In the clip below, Jana and Robert talk about why this tax credit is so harmful to the freedom homeschooling families in Oklahoma enjoy now and have enjoyed since statehood – a greater level of freedom, in fact, than most, if not all states.
For those of you interested in helping Oklahoma homeschoolers get out of the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit, if you would like to sign a petition that will be taken and presented to lawmakers next session, please reach out to Andrea Scott on Facebook. The petition has to be signed in person, so she – or another volunteer – will have to meet you to sign it.
You can also visit the Oklahoma Coalition To Protect Constitutional Homeschooling on Facebook as well. There, you can get more information on this effort and get plugged into the community of homeschoolers who want to protect Oklahoma’s history of ZERO regulation for Oklahoma homeschoolers.
File under ROPEtoldyaso. In fact, thanks to this, ROPE and homeschoolers across Oklahoma will take the prize for “prophets of the year” already for 2024.
Yesterday, Oklahoma’s Channel 9, interviewed Representative Jacob Rosecrants who had the following to say about Oklahoma’s Parental Tax Credit for private school tuition.
Woah… Weird… Sounds exactly like what we’ve been saying could happen since nearly the beginning of the “Parental Choice” movement, right?
Yes. All one has to do is search this site to find out how many articles have been devoted to attempting to educate people about this specific issue.
“But Jenni, Rosecrants is a DEMOCRAT! This will NEVER happen here!”
Well picture me as Santa Clause in this quote from the movie Elf:
I’ve watched the legislature for nearly 15 years now and I’ve seen Republicans do some super UNRepublican stuff – the biggest example here being jumping on the Common Core bandwagon, where a majority of Oklahoma Republicans wanted a national curricula for Oklahoma kids until we began going to them individually with facts that showed how harmful such a program would be (and now we know – for the states who used it – how harmful it was).
In fact, one would have HOPED that Republicans – people whose platform indicates them to be bastions of smaller government and private enterprise over public control – would have spotted the whole tax credit/VOUCHER scheme from a mile off. Yet, how can we forget that there wasn’t a single Republican lawmaker who voted AGAINST the tax credit/VOUCHER – scheme last session. Not one. Here are the votes for the HOUSE. Here are the votes for the Senate so you can check me up on that.
So ask yourself…how did not a single Republican Senator or House member think it wouldn’t be problematic to give private schools public tax dollars?
Frankly, that’s a great question, and if we can’t answer that question, how in the world could we trust our legislature not to simply double-down on the whole thing and then turn around and tell us it’s a good thing – which is what they did with the tax credit/VOUCHER scheme in the first place.
“This is a tax credit, not a voucher”, they said.
“This is to help underserved/underrepresented kids”, they said.
Already, however – not even two months into the program – nearly every Republican talking point for the program has been debunked.
In this video, I make the point that out of the 4 income categories proposed for the “tax credit”, only the upper two income categories are a true tax credit – and that’s only for one child – the lower 2 income categories are 100% VOUCHERS. So it’s just a boldfaced lie to have sold the program as a tax credit right there. Why were none of the Republicans crunching the numbers to find this out for themselves? This was easy info to find.
Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act (OPCTCA)
Then we have the idea that it’s to help disadvantaged kids/families.
The Tax Commission has received more than 30,000 applications for the tax credits approved by the GOP-led Oklahoma Legislature last year. About 45% are from priority applicants and 55% are from families earning more than $150,000 annually, Haxton said.
So, there you go. If you have a household income of $150k and you can’t put your own kids in private schools, OTHER PEOPLE SHOULDN’T BE SENDING YOUR KIDS TO PRIVATE SCHOOL FOR YOU. That’s 100% socialism – especially when I just showed that you don’t even get ONE KID as a tax credit at that level. Our household is near that income level and we had one kid at Oklahoma Christian School for two years, scrimping and saving and homeschooling the others. Why should I pay for YOUR kid when you didn’t pay for mine?
Meanwhile, back in Arizona, School Choice Inc’s MODEL for school ‘choice’ legislation – including full universal vouchers like Oklahoma’s Governor signed into law just last year – Democrat Governor “Katie Hobbs unveils plan to rein in Arizona school voucher program“. Yup, regulation of private schools on even a WORSE level than Rep. Jacob Rosecrants has suggested, including the following:
A requirement that private schools provide the accommodations and services in a disabled student’s Individualized Learning Plan or Section 504 Plan.
Require manual approval of any ESA purchase over $500. That should ensure the taxpayer dollars that fund ESAs are spent on academic purposes, Hobbs said. She also called for an end to ESA awards for items such as ski passes and luxury car driving lessons, although it’s unclear how those “luxury” items would be defined.
Give the state Auditor General authority to review and report on how ESA money is spent by private schools. This is a standard practice for Arizona’s public schools.
So, how in the world did a REAL threat that private schools be regulated for purposes of accountability and essentially turned into public schools over a tax credit bill rear its ugly head? How does this happen in Oklahoma? Aren’t we smarter than that?
Whelp…NO. According to EdWeek, Oklahoma was 49th in education in 2021. So, maybe we aught to be putting more effort into MAKING public schools actually educate kids instead of growing government to the point that it becomes the blob that ate private schools.
For years, ROPE has been fighting ‘city hall’ all for a parent’s right to educate their child the way they wanted without interference from the government. Unfortunately, our advocacy for educational self-reliance appears to go out the window when money comes into the picture as we watched over 30,000 parents line up to take money from the government for their child’s education while waving the banner of “it’s my money”.
Early on in the push to get universal school choice in Oklahoma, ROPE sounded the call: 1. Once tax dollars are removed from you (by force) by a government, they are no longer YOUR dollars, they are the state’s dollars. They are not earmarked as Jane’s dollars, or Sam’s dollars – all dollars go into a pot to be divided up among government agencies and programs to be used the way the government sees fit – often, giving tax dollars away to businesses to make it desirous for them to do business in the state. 2. If the state gives private schools tax dollars, those private schools become public schools. Alex Newman, an excellent education researcher and a recent guest on our podcast explains:
LOTS of Christians have been pushing this program. “But, wait!”, we say; this will break the barrier of church and state, where the state will gain control private religious schools. It doesn’t matter, we’re told, THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE FAAAIIILLLLIIINNNGGGG, and the state will stop the program once public schools don’t have enough money to educate kids anymore (because the state has stopped, Medicare and Medicaid and Welfare….insert eyeroll). “But, wait!”, we say; once the state gives out money to a Christian school, they’ll be bound to give money to ANY SCHOOL THAT DECLARES A RELIGION, including Satanists. No, we’re told, the Satanists won’t come here and the state won’t let that happen.
We'll consider opening an alternative school if the courts uphold a flagrantly self-serving & uneducated, utterly unqualified & ignorant school board's vote to overturn the constitution. https://t.co/zOxEwj0fIE
Lucien Greaves is the Co-Founder and the Spokesperson for the Satanic Temple.
As of 12/10/23, I counted 174 registered schools – two of which are Muslim/Islamic.
So here’s the problem. Many people in Oklahoma identify as members of the Christian faith. Unfortunately, no matter how the ‘religion of peace’ likes to bill itself, Islam is not friendly to/toward Christians. In fact, Christianity Today marked the 50 countries where Christians were most persecuted in 2021 and says this:
Islamic oppression (29 countries): This is the main source of persecution that Christians face in more than half of the watchlist countries, including 5 of the 12 where Christian face “extreme” levels: Libya (No. 4), Pakistan (No. 5), Yemen (No. 7), Iran (No. 8), and Syria (No. 12). Most of the 29 are officially Muslim nations or have Muslim majorities; however, 7 actually have Christian majorities: Nigeria (No. 9), Central African Republic (No. 35), Ethiopia (No. 36), Democratic Republic of Congo (No. 40), Cameroon (No. 42), Mozambique (No. 45), and Kenya (No. 49).
In Saudi Arabia, the report says, school textbooks “teach pupils religious hatred and intolerance towards non-Muslims, including Christians and Jews”.
The website Jihad Watch, documents what the Quran says about Christians throughout its many articles. Here is but one paragraph:
A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law endorsed by the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, says that the leader of the Muslims “makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax,” and cites Qur’an 9:29 in support of this idea: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden-who do not practice the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book-until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled.” (‘Umdat al-Salik o9.8)
Why should ANY taxpaying Oklahoma Christian be alright with their tax dollars funding an Islamic school in Oklahoma?
Look, I don’t care who you worship, or marry, or anything else you do, frankly – unless you commandeer the government to force me to do it too – or spend my money on it. I’m certainly willing to live and let live, but I’m not okay with the government using state funds to support a school of people whose holy book tells them to fight Christians until we are humbled and become Muslim. This. Is. Not. Okay.
Additionally, we’re told that Oklahoma Public Schools are GOING WOKE and we HAVE to get kids into private education to SAVE them from the WOKENESS. Well guess what? Christian schools are going woke too.
In this article from Capstone Report, Analysis; WOKE Comes For Christian K-12 & Homeschools, the author points to the fact that the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) has “partner[ed] with UnifiEd to offer Christian schools resources on Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Reconciliation with focus on Multiculturalism”. From the article:
And multicultural is the goal of Dr. Strickland’s organization, according to the press release: “The majority of our resources are designed to assist leaders with the ongoing challenge of implementing a God-glorifying diversity strategy that fosters a multicultural environment.”
Interestingly, an unrecorded phone call on Tuesday, November 7th with Dave Bond of OCPA and Jennifer Carter of American Federation for Children – ostensibly to help private schools become registered as vendors for the tax credit – included OPSAC, the Oklahoma Private School Accrediting Commission which, itself does not accredit schools, but is an association of organizations that accredit Oklahoma private schools. OPSAC’s “Association” page lists ACSI – thus, ACSI accredits Oklahoma private schools.
Here’s some information from OPSAC’s webpage referencing accreditation of Oklahoma private schools:
An accrediting agency that requires schools to uphold standards comparable to State standards may apply to an agency for accreditation. These standards include, but are not limited to, consideration of the school’s goals and objectives; compliance with applicable state and federal statutes; effective governance and administration; the teaching of a balanced curriculum; implementation of personnel practices which ensure the hiring of qualified and degreed instructional leaders; and standards for student achievement.
WHAT? So, if Oklahoma accredited private schools – the ONLY ones that can register for the voucher/tax credit – have to comply with state and FEDERAL statutes (you know, like the ones that say that boys can use girls bathrooms), can someone please tell me how OKLAHOMA ACCREDITED PRIVATE SCHOOLS ARE ANY DIFFERENT THAN OKLAHOMA PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
In addition, at least one private school on those approved for enrollment, Mt. St. Mary’s, has/is suffered/suffering through a sex abuse scandal.
What is it going to take to wake up Oklahomans to the FACT that they’re being deluded into thinking – just like with Common Core – that taking money from some Oklahomans and giving it to others so their kids can go to a private school IS A VERY BAD THING? THIS?
The Satanic Temple has set up an altar at the Iowa State Capitol building…..
School choice. Parental choice. It sounds good. It looks good. But, is it really all that it is cracked up to be?
A new Oklahoma law, hailed by Governor Stitt as a major victory for parents and students in Oklahoma, is just about to move into action with the Tax Commission’s adoption of an emergency rule this week.
While the text of the bill originally failed and faltered, it was “saved” by some resourceful legislators, who simply gutted another bill, pasted in the language, and ran it through under a different number.
The new law does two things. First, it provides families that are not in the public school systems – either brick and mortar or virtual charter schools – with reimbursement for certain educational expenses. Public money, potentially millions of dollars out of the state budget, is promised to private schoolers and traditional homeschoolers, who up until now have been completely private and parent-directed.
Second, the new law lays the groundwork to gather a wealth of information about private schoolers and traditional homeschoolers alike. Previously private information will now be public information shared between government agencies.
The law is not simply about school choice or parental choice. The “parental choice” law results in government control and involvement. When eligible families seek reimbursement, they will be required to give information to receive public funds. Specifically, the reimbursement law necessitates that the Oklahoma Tax Commission analyze requests for certain reimbursement of fees, curriculum and other educational expenses and cross-reference requests with the Department of Education for validity. If the Tax Commission reviews the information and finds that money was handed out improperly, then the tax man will come back to families and “capture” what was lost. Further, the Department of Education is required to create an online platform for the exchange of information, ratings and reviews of educational providers. (Look out Amazon)
These rich sources of unnecessary and intrusive information-gathering could obviously be used by the state to paint a picture of the entire private and homeschool communities and would likely lay the groundwork for future regulation. Opting out would no longer be an option.
While private school and homeschool freedom has not been obliterated yet, the chain is now placed around educational liberty – just as a choke chain is put around an animal‘s neck – as a sign of warning and threat to obey.
When the government offers something “free,” it is never free. It appears that the chain may only grow tighter and tighter, until parents have no educational choices at all. The real losers will be the children.
Warning – homeschoolers and private schoolers. Look out for the knock on the door and the man on your porch, who says, “Hello, I am with the government, and I am here to help.”
The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act (OPCTCA) – HB1934 – directed the OTC to create/promulgate rules “to implement the provisions of the [Act]” (page 6 and page 8). To that end, the OTC has created rules and now has them open for public comment until 4:30pm on Thursday, October 12th of this year. The rules can be found here. The Oklahoma Statutes created from HB1934 can be found here.
Beginning Monday (10/2), I began to compare the rules to the bill. The rules cannot mirror the bill/statute word for word, because the OTC rules will include verbiage specific to the Act’s implementation. After speaking with Representative Sherrie Conley, I did learn, however, that the rules do have to mirror the legislative intent of the Act – the OTC couldn’t add things via the rules process that weren’t already specified by the Act or the intent of the Legislature in creating the Act. Consequently, I confined my review of the rules to that parameter.
Wednesday, October 4th on our ROPE Report LIVE podcast, I explained my findings – but also, the reasons ROPE cannot abide the Act in the first place. You can find a clip of this video on the front page of the website, but the FULL video can be found on YouTube and Rumble. I think it’s worth a watch for the topics covered.
WHAT CONCERNS DID I HAVE WITH THE RULES?
I really didn’t find any place that did not mirror the legislative intent of the Act. In other words, I couldn’t find any law making through the rules. I did, however, take issue with a couple things:
There are two versions of “Taxpayer” in the rules. One called “Taxpayer” that copies the definition from the Act, and another called “Oklahoma Taxpayer” that defines that OTC verbiage for a tax payer. These two should be combined because it is confusing to have two “Taxpayer” definitions.
Under the definition of “Eligible Student”, the OTC adds to the Act’s definition by including the words, “and is registered with the Oklahoma Tax Commission”. What? Why would a child under 18 be registered with the Tax Commission? Their taxpayer parents/guardians are registered, not the child. This designation needs to go in my opinion (IMO). I don’t even see how it’s helpful here and it makes me nervous because we ALREADY collect so much data on CHILDREN in Oklahoma.
Warrant. There are several problems here IMO.
The Act’s definition of “Warrant” says, “means an order for payment directing the State Treasurer to disburse funds to a designated payee. A warrant operates like a paper check.” (page 2 near the bottom of the page)
3D (top of page 5), says this, “Payment of the credit shall be made by the Tax Commission with an individual warrant made payable to the taxpayer and mailed to the private school where the eligible student is enrolled or expected to enroll. The taxpayer shall restrictively endorse the warrant to the private shcool for deposit into the account of the school, unless the tuition and fees for the eligible student have already been paid by the taxpayer.”
Why would the OTC send a paper check two places? Why does the school get it and the school ALSO get a warrant mailed to them? The taxpayer has to ‘restrictively’ (meaning they can’t endorse it for personal use – but then, how many people are going to have to be hired to check up on this?) endorse the check they receive to the school. Why doesn’t the parent just take the warrant to the school and not have the OTC issue two warrants?
This makes no sense IMO. In fact, the only reason I can see this ‘procedure’ being used is to make it seem as though the payment is coming from the family to the private school – which it is not. According to Forbes Oklahoma Income Tax Calculator, a married couple filing jointly have to make $180,000 before their Oklahoma income tax is $7500 (it’s $7,497) – the ‘reimbursement’ provided by the state for each child to go to private school. Therefore, the state pays the tuition to the private school for every child who applies for the ‘credit’ in a family that earns $180,000 or less.
Incidentally, a KOSU poll from last year found that voters oppose public money going to private schools – which is probably why House and Senate leadership (with cover provided by “school choice” groups Americans For Prosperity (AFP), OCPA and American Federation of Children) – lied to legislators and/or twisted arms to get them to agree that the Act was a ‘tax credit’.
Now, I could go more in depth about the OPCTCA here, but I did that in the video – and will continue to do it as time goes on with the vain hope that the people will see the errors in this idiodic scheme and tell the Legislature to do away with it because, in the long run, this WON’T help parents like the Legislature REDUCING OUR TAXES IN THE FIRST PLACE. The idea that the government overtaxes me and then wants to return money to me – most of it that it stole from OTHER PEOPLE to give me (redistribution of wealth) in the first place – is anathema because the government’s ‘gift’ gives it so much more control over me than if the taxes weren’t taken from me (by force) in the first place.
Believe me, as a Christian, I HATE being the one to stand up and say, “You can’t give my taxes to a private school”, but I’m only doing it because I firmly believe that this whole “school chioce” scheme is to make sure that the public money going to private schools will make private schools public so that NO PARENT HAS A CHOICE as to how their child/children is/are educated.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?
According to the OTC website, “Written comments will be accepted until 4:30 p.m. on October 12, 2023, at the Oklahoma Tax Commission, Oklahoma City, OK 73194, Attn: Lisa Haws, or by email to parentalchoice@tax.ok.gov.”
So, I’m sending an email to Lisa Haws that says,
Dear Ms. Haws,
Please consider the following comments regarding the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act rules:
There are two versions of “Taxpayer” in the rules. One called “Taxpayer” that copies the definition from the Act, and another called “Oklahoma Taxpayer” that defines that OTC verbiage for a tax payer. These two should be combined because it is confusing to have two “Taxpayer” definitions.
Under the definition of “Eligible Student“, the OTC adds to the Act’s definition by including the words, “and is registered with the Oklahoma Tax Commission”. Why would a child under 18 be registered with the Tax Commission? Their taxpayer parents/guardians are registered, not the child. This designation needs to go in my opinion (IMO). The designation of “taxpayer” already covers who pays taxes.
The Act’s definition of “Warrant” says, “means an order for payment directing the State Treasurer to disburse funds to a designated payee. A warrant operates like a paper check.” (page 2 near the bottom of the page)
3D (top of page 5), says this, “Payment of the credit shall be made by the Tax Commission with an individual warrant made payable to the taxpayer and mailed to the private school where the eligible student is enrolled or expected to enroll. The taxpayer shall restrictively endorse the warrant to the private shcool for deposit into the account of the school, unless the tuition and fees for the eligible student have already been paid by the taxpayer.”
Why would the OTC send a paper check two places? Why does the school get it and the school ALSO get a warrant mailed to them? The taxpayer has to ‘restrictively’ (meaning they can’t endorse it for personal use – but then, how many people are going to have to be hired to check up on this?) endorse the check they receive to the school. Why doesn’t the parent just take the warrant to the school and not have the OTC issue two warrants?
This makes no sense IMO. In fact, the only reason I can see this ‘procedure’ being used is to make it seem as though the payment is coming from the family to the private school – which it is not. According to Forbes Oklahoma Income Tax Calculator, a married couple filing jointly have to make $180,000 before their Oklahoma income tax is $7500 (it’s $7,497) – the ‘reimbursement’ provided by the state for each child to go to private school. Therefore, the state pays the tuition to the private school for every child who applies for the ‘credit’ in a family that earns $180,000 or less.
Thank you so much for your consideration of my comments.
Sincerely,
Jenni White
Education Coordinator
Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment (ROPE)
jenni@rope2.org
CLOSING
Please feel free to make any changes to my letter – also, feel free to examine all the information for yourself to see if I missed something or if you don’t particularly agree with my criticisms of the Rules.
Being a conservative is often a lonely position. Asking people to take responsibility for THEMSELVES to prevent government intervention is not an easy sell in a world where all the creature comforts of human existence are but a moment away. After being attacked personally by OCPAC for an opinion Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment corporately holds, a rebuttal is in order.
In full disclosure, several members of ROPE met with OCPAC President Bob Linn February 8th to discuss our concerns with SB1647, during which time Mr. Linn admitted he had not read the bill.
Let’s be very clear: NO, ROPE does not support the movement of tax dollars (government money – vouchers) to private or homeschools.
Here are the ways ROPE SUPPORTS PARENT EDUCATIONAL CHOICE:
Individual and family tax credits for home or private school. Oklahoma doesn’t have this option currently, but there are several bills in the legislature this year to do so – SB1471 – and several modifications to increase the EOES (below)
send their children to a public online charter school like EPIC, which provides tax dollars to parents who would like to school their children at home using EPIC’s curriculum
send their children to a brick and mortar charter school (link above)
begin saving their money in a state-sponsored 529 program when their children are born to use for either college or a private K12 school
use the EOES mentioned above to attend a private school
transfer to another public school – if allowed by the school to which the transfer would be made
The term ‘fiduciary’ comes from the word ‘trust’. A ‘fiduciary’ responsibility imposes a restriction that money given (or taken) is used in good faith and in the best interest of the owner of the money. That’s all that means.
The government has no money it doesn’t forcibly take from citizens (people who don’t pay their taxes go to jail or lose their property), so all ‘government’ dollars are tax dollars, taken from the people. Yes, government has a fiduciary responsibility for those funds, but how many times have those been overlooked and money spent wastefully and fraudulently? Who is NOT familiar with wasteful government spending? Tom Coburn was.
Bob uses Social Security as an example. This is a sad example of ‘fiduciary’ funds. Though I’ve paid into the SS system, it has been raided over and over by government overreach to the point that few of us my age will have funds to use for retirement. What happened to the government’s ‘fiduciary’ responsibility there? Clue: GOVERNMENT DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ‘FIDUCIARY’ RESPONSIBILITY or public schools wouldn’t be the problem they are now. If government cared, they would have appreciated their fiduciary responsibility and made schools responsible for not educating students all along.
TJ Schmidt, an attorney with Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), does not agree with Bob’s assessment and says that, because all money comes from taxpayers, any government money taken from citizens but then given back – as in to home or privately school children (voucher) – comes with the need to make those funds ACCOUNTABLE to taxpayers.
When citizens are ‘incentivized’ to use government money to do something they don’t have the personal responsibility to do on their own, there will be fraud – it’s simply human nature.
In fact, my contention is that parents who want to homeschool do so to ESCAPE government entrapment and don’t want ANY government involvement. Parents who want government money to school at home use a system like EPIC where government money pays for curricula to be used at home. Data from Arizona indicates I’m correct.
parents funding private school OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS were the happiest of all
though polling shows 29% of Arizonans would use private school and 14% homeschool, the actual numbers are MUCH LESS – 6% and 2% of Arizonans actually use the GOVERNMENT programs respectively and Arizona was one of the earliest adopters of ‘school choice’ programs
In fact, EdChoice tells us that 23% of Arizona’s students are eligible for vouchers and tax credit programs and 100% of students are eligible for a tax credit scholarship, but ONLY 7% OF ALL ARIZONANS USE ALL PROGRAMS TOGETHER and that’s the best record in the nation!
Data for 2021 indicate that after a 31 million dollar investment over the 10 years, only 1,135 students took advantage of the program in 2021 and of those that reported their status (112), only 32% (36) were economically disadvantaged.
“We have denied an equal playing field” to children sentenced to a failing neighborhood school
How have we done that? I just cited 8 ways parents can direct the education of their children and showed that, when offered, most parents don’t take advantage of voucher programs or tax credit scholarships.
But beyond that, since when did a ‘conservative’ talking point become ‘equaling the playing field’?
I searched the term ‘equaling the playing field’ and found this slide show about how COMMON CORE equaled the playing field for all kids. Now that’s great! But, as we said it would for YEARS, Common Core – making every child have the same curricula across the US – FAILED SPECTACULARLY, never amounting to any kind of positive change on student achievement of any kind.
CONSERVATIVES DO NOT USE GOVERNMENT TO ‘EQUAL PLAYING FIELDS’, we want the government to stay in its own lane and allow PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS AND THE MARKET TO CREATE CHOICE.
“Those who oppose educational choice where money follows the child display an arrogant and callous disposition to the less fortunate”
Gosh, I guess, people like Ben Carson, whose single mother worked three jobs to allow Ben and his brother a great education and Mark Robinson (Lt. Gov. of North Carolina) whose family was dirt poor but made sure he and his siblings were well educated have it all wrong. Government should have come in and incentivized their transformation – because government ALWAYS produces programs that work.
I find it sad that a Christian Conservative, would – essentially – call those who want LESS government and more personal responsibility ‘arrogant and callous’.
In Matthew 26:11, Jesus tells us that the poor will always be with us.
Leviticus 23:22 quotes the Lord as saying, “When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you.”
In other words, INDIVIDUALS, left part of the harvest for the poor to harvest themselves. The Romans taxed the Jews horribly, but their religion told them it was THEIR responsibility to help the poor.
As PragerU said in a recent Instagram post, “Jesus advises us to be of “generous spirit” – to show kindness, to assist the widow and the orphan. But he clearly means this to be our responsibility.”
Conservatives are those who promote LESS GOVERNMENT, PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, PRIVATE COMPETITION and INDIVIDUAL GIVING.
“More than that, they also fail to understand that no parent should see their educational dollars forced into the government’s failed model of education.”
Nope, we get it – we just want it done THE RIGHT WAY – via tax credit and tax credit scholarship. Both would remove money from public education, but do so BEFORE the money is taken by the government in the first place.
Here’s something Bob doesn’t apparently understand – the legislature appropriates education dollars. Why don’t we ALL advocate that, instead of giving more and more tax dollars to FAILING government education, the legislature use the grade card the State developed to get ESSA funds, to pull funding from failing schools?
Bob complains that government schools are unGodly and parents shouldn’t have to leave their children in that situation.
OF COURSE THEY ARE! THEY ARE PROPPED UP BY SECULAR GOVERNMENT MONEY! Do you honestly think that sending government money into home and private schools WON’T PRODUCE THE SAME RESULTS? It absolutely will. Right now, the only thing staving off an atheistic society are Christian home and private schools. Why do you want to compromise the two things that are working under complete parent control? That makes absolutely no sense!
Why not instead work with churches to create programs like microschools, learning pods or to provide daily tutoring, or even create a school specifically for those below the poverty line? The Biden Justice Department can’t force policy there. Again, why does GOVERNMENT have all the answers? Don’t conservatives think the private sector has those?
In closing, Bob calling me “a bit callous, heartless and cold” for wanting the private sector to do their job instead of allowing government to do that is a bit social justice warrior for me – especially in the face of Conservative principles. Government doesn’t provide choices, the private market does and the more government ‘does’ the less churches and the private market do.
Note this: in 2021, homeschooling and private schools grew and Oklahoma public schooling LOST STUDENTS thanks to parents deciding to homeschool and leave government schools ON THEIR OWN POWER.
Just recently I posted a meme to our social media about how single-parent families could homeschool and was inundated with OTHER ideas as well:
working from home and schooling when able in their schedule
church-created homeschool coops for single parents
teaming up with other families to create a coop so that each day the parents rotate so one is in charge of the children every day
teaming up to hire a tutor to teach all the children each day
homeschool families bringing in children of single parents to school with their own kids (I did this with the child of a single friend. She just became a part of the family and she graduated with my own!)
These are AWESOME ideas that parents came up with all on their own without the ‘benevolent’ hand of the government ‘helping’ them.
CONSERVATIVES, STOP TRYING TO USE GOVERNMENT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS WE LET GOVERNMENT CREATE IN THE FIRST PLACE. The only ways to help students out right now (other than making the legislature responsible for their funding of failing schools) is to provide individual family tax credits for home and private schooling and tax credit scholarships for the same. This would help parents and ‘punish’ failing schools without government strings while allowing the free market to work.
Every legislative session in Oklahoma, the topic of “School Choice” rears its head. People become “School Choice” advocates because they believe the concept will put parents back in the driver’s seat for their children’s education. But what does the term “School Choice” actually mean?
EdChoice, an organization that has been touting “School Choice” for many years, provides this definition:
School choice allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs —whether that’s to a public school, private school, charter school, home school or any other learning environment families choose.
This makes sense to me. School Choice has to be about MONEY. It can’t be about a choice of schools, because Oklahoma has a near smorgasbord of choices to provide parents for schooling their children. Let’s look at them:
Here in Oklahoma, our Constitution makes it clear that parents have the absolute right to direct the education of their children through homeschooling. Homeschooling is an educational choice.
Oklahoma has 1784 public schools. Last session (2021) SB783 was passed. This law allows parents to be able to transfer their child/children among public schools instead of them being assigned to a school according to their zip code. Transfer amounts to a choice.
Here in Oklahoma, we have a thriving private school network of 96 schools. Parents who are able and would like to do so, may CHOOSE to send their child/children to a private school.
Oklahoma also has a thriving Charter school network – some brick and mortar – and others virtual. Parents can choose whether or not to send their child/children to either type of charter school.
So, it seems it would be hard to be an Oklahoma parent who then argues you don’t have much of a choice as to where you sent your child to school. Yes, not all parents can afford to homeschool or put their child/children in private school, yet that doesn’t negate these as valid choices and many parents work hard to scrimp and save in order to keep their children home or send them to a private school.
Fortunately, Oklahoma has a HUGE NUMBER OF SCHOOL CHOICES available to parents, so why do we continually talk about “School Choice”?
Returning to EdChoice’s definition, because legislators feel that parents should be able to send their children to ANY school they want, something that can only happen if tax dollars are appropriated to people who can’t afford to send their child/children to private school or keep them home for homeschool.
Herein lies the problem. Once money leaves the hand of a citizen as a tax, it becomes property of the government who receives the tax. Now, it’s the government’s job to make sure that tax dollar is accounted for transparently.
Let’s say that Oklahoma gives parents part or all of the money it would have spent to educate their child and says, “Here, you can use this any way you’d like to educate your child.”
The thrilled parents then take that money to a private school and enroll their child. Unfortunately, the private school that receives the funds is now accountable to the state to make sure that money is spent properly.
In order to do that, the state now has the ability to ask the private school to perform certain tasks to assure them of the way in which that money is spent and suddenly, the private school now has strings from State government it never had before. How many strings can a private school have to the government for state money before it’s no longer really a private school? At what point does the State government get to tell the private school what kind of curricula they may offer, or regulate the type of teachers they want to hire because, well, accountability of taxpayer funds?
Unfortunately, there’s more. Oklahoma has never fully repealed Blaine Amendment language from our Constitution. The Blain Amendment is a failed federal law created in the late 1800’s proposed to ostensibly prevent Catholic schools by denying them access to public funds. Though the federal law failed, many states added similar language to their Constitution, as did Oklahoma.
It would be an extremely difficult task to take funds designated as public, give them to parents and allow them to finance a child’s private school education – especially at a private religious school.
We’ve all seen the mess that has been created by Epic Charter School’s administrative arm – Epic Youth Services. If state funds are given to parents to use for expenses related to the homeschooling of their children, how could the state not expect parents to account for every dime of state money provided them? They certainly would have every right to do so, yet now a homeschooling parent could find themselves in the unenviable situation of having to report to the state on behalf of their homeschool.
What if the state doesn’t ‘like’ a type of curricula a parent chooses, or the type of activity a child prefers? What happens to the autonomy of the homeschooling parent in that case?
Granted, it seems like a stretch – and legislators would be sure to say that would never happen – but who in the world would have ever thought that in the last two years the government would force people to wear masks, take vaccines and shut down businesses? Hopefully, if we’ve learned anything else from the pandemic, we’ve learned that governments are less about individual rights and more about power and control.
And what about taking public money and giving it to parents to allow their children to homeschool or attend private school? What about the families who scrimp and save to provide these options for their children? Isn’t that the state creating an equity program?
TRULY, THERE SEEMS TO BE NO WAY FOR THE STATE TO ALLOW PARENTS TO HAVE STATE MONEY TO FINANCE THEIR CHILD’S EDUCATION. The only way to do anything of the sort is some form of TAX CREDIT:
1. Allow parents to keep the money they WOULD HAVE given to the state in taxes for public education. This way, the money is only ever the parents – it never becomes the property of state government. Parents can use that money to help finance a private education, or homeschool their child/children.
2. Allow parents who are unable to finance their child’s private or homeschool to apply for ‘scholarship’ funds placed into an account by people who want to donate to the scholarship. Oklahoma already has the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship, that can simply be broadened.
3. Parents should begin planning for their child’s education early on and make after-tax deposits into the State 529 Plan. Though ostensibly a college savings program, funds may be deducted to pay for homeschool or private school expenses as well.
Unfortunately, like with so many things, there is no free lunch in education. It’s important to understand the issues surrounding “School Choice” and not merely carry the flag of “School Choice”. Private schools do not need any further state regulation and homeschoolers want absolutely no interference from government in their schools. Let’s be VERY CAREFUL then, when we discuss the term “School Choice” and keep government sequestered in its own lane.
