Oh. My. Word. Here’s where we are today; flipping through pages of social media postings about a school choice mouthpiece who has recently been accused of having a former life as a gay, adult film star.
So let’s break this latest phenomenon down, shall we?
NUMBER ONE: If you’re a professing Christian, you shouldn’t be using this story to bolster any of your own personal political points.
Every one of us is human and 90% of us have done something crazy/awful/horrifying/creepy when we were young people. We are certainly right to judge other professing Christians for their behaviors – and even call them out on them – but I don’t recall DeAngelis being one of those. In fact I have no memory of any of his talking points revolving around Jesus Christ or Biblical living.
I’ve never been a DeAngelis fan because I’m not for giving taxpayer money to other taxpayers so they can put their children in private schools at my expense, but in all honesty, I can’t imagine being Corey DeAngelis right now. He apparently married last year. He’s been wined and dined and admired as an expert by many thousands of people over many years. What a screeching halt to a rather charmed life. The kind, in fact, that should probably make each of us internalize the notion, “there but by the Grace of God go I“.
NUMBER TWO: People can change. Granted, some people never do, so there’s that, but the world is full of stories in which people overcame a life predicated on bad circumstances and/or choices to become better people – changed people. It matters not the circumstances, if they’ve rebuked their former lives and done a 180, it’s the Christian perspective to ‘forgive and forget’.
When I was in high school, I spent most of my time hanging with the stoners. I drove stoned. I went to work stoned. I was stoned a lot.
At 20, I was a married mother of one and my whole high school hanging with the stoners lifestyle went out the window as I took up the mantle of respectable, homemaker and mother. I then went on to become a respectable divorced parent putting myself through college while simultaneously raising a small person (who, incidentally, became a respectable adult).
The stuff I learned from my high school years kept me from doing further stupid stuff as an adult. The world didn’t end because I did stupid stuff, it could have actually made it a bit better because I learned some hard lessons about the consequences of doing stupid stuff that I have never forgotten.
Look, I get that acting in gay porn movies when you’re spokesman for a group touting parental ’empowerment’ and bettering kids, isn’t a small deal, but bad is bad is bad. Let’s avoid getting into an argument – for now – over what’s ‘badder’ in a ‘previous life’ – doing drugs or performing gay porn.
NUMBER THREE: We should NEVER take people who put themselves in the role of ‘expert’ on anything, at face value.
It happens over and over and over again. It’s a story as old as the hills.
A Music Man comes into town and says he’s created the world’s biggest band – with 76 trombones no less – and can do that for them! The townspeople, amazed at his eloquence, believe his pitch, throw their lot – and their money – in behind him only to find out that their marching band expert is nothing more than a conman trying to make money off the backs of naive Midwesterners.
Today, people are all too willing to believe the words of people who are deemed experts by others – or deem themselves as experts. We don’t even have to mention Anthony Fauci or anyone at the UN, or WEF here. After all, everyone knows these people are experts who deserve our complete faith, because, well, ‘science’ and all that.
Corey DeAngelis (and every other ‘school choice’ ‘expert’) is no different in any singular way.
NUMBER FOUR: There are about 99,999,999 things more important in this world than Corey DeAngelis right now and one of them is to note who IS using this information for their gain.
When the left comes out of the woodwork with all kinds of garbage about anyone on the right, you know it’s to shiv them politically and skewer public opinion and trust in whatever topic it is they’ve shiv’ed them over.
IN THE END: So, all of those things, but of all of those things – this; STOP BELIEVING IN EXPERTS. People in power, STOP COURTING THEM; stop wining and dining them and giving them your Citizenship Awards, or bringing them into your office at the capitol and predicating [flawed] education policy on them.
Believe it or not, there are REGULAR people out here in the real world of non-experts who have become everyday experts just by our own experiences and we might have a thing or two to say, but we can’t because…well…experts.
I sat there quietly as a Democrat legislator and the head of the task force, Chairman, AJ Ferate, explained the work his group had done to satisfy the Governor’s EO. At one point during his presentation, Mr. Ferate mentioned how “his friends in Washington DC” didn’t like one of the proposals the group had made, and, after all, everyone should know that every DC swamp rat is an expert in ethics.
After all the experts in the room had spoken, the head of the Ethics Commission, Lee Anne Bruce Boone asked if there were any comments from attendees. I asked if I could go to the mic and was allowed to say a few things about what I had uncovered in my research on Dark Money in Oklahoma.
I was fascinated – but not surprised – by how many of the experts in the room seemed disinterested in what I had to say, yet they had asked Ferate and others, several questions during the session. But then again, who am I? I’m no expert. And why? Probably because the ‘real’ experts don’t want me to be.
So, instead of using the DeAngelis scandal for political gain, let’s use it to inform ourselves about what it means to be an ‘expert’ in today’s political space. Then, let’s use that knowledge to remind our elected officials that we citizens can be experts just as knowledgeable as those on FOX, or in DC – and we don’t have quite so far to fall off our pedestals.
What in the world IS Non-Public education? We’ll get to that in a minute, but first a recap…
At the end of the Oklahoma legislative session in 2023, the House and Senate passed HB1934, a bill which created ‘Universal School Choice’ in Oklahoma as described by organizations like The State Policy Network which have long-championed giving public tax dollars to private education.
All of Oklahoma’s Republican legislators voted for the bill (House, Senate; excepting those ‘excused’).
Afterward, the legislators we spoke with about the vote couldn’t understand how we were against the bill since it was a ‘tax credit’ – the form of ‘school choice’ for which ROPE has advocated against the concept of vouchers.
In fact, these legislators either argued with us about how the bill WAS a tax credit, or about how a voucher would – insert ‘school choice’ talking points – like those asserted in our interview with the Executive Director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, Brett Farley.
Farley, who was instrumental in the creation of Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, the school choice organization for which now-state Superintendent Ryan Walters was made head, actually admitted in the interview that yes, school choice advocates want voucher bills. In the ‘school choice’ mantra, the state already funds [failing] public education, so the only way to create the ‘competition’ necessary to make public schools ‘no longer a viable option’ is to divert state money to private schools.
This ‘logic’ has always been a head-scratcher to me, because the state legislature holds the budget appropriation strings and can choose to fund public education or not, yet every year they complain about how awful public schools are and then award them ‘historic’ appropriations (see 2023 and 2024 for example) while refusing to tie public school results to funding. Make that make sense.
After the Universal Voucher bill passed, I did a full breakdown on the associated rules and found that, as Farley described, the first two tax categories listed provide – not a tax credit as the legislature promised – or was lead to believe – but a ‘voucher’; a grant of Oklahoma tax dollars to private schools for children whose parents applied to the program because they couldn’t otherwise afford private education tuition.
One more time, let’s break down the school choice options afforded to parents in Oklahoma even prior to the ‘Universal Choice’ bill:
Public school;
Traditional public schools – Oklahoma has 509 school districts in Oklahoma. None have requirements for entry.
Charter schools – according to the Oklahoma State Department of Education website, Oklahoma had 24 of these in 2022. All are taxpayer-supported. Some have requirements for entry, others are a ‘lottery’ system where if the child’s name is randomly chosen, the child may attend, others have no requirement for entry.
Virtual Charter Schools – the OSDE records six of these schools which operate either solely on the internet, or a combination of in-person and online, such as EPIC charter schools. There is no requirement for entry
Magnet Schools – I could find no information about ‘magnet’ schools on the OSDE website, but an online site called Niche claims there are five in Oklahoma. Magnet schools provide a specific field of study along with ‘typical’ educational requirements for the state. An example would be Classen School of Advanced Studies where students have the opportunity to have in-depth study in the Arts while completing their Oklahoma educational requirements. There are entry requirements for attendance and all are taxpayer-supported.
Private Schools – According to Private School Review, there are 106 K12 private schools in Oklahoma with an average tuition of $7,293. These are private schools because families use their own household dollars to afford the school.
Homeschooling – The Homeschool Mom has an amazing list of homeschool coops and ‘enrichment’ classes available in Oklahoma. This is probably because Oklahoma is the MOST FRIENDLY homeschool state in the union, having written the ability for citizens of Oklahoma to educate their children at home in the state’s Constitution. This is also a private educational form because families pay out of their own pockets to afford this type of education.
So what is exactly the ‘choice’ School Choice proponents are talking about then? Oklahoma has LOTS and LOTS of choices that parents may choose to provide an education for their child/children. What choice did we not have that we had to have last year with Universal School Choice? Oklahoma taxpayer dollars funding private education for parents who can’t afford it – that’s it. That’s all. The ONLY thing our organization has ever objected to in the ‘choice’ menu – publicly-funding private schools.
Last Wednesday (6.5.24), our guest on ROPE Report Live was my friend and fellow homeschooling mom from Broken Arrow, Sarah DeNeui.
Sarah has become increasingly concerned about what would happen to homeschooling and private schooling since the passage of HB1934 and private schools began to receive state money. She talked with us about several of her concerns, mainly that once PRIVATE schools begin receiving PUBLIC money, they would no longer be PRIVATE schools.
Why? Because once tax dollars are involved, the government must maintain some control of the dollars in order to provide accountability and transparency to the public from whom it was taken (by force).
In addition, schools that receive funds from the Federal Department of Education, are required to comply with federal dictates, including, for example, President Biden’s decree that boys enrolled in schools taking federal funds and wanting to be girls, can use the girl’s bathroom. Though many states wrote laws to get around that particular dictate, the Biden Administration then proceeded to write a rule to keep states from placing a ban on the practice. How’s THAT for government control?
The full live video of Sarah’s interview with Michael and I can be found on our Rumble and YouTube channels, but here is the most concerning issue Sarah raised. In this short video segment, she tells the story of reaching out to her contact in the OSDE questioning a press release concerning the creation of an “Office of School Choice” in the Department. She was interested in exactly what the ‘office’s’ duties would entail.
Essentially, when the answer to her question was returned, it included a phrase she’d never previously heard – non-public education. Sarah wanted to know more, so she went out onto the internet to find that the federal government has an Office of Non-Public Education. Here’s their mission:
ONPE fosters maximum participation of nonpublic school students and teachers in federal education programs and initiatives. Since the initial passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965, private school students and teachers have been eligible to participate in certain federal education programs.
So, the definition of ‘non-public education’ then, relates to private schools that take federal (and/or state?) funds.
The Office of Non-Public Schools even has a list of “private elementary and secondary schools, and/or home schools (?!?!) with which the U.S. Department of Education (Department) regularly communicates regarding the participation of nonpublic elementary and secondary school students and teachers in federal education programs and initiatives”.
It might behoove parents sending their children to ‘private’ schools to find out if the organization under which their private school is sanctioned, or accredited, is on the list provided here. And beyond that, to check DIRECTLY with their private school to find out whether or not they are truly PRIVATE – taking only private funds, no tax dollars.
This is HIGHLY problematic. It should go without saying that the more education becomes funded by a governmental entity, the more controlled it is by the government and the less free parents are to decide what is truly best for their child/children’s education. And we’re not the only organization to believe that.
“We don’t want private schools to accept money, no strings attached initially, get dependent on it and then the government starts throwing down these regulations in exchange for the funding. Then they’re stuck having to make a choice of either closing their doors or compromising their values in order to continue to accept the federal and state funding.”
Alex Newman of Liberty Sentinel told us the exact same thing in his interview with ROPE last year.
As did Robert Bortins, CEO of the worldwide homeschool organization Classical Conversations:
So how again then, does a school choice VOUCHER create freedom for parents? How is putting a school under federal ‘rule’ EMPOWERING for parents?
Sarah asks these types of questions and more in the video below. If you are a Republican FOR vouchers before you watch this segment and are still for vouchers afterward, I’m going to suggest you change your political affiliation – none of the questions asked by Sarah here, result in answers that follow the small-government, personal responsibility/liberty model of Republicanism. In fact, they could all be considered LEFTIST ideals, so how are Republicans buying into them?
The idea of every American parent choosing the form of education they want for their child is fundamental to the concept of personal freedom enshrined in the Constitution and I’ll fight with all I have to preserve that ideal.
HOWEVER, the ideal of ‘school choice’ that includes bringing in the government AT ANY LEVEL of a child’s education while asserting that as a ‘free market principal’ or freedom in any way, is a flat out lie and I’ll fight for that lie to be exposed for what it is and the detriment it will become to actual educational freedom in the long run, every day of the week.
Though few may pay it the attention it’s due, the Republican Party has a Platform snapshotting a picture of the basic things Party members generally believe. Oklahoma has its own Platform created through a process that eventually ends in a vote of acceptance at their biennial convention. The Oklahoma County GOP has a very good one page summary of the OKGOP Platform here.
According to this OKGOP Platform, these are five reasons Republicans should NOT support ‘School Choice’ vouchers (please see “An Analysis Of Three Oklahoma Voucher Bills” for more information on what the bills say):
Republicans believe in “limited government“. In fact, that is where the term “conservative” arises. We wish to ‘conserve’ the rights to the people by limiting government to the smallest footprint possible. Every universal voucher bill filed in the senate creates 6 to 7 sections of NEW LAW. In fact, they expand the Oklahoma Treasurer’s office by providing it not less than 20 new duties.
Republicans believe in “personal, moral responsibility“. Taxpayers are forced to pay taxes to governments. If their taxes are not paid, the government will either take our property or our liberty (by throwing us in jail). Once the money leaves our hands, it’s not ours anymore. It is placed into one giant pot over which we have minimal control – through our legislators (taxation with representation) – as to how it’s spent. We can’t use government as a bank – our money isn’t earmarked as ours once it goes into the pot – all we can do is use the services our lawmakers choose to provide us for the money we must provide them from our budgets.
It is our personal, moral responsibility to raise and educate our children the way we believe is best.
It is the personal, moral responsibility of our elected lawmakers to do what is necessary to make government – including public schools – produce results and be accountable to the taxpayer whose dollars they appropriate.
It is the personal, moral responsibility of parents to move their lawmakers to force educational results (accountability) on our public schools, but it is also our personal, moral responsibility not to go to our lawmakers and demand more of our neighbor’s money so that we can put our children in schools we couldn’t otherwise afford without help. That is called welfare and/or socialism – definitely NOT a Republican ideal.
Republicans believe in “individual liberty“. If the government gives a private school taxpayer dollars from the public coffers, taxpayers have the right to demand accountability for those dollars. This accountability can put boundaries on “individual liberty”. The Class Wallet debacle shows this to be true in spades.
In 2020, Oklahoma government officials – including now State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters – contracted with a PRIVATE organization called “Class Wallet” to disseminate over 17 million dollars in GEER funds (Governor’s Emergency Educational Relief). Parents who privately schooled their children were gifted $6500 for tuition to the tune of 10 million dollars total through the “Stay In School” program. Public school parents who needed help schooling their children online were gifted up to $1500 through the “Bridge The Gap” program.
According to The Frontier, the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) is sending emails to identified users of the programs – for apparent accountability measures – asking, “What was the particular purpose surrounding your purchases during the pandemic?” And “were you homeschooling your children, or were they still in school?” ROPE has expressed continuous concern that homeschooling families taking government money would be assimilated by the government. The government gave away the money without guardrails – what good could it do to determine if families schooled at home or not?
Once the government begins to separate homeschooling families from private school families and online public school families from homeschooling families, Oklahoma’s previously undefined, but Constitutionally protected use of education “by other means” is in jeopardy of becoming regulated by the state, thus subverting the “individual liberty” of parents to school their children without state interference.
Republicans believe in “state sovereignty“. Unfortunately, the Oklahoma legislature and public schools LOVE to get federal funding. In fact, according to this article from 2022, Oklahoma is 15th in the amount of federal funding we receive.
According to the Department of Education, the feds provide considerable funding to Oklahoma schools at the state level (and the chart at the bottom of the page does not show individual federal grants for which school districts may also apply) and that number grows every year.
Republicans believe in the “free market“. Public/private partnerships are not “free market”. Once the government – at any level – injects money into a private company/organization/school, the business to which the funds were given, now has an edge over the wholly-privately-owned businesses that weren’t able to, or didn’t, capitalize on on government handouts.
Nowhere is this better seen than the distribution of CARES Act monies. According to Forbes, private equity firms used federal funds to boost profits, crushing their competitors, the ‘little guys’ who weren’t able to capitalize on federal loans.
The “free market” describes a system of business free from government intervention, where businesses compete with each other so that the best companies prevail. Injecting public funds into a private school will create an imbalance in the private school system in which those taking state funding will grow and those that don’t, won’t. Sadly, the ones NOT taking public funds will do so to retain their autonomy, yet parents will slowly be denied access to an autonomous private school as the public-fund-sucking schools overpower their marketshare – leaving parents – AGAIN – with less choice than they had BEFORE government intervention.
Vouchers, like the Republican-pushed Common Core before it, are not based on Republican ideals and they will not work for Oklahoma families just like they haven’t in states like Arizona that have tried them.
As we’ve pointed out again and again, Oklahoma HAS SCHOOL CHOICE! We have a voucher program – the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship for children with disabilities. We have the Opportunity Scholarship Fund which uses donations to “help[s] low-income families bridge the financial gap between what they can afford and what is best suited for their student for specialized PreK-12 education”. According to the Oklahoma section of the “National School Choice Week” website, Oklahoma has approximately 60 charter schools, several magnate schools, over 200 private schools, six fully online public schools, Constitutionally protected homeschool, and “learning pods”. The idea that ‘vouchers’ are required to somehow provide parents with school choice, should make one wonder then – what exactly do the people pushing “school choice” legislation really want?
I would like to say this as an opener to this piece: This is not a rebuke of Governor Stitt – there are many things our Governor has done of which we all approve – but there is a sincere lack of agreement in the area of ‘School Choice’ that needs to be addressed. I am not criticizing to criticize, but to make points I think EVERYONE – especially Republicans – should think about before blind acceptance of the concept of state-sponsored ‘school choice’ through yet another voucher system.
This is the section in which the Governor addressed Government Education – I have bolded the sections with which we take exception –
I have bolded and italicized the popular ‘buzz words’ used to create emotion around the topic of ‘school choice’ –
My comments are enclosed in parentheses.
(1.) We provided record funding for all public schools, including charter and rural schools.
These initial investments were good first steps for Oklahoma’s education turnaround, but there’s much more to do.
(1a.) Just 15% of Oklahoma high school graduates are ready for college in English, math, reading and science — less than one out of five.We can do better than 47th in the nation when it comes to our kids
(Democrats say this every time they want more funding for schools).
We’ve tiptoed around the edges for far too long. It’s clear the status quo isn’t working. We need to take bold steps. It will take courage, and it will take a desire to make a generational impact. This is our moment!
(There is always an emergency that requires government to act – Nancy Pelosi perfected this concept with ObamaCare.)
(2.) We know education is not one-size-fits-all, and I pledge to support any legislation that gives parents more school choice, because in Oklahoma, we need to fund students, not systems! ProTem Treat filed a bill called the Oklahoma Empowerment Act. It makes sure that money follows the student, and it would make us a national leader in school choice.
(Oklahomans were told this about the Lyndsey Nicole Henry Scholarship and our creation of charter schools, yet, we are STILL not apparently a ‘national leader in school choice’. When will that come? How many times will we be told this very thing?
Let me be clear: Oklahoma has a lot of great schools, but the results don’t lie. We need new ideas, more options, and higher standards for our kids
(Again, how many ‘new’ ideas are there? The more the government micromanages, the worse schools get because of the layers and layers of laws and rules).
This is just common sense.
(I’m missing the common sense part I guess.)
(3) We have a duty to make sure nothing stands in the way of an Oklahoma student achieving their full potential. There are roadblocks – literally. State law creates artificial barriers for school districts that don’t put our students first.
Our school transportation formula is outdated and broken. We desperately need to modernize it.
(What does ‘modernize’ mean? It is a word without definition in the government setting. Here, the word ‘modernize’ can only mean spending more money and/or ‘growing government’. Taxpayers should REQUIRE definitions for terms attached to their tax dollars.)
(4) Another roadblock in our current system keeps some of the best teachers out of the classroom. Right now, some talented teachers choose to leave the classroom to make more money as an administrator. Oklahoma students can’t be the best without the best teachers. That’s why I’m proposing matching funds so that our best teachers can make six figure salaries and stay in the classroom.
It’s the right thing to do for our teachers and for our kids!
(How do we know? What metrics are used to make this statement? Every year, Oklahoma continues and doubles-down on failed systems – stacking up laws and programs government schools should follow – yet we still languish at the ‘bottom’ of the NAEP – National Assessment of Educational Progress. This comment means absolutely nothing if not backed up by some kind of plan that doesn’t involve more failed government interventionist policies.)
Another way to support Oklahoma educators is to protect their paychecks from union bosses. The same unions that have pushed critical race theory and school closures intimidate new teachers into handing over part of their salaries. Liberal unions want to keep a stranglehold on their cut of teacher pay. Enough is enough! Every other profession lets you opt-in to health insurance and other benefits at work every year. Unions should be opt-in, not opt-out!
(ABSOLUTELY, but why – after years of lip service to this idea – has it NOT BEEN DONE?)
1. WHY DOES THE LEGISLATURE CONTINUE TO FUND FAILING PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
Seriously. Our Governor appears proud of all the funding poured into government schools but then directly follows that statement with DATA indicating that the majority of Oklahoma students are NOT READY FOR COLLEGE.
If you know education isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor, why make all private solutions (private and homeschools) public ones by infusing them with taxpayer dollars?
Doesn’t that create yet another extension of an already-broken system?
One major talking point for the bill has been, “This is voluntary, no one has to take the money” yet Senator Greg Treat, during his defense of SB1647 in the Senate Education Committee (where the bill only passed 8-7 with Treat and Majority Floor leader McCortney’s extra-committee voting) said numerous times that ‘state’ (government) money necessarily has to come with strings and that we couldn’t be worried about what might happen in the future. Hmmm…isn’t that why we have SO MANY LAWS with UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES?
Most recently, former Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter issued an opinion regarding an attempt to force private schools taking students on LNH scholarships to add ‘sex’ to their state-required discrimination policy.
However, several years after the passage of the LNH law—after State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister became head of the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE)—officials at OSDE rewrote the regulations governing the LNH program to also bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and religious affiliation. Those revisions were then approved by the State Board of Education, which at that time consisted of Hofmeister and members appointed by then-Gov. Mary Fallin.
The revised regulations effectively required private religious schools that adhere to traditional Christian teachings to nonetheless hire atheists and abandon student code-of-conduct requirements regarding sexuality and marriage if they accepted LNH students.
In November 2020, the revised OSDE regulations led the State Board of Education—by that time consisting mostly of Gov. Kevin Stitt appointees who were not involved in the earlier revision process—to initially reject the application of one private Christian school that sought to serve LNH students.
So, if a REPUBLICAN-appointed board is going to apply Obama-orginated Title IX guidanceto LNH-required anti-discrimination law (42 U.S.C. section 2000d), and a subsequent REPUBLICAN-appointed board acted on that change, what would happen under a DEMOCRAT Governor-appointed board?
Though AG Hunter’s opinion states that the State Board “lacked the statutory authority to impose additional requirements on participating schools” (among others) and Hofmeister said of the decision that the Board would “move forward in accordance with the opinion“, an opinion has only advisory effect – another Board may see things another way.
This goes for federal law as well. In 2016, the heads of the Department of Justice and the US Department of Education Office For Civil Rights sent a Dear Colleague letter to all state schools that they were adding transgender rights to Title IX law. Let’s not quibble about the fact that these Dear Colleague letters mean little to nothing, because states and schools have a history of following them like Supreme Court decisions. During his presidency, Trump rescinded this ‘guidance’ only to have Biden reinstate it not long after his inauguration. This introduced HUGE amounts of confusion into a system already generally overregulated and confused.
What ends up happening with this kind of thinking is not that the bottom gets elevated, but the top gets drug down. It’s like the ‘even the playing field’ idea – it’s a socialist notion.
You can’t continually take from others with more and give it to those who have less because eventually you have a society with no middle class (a CLASS-LESS society), which is what’s happening now.
If parents themselves won’t step up and take control over their child’s education, you can’t legislate or incentivize them to do so. I’ve written about this numerous, numerous times from the perspective of an education policy researcher and that of a former teacher.
We need to stop this kind of ‘equity’ thinking and concentrate on helping the majority of kids while letting non-profits and those who wish to volunteer their time (and there are lots of those thank goodness!) to help those that are – for whatever reason – not in a position to help themselves.
4. TEACHERS LEAVE THE CLASSROOM FOR A LOT OF REASONS, BUT MOSTLY BECAUSE ADMINISTRATORS WON’T ADMINISTRATE
How is government going to fix that? Administrators are already supposed to administrate, yet there are at least two bills I’ve seen in the legislature this year adding yet another law to Title 70 TO MAKE ADMINISTRATORS DO THEIR JOBS. How can adding yet another law fix that?
My contention has always been that the Conservative option is always the best – our state should stop writing school law, repeal a lot of existing school law and GET OUT OF THE WAY OF COMMUNITY CONTROL!
Why do you suppose charters aren’t working the way they were at the beginning of the charter movement? We legislated them to death too! I worked for a charter school that was GREAT when it started only to watch it get worse and worse every year to the point that it was no different than the neighborhood school.
1. Cut Bureaucracy Don’t Add To It – as ROPE showed with Common Core, Turning Around Failing Schools, and all the other pillars of Obama’s Education Reform system – BUREAUCRACY DOESN’T WORK, it simply impedes the process.
Instead of ADDING laws, REPEAL laws relating to government education. Webs of laws entangle and confuse those they are meant to control.
Republicans talk endlessly about ‘local control’ but rarely REMOVE state laws and mandates to allow schools to function according to community needs as addressed by local school boards. Could this be part of the reason parents finally quit participating in the process until recently?
In fact, it could be argued successfully that part of the reason school boards stopped addressing (or listening to) the needs of parents is that parent desires are often stymied or take a back seat to the need (or drive) to receive funding by following state and federal laws – the latter of which are not even Constitutional. As Republicans say they believe – but rarely follow – THE LESS GOVERNMENT the MORE INNOVATION, POSSIBILITY and OPPORTUNITY.
2. Provide tax credits for parents wanting to use other systems – Instead of taking money from parents and then ‘giving’ it back to them with strings created by the need for the state to be accountable to the money it gives parents – simply DON’T TAKE IT FROM PARENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
This seems up front enough but then the argument becomes – “what about parents who don’t pay into the system”?
To take from others to give to those without is REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH – something, again, Republicans are ostensibly not for. It used to be that the poor were cared for by churches and communities – have churches shrunk because they have nothing to do now that the state does all their work for them?
3. Provide tax credit scholarships for taxpayers wanting a tax deduction and parents wishing to apply for a scholarship. Oklahoma has the Lyndsey Nicole Henry Scholarship for children with disabilities to attend schools other than their failing neighborhood school. Why not create another tax deduction scholarship for those who would like to pay in to ‘sponsor’ needy students?
4. Stop Funding Failing Schools – truly, what difference does it make if you take the money from the school to follow the kid when government schools STILL have no incentive to get better? Eventually – even with the benevolent hand of government guiding us – you’re eventually going to RUN OUT OF SCHOOLS TO RUN TO!
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*The evaluation, Improving Teaching Effectiveness: Final Report (587 pages, PDF), found that while the sites succeeded in implementing new measures of effectiveness and used them to inform a range of personnel decisions, the initiative did not lead to an overall improvement in student achievement or graduation rates. Although interim evaluations as of 2013-14 had found small improvements in grades 3 through 8 reading scores at some schools, the final report concludes that, as of the spring of 2015, the initiative had had no significant impact on students’ reading or math outcomes. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-teacher-effectiveness-initiative-fell-short-study-finds
