We are living in contentious times, making the need to expose and debate issues more important than ever. This reality has prompted the creation of a new featured section for The Hispanic Outlook – It’s Debatable. Every month, we will explore a wide range of hot button topics related to the Hispanic community, education and/or our world in general. You may find the pieces in this section reflect your own views – or may challenge them. Our hope is that exploring these topics in greater detail will encourage healthy debate and foster thought-provoking conversations moving forward.
Every crisis breaks two ways. There are those who are devastated by the wave of destruction and upheaval. For others, the adage “never let a crisis go to waste” applies. For those who have fought against the notion that the future of education is the gutting or elimination of public education in favor of private and charter school education (some notably run by religious institutions), COVID-19 is the perfect storm against their efforts. To them, the virus in its philosophical form is every bit as damaging as it is in its biological form.
The pandemic brought public education to a grinding halt this spring, but that hasn’t stopped policymakers from pushing their own political agendas. On the one hand, public school advocates see this as their chance to bring aging infrastructure and technology improvements to a public system that has long been underfunded and neglected. Until this crisis, many parents saw teachers as overpaid and underworked public servants with greedy union leaders who forced municipalities into supporting higher salaries, tenure, a shorter workday and summers off. To be fair, union leaders have been fierce and unpopular in their defense of their membership. This public resentment fueled by an effort to slash property taxes resulted in a series of budget cuts, which led to larger classrooms and little to no funding for school supplies, so instructors and parents have had to pick up the slack.
But a funny thing happened when schools shut down. Parents had to step into the shoes of their children’s teachers. It was a major shock for many. Suddenly, they understood that being their child’s teacher was no walk in the park. It was a revelation to them. It was a reaction similar to the new found respect people have realized for “essential workers” – everyone including the person who delivers their groceries, picks up their garbage, works in meat-packing plants and dispenses their medications (not to mention the health care professionals who risk their lives daily to take care of them and their loved ones). It seemed that the stars had positively aligned for real change for public schools.
Change Creates Conflict
And change came, but not the kind that public school advocates hoped would happen. Advocates of private and religious charter schools were paying attention to this as well. And for the first time in a decade, they had an advocate in the White House and the Department of Education. For years, private school supporters, especially in the religious community, have fought for federal funding and then more and more funding in the form of grants, compensation for lower income student enrollees and charter designations. Conservative courts have largely supported those efforts. The installation of Betsy DeVos, a longtime private school promoter, to secretary of education put the school choice movement (i.e. private school funding) on steroids.
The COVID-19 crisis proved to be the perfect vehicle to drive the transformation of school funding. According to Voice of America, the Department of Education created a new policy that took effect immediately in time to divert emergency COVID-19 relief funds to private schools whether or not these schools served wealthier communities or had robust financial support from donors or other sources. The only concession made to critics of the policy was DeVos’ assurance that she would “discourage” any “financially secure private schools” from applying for these funds.
DeVos explained, “The CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) is a special, pandemic-related appropriation to benefit all American students, teachers and families impacted by coronavirus. There is nothing in the law Congress passed that would allow districts to discriminate against children and teachers based on private school attendance and employment.”
A Plan Takes Shape
DeVos’ concern was the health and welfare of the private schools she has championed for years. “Most private schools serving low- and middle-income communities are under great financial strain due to COVID-19 because they are typically dependent on tuition from families and donations from their communities,” she argued. “More than 100 private schools have already announced they will not be able to reopen following the pandemic, and hundreds more are facing a similar fate.”
In May, DeVos made no secret of her desire to promote private schools in an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Catholic archbishop of New York. The SiriusXM Radio appearance, reported on by Chalklist, quoted Dolan suggesting that DeVos was trying to “utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to send them to faith-based schools,” which included a policy pushing states to offer voucher-like grants for parents seeking school choice. He wanted to know if he was reading her intent correctly.
“Yes, absolutely,” DeVos admitted. “For more than three decades that has been something that I’ve been passionate about. This whole pandemic has brought into clear focus that everyone has been impacted, and we shouldn’t be thinking about students that are in public schools versus private schools.”
DeVos made good on her intentions. It was a busy July for her, in fact. She announced a $15 million grant competition to promote tribally-directed education choice for Native American students. The Accessing Choices in Education (ACE) grants allows tribes, or other education entities partnering with tribes, to set up a variety of education options and services from which parents or students can choose.
DeVos also announced that the Department of Education will award at least $85 million over the next five years for disadvantaged students from families with lower incomes in Washington, D.C., to attend private schools of their choice, as part of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
A Political Turn
“Students and parents love the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program because it gives them the freedom to choose the right education fit for them,” she said. “When students find their right fit, we know they’re more likely to succeed.” And then she added this political statement to emphasize her point. “While too many Democrats in Congress continue to do the bidding of union bosses who want nothing more than to defund this successful program, this administration will continue to be on the side of students and parents. This program should not be subject to political whims.”
Democrats would argue it is not political whim that has them concerned; it is the systemic promotion of private education over public education, an American institution that has consistently educated 90% of America’s youth. They argue that no amount of vouchers could successfully cover nine-tenths of the student population, so why not promote and invest in public education? In addition, they argue private schools aren’t the perfect model they are cracked up to be. For example, many who push private schools do so because they believe students get a better education there. However, there is evidence that private schools are actually not as effective as public schools in educating the leaders of tomorrow. In fact, a study conducted by the Center for American Progress in 2018 entitled, “The Highly Negative Impact of Vouchers,” concluded that student math achievement in private schools was the equivalent of missing 68 days of public school instruction.
All things being equal, where does the support for private schools come from, then? It could be argued that religious education is important to some parents. The smaller class sizes also mean more personalized instruction even if the Center for American Progress’ research is correct, and there is little to no difference in the quality of instruction. But some opponents to the creeping privatization of public education in America believe there is something more political at play, and it can be traced to the opposition to and continuing resistance to the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954.
Promoting Segregation?
A report issued by the Urban Institute entitled, “When Is a School Segregated? Making Sense of Segregation 65 Years after Brown v. Board of Education,” analyzes the impact of private and charter schools on segregation. They begin with the supposition that “Many students are enrolled in segregated school systems with unequal access to resources.” They present research that indicates:
• Holding school size constant, private and charter schools tend to have higher than average contributions to segregation than traditional public schools.
• Charter schools are overrepresented among schools that are both significantly more and less Black and Hispanic than the surrounding neighborhood.
• In neighborhoods with low shares of Black and Hispanic students, private schools are 30 percentage points more likely than traditional public schools to segregate the system.
Their conclusion? “Private schools account for a large share of segregation relative to their enrollment share. Charter schools’ contributions are high often because of where they are located. But traditional public schools serve almost 90% of students – segregation cannot be eliminated unless these schools better integrate.”
Parents’ Concerns
The “concern” DeVos expresses is shared by parents across America – although most of them are parents of public school children. A survey conducted by Caissa Public Strategy since the start of the COVID-19 crisis reveals what parents are most concerned about as they grapple with the decision of whether or not to send their children back to school in the fall. When asked how concerned they were about their children returning, 89% of parents indicated they were concerned about their child’s safety at school in relation to COVID-19. Not only are parents concerned, they are ready to make changes on behalf of their children if desired safety measures aren’t met. The data shows as many as 61% of parents are likely or very likely to consider changing schools in the fall if desired safety measures aren’t met. The nationwide online survey polled parents of K-12 children and was conducted the week of June 1, 2020.
Although these parents are concerned and confused, these feelings are directed toward politicians and local school and municipal leaders. Fully, 77% of parents in the survey were well-satisfied with the communication they have been having with their children’s teachers.
Low Morale
Another survey conducted this time by EdWeek Research Center found that student and teacher morale is at an all-time low. This is especially true for elementary school teachers and students where there is more of a family atmosphere generated on behalf of younger students. Rather than have more leisure time during the shutdown, 90% of teachers surveyed report that they are spending more time preparing and engaging students than they did prior to the pandemic.
But the overriding feeling of parents and teachers, alike, is fear. They see no viable plan being presented to keep them and their families safe. This might be because the competition between public and private schools to reopen safely in the fall is an uneven playing field. It is the difference between trying to rotate a tanker 360 degrees to safely and successfully dock their vessel, and doing the same thing with a yacht.
Public schools are heavily regulated, limited on sources of funding for improvements, overcrowded (making social distancing virtually impossible), and are interconnected with other neighborhood schools. Their facilities are generally old and technologically inferior in terms of the tools it can offer to teachers and students. They are slow to act because each change must go through layers of federal, state, local and union oversight.
Private schools are “boutiques” of learning with unlimited financial support from parents in the form of tuition, donors and government grants. They generally have small classes and face little regulation in terms of the curriculum taught. They are, for the most part, not unionized. Their facilities are newer, better equipped with technology and have application processes, which allow them to limit who attends their schools with little to no influence from local, state and federal regulation. Parents might believe that private school is the safer option for the fall – if they can afford it or score a voucher – but the autonomy of private schools and the absence of a nationally regulated plan makes this no sure bet.
Finally, it is not lost on parents that two national conventions have now been converted to virtual events because of safety concerns, while officials at the local, state and national level give vague and unconvincing assurances that parents can safely roll the dice and send their children back to their neighborhood schools for hours a day every day without much risk. As a nation, we have been so right and so wrong about this pandemic so far. We are about to take a giant leap of faith this fall with our most precious resource, out children. Time will tell if America’s know-how can rise to this challenge and right our ship of state. •
