Take the Money and Run—Or Just Run

In a post linking to an article on the overwhelming problems we have with public schools (“Public Schools Are Cesspools of Debauchery. Get Your Kids Out Now, Before It's Too Late.” By Paula Bolyard), PJ Media asks, “At what point should it be considered parental malpractice to keep your kids in public school?” That’s actually a good question.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis promises parents that pressure
from media and woke corporations will not stop him from 
protecting students in schools. screenshot from here

For me, the answer came in 2000, when we talked it over as a family and pulled our children out of public schools—and never looked back. We weren’t looking at the debauchery, or even more than a rather subtle bias against religion; we pulled our kids out because the schools were doing a lousy job of meeting their particular educational needs. We could much better meet those needs outside of public schools.

That seemed like a good enough reason. Maybe it isn’t a reason every family has; maybe what their schools offer is a good fit for their children.

But now, a couple of decades later, there is no doubt that many schools offer even greater harm than merely failing to educate to a child’s potential. If you think your children’s school isn’t one of those bad ones, maybe you just haven’t looked carefully enough.

This story was linked in the PJ Media
article. There's more detail in the story. 
Some educator assumed 12-year-olds
were not only sexually active, but had
multiple sexual partners and would
 benefit from a pizza analogy.

That article gives a pretty hefty list of stories of school wrongdoing. I’ve written on this a number of times. Here, here, here, and here, for example.   

I shouldn’t have to spell this out, but I will. This is not to indict all teachers as bad, or even most. Many would thrive and do a much better job of educating, if the powers above them would set them free to do so.

The two main categories of evil indoctrination by schools are Critical Race Theory and the LGBT agenda, both of which are more closely related—through intersectionality—than a surface glance would make them appear.

The awakening of parents to what is being taught dawned during the COVID-19 shutdown. Classes were done online, often in the presence of parents, who had not been privy to actual classroom instruction in the past. They turned their heads and said, “What did I just hear?” And then, “No! No way! Not teaching that to my child.” Private schools, by the way, fought to open schools back up; public schools—because of teachers union—fought to keep them closed. So that online learning overheard by parents was their own doing, ironically.

In the spring and summer of 2021, the parental outcry in various school districts got the national attention.  Parents began showing up at school board meetings, where they’d been docile and quietly absent up until then. They began changing out their local school boards. And they began keeping a better watch.

So, right now we’re at a state of heightened awareness, but we have not yet seen the turn to believing that keeping children in failing public schools is “parental malpractice.” We don’t have a concrete definition for such a term, as we might for actual neglect or abuse. But maybe we should get one.

If you go to PragerU, you can find a long list of videos related to CRT and LGBT stuff being taught in schools, raising awareness, and sometimes adding what to do about it—often including pulling kids out of those environments.

Corey DeAngelis, screenshot from here

Today I saw a new PragerU video, “Fund the Children, Not the Schools,” talking about why it makes sense to attach the education dollars to the student. Corey DeAngelis, head of research at the American Federation for Children, points out multiple areas in which government money does not specify where the receiver spends the money:

·        Pell grant recipients choose their college.

·        GI Bill recipients choose their college.

·        Head Start recipients choose which preschool to send their children to.

·        Food stamp recipients choose which grocery store to shop at.

So why not allow that choice for parents of K-12 children?

There is this misconception—we might call it a lie—that allowing choice takes money away from the public schools. But we don’t say that allowing a food stamp recipient to choose a non-governmental grocery store takes money away from some other grocery store. We don’t say allowing a GI Bill recipient to choose their college takes money away from some government institutional college.

DeAngelis blames teachers unions for many of the misconceptions, like the money belonging to the schools. He says,

The truth is the opposite: public schools “steal” money from families. School choice initiatives just return the money to the hands of the intended beneficiaries of the funding—students and their parents.

What actually happens when public schools are faced with competition? The same thing you’d expect to happen with competition in other parts of life: better quality at lower costs.

When faced with competition, public schools do, in fact, up their game. DeAngelis says,

Twenty-five of 27 studies—and the latest peer-reviewed meta-analysis on the topic—find that private school choice competition leads to better outcomes in public schools.

For example, a study published in May 2021 reveals that increased competition from expanding private school choice in Florida improved academic and behavioral outcomes in nearby public schools.

That makes sense. Because, whenever the free market is allowed to flourish, we get better products and services at lower prices. Innovation happens. Demand is met.

So, if we demand better schools—by putting the money in the hands of the parents—we can have the outcomes we want.

DeAngelis also points out that current per student costs in public school is an average of $16,000 annually, while private school tuition is around $12,000. We could save $4,000 a year per student simply by turning over the responsibility to private schools.

During the COVID-19 lockdown year, support for
school choice went up 10%.
screenshot from here

Not realistic? Maybe not overnight. But consider the long waiting lists for charter schools—still a public school option, but with some innovation. The number of available seats in private schools almost meets that need. How many parents would be willing to take the private school option—rather than wait out the years of their child’s education hoping for a win in the charter school lottery? Not all, but many.

What about the question of government strings attached to the money? You think that’s not a problem now? How could giving accountability to parents increase the stranglehold government schools have now?

Maybe working for putting the money in the hands of the parents goes hand in hand with keeping government’s glommy[i] hands off our curriculum choices.

Do we risk damaging the public school system? Maybe that’s a risk we ought to be willing to take. If a collapse of that government institutional monopoly happened simultaneously with a free-market response, the only real losers are the teachers unions. And that includes the indoctrinators who think they have a right to control our children.

Whatever we do right now, it had better be bold and big. We can’t afford to lose a generation of kids. And if they’re your kids in school right now, can you afford for them to suffer any more indoctrination?

As Paula Bolyard says in that PJ Media article, “What’s it worth to you to protect your kids from what’s going on in public schools?”

Maybe the answer has been to turn over the school board and then watch closely. You might give that a year, two tops. If that doesn’t eliminate the problems, you need to cut and run.

If you’re not simultaneously lobbying the legislature to put the school money in the hands of parents, don’t be surprised if, when you need to pull your kids out, it’s going to be at your own expense—even though it shouldn’t be, and even though that solves nothing for all the other kids stuck in that strange indoctrination institution.

School choice—with plenty of free-market involvement—will mean better outcomes for all school children. In that case, take the money and run to better options. But if you can't wait for that huge win over the powerful teacher unions and their sycophants, just run. Whatever the cost, your kids are worth it.

 

---

[i] Online dictionary is telling me this is not a word, even though it was common in my household growing up, as in, “Keep your glommy hands off my candy; you’ve got your own.” Think “glom onto,” which does show up in the dictionary and means to cling to, the way a leech might glom onto a person. 

Education vs. Indoctrination

In the last post my point was that parents are best able to make decisions regarding the care and upbringing of their children—and that includes educating them as much as it does feeding and nurturing them in other ways. This is one of my passions, and I could go on for days, so I’m trying to restrain myself and just cover a few bites at a time.

During my career years (working full time before staying home full time and homeschooling, etc.) I was a curriculum writer. I wrote educational support material for college professors, and later wrote special education textbooks for secondary school students with low reading ability. It wasn’t enough to qualify me as an expert in the field of curriculum, but it’s more than the average parent out there.

We use the word curriculum as if we know exactly what it means. But we probably don’t think about the meaning enough. So, here’s the dictionary version:

In Texas, very few specifics are required of homeschools and other private schools, but we must use a written curriculum that we pursue in a bona fide manner, which must include math, reading, spelling, and good citizenship.

There is nothing about having a set of textbooks provided as a set by a particular publisher, although some people choose to go that route. There’s not even a requirement that textbooks be used, just that there is a plan for getting to a relatively acceptable outcome. For me, I used an eclectic combination, using some classical education ideas along with some newer approaches that fit us at any given time.

I had at one time taught college level writing, so I felt confident teaching that to my kids. I chose what books and programs we used to support us in the effort. I knew what the outcome would look like, because I’d been there. Also, I had the goal of getting my kids college ready, and I used the requirements for entry into the large private university I attended. That didn’t mean my kids had to go there (although two of them did); it just meant I expected them to be acceptably educated to go there in order to graduate from my homeschool. This was a much higher standard than a normal high school graduation.

I used varieties of math approaches, not including anything like a traditional textbook. For science we did research-based approaches early on and combined with others in classes later on. Our history “text” was a collection of original materials with some commentary.

I know homeschoolers who started out with a curriculum set and stuck with it all the way through. I know others who traded in the whole set of curriculum for a new set every year or two (the expensive way to go, but looks to me most like what public schools do). Others pick and choose and change at will.

Here’s another question we hardly ever ask: What is a textbook, and how is it different from curriculum? A textbook is a collection of information on a particular subject aimed at a particular level. It’s kind of an unnatural tool, when you think about it. Someone has gathered together the basic information they think you need, and compiled it, ordered it, and laid it out for your student consumption. Who did the deciding? If the collector of information is a known, trusted teacher, then a textbook can be a useful tool for transmitting useful knowledge in an efficient way. But, with the possible exception of Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw, who wrote the popular Principles of Economics, textbook authors are pretty anonymous. Usually students don’t even ask the “who” question; their only concern is whether it’s too boring to get through.

Textbooks are a relatively recent invention. They’ve technically been around since the Greeks. But textbooks as mass-produced educators coincide with the ballooning public education industrial complex. Some texts are excellent, using information learned in the last few decades about how people learn, and are designed with a look that enhances interest—and no learning happens if the student doesn’t tune in his attention because he’s interested.

So I can see why a teacher might want to use a textbook for some courses. But teachers rarely get to make that decision anymore. It’s much more likely that the decision is dictated to them by their school, or school district, whoever is holding the purchasing power. Maybe even the state—although in better cases, the state board of education should only be reviewing texts as acceptable choices or not.

Think about your life as an adult, out of school. When you want to learn something new, how often do you turn to a textbook? You might check out a series of books on a subject from the library, maybe buy a couple on the topic from the bookstore. You’ll probably use online sources. Get the basics, learn from others who are on a similar search or are sharing their expertise. You might watch some video tutorials (I love Pinterest and YouTube for this purpose). Learning from home, sometimes entirely for free, is becoming more and more the reality, and textbooks are practically archaic by comparison. It’s hard to imagine limiting yourself to a collection on the topic put together by some anonymous source.

When we look at a curriculum used in public schools, what are we looking at? Usually an integrated (and expensive) set of textbooks (and sometimes electronic media) integrating subjects covering the range of grade levels—insuring these things:

·         Greatest income for the publisher.

·         Greatest control of information for the producer/implementer.

What you do not get is anything even attempting flexibility for individual students, or choice for the parents or even for individual classroom teachers.

Whenever there is discussion about curriculum choices, I suggest you take a default position against the implementation—no matter how good it is. Because, no matter how good such a collection may be, it will not work for every student, every teacher, every classroom situation. And anything implemented as a one-size-fits-all solution is intended to enrich someone and give power to someone to control the thinking of all students. If you want to be able to educate your student, instead of succumb to indoctrination by some faraway entity, insist on being the one who makes every choice.

I’d like to talk a bit about Common Core and CSCOPE in a future post, as well as some other education concerns. But I thought we needed to set this groundwork first.