There's currently a nationwide war against public education,
and that war is being waged by the right wing.
In fact, a new report indicates that there's a new effort to privatize
education in several red states, and they're doing so
through legislation that would undermine public schools and
replace them with voucher supported public education.
At the end of the day, the real point here is to cut taxes for the rich,
and more importantly, to essentially turn the grade school model
into a profitable model, opening this up for
all sorts of bad actors to get involved and make a quick buck.
And it's gonna cost you, it's gonna cost your kids when it comes to their
education, and we need to strategize to fight back against it.
Now, let me give you the details on what's happening.
In These Times reports that many states are looking to install a new form of
vouchers called education savings accounts, ESAs.
Like strategies to empower charter schools and introduce private school tax credits,
ESA programs aim to remove local control of taxpayer dollars and
redirect them to private interests with as little public oversight as possible,
says public education advocate, Amy Frogge.
Now, the end goal for this again, is this privatization movement, and
it's always been about that.
When you see these attacks toward public school boards,
when you see these attacks against teachers' unions, understand that
the specific attack that they're leveling against teachers' unions or
public schools is not really what this is about.
It's about slowly but surely dismantling the public education system and
doing so by manufacturing consent among the electorate, right?
You fear monger about how terrible these schools are,
how they're indoctrinating your kids.
Wouldn't it be so much better if you had choice, if you had a way of taking your
student or taking your kid and putting them in a private school instead?
We can support you, we've got vouchers.
But as soon as they dismantle the public education system,
you think those vouchers are still gonna be available for
the underprivileged families that can't afford a private education for their kids.
Just try to think two steps ahead and understand that what they're trying
to do here is essentially make money off education, but also to keep education
an exclusive thing that's only available to their privileged kids.
Okay, so if you think inequality is bad now, this will certainly exacerbate it.
At least a dozen states, including Tennessee,
have introduced legislation to create ESAs,
heralded as the next generation of school choice by school privatization proponents.
Instead of a traditional voucher program which diverts public money to
private schools, ESAs grant public money directly to parents,
they send the money directly to parents.
This maneuver could help avoid challenges due to state level Blaine Amendments,
which prohibits state money from funding religious schools.
So they've found a loophole that allows for public money, this is taxpayer money,
to be diverted into religious organizations and religious schools.
And when we talk about private schools,
understand that they do not have to abide by certain standards.
Private schools can go ahead and teach whatever they want, whereas public
schools have oversight, they have certain standards they need to abide by.
And if they don't meet those standards, there're gonna be problems.
That is not the case with private schools.
And as you can tell,
a lot of these private schools are also religious in nature.
Now, it also removes accountability.
Parents in Arizona, where ESAs were the first to pass in 2011,
spent more than $700,000 in ESA funds on purchases unrelated
to education between July of 2017 and June of 2018.
But if the goal is to blow a hole in the state's education budget,
that miss-spending may not matter.
So let's let's talk about what this does to public schools as well.
Remember, they're taking the funding that these public schools desperately need,
they're taking the funding out, they're diverting it to private schools.
And remember, private schools also have a profit motive in mind.
Oftentimes the money goes toward religious schools,
remember the government is not supposed to endorse one religion or the other.
So funneling that money to religious schools has some issues when it comes to
the constitution as well, which is why they're doing it through these ESA
programs rather than the voucher program.
And when you defund the public schools,
what do you think happens to the public school?
Does the public school perform as well as it would if it was funded appropriately?
No, the public school starts to fail if it isn't failing already, because as we know,
many of these red states have already defunded public education.
So then it allows for the right wing to point to those failing public schools and
say, you see, schools are failing, public schools are failing your kids.
Of course, they won't take any ownership of the fact that they've led this charge
of defunding the school in the first place.
But it works every time, because understandably, these parents want to make
sure that their kids are getting the best possible education.
When you see the school's failing, most parents don't have time to read about
the legislation that defunded these schools.
They don't, they've got work to get to, they've got kids to raise, they're busy.
And so it is a perfect strategy by the right wing to defund,
dismantle public education and
then just divert public funds to the institutions they favor.
Now it's interesting because this strategy was proposed by right wing lawmakers
in Georgia, but it turns out that they turned this down in Georgia, why?
Well, remember there are rural parts of the country where
there are no private schools.
So if they dismantle the public education system,
and I have no doubt that they will succeed because the right wing knows how to
strategize, they know how to stay united.
They know how to work together and orchestrate the messaging necessary to
carry out their strategy, so I have no doubt that they'll do this.
But the rural parts of the country that do not have private education available at
all, there are no private institutions at all,
all they can rely on is public schools.
What do the students do there?
What happens to those students?
Are they just left to figure it out for themselves?
Are their parents screwed?
What happens?
So states like Georgia actually turned down proposals for these ESA or
voucher programs, but I don't think that's gonna stop them for long, okay.
And other parts of the country have implemented this, like Tennessee.
Now there's also a clear moneymaking motive behind this, there's a profit
motive, and any time there's a profit motive introduced, what ends up happening?
Well, you're gonna cut costs to maximize profits, right?
You're maybe not gonna invest much in ensuring that the students are getting
the best possible education, if that money can go to the shareholders or
if that money can go to the investors.
Now Amy Frogge, who I had quoted earlier, she's the Public Education Advocate
says this, if you can show that the public schools are failing,
then there are opportunities to sell so-called solutions, test prep,
charter schools, vouchers, these are the for-profit solutions.
In fact, if you look at the kind of technology that charter schools
are spending money on, it is really interesting, cuz a lot of the people who
run those charter schools have these cozy little ties with various companies that
provide educational solutions and educational technology.
And so the money that ends up getting spent,
oftentimes on things that the students don't even need, is pretty insane.
Now, lobbyists in Tennessee work for the pro privatization, American Federation for
Children, let's talk a little bit about who's funding these efforts.
Funded by billionaire, Betsy DeVos, as well as the City Fund,
backed by netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, and hedge fund billionaire, John Arnold.
Hastings is also an investor in Rocketship charter schools, education software
company, Dreambox Learning and Khan Academy, which publishes education videos.
Bill Gates and the Walton family have also donated millions to
education initiatives in Tennessee, so f that guy.
Okay, when we talk about privatizing education,
I know most of the focus is on the right wing people like Betsy DeVos,
but let's not make a mistake and
assume that the corporate Democrats are not in line with this.
In fact, under the Obama administration,
there was a pretty significant push toward charter schools.
And the one thing that stands out about charter schools that we should all know
about, we should all be wary of, is that they do not employ unionized educators.
They wanna be able to do whatever they want to cut the cost,
not have to deal with certain labor agreements,
labor rules pertaining to union contracts.
I mean, that's what this is all about.
And what's amazing is educators, even unionized educators,
are still not treated well in this country, they're not paid well.
Their working conditions are not so great.
Oftentimes, they need to take money out of their own accounts in order to provide
supplies for their students.
I mean, you really have to be passionate about being an educator in America
if you want to be a public school teacher, and a lot of people still do it.
And these people are heros, they really are,
considering the abuse that they deal with.
But considering how powerless they are, the fact that the right wing makes them
out to be these nefarious, dangerous, super powerful people blows my mind and
some people fall for it, time and time again.
Let's get to some of the other funders.
You have Charles Siler who is a former lobbyist for
the conservative Goldwater Institute, who now works in public education advocacy.
While gutting the education budget in a state reduces a huge tax liability for
the wealthy and generates business opportunities in for profit education,
according to Siler, there are other insidious reasons that corporations and
other wealthy people encourage privatization.
Public education creates more opportunities for social mobility,
which means a lot more churn and less stability in social and economic class.
That's the kind of thing that threatens people who fund these movements,
says Siler.
And it's what I referred to a little earlier in the show,
what is their number one concern?
Yes, make profit, pay less in taxes, but also, no,
we don't want you to move up in your social class.
We don't really want you to pick yourself up by the bootstraps.
We want to make sure that we maintain this system of inequality.
That's also part of this equation.
ESAs were actually developed by the Goldwater Institute, Silar adds,
as a shell game that launders public money through parents.
These parents are then presented as the grassroots arm behind school
privatization, but in truth, grassroots interest in the movement are negligible.
They don't really need a large grassroots movement.
These politicians can enact policy and
say they're doing it to give people other options.
So finally, where are we seeing this kind of movement toward privatization?
Outside of Tennessee, bills to adopt expanded ESAs have been in play this year
in a number of states, including Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho,
Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Rhode island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Washington.
By the way, Washington, I don't really think of Washington as a red state, but
they're moving toward privatization as well, and
it's terrifying because I think they're gonna succeed.
The reason why I think they're gonna succeed is because
the left can't get its act together.
Get off Twitter, stop with the in-fighting, strategize, work together and
figure out a way to counter what we're seeing right now,
because the right wing is winning on every front.
They're winning when it comes to privatizing education,
they're winning when it comes to taking over all these means of
communicating on social media platforms.
They're taking over, they control the narrative in many ways.
And the reason why they're able to do it is because they think strategically.
They might have some infighting behind the scenes,
as we've shown you with Kevin McCarthy and
what he's willing to say about members of his own Republican caucus, privately.
But publicly, they go out of their way to appear united.
And I think that's important because they put strategy and
winning above all else, and that pays dividends, clearly.
Anyway, that took a long time to to explain, so apologies for that.
There was another story I wanted to get to in this