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made a strategic visit, dripping off at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. Surrounded by children from so-called “choice” schools the pair, DeVos first and Pence second lauded the program where it all started some 30 years ago. Being the designated “school choice” week, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, and intentional, in targeting a key state for the upcoming presidential election. A state, to be certain, run in the executive branch by a former state superintendent of the schools, and now Governor Tony Evers.
I have a personal and professional insight into this story of “school choice” having written about my own educational and political journey (Oxford Roundtable) and participation in a documentary to expose this program as a fraud. Several recent events have coalesced around the issue that make the writing of this essay timely, and necessary.
The first is a lawsuit launched in Montana which if successful opens up the chicken house to foxes, or edupreneurs as I call them. To hear the story from the so-called school choice side, as described in the Kenosha News, advocates for a publicly funded, thorough and efficient system are somehow violating families and children’s religious freedom.
The second is desire by the Republican-led legislature to expand the Wisconsin Choice program by making an appeal to families and children, two groups essentially: one that is low SES, often minority families whom have not had the $ to move to an imagined better school; the other are middle class parents whose kids are in private schools and are seeking property tax relief.
This relates directly to the third condition, a response to the skimming from the general fund and the short changing of public school kids. In a nutshell some 330 million has left the general fund and gone over to private schools. This in accurate language is public taxpayers subsidizing private schools, often religious ones. A bill was released today, after the high profile pitch by Pence, DeVos and state Republicans to provide so-called choices for private school parents, that aims to finally sunset this bad faith experiment, with real investments in kids in public schools and valuable programs such as SAGE which aim to reduce class sizes, so that teachers can teach effectively to the kids in their classrooms.
From my 30 years as an educational researcher, public education advocate, and parent of two children receiving an excellent education in neighborhood schools, it is well past time that we stop siphoning off money that is sorely needed to support the one system that is capable of meeting the needs of all kids, that is the public taxpayer supported system of public schools.
And this is the reason, among others reasons including how myself and my own family have benefited so much from the great teachers in our public schools, why I feel so passionate about public education and have stepped up to the plate to run for the Kenosha Unified School District School Board.
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