School Choice is Good For America; round 4

[Muda69]

Elementary Schools Ban Tag, Football, and Fun During Recess

https://reason.com/2024/05/29/elementary-schools-ban-tag-football-and-fun-during-recess/

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A mom recently went to her daughter's Maryland elementary school to ask why the kids aren't allowed to play tag at recess—or even to close their eyes.

"We'd recently transferred from another district and my daughter was taken aback by how many rules there were," said the mom, whose name is being kept private to protect her identity.

There are indeed a lot of rules at the girl's new school—four typed pages of them. The mom found this out after the school administrator handed her a copy of the "Montgomery County Public Schools Playground Supervision Recess Procedures for Playground Aides." It states, among other things: 

• Baseball and football games are not permitted at any time.
• Haphazard running, chasing and tag games on the blacktop are not permitted.
• A student may not begin to swing on rings and bars until the student ahead of him/her has finished.

Once they do swing or climb, they must use an "opposed thumb grip." (As opposed to their teeth?)

The rules also instruct playground aides to "caution children if it appears that emotions and excitement are mounting to a point where incorrect actions may soon result."

After the mom sent me the rules, I contacted the Montgomery County office in charge of recess safety. They did not respond.

 

"It really feels as though maybe we've lost touch with what's developmentally appropriate," the mom told me.

An administrator who met with the mom explained that the school's primary job is to keep children safe at all times. The mom disagrees; a school's primary job is to teach children and avoid interfering with their development.

Boston College Psychology Professor Peter Gray feels similarly.

"These rules demonstrate no trust at all of the children, nor even of the playground supervisors," says Gray, a co-founder of my non-profit, Let Grow. "When we treat people as irresponsible, they become irresponsible."

The mom said she felt a bit sorry for the administrator, who had no say in these rules. (Just like the kids.) And she added that today's children really do seem a little rough when they play tag—probably because they've had so little practice at it.

I have heard this from other people who work with children, especially occupational therapist Angela Hanscom, who notes that when kids don't move enough, they fail to develop proprioception, the ability to know where their body is in space and how much force it needs to do something physical.

All the more reason to let kids start adjusting to each other in the easiest, most natural way possible: through play.

In his new book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt recommends bringing more play into kids' lives by keeping Friday afternoons free so kids can play in the neighborhood. He also recommends that schools stay open before or after school for mixed-age free play in a no-phone zone: what we call a "Let Grow Play Club." (Haidt is another co-founder of Let Grow. Our Play Club materials are here, for free.)

Depriving kids of play in the name of safety is dangerous. Even more dangerous than two kids using the climbing rings at once.

Dangerous indeed.  

[swordfish]

[Robert]

On 5/29/2024 at 7:39 PM, Muda69 said:

I expect you have researched the history of government primary and secondary education in this country?  It wasn't to turn out a populace of Rhodes scholars and Nobel laureates, but a willing,  malleable workforce.   Nothing has really changed, regardless of what side of the uni-party was running the Indiana department of education.

 

I understand the history.  It certainly has changed a lot in the last 20 years.  It used to be get everyone prepared for post high school education.  When factory owners and other business owners get into power, they need workers, yes. 

[Muda69]

4 hours ago, Robert said:

I understand the history.  It certainly has changed a lot in the last 20 years.  It used to be get everyone prepared for post high school education.  When factory owners and other business owners get into power, they need workers, yes. 

Do you count trade schools and apprenticeships in fields such a electrical, plumbing, carpentry, HVAC, automobile technicians, etc.  as "post high school education"?

 

[Robert]

19 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Do you count trade schools and apprenticeships in fields such a electrical, plumbing, carpentry, HVAC, automobile technicians, etc.  as "post high school education"?

 

I most certainly do and we always did at the schools I taught at.  When I work my summer factory jobs, I think about how a robot or an ape could do it.  🙂

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, Robert said:

I most certainly do and we always did at the schools I taught at. 

So how much are these other types of a post high school education stressed in today's government high school system? Are they given equal footing to a 4-year college education?

 

[Robert]

On 6/6/2024 at 4:58 PM, Robert said:

I most certainly do and we always did at the schools I taught at.  When I work my summer factory jobs, I think about how a robot or an ape could do it.  🙂

Of course, Gonzoron, I'm not talking about the skilled labor parts, just the standing there all day listening to music putting things into boxes or swiping my fingers across sensors after I pull a part out, place it on a belt, and put another part in.  

On 6/6/2024 at 6:51 PM, Muda69 said:

So how much are these other types of a post high school education stressed in today's government high school system? Are they given equal footing to a 4-year college education?

 

It really depends on the school and what is going on there.  My school now has a good mix.  

[Muda69]

Nearly 1 in 5 Indiana students don’t attend their home school district. Here’s the impact of school choice: https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/indiana-school-choice-analysis-public-private-transfer-1-in-5-students-home-district?emci=1c39e1b6-982d-ef11-86d2-6045bdd9e096&emdi=ed4b483f-2f2e-ef11-86d2-6045bdd9e096&ceid=577105

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School choice has never been more popular in Indiana. Parents and caregivers have more access and options than ever to pick what they believe is the best learning environment for their children.

A WFYI analysis of education data found nearly 1 in 5 students attend a school other than their home district — either a private school with aid from a state voucher, a public charter school or a district other than the one in which they live. That’s up from about 1 in 13 a decade earlier.

This freedom to choose creates vigorous competition for students and winners and losers among traditional public school districts. In a state where school funding follows the student, losing even one to another school district, charter school, or private school can result in financial losses for the home district. 

The analysis reveals roughly two-thirds of Indiana’s 290 districts had an overall enrollment loss in the just completed academic year due to school choice policies. The primary cause is a student transferring from one public school district to another district. Of the top 20 districts losing students, just one was more impacted by families using a voucher to attend private parochial or non-religious schools even as the Choice Scholarship Program reached an historic level this year.

The WFYI analysis of the 2023-2024 academic year also found:

• Fewer students used a publicly-funded voucher to attend private parochial or non-religious schools compared to a public option. Just 76 public districts, or 26.2 percent, lost more students to private schools than they gained or lost from transfers.
• 111 public districts, or 38.3 percent, lost more students than they gained to a combination of other districts and charter schools.
• 103 public districts, or 35.5 percent, gained more students who transferred from other districts compared to the students lost to all choice options combined.
• Districts with overall enrollment loss due to choice had a higher average percentage of students of color and students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch than districts that gained enrollment from choice.

These shifts in how parents choose to educate their children are the result of more than 20 years of Indiana policies expanding school options beyond a family's neighborhood school. Republican lawmakers have supported proponents' reasoning that families should educate their children how they want with the support of state funding. Opponents continue to question the equitable access in school choice and the financial and academic impacts on traditional schools and students.

The data analysis examined state enrollment data and transfer data by sorting schools into different types of impact based on choice participation and student body demographics. It also examined annual voucher reports and state budget data to see how private vouchers impacted public districts’ finances. Financial data for student transfers between public schools was not available.

The financial impact

The analysis found 187 districts suffered overall enrollment losses to choice even if they gained enrollment from students choosing to transfer into the district. Because the state funds schools on a per-student basis, it's possible each of these districts lost some amount of funding from its education fund. 

The education fund is state appropriated money used to pay for classroom expenses, such as salaries for teachers, certain staff and academic programs.

Of these districts, 14 lost more than 10 percent of their education fund to vouchers alone, according to an analysis of voucher and district budget data. The average loss among these districts was $12.7 million, or 13.4 percent. 

The state does not publish corresponding financial data for students who enroll at a public school that is not in their home boundary. 

South Bend Community Schools is the district most financially impacted by vouchers, according to the financial analysis, with voucher loss representing 27.6 percent of its education fund. But choice policies affect its enrollment almost equally: 21.6 percent of students transfer to other districts and 19.1 percent leave for private schools. Overall, nearly 41 percent of the 23,259 students who live in the city enrolled in private schools or attended separate districts, including more than 1,000 who enrolled at Penn-Harris-Madison Schools.

South Bend’s school board voted to close three schools in 2017 and two elementary schools in 2021 due to declining enrollment. This year, another elementary school and a high school closed. The district’s consolidation plan also called for merging other schools to save money.

“As enrollment declines, you have to continually assess your school buildings… your staffing, and adjust accordingly,” said Rafi Nolan-Abrahamian, an assistant superintendent and chief of staff involved in strategic planning for the district.

But not all public school districts have seen negative impacts. About a third of all districts gain enrollment. Fifty-one districts — or over a sixth of all districts — saw an increase of enrollment by over 10 percent. 

Students participating in choice often transferred from their home district to another public school district for some perceived benefit, such as better academics, extracurricular activities, or practical concerns like distance, according to the WFYI interviews with policy experts, school leaders and parents.

Seven districts have more than half of their student body enrolled from out-of-district.

Tri-Central Community Schools is a rural district between Kokomo and Tipton. With only two schools and over 600 students, it gains nearly 20 percent of enrollment through transfers from other public districts. Most of these students come from three nearby districts, including Kokomo.  

The 103 districts with positive enrollment impacts gained an average of 40.2 percent of all students residing in-district. That’s in contrast to the average loss of 11.7 percent in schools negatively impacted by all forms of choice.

School districts are not required to accept out of district students for enrollment and some districts do not allow it.

In my neck of the woods the Community Schools of Frankfort has lost almost 14% of it's students, most of them probably going to Clinton Prairie and Rossville:

Love that 99.6% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunches, btw.   Clinton Central school corp. has several billboards up around Frankfort, advertising it's services to potential transfers.  And CC will also currently send a bus to Frankfort for pickups and drop offs.    That has to cost some $.

 

[Muda69]

Tennessee School Expels 10-Year-Old for Making a Finger Gun: https://reason.com/2024/08/27/tennessee-school-expels-10-year-old-for-making-a-finger-gun/

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A Tennessee 10-year-old was expelled from school for a full year after he pointed his finger in the shape of a gun and made mock "machine gun" noises, according to a ProPublica investigation. 

The boy was expelled as part of a "zero tolerance" law in Tennessee that mandates any student who makes a threat of "mass violence" be expelled for at least one year. While the law, originally signed in 2023—following a shooting by a former student at a private school in Nashville—was recently amended to direct schools to expel students only for "valid" threats, the provisions of the law are still vague, and schools have considerable enforcement leeway.

In the process, expulsions for threats have considerably increased in many school districts. ProPublica reported that during the 2023–24 school year, Metro Nashville public schools expelled 42 students for making any threats, including 16 threats of mass violence. The prior year, only 22 students were expelled, despite the district investigating a similar number of alleged threats. 

Another school district reported expelling 33 students for making threats in the 2023–24 school year—including a whopping 27 for mass violence threats. The year before, the district had more alleged "incidents," but only six students were expelled for making threats. When asked by ProPublica to explain the increase in expulsions, a school district spokesperson cited a change in state law "that required expulsions for mass threats."

A lengthy suspension is incredibly disruptive to a student's education. Expelled students are frequently forced to learn through ineffective online programs or sent to alternative schools, if they can even find schooling at all. While these requirements might make sense for a student who is a genuine danger to others, Tennessee's law has ended up punishing students who were clearly making jokes rather than serious expressions of violent intent.

For example, one high school student who was "known as a class clown" made "an offhand joke about committing an act of violence" last school year, according to ProPublica's report. "Rumors spread among the students about his comment, warping it in the process. He was called to the principal's office, where a waiting police officer asked whether he had a gun in his backpack. He showed them that he didn't and insisted that he had just been making a joke….School officials initiated a threat assessment and gathered statements from the students who heard the joke, which were then used as evidence against him. He was expelled for a year."

In the case of the 10-year-old featured by ProPublica, his mother decided to homeschool him rather than appeal the expulsion. Her son, who was already struggling in school, had further challenges at home. "It is pulling teeth every single day," the boy's mother told ProPublica.

In an attempt to prevent mass shootings and other acts of violence, lawmakers have enacted a law that has ended up punishing students who did nothing truly threatening. The state has embraced panic and gone after finger guns. 

Wow. I remember as a child running around on the school playground with my friends playing "war".  We either used finger guns or maybe a stick of some kind.  As far as I know none of us ever perpetrated acts of mass violence against the school.   But in today's age we would have been thrown out of school and our parents probably referred to CPS.  Talk about government indoctrination and the repression of imagination............

 

[swordfish]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Tennessee School Expels 10-Year-Old for Making a Finger Gun: https://reason.com/2024/08/27/tennessee-school-expels-10-year-old-for-making-a-finger-gun/

Wow. I remember as a child running around on the school playground with my friends playing "war".  We either used finger guns or maybe a stick of some kind.  As far as I know none of us ever perpetrated acts of mass violence against the school.   But in today's age we would have been thrown out of school and our parents probably referred to CPS.  Talk about government indoctrination and the repression of imagination............

 

The days of our childhood where we played "Cowboys and Indians" with Lone Ranger and Tonto toys, or pretended the bad guys were Germans or Japanese with our GI Joe figures, or played with our toy guns and bow and arrows are now so taboo, I'd be afraid to bring the topic up......I still have a set of Lawn Jarts in the attic that I would love to have one of my neighbors melt down over if I were to pull them out and toss them around the yard.  Bummer is my Grandfather was really good at Lawn Jarts.

[Muda69]

2 hours ago, swordfish said:

The days of our childhood where we played "Cowboys and Indians" with Lone Ranger and Tonto toys, or pretended the bad guys were Germans or Japanese with our GI Joe figures, or played with our toy guns and bow and arrows are now so taboo, I'd be afraid to bring the topic up......I still have a set of Lawn Jarts in the attic that I would love to have one of my neighbors melt down over if I were to pull them out and toss them around the yard.  Bummer is my Grandfather was really good at Lawn Jarts.

You'll put your eye out, kid.  🙂

[Muda69]

https://reason.com/2024/09/06/we-have-already-passed-peak-public-school/

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As back-to-school week wheezes into gear for the nation's 54 million or so children between the ages of five and 17, a startling, post-COVID reality is becoming more apparent, even if the implications are still too big to process. It is this: Though the U.S. population continues to grow, the number of kids attending public K-12 schools will likely never again reach its 2019 peak.

The rise of homeschooling—from around 2.8 percent of the school-aged population pre-pandemic to around 5.8 percent now (reliable statistics are hard to come by)—is a chief contributor to that decline, along with ever-decreasing birth rates. Between fall of 2019 and fall of 2030, the National Center for Public Education Statistics (NCES) projected this past February, public school enrollment will decrease by 7 percent, from 50.8 million to 47.3 million.

So surely government spending on those schools, which typically amounts to around 20 percent of state/local budgets, will decrease too, right? Ha ha, no.

The NCES estimates that taxpayer expenditures on K-12 schools will tick up slightly from $693 billion in 2018-19 (using constant 2021 dollars) to $698 billion in 2030-31. Per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, will therefore continue its long-term trend of increasing, from $13,700 to $14,800.

The reality is even less fiscally sane than those numbers suggest. First of all, the NCES did not factor into its projections the direct federal injection of $200 billion worth of federal COVID-relief money—$69 billion in two 2020 bills, $130 billion in the American Rescue Plan (ARP)—nor the indirect $350 billion ARP bailout for states to plug whatever budget holes they wished. This taxpayer blowout, extracted with strategic intentionality by the same Democratic Party-supporting teachers unions that kept schools closed in America much longer than those in most other countries, produced the largest one-year per-pupil spending hike in two decades.

So: Taxpayers are paying more money for a service they use less, even without calculating the COVID-19 spending/shutdown debacle. (Reminder: The New York Times concluded in an analysis this March that "extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.") Yet still the picture looks worse when viewed in light of the still-dominant operating model for these flagging institutions.

That's because the number of kids attending charter schools—"public" in name, but managed by private entities rather than government—has more than doubled since 2010-11, from 1.8 million to 3.7 million in 2021-22. This is despite Democratic politicians, from the president on down, seeking in recent years to restrict charters' proliferation and even roll them back.

Families, it turns out, have been fleeing government-managed schools since long before COVID-19.

"If you subtract the charter school students," former Houston Chronicle columnist Bill King observed in a trenchant analysis last week, "enrollment in traditional public schools peaked in 2012 and has since declined by 5%."

That decline is almost guaranteed to accelerate. In the past three years, spurred on by the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Carson v. Makin, a dozen states have adopted something close to universal school choice for K-12, allowing taxpayer money to flow into private institutions. More states, including the giant prize of Texas, look likely to join.

It is notable that all of these school-choice states are run by Republicans, just as all of the biggest school-lockdown states were run by Democrats. Education policy has become so polarized as to be unrecognizable from even a dozen years ago.

Back then, President Barack Obama, with his pro-charters education secretary Arne Duncan and their "Race to the Top" initiative, talked enough about introducing competition and firing bad teachers that New York Times columnist David Brooks (prematurely) called him "the most determined education reformer in the modern presidency."

That past is a different planet. Now, hating on charter schools (except when relying on them to do the things your one-size-fits-all system cannot) is an opening bid for national Democratic ambitions, the current president is literally in bed with the teachers unions, and the 2024 party platform states flatly that: "We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education."

The Republican platform, meanwhile, supports universal school choice in every state, expanding 529 Education Savings Accounts, and closing down the Department of Education.

What are teachers unions getting for their 99 percent-plus political-donation spending on Democrats? On the local level, Democratic-dominated polities like the state of New York are still pushing through mandatory class-size reductions, which—surprise!—requires hiring more teachers even as the student population declines. And certainly, muscle-flexing groups like the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) will find it advantageous in contract negotiations to be bargaining with a former CTU lobbyist they helped elect.

There is still loose change to be found in the national couch cushions as well. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) have been among the loudest voices pushing the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris administration to wipe out student loans, an effort that has produced a dedicated Teacher Loan Forgiveness program. They still want federal action to loosen testing requirements, strengthen union organizing, and enact a Paraprofessionals and School-Related Personnel Bill of Rights.

An underrated instance of recent teachers-union muscle-flexing on the Democratic Party was Harris's selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her vice presidential running mate over the onetime heavily favored Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Walz, a former teacher, was a dues-paying member of both the AFT and NEA, and as governor opposed school choice and favored extended school lockdowns. Shapiro, unforgivably, has supported school vouchers.

So complete has been the teachers union dominance of the Democratic Party that The Nation this week published what amounted to a victory lap. "After decades of serving as a punching bag for the party's neoliberals," the progressive magazine declared in the subhed, "public schools and the people who work in them are back in fashion."

Well, except among their customers. No amount of political backslapping and Democratic influence-buying can overcome the cruelty of math. When public school buildings become too empty, they have to shut down. When the federal spigot runs dry—as it was supposed to this month, though some drops will stick around until next year—state and local governments will be gazing out over a fiscal cliff.

"Throughout the country some of the largest enrollment declines have come in districts that embraced remote learning," reporter Alec MacGillis wrote in a deep-dive ProPublica piece about school closings last month. "In these places, a stark reality now looms: schools have far more space than they need, with higher costs for heating and cooling, building upkeep and staffing than their enrollment justifies."

Public schools had just one job, and they screwed it up. Just wait until all taxpayers—not just the defecting families—begin to notice.

It's being noticed here in Indiana.

 

[Muda69]

States Are Trying To Force the Bible Into the Classroom: https://reason.com/2024/09/19/battle-of-the-bible-bills/

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In June, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed a bill mandating that all public school classrooms display a poster of the Ten Commandments. Just over a week later, Oklahoma's State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters declared that "every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom," later telling PBS News Hour, "the separation of church and state appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution."

Since 2023, four states have attempted to mandate or are considering legislation mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Arizona legislators actually passed a Ten Commandments mandate, but Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs ultimately vetoed the bill. In Utah, lawmakers passed a watered-down version of a bill that originally mandated classroom posters of the Ten Commandments but by the time it became law in March instead required the text be incorporated in classroom instruction.

Many critics insist that mandates forcing schools to display the Ten Commandments or teach from the Bible are obviously unconstitutional attempts to put religious instruction in public schools. Louisiana's "law violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and long standing Supreme Court precedent," says Heather Weaver, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. "The separation of church and state means that the government can't use our public schools to religiously indoctrinate or convert students."

In July, a group of parents sued Louisiana, arguing that its law violates their own and their children's First Amendment rights. The law "unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state's favored religious scripture," their suit reads. "It substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children's religious education and upbringing."

But many lawmakers don't seem concerned about potential legal challenges.

"Look, there are people that don't believe in our Constitution and we can post that on the walls," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told Newsmax in June. "This is a document that has historical roots in our country's foundations. The United States Supreme Court has recognized that."

"If we get sued and we get challenged, we will be victorious," Walters told PBS News Hour. "The Supreme Court justices [Donald Trump] appointed actually are originalists that look at the Constitution and not what some left-wing professor said about the Constitution."

Why are so many states attempting to infuse religious texts into the classroom?

The most obvious reason is that the Ten Commandments have become yet another front in our never-ending education culture war. As public schools in some blue states have come under fire for pushing progressive politics in the classroom, some Republican politicians seem to be attempting to squeeze in some ideological indoctrination of their own. The debate around Louisiana's bill, for example, was dominated by lawmakers who insisted that a Ten Commandments mandate would make children behave better and in accordance with Christian values.

"I really believe that we are lacking in direction. A lot of people, their children, are not attending churches or whatever," said state Rep. Sylvia Taylor (D–LaPlace), a co-author and co-sponsor of the Louisiana bill, debating in its favor. "We need to do something in the schools to bring people back to where they need to be."

It's hard not to view these bills and directives as pure political theater.

Even if a bill mandating that schools display the Ten Commandments gets struck down, legislators supporting the bill still get to tout their record as strident Christian conservatives. In Oklahoma the memo following Walters' announcement bore little resemblance to his original statement. It stated that the Bible and the Ten Commandments would be "referenced as an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like"—a directive much more likely to pass constitutional muster. Formal guidance released in July inched closer to the line, adding a requirement that every classroom be provided with a Bible, along with directives that students be taught skills like literary analysis using Bible stories as examples.

For now, a federal judge will decide whether Louisiana's Ten Commandments mandate can be enforced.

"Hundreds of thousands of kids are going to be required to see these displays every day in every classroom," Weaver says. "This is an obvious attempt to use our public schools to convert kids to Christianity. We live in a democracy, not a theocracy."

 

[Muda69]

School curricula to stay hidden from parents, high court rules: https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/news/school-curricula-to-stay-hidden-from-parents-high-court-rules?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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Michigan parents can’t request some school curricula under public record acts after the Michigan Supreme Court chose not to hear an appeal from a lower court.

On Sept. 25, the state’s top court denied an appeal filed by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy on behalf of a Rochester parent who requested the curriculum for a class held in the Rochester Public Schools district.

Through the state’s Freedom of Information Act, Carol Beth Litkouhi in 2022 sought course materials for a high school class titled “A History of Ethnic and Gender Studies.”

Rochester Public Schools refused. The district argued that the law did not require it to provide records held by teachers.

“At the heart of my lawsuit was a simple but critical principle: Nothing taught in our schools should be under the cover of secrecy,” Litkouhi, who ran for and won a seat on the Rochester Community School District's Board of Education in November 2022, said in a statement. “If there is any reason why secrecy is desired or needed, that alone is a red flag. The Rochester School Board felt it best to keep classroom materials secret from parents. They took money away from classrooms to fight this fight. Sadly, they have now succeeded in setting a new, disturbing legal precedent.”

In February, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the school district, stating that only records possessed by a public body itself — not its employees — are subject to FOIA. This decision will restrict the information available to taxpayers.

“This isn’t just about a single class in one school district,” said Steve Delie, director of transparency and open government at the Mackinac Center. “The implications of this decision are enormous. It means that records held by local government employees across the state — whether they be teachers, police officers or township workers — are likely exempt from public disclosure, making it much harder for citizens to hold their local governments accountable.”

Lawmakers can change the law to define local government employees as public bodies. Rep. Mark Tisdel, R-Rochester Hills, introduced House Bill 4220 in May 2023, which would make the work product of employees, contractors, and volunteers of a public body subject to FOIA within the scope of the person’s duties to that public body.

“If the work product of a public employee is paid for by taxpayer dollars, taxpayers have a right to see it,” Tisdel said in a phone interview with Michigan Capitol Confidential.

The bill was referred to the Committee on Judiciary last year.

Let's hope the Michigan legislature sets this indeed disturbing legal precedent right.  

I wonder if this is also currently the same here in Indiana.  Are local government employees defined as "public bodies"?

 

[Muda69]

Mute Buttons: Two Ways the School Complex Muzzles Parents and Students: https://mises.org/mises-wire/mute-buttons-two-ways-school-complex-muzzles-parents-and-students

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I was asked the other day why parents and students do not have more say in their education in the government system, and my reply was simply “because that is the goal.” Specifically, the system exists to perpetuate itself and to propagandize large numbers of children each year so that they believe and pass on to their children the myths that permit government predation. In order to do so, the system and those in it must quash individuality of any significant form and foster a process that is labyrinthine, at best, and impossible, at worst, for making even picayune changes therein.

Over time, this system has expanded to include more than 80% of all children in the United States, 3.2 million teachers, 97,568 schools, an average of over 500 students per school, and nearly $1 trillion in tax funds each year. Consequently, a behemoth such as the one that has metastasized in this country has innumerable ways to muzzle both parents and students, but two primary methods ensure compliance and uniformity in the system and its graduates—compulsion and bureaucracy.

Compulsion: Papers (and Dollars), Please

Compulsion in government schools takes two interdependent and equally sinister forms—compulsory attendance laws and compulsory funding.

By 1917, every state had enacted compulsory school attendance for children through the age of 16 or 18, depending on the state. Such compulsory school laws mean, in practice, children are forced into their local government schools by default unless their parents or guardians opt out by completing the steps required by the state. Thus, parents and students are at the mercy of the state from the outset.

Such a system intrinsically inhibits parents’ rights and voices by obliging them to interact with the state to meet requirements and/or prove the validity of curricula. Although such permission takes different forms across the country, many states require some type of notification to the local school authorities, some form of education until a state-specified age, teaching of state-mandated subjects, administration of state testing, and even certain immunizations. Furthermore, such requirements can change at a politician’s whim, so the very existence of such laws is a lingering threat to parental and student choice and autonomy.

Correspondingly, hazardous to students’ and parents’ voices, is the second form of compulsion, namely, compulsory funding. Across the country, every property owner pays the majority of his or her property taxes towards the local school system, which is also buttressed by state and federal funds to greater or lesser degrees depending on the district. Regardless of one’s support or opposition to that district and regardless of one’s status as a parent or a childless individual, each person is required by force to support the local school system. This mandatory support now totals $18,614 per student, on average, as of 2021.

Perhaps more important than the actual amount of funding (which is certainly staggering), though, is that the compulsory aspect of that funding means that school boards and others in the system have little to no incentives to meet parents’ requests and students’ needs. As economics teaches us, monopolies inexorably lead to higher prices and lower quality because consumers have no other choices. When schools are compulsorily funded, they effectively become local monopolies because, even though there may be alternative options available to parents and students, the government schools still receive funding from everyone who lives in that area.

If I opt to enroll my child in a local microschool or perhaps to homeschool him or her, I am now responsible for paying for that education in addition to the property taxes that support the local school my child does not use. And lest people believe that vouchers and education savings accounts (ESAs) are the solution, recognize that such options still utilize tax dollars extracted from others and have led to no tangible decreases in government-school funding. For example, Arizona has a universal ESA program that grants approximately $7,000 per student (or even $30,000+ for students diagnosed with autism), but, per the Goldwater Institute that worked to implement the ESA program in Arizona, “state and local funding for public schools has increased substantially during the years in which the ESA program has operated, rising over $2,000 per student (20 percent) in inflation-adjusted terms since the program began.”

Thus, even when parents opt out of the government system and take their (and others’) money elsewhere, funding and the taxes that support it still increase, ensuring that those in charge of the government system have little need to address any real parent and student concerns since their gravy train will continue relentlessly.

Bureaucracy: Mo’ People, Mo’ Problems

Parents and students are effectively silenced and shunted aside by the ever-growing bureaucracy that thrives parasitically on the aforementioned compulsory elements of the system. As both the public and private spheres prove, larger entities tend to be more ossified and inflexible than do smaller organizations. Thus, in responding to market demands, smaller enterprises have the benefits of being able to respond more quickly and individualistically, on average, than larger entities can.

Such is the truth observed each day in the government school system, in which layer upon layer of bureaucracy ensures that few substantive changes actually occur, and that parental and student needs are rarely, if ever, addressed. For example, in the district in which I worked, we had the following levels of bureaucracy and decision-making—teachers, assistant department chairs, department chairs, curriculum/subject coordinators, assistant principals, principals, central office coordinators (HR, business department, etc.), assistant superintendents, superintendent, school board members.

Something as simple as swapping out a book in an English class might require approval of three or more of those levels and months or perhaps years of committee meetings, proposals, and revisions. (For those whose immediate reaction is positive to such a process because it may prevent material they do not like from entering the classroom, recognize that would not be a problem if it were simple and affordable to remove your children from a class or school in which such objectionable material was being used).

Moreover, curricula are designed and chosen by teachers, administrators, and state bureaucrats, so parents have little to no input. This bureaucratic process also ostracizes parents and students in that each decision will apply to hundreds or thousands of students, so no real opportunities exist for individualization—if a student wants to skip part of a curriculum, for instance, there is no mechanism to do so because everyone must learn the same material to get the same diploma.

As a personal example, in one instance, I learned of a computer-based vocabulary program that personalized instruction for each student from a shared list of several thousand words. I suggested piloting this program in lieu of the Sadlier-Oxford textbooks we then used for vocabulary instruction (consisting of 20 units of 20 words each), but I was not permitted to do so because not every teacher in my subject area and level across the two high schools would be using that program, so my students would have received a different “learning experience” than would their peers. This pilot program may have served students better or worse than the current program did, but students and parents never had the opportunity to make that choice for themselves. Ultimately, the bureaucracy intervened to ensure uniformity was maintained and customer (student and parent) feedback was avoided.

Conclusion

Contrast such a system described above with a private microschool with two adult guides and six to ten students, as is common to models such as Prenda. In this type of system, each student can work at his or her own pace using different curricula at different times and swapping them in and out as needed and as preferred. The adults and students can make changes to the daily schedule, rules, organization of the classroom, and myriad other aspects of the school and day immediately based on demonstrated student needs and parental feedback. Parents pay monthly tuition for such an educational environment they and their students willingly choose and value, and they stop paying and remove their children if that value vanishes.

This type of system and others like it in the burgeoning alternative-school movement (and especially in homeschooling environments) treat parent and student voices and needs as keystones, not afterthoughts or offal, because compulsion and bureaucracy are as foreign herein as are healthy lunches in government schools.

Thus, changes to government schooling cannot occur via school board candidates promising to end the “woke agenda” or teachers who offer students a choice of projects at the end of the required reading. Real change can only occur when compulsion and bureaucracy are extirpated from the system—something that is only possible by continuing to build and support better alternatives and by finding ways, via referenda and the like, to finally starve the present system of the coercive funding it needs to sustain itself.

 

[Muda69]

Indiana Considers Dissolving Public Schools

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2025/01/07/indiana-considers-dissolving-public-schools/

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Indiana Representative Jake Teshka’s official website lists his occupation as “Business Development Professional,” and his newly proposed bill would certainly call for charter school businesses to be developed in the state.

HB 1136 is simple in its objective; if more than 50% of eligible students are enrolled outside of the public schools, that public school district will be dissolved and replaced with a charter system governed by an unelected board.

 

The bill calls for that 50% count to be established as of fall 2024. Any district that falls under the bill would have to transition all schools to “operating as charter schools” by July 2028. Charter schools are privately owned and operated, but funded by public taxpayer dollars.

 

The school corporation central office must cease operating and would not be allowed to pass new taxes nor extend old ones.

The new board would be composed of seven members. Four would be appointed by the governor, one appointed by the mayor, one appointed by the “president of the fiscal body for the county, and one appointed by the executive director of the Indiana charter school board. None would be elected by taxpayers.

This new board would handle the dissolution of the old school corporation and “recruit high performing organizers to operate schools” as they are transitioned to charters. The board would also have the same “levying authority” as other school corporations in the state.

A statement from Teshka to WFYI said in part, “This bill would only apply to school districts where more than half of the students and families living within the school district's boundaries are choosing to attend other schools, meaning their property taxes are funding a school system they don’t attend.” Property taxes are, of course, also collected from taxpayers who are not sending any children to any schools at all.

The bill would affect five districts in the state, including Indianapolis Public Schools. Gary Community Schools, Tri-Township Consolidated Schools in LaPorte County, Union Schools southeast of Muncie, and Cannelton City Schools near the Kentucky border in Perry County would also be required to dissolve. The range of districts is large; Indianapolis covers almost 50,000 students, while Cannelton has just 256 students within its border.

The bill represents a more extreme version of previous state takeover of schools strategies. Takeovers have been attempted with little success. Ohio tried takeovers on a limited scale, while Tennessee created the Achievement School District in an ambitious, failed attempt to turn around the lowest performing schools. But this proposal to completely dissolve public school districts and their elected boards is a step further.

The success of such a plan would depend on several factors, especially finding charter operators who want to take on some of the districts’ most challenging schools. If the new charter board feels the need to attract charter operators with higher payouts, how will the public react to having their taxes raised by an unelected board? If a charter closes (a report from the Network for Public Education shows that 1 in 4 charter schools close within the first five years of operation), where do students go if there is no public system to which they can return?

Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans has been an example of a city using an all-charter system; this year the city started turning back to traditional district-operated public schools.

An interesting idea, but I don't like the idea of the governor's office basically taking over.   

[Robert]

On 1/8/2025 at 2:06 PM, Muda69 said:

Indiana Considers Dissolving Public Schools

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2025/01/07/indiana-considers-dissolving-public-schools/

An interesting idea, but I don't like the idea of the governor's office basically taking over.   

Mitch to Daniels to Pence damage...and now Braun is going to do some more damage.

[Muda69]

The Supreme Court Is About To Hear 2 Education Cases. Neither Goes Far Enough.

https://reason.com/2025/04/19/the-supreme-court-is-about-to-hear-2-education-cases-neither-goes-far-enough/

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Before the end of April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear not one, but two important education freedom cases. At stake in both is the ability of families to determine what children will learn.

Unfortunately, no matter how the cases are decided, neither will get us to where we ultimately need to be for a free and equal society: money following children to whatever education they and their families choose.

The first case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, is too narrow. Mahmoud pits parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, against a school district that prohibited them from opting their children out of readings promoting lifestyles at odds with their religious convictions.

School board member Lynne Harris unabashedly said imposition was necessary. "Saying that a kindergartener can't be present when you read a book about a rainbow unicorn because it offends your religious rights or your family values or your core beliefs is just telling that kid, 'Here's another reason to hate another person,'" Harris said, adding "we are not going to do that in the school system."

 

Government imposing the "right" morals is obviously at odds with a free, diverse society, and allowing for an opt-out is a no-brainer. But it is also just a bare minimum: Families would be able to shield their children from the imposition of values, but would still be given no power to choose a curriculum consistent with their religious convictions.

It is a Band-Aid on a liberty hemorrhage.

The second case, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, seeks to expand freedom and equality, not just provide basic choice against government imposition. But it still does not offer a solution.

St. Isidore is a Roman Catholic cyber charter school that received approval to operate from Oklahoma's state charter school board. However, the state's supreme court later overturned the approval because it is a religious school. Charter schools are, by law, public, but they are supposed to be free from many rules and regulations that govern traditional public schools. Because they are public schools, under the principle of separation of church and state, they have never been affiliated with any religion.

But there is a glaring problem with that: It discriminates on the basis of religion. It says a charter school can adopt any ethos it wants, as long as it is not a religious one. Citing precedent, the petitioners cite several recent Supreme Court decisions that find if a state runs a school choice program, it cannot exclude religious institutions.

It is a compelling argument, but the prior cases were about private choice—scholarship tax credit and town-tuitioning programs that empower families to make choices among autonomous private schools. Chartering is different, as it almost always involves a government entity—a school district or a state board—deciding whether to approve applications to create a school. This presents the danger that an authorizer might approve or disapprove a charter application based on the applicant's religious status. And even if religion did not play into the decision, suspicion that it did could spark an ugly church-state conflict.

 

This is a rock-and-a-hard-place situation for the Supreme Court: Rule against St. Isidore, and discrimination against religion wins. Rule for it, and dangerous government entanglement will ensue. 

Thankfully, there is a solution to both the discrimination and entanglement problems, and it can be seen in the precedents: money following children to private choices. If money follows kids to truly private schools that families choose, the government has no role at all in the decision and is therefore truly neutral.

This seems logically and constitutionally obvious. Government must not select religious viewpoints to uphold or advance, including secularism. But this is inherently the position in which public schooling puts government. Of course, educational freedom is bigger than religion—government should not be imposing one curriculum, or set of policies, on anyone. But religion, constitutionally, demands neutrality.

Letting families opt out of instruction that violates their religious values is better than no option, and allowing them to choose religious public schools is better than excluding religion. But only real choice among private educational options fully fits the freedom and equality bill.

 

[Sparty]

School choice is absolutely needed as long as all these private and charter schools play by the same exact rules as public schools. 

[Muda69]

12 hours ago, Sparty said:

School choice is absolutely needed as long as all these private and charter schools play by the same exact rules as public schools. 

Then so much for real school choice.

 

[Muda69]

The new reality in American education, from the educator side:

Never mind that most of the "work" turned in by the students was also AI generated, at least to some degree.