School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States |

School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States |

School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States

But teachers and their allies are fighting back in Arizona, Kentucky and elsewhere.

Three years ago in West Virginia, roughly 20,000 educators went on strike and shut down public schools across the state, protesting low pay and high health care costs. Their historic nine-day labor stoppage led to a 5% pay increase for teachers and school service personnel. Inspired by the success in West Virginia, strikes in states including Oklahoma, Colorado and California soon followed.

The uprising sparked a wave of national attention, and the future of teacher organizing seemed more promising than it had in years. Their movement even had a name: “Red for Ed” — which referenced the red clothing educators and their allies wore each time they took to the streets for public schools. A year later, West Virginia educators walked off the job again in an effort to defeat a bill permitting charter schools to operate in their state. This time their success was more limited; teachers watered down the legislation, but lawmakers still rammed a version through in a special session, authorizing three charters to open by July 2023, with potential for more after that.

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Today, it’s school choice advocates who feel they have the momentum. Since the start of the year, two states that helped launch the national teacher uprising in 2018 — West Virginia and Kentucky — have passed some of the most expansive school choice policies in the country. And public education advocates in a third pivotal “Red for Ed” state, Arizona, have been fighting CONTINUE READING: School Choice and Charter Proponents Target Public Education in Key States |

CURMUDGUCATION: To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

CURMUDGUCATION: To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

I have concerns about school choice programs, and I usually express them as complaints, criticism, general snark. This time, I'd like to come at it a little differently. Let me frame these concerns as questions, because maybe there are answers that I'm just not aware of. As is obvious from a multitude of posts, I am skeptical; these questions show exactly what I'm skeptical of. 

And before I start, I'll agree that some of these concerns are not always well-addressed by public schools. So I'm not looking for answers in the old mode of "Yeah, but public schools do X!" I'm still wondering how a charter or voucher system would do a better job of managing the issues. If you want to take a shot an answering these, the comments are open.

1) A choice system is built on the idea of making parents the primary stewards of their child's education. Contrary to the usual criticism, I believe that the majority of parents are smart and capable and caring. But a non-zero number are not. I've told the stories: the student whose mother tried to run her over with a car; the student who was always tired because dad spent the utility money on beer; the student whose father threw him out of the house for trying to take some of dad's drugs; the student who was thrown out for coming out as gay; etc.  In those sorts of CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

The Politics Of School Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Politics Of School Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Politics Of School Choice

Julian Vasquez Heilig, Jameson Brewer, and Frank Adamson have written a peer-reviewed analysis of the politics of school choice. As Heilig wrote in his description of the analysis, “Modern notions of “markets” and “choice” in schooling stem from the libertarian ideas Milton Friedman espoused in the 1950s. Considering the underlying politics of school choice, it is important to examine the ramifications of neoliberal and collective ideology on market-based school choice research. In this chapter we point out that much of the research suggesting positive findings is continually conducted and promoted by neoliberal ideologically-driven organizations.” I would add to their analysis that Milton Friedman was not the sole originator of the ideology of “school choice.” As I wrote in the New York Review of Books, Friedman shares that dubious distinction with white Southern politicians who were adamantly opposed to the Brown decision and desegregation.

The Politics Of School Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog

Brookings Study: How D.C. School Choice Intensifies Segregation | Diane Ravitch's blog

Brookings Study: How D.C. School Choice Intensifies Segregation | Diane Ravitch's blog

Brookings Study: How D.C. School Choice Intensifies Segregation

The Brookings Institution published a study of the D.C. school system, which is almost evenly divided between public schools and charter schools. It was written by three scholars: Vanessa Williamson, Brookings Institution; Jackson Gode, Brookings Institution; and Hao Sun, Gallaudet University. The title of their study is “We All Want What’s Best for Our Kids.” Their findings are based on close reading of an online parent forum called “DC Urban Moms,” where school choice is an important topic.

What they found is not surprising. Choice intensifies and facilitates racial and socioeconomic segregation. This is the same phenomenon that has been documented in choice programs everywhere. The most advantaged parents master the system and get their children into what is perceived as the “best schools.” The “best schools” are those that have the most advantaged students.

The study begins:

Public education in the District includes a system of traditional public schools and a system of public 8
charter schools; in 2018–19, these schools served over 90,000 students at 182 schools. The city is highly diverse, as is the incoming school-age population. Among children under five, 48 percent are Black, 27 percent are white non-Hispanic, and 17 percent are Hispanic.9 54 percent of the city’s public school students are in CONTINUE READING: Brookings Study: How D.C. School Choice Intensifies Segregation | Diane Ravitch's blog

Shawgi Tell: Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument

Advocates of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools have long ignored serious criticisms of charter schools in a variety of ways. They have always believed, for example, that simply repeating worn-out phrases like “charter schools provide choice” will automatically cause everyone to dismiss the need for any discussion, investigation, and critical thinking about the well-documented negative effects of charter schools on education, society, the economy, and the national interest.

“Choice,” however, is not an argument for the existence or expansion of privately-operated charter schools.

When charter school promoters use the language of “choice,” they want people to:

1. Not recognize that education is an inalienable human right that must be guaranteed in practice by a public authority worthy of the name.
2. Believe that “free market” ideology is the best and most pro-social way to organize education in a modern society based on mass industrial production.
3. Ignore how “choice” leads to greater stratification and segregation in charter schools through their geographic location and selective student enrollment and attrition practices.
4. Disregard the fact that by “choice” charter school promoters really mean education is a commodity, not a social responsibility, and parents and students are consumers, not humans and citizens, who fend for themselves while shopping for a “good” school that hopefully does not close in under 10 years.
5. Think that there is no need to analyze how and why public schools have been set up to fail by privatizers so as to justify the rise of deregulated charter schools.
6. Get used to the disinformation that public schools are automatically bad and charter schools are inherently superior.
7. Ignore the fact that charter schools usually choose parents and students, not the other way around.
8. Overlook the fact that “choice” does not guarantee excellence, stability, or equity. Several thousand deregulated charter schools run by unelected individuals have closed in recent decades.
9. Believe that it does not matter who “delivers” education, but what kind of “results” are produced.
10. Dismiss the fact that “choice” means taking money away from under-funded public schools that educate thousands of students and that public schools in many instances are even compelled to provide some free services to charter schools.

It is not possible to conceal the fact that deregulated charter schools fail and CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument | Dissident Voice

Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity - Public Enemy Number 1

Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity - Public Enemy Number 1

Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity

Power used the Tampa Bay Times' Pulitzer tagline to strip mine Florida's public schools. It largely ignored the Orlando Sentinel's better, further-reaching voucher reporting. Why?

Part 1: Welcome to Jeb Crow Florida, 2021

Part 2: What "Jeb Crow" has wrought for FTC, McKay, and Gardiner kids -- and everybody else

Part 3: How to shop in a Jeb Crow voucher marketplace built to cheat and grift and harm your child

Today’s Part 4 is a comprehensive history and accounting of the consequences from Florida’s two most important pieces of newspaper journalism since 2015. Both concern education; and both illustrate how power determines the impact of journalism, in different ways. This article may be truncated in email delivery; so you should plan to click through to the website.

It would take a reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, to which I am a subscriber, a couple of days at most to go through the Step Up for Students website and compile a spreadsheet of voucher schools for the counties in their coverage area — with the same information I put together in this spreadsheet. (I will send you the full sheet if you want it, TBT, for a template.)

I would bet my house that every county would have a giant list of racially and ESE-segregated voucher schools with no accreditation or oversight or capital. These voucher schools exist only because of direct taxpayer funding or because big corporations get a public dollar-for-dollar tax break for funding them directly rather than funding real public schools.

In Polk County, 16 voucher schools have enrollments that are at least 76 percent black. Twelve of the 16 schools are at least 95 percent black or greater. Six are 100 percent black. Not one of those schools has accreditation, of any kind. More than 800 black children attend these segregated, no-capital “schools.”

Beyond purely black segregation, 30 out of 65 Polk voucher schools are at least 70 CONTINUE READING: Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity - Public Enemy Number 1

CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Dinner Party

CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Dinner Party

School Choice Dinner Party

Pairagraph is a website set up around the idea of conversations, or debates, around a particular question. The website organizers invite a pair of people to address the question in turn for a total of four posts of no more than 500 words each. It's a fun little concept that has, so far, been applied to a broad range of topics.

I was recently invited to join in one of these pairings around the question "Is school choice essential to educational justice." My counterpart was Terry Stoops of the John Locke Foundation (North Carolina’s Most Trusted and Influential Source of Common Sense). I had the second and fourth positions in the debate. 

Here's what I posted for my first response.

Imagine that you have a dining room with three tables set up. At one is a great feast, with the finest meats and vegetables, beautifully cooked. At another is a good, solid, if not spectacular, spread of hearty, wholesome food. At the third is bread and water. 

Folks are assigned to one of the three tables to eat, but the assignment seems unfair, so one of the people enters the dining room and sets up a fourth table. This person takes a few chairs and some food from each of the other tables for their Table #4, and announces, "We will now have choice."

But there is the same number of chairs, the same amount of food, and the same range of quality. The same number of diners will eat bread and water. 

Mr. Stoops has made an excellent case against the CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Dinner Party

Using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms to Guide Education Choice - Network For Public Education

Using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms to Guide Education Choice - Network For Public Education

Using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms to Guide Education Choice

The writing team at Accountabaloney has kept a watchful eye on Florida’s ongoing shenanigans, and their newest post is alarming. Florida’s legislature is considering SB48, a bill that would turn all of Florida’s voucher programs into Education Savings Accounts. ESAs are like super-vouchers, a grant of taxpayer money from the state that parents can spend on whatever education expenses they choose–not just private school tuition, but anything education-related.

The money is handled by a non-profit organization. In Florida’s case that’s Step Up For Students, and one of the mysteries of this kind of transition is how such a group would manage thousands of families choosing from thousands of education-flavored vendors. The answer, as reported on the blog, is scary:

In a recent podcast, Doug Tuthill outlined how Step Up for Students has created an e-commerce platform, that will collect data from its voucher recipients and use Artificial Intelligence and algorithms to guide them towards the “best educational options” for their children. Apparently, those “best educational options” will never be district managed public schools.

Algorithm-selected education. Massive data mining. All handled by non-transparent software. Turns out school choice is actually algorithm’s choice.

Follow this link to the full story.

Using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms to Guide Education Choice - Network For Public Education

As Trump Era Ends, “School Choice Movement” Must Confront Its Conservative Roots | Diane Ravitch's blog

As Trump Era Ends, “School Choice Movement” Must Confront Its Conservative Roots | Diane Ravitch's blog

As Trump Era Ends, “School Choice Movement” Must Confront Its Conservative Roots

Avi Wolfman-Arent writes at the Philadelphia PBS website WHYY about the uncomfortable dilemma of the “school choice movement.” At least some of the choice champions had not come to grips with the fact that their movement was funded by Trump supporters. Perhaps the reckoning might have caused them to wonder if they were being used. It’s easy to forget–or perhaps never realize–that the school choice movement was created by Southern segregationists, borrowing the rhetoric of libertarian economist Milton Friedman. It i worth pondering why and how the Democratic Party abandoned its longstanding belief in equitable, well-resourced public schools as a common good.

He begins:

When Philadelphia-area mega-donors Jeff and Janine Yass made headlines recently for their contributions to Republican politicians — some of whom tried to overturn the presidential election — it stirred up a familiar debate CONTINUE READING: As Trump Era Ends, “School Choice Movement” Must Confront Its Conservative Roots | Diane Ravitch's blog

‘School choice’ is a dog whistle for resegregation

‘School choice’ is a dog whistle for resegregation

‘School choice’ is a dog whistle for resegregation

Congratulations to Cindy Marten. San Diego Unified School District’s superintendent has been tapped to become the next deputy U.S. education secretary.

Under Marten, San Diego Unified was one of two large urban districts nationwide in 2019 to outperform average test scores for fourth- and eighth-graders. The district’s Black and Latino students also graduated at higher rates than the state average.

Meanwhile, Iowa is headed in the other direction. Like, really far in the other direction.

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has proposed a bevy of so-called “school choice” reforms to the state’s education system.

What you’d expect is included. Private school vouchers. More funding for privately operated charter schools.

But most striking is a change that would allow students to transfer out of schools that have a voluntary or court-ordered diversity plan.

Higher-income families (read: well-to-do white families) would be able to remove their kids from schools that educate predominantly lower-income students (read: Black and immigrant families in cities like Des Moines).

In other words, the resegregation of public schools.

No wonder so many right-wing politicians and pundits are gung-ho about vouchers and charter schools. As historian Steve Suitts has documented, “school choice” rhetoric and policies harken back to the racist segregationists of the mid-twentieth century.

Like former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who coordinated with the Ku Klux Klan while cloaking his CONTINUE READING: ‘School choice’ is a dog whistle for resegregation

Our Choices During “School Choice Week” | The Merrow Report

Our Choices During “School Choice Week” | The Merrow Report

Our Choices During “School Choice Week”

This short piece attempts to make two points. First, public education must stop trying to ‘get back to normal,’ because “normal” isn’t anywhere near good enough to justify continued large public investments of taxpayer dollars in public education. As widespread school reopenings draw closer, I believe that educators face decisions that will, at the end of the day, determine whether public education survives. And, if they mess it up, Jeff Bezos is lurking in the wings!

A second point: The young people who will be returning to classrooms have endured (and are still living through) an unprecedented time of crises–not just COVID-caused isolation but also economic hardship, political turmoil, and often severe stress in their homes, including (perhaps) abuse. For those reasons, simply trying to “get back to normal” in classrooms is a terrible idea. It’s time to step up for our children, meet them where they are, and do what’s right. Stop blathering about ‘learning loss’ and ‘closing the achievement gap’ and other diversions!

Point One: As schools prepare for reopening, traditional public schools and the men and women running them are facing serious choices.  Ironically, this week, January 24-30, happens to be “School Choice Week,” a gimmick created ten years ago by conservatives to advance the charter school and voucher movements.  I.E., “School Choice Week” exists to undermine traditional public education.

(SIDEBAR: In case you are curious, the ‘School Choice Week’ website does not list its funders, but, as Valerie Strauss reported in the Washington Post,  “According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the National School Choice Week website listed the CONTINUE READING: Our Choices During “School Choice Week” | The Merrow Report

School choice lawsuit surge pushes possible high court fight

School choice lawsuit surge pushes possible high court fight

School choice lawsuit surge pushes possible high court fight

Vermont is facing at least its second lawsuit in four months over a voucher program that allows students in communities that don't have schools or are not part of supervisory unions to attend schools of their choice, including approved private institutions.

The Vermont system in which certain towns pay tuition for students to attend other schools is unconstitutional because it's not available to all students in the state, according to the Liberty Justice Center, a Chicago-based national nonprofit law firm that fights for school choice. If the lawsuit succeeds, officials at the nonprofit say they will file legal challenges in other states with similar school choice programs. But critics say the lawsuit is a veiled attempt to get a case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where conservative judges hold six of nine seats, to get more public funding into private education, including religious schools.

The Vermont suit comes six months after a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a Montana case that states can't cut religious schools out of programs that send public money to private education. Following that decision, three Vermont families filed a lawsuit in September in federal court, saying that denying them the state tuition benefit to send their children to religious schools is unconstitutional.

A similar lawsuit challenging Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from a high school tuition voucher program was denied by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the parents challenging the law and their attorneys have vowed to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Another lawsuit was filed in New Hampshire.

Maine and New Hampshire have similar programs for students who live in communities without schools to attend public or non-religious private schools of their choice.

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Montana case, the federal appeals court granted an injunction on Friday to stop Vermont from excluding a high school student who attends a religious school from taking college classes under the state’s dual enrollment CONTINUE READING: School choice lawsuit surge pushes possible high court fight

Diane Ravitch: The Dark History of School Choice | by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books

The Dark History of School Choice | by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books

The Dark History of School Choice

How an argument for segregated schools became a rallying cry for privatizing public education.

During her tenure as secretary of education, Betsy DeVos repeatedly asked Congress to allocate billions of dollars for vouchers for religious and private schools. She was repeatedly rebuffed. Even Republican members of Congress were unwilling to use the federal education budget to pay for vouchers. After all, most of their constituents’ children attend public schools.

After the pandemic struck, DeVos tried again. Late last March, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion relief bill called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which allocated $13.2 billion for K–12 education. Congress expected that the money would be shared, as federal education funds typically are, among the nation’s nearly 100,000 public and 7,000 charter schools, as well as private schools based on the number of low-income students they enroll. DeVos instead directed states to share the money allotted to public schools with private and religious schools that enrolled middle-income and affluent students. The NAACP and several states responded with lawsuits, arguing that her order was illegal. Three federal judges in different parts of the country ruled against DeVos, and she backed down.

But the Trump administration found another way to enrich charter and private schools. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), also part of the CARES Act, was supposed to rescue small businesses. Lobbyists for the charter industry, however, encouraged charter schools to apply as nonprofits, thus double-dipping into both the public school and PPP funds (public schools were ineligible for PPP funding). Private and religious schools also qualified for PPP funds as nonprofits. Therefore, through a bill supposed to aid small businesses at risk of bankruptcy, thousands of charter, private, and religious schools received an average of about $855,000 each, compared to about $134,500 per public school through CARES. Religious schools of every denomination, elite private schools, and more than one thousand charter schools received anywhere from $150,000 to $10 million each according to a database compiled by a website called COVID Stimulus Watch. Antelope Valley Learning Academy, a charter school in California, received $7.8 million. The for-profit Academia Corporation charter school chain won $28.6 million. Buckingham Browne & Nichols, an elite private school in CONTINUE READING: The Dark History of School Choice | by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books

Ohio: The Cost of “School Choice” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: The Cost of “School Choice” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio: The Cost of “School Choice”

What is the state of Ohio paying for charters and vouchers? From state data and evaluations, we know that neither sector performs as well as the state’s public schools. The legislature likes to fund failure.

Bill Phillis, who retired as deputy state superintendent and is expert about school finance, has the answer:

Current Cost of School Choice

The cost of school choice borne by the state and school districts is enormous. Public school leaders and advocates should be alarmed.
Ohio has been private school-friendly beginning a half century ago. In HB 166, the state provides private schools with $139,995,470 for administrative cost reimbursement and $309,878,268 for auxiliary services, for a total of $449,873,738. One half billion!

Additional direct state subsidies for charter schools and vouchers in HB 166 for FY 21 and FY 22 include:   
Charter facilities                                                $40,000,000 
 Quality charter schools                                  $60,000,000               
Public charter schools                                     $14,000,000               
EdChoice expansion                                      $178,240,758              
Choice programs                                                $9,780,309                               Total                                                $302,021,067

Hence, the direct state appropriations for private schools, charters and vouchers in FY 21 and FY 22 total $751,894,805.
If the deductions from school districts in FY 22 are equal to the deductions in FY 21 for vouchers and charters, the total will be $2,352,881,306. Therefore, the grand total of tax dollars going to private schools and charters in FY 21 and FY 22 is $3,104,776,111.
Charter school deductions from school districts started with $10,784,924 in FY 99 and escalated each year to $929,884,915 in FY 15. Since FY 15, the total charter deduction has reduced slowly to $827,136,047 in the current school CONTINUE READING: Ohio: The Cost of “School Choice” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Shawgi Tell: Charter School Disinformation About "Choice" | Dissident Voice

Charter School Disinformation About "Choice" | Dissident Voice

Charter School Disinformation About “Choice”

Perhaps no other word is more central to charter school discourse than the word “choice.” “Choice” is not only a central concept in charter school discourse but a persistent source of disinformation. Disinformation refers to the deliberate hiding of the real context and relations of things so as to disorient people and cause them to act against their own interests while making them think that they are acting in their own interests. It is a form of false consciousness or anti-consciousness, and we all pay a heavy price for it.

Advocates of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools that siphon billions of dollars a year from public schools have long valorized “choice” and used the rhetoric of “choice” to distort thinking, mislead the public, and promote the private interests of owners of capital. Under the veneer of high ideals, “choice” has consistently been used by school-choice advocates and corporate school reformers to eliminate a modern conception of government, education, rights, and social responsibility, and to promote the outdated idea and practice of an education marketplace where education is seen as nothing more than a commodity and parents and students are treated as consumers, not humans or citizens with rights that belong to them by virtue of their being.

Confounding Two Different Notions of “Choice”

“Choice” in the most basic and straightforward sense of the word is simply the act of selecting something from a list of alternatives. It is something people CONTINUE READING: Charter School Disinformation About "Choice" | Dissident Voice

CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Disempowers (Almost) Everybody

CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Disempowers (Almost) Everybody

School Choice Disempowers (Almost) Everybody

The standard argument for school choice is that it will empower all sorts of folks, but it's just not so. In fact, modern school choice is designed to deliberately strip power from all sorts of public education stakeholders.

Unions

Let's start with the most obvious--one big dream of choiceniks is to finally break the damned teachers unions. You can see in pieces like the one I discussed yesterday just how badly some conservatives want to make teachers unions go away; for some hard righty folks, the entire public school system is just a scam set up to generate revenue for the unions, which in turn function simply as a fund-raising arm of the Democratic Party.

The charter dream model has been built around the fully-empowered visionary CEO, who should be free to do whatever his vision tells him needs to be done without government regulations or union contracts limiting his options. For charteristas, freedom to hire and fire at will, to extend the work day and work year as far as they wish, and to set work conditions as they wish are all an essential part. They want to "empower" teachers to obey whatever orders the boss wants to implement.

Vouchers of course move us into the world of CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Disempowers (Almost) Everybody

CURMUDGUCATION: Did Covid-19 Destroy The Case Against School Choice?

CURMUDGUCATION: Did Covid-19 Destroy The Case Against School Choice?

Did Covid-19 Destroy The Case Against School Choice?

Betsy DeVos repeatedly insists that the current pandemic A) shouldn't in any way interfere with the normal operation of public schools and B) makes it "more clear than ever" that school choice must be a thing, toot de suite. The two prongs of her argument belong to two entirely different pitchforks, but many folks with more coherent debate tools have picked up that second point. 

One of those is Rick Hess, who over at EdWeek argues that "Covid-19 Has Capsized the Case Against School Choice." To make his point, he calls back to a point he made back in the spring (you know--100 years ago):

The most effective argument made by opponents of school choice has long been the simple assertion that we can't trust choice to yield decent options for every child. And since every child has a right to be schooled, it's important to protect traditional public school systems in order to assure an acceptable default education for every child.

Hess's assertion is that "this line of argument is no longer operative." Covid has revealed that the public system "guarantees a lot less than we imagined." 

Hess points to a small list of public school pandemic failures-- missing students, dodgy methods of taking attendance, dumping home schooling requirements on harried parents, insisting that re-opening will require more money. These are all true things, and several are hard to excuse (except the "needs more money" part--the addition of PPE and the additional staff needed to handle daily CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Did Covid-19 Destroy The Case Against School Choice?