CURMUDGUCATION: SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

In South Carolina, a lawsuit filed this week seeks to obliterate the wall between church and state.

Like most such lawsuits, the federal lawsuit has been a advocacy group that specializes in such things-- you may remember the Liberty Justice Center as the folks who won the Janus case, which either was an attack on unions wrapped in the First Amendment. 

As with most such cases, the advocacy group needed to find themselves some plaintiffs to attach the case to. What's striking this time is that the plaintiffs are not some group of regular citizens-- the lawsuit-- Bishop of Charleston v. Adams  has been filed on behalf of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, plus a group of independent colleges.

The federal suit follows the South Carolina Supreme Court's rejection of Governor Henry McMaster's attempt to use CARES pandemic relief funds for private schools.

That court found the desire to hand public funds to private schools unconstitutional. So the solution is obvious--sue to have the state's constitution rewritten.

The case has a target perfect for PR purposes--the Blaine Amendment. In 1875, President Grant proposed, and Congressman James G. Blaine officially launched, a move to add a constitutional CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

David Berliner: Why Religious Schools Should Never Receive a Dollar of Public Funding | Diane Ravitch's blog

David Berliner: Why Religious Schools Should Never Receive a Dollar of Public Funding | Diane Ravitch's blog

David Berliner: Why Religious Schools Should Never Receive a Dollar of Public Funding

Since the 2020 election, when Republicans won many seats in state legislatures, there has been an explosion of proposed voucher laws, to allow people to get public money to pay for religious schools. David Berliner, one of our nation’s most distinguished researchers of education, explains why funding religious schools with public money is a terrible idea.

Why Religious Schools Should Never Receive a Dollar of Public Funding

David C. Berliner Regents’ Professor Emeritus

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Arizona State University

I believe in separation of church and state. I think it has done the United States a lot of good to honor Jefferson’s metaphoric and aspirational “wall” between the two. I also believe that money corrupts too many people and too many institutions. Holding those two beliefs simultaneously means 1.) I never want to see any local, state, or federal money used to aide any religious group, and 2.) I don’t want to see any religious group, or affiliated religious organizations, donating to the campaigns of public officials. The latter may be impossible to stop in an era of “dark money.” But the former—government support of religious institutions– is almost always done in public view and is worth stopping CONTINUE READING: David Berliner: Why Religious Schools Should Never Receive a Dollar of Public Funding | Diane Ravitch's blog

David Berliner on the Travesty of Public Funds for Religious Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

David Berliner on the Travesty of Public Funds for Religious Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

David Berliner on the Travesty of Public Funds for Religious Schools

David Berliner, a distinguished scholar of American education, is writing a long essay about the dangers of public funding for religious schools. Currently numerous red states are considering proposal to expand vouchers and transfer more public funds to religious schools, typically without accountability. Their actions will overturn the historic tradition of separation of church and state. As the Pastors for Texas Children often say, that separation guarantees religious Liberty.

Berliner writes:

Public dollars for support of religious schools costs citizens billions of dollars annually, and ends up supporting some horrible things. A contemporary example of this is the criteria for entrance to the Fayetteville Christian School (FCS) in North Carolina. 

The Fayetteville Christian School is recipient, in a recent school year, of $495,966 of public money. They got this in the form of school vouchers that are used by students and their families to pay for the students religious schooling. The entrance requirements for this school, and other religious schools like it, frighten me, though they are clearly acceptable to North Carolinians. From their website, in 2020:¹

“The student and at least one parent with whom the CONTINUE READING: David Berliner on the Travesty of Public Funds for Religious Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

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

DeVos Still Haunts Indiana | Live Long and Prosper

DeVos Still Haunts Indiana | Live Long and Prosper

DeVos Still Haunts Indiana

ADVANCEMENT OF GOD’S KINGDOM

Betsy DeVos is gone…and her boss will be gone in less than a week, but that doesn’t mean that the party of low taxes for the wealthy has forgotten what Princess Betsy stood for…the advancement of God’s Kingdom in the battleground of “educational reform.”

The Indiana General Assembly for the 2021 session already has thirty-seven bills dealing with “school.” Most notable among them is House Education Committee chair, Bob Behning’s HB 1005 which would…

…create state-funded Education Savings Accounts that certain K-12 students could use for various educational services, including private school tuition.

Just a reminder…in Indiana “private school tuition” means parochial schools more than 99% of the time. Advancing God’s Kingdom, indeed.

Remember when Governor Mitch Daniels told us that it was important for anyone using vouchers to attend a public school for at least a year? Remember when Governor Mitch Daniels told us that vouchers were for poor kids to CONTINUE READING: DeVos Still Haunts Indiana | Live Long and Prosper

The Legacy Of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos | 89.3 KPCC

The Legacy Of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos | 89.3 KPCC

The Legacy Of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

What to make of the tenure of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos depends, like Beauty itself, on the eye of the beholder.

To the president who asked her to run the Department of Education, she was a loyal lieutenant who argued for her department's irrelevance in a nation where control of schools is a local affair — that is, until she argued the opposite, at the president's urging, and threatened schools with a loss of federal funding if they refused to reopen mid-pandemic.

To Christian conservatives, she was a hero who once proclaimed, "I fight against anyone who would have government be the parent to everyone." DeVos used her bully pulpit to champion religious education, push for school choice and help private schools in financial turmoil.

To her critics, including the nation's teachers unions, she was a stone-cold villain who famously suggested guns belong in some schools (to fend off bears), who needed the vice president's vote to survive confirmation and who spent four years disparaging American public education.

Whatever view you take of Secretary DeVos, here's a look back at the facts of her CONTINUE READING: The Legacy Of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos | 89.3 KPCC

Public Schools. Public. | Teacher in a strange land

Public Schools. Public. | Teacher in a strange land

Public Schools. Public.

[Many years ago, at my husband’s class reunion]: Inebriated classmate starts rhapsodizing about the extreme superiority of the education they all got at their well-regarded co-ed Catholic high school in the suburbs of Detroit, back in the day. His monologue derails (did I mentioned he was sloshed?) and he turns to yammering at ME (a public school teacher) about how terrible schools are today (he has no children) and that the public schools—well, they’re the worst of all. Everybody knows that.

I bite my tongue.

I’m used to people assuming that private and religious schools are, somehow, automatically better than public schools. On the face of it, if ‘you get what you pay for’ is a truism, private schools ought to be better than public schools. Depending on your definition of ‘better,’ of course.

Part of the cachet of privately funded education is exclusion. You’re paying for the privilege (a carefully chosen word) of sending your child to a school that other people can’t afford, and having them taught using a set of values (religious and otherwise) that your family has chosen, not been assigned to by location.

You are making the decisions, finding a school with a socio-economic level close  CONTINUE READING: Public Schools. Public. | Teacher in a strange land

Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) – Part Two | Blue Cereal Education

Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) – Part Two | Blue Cereal Education

Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) – Part Two

I’m discovering as I continue to draft a follow-up to “Have To” History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases that it’s more and more difficult to keep things succinct as subject matter nears the 21st century. I’m sharing a few rough drafts along the way partly in hopes a few of you, my Eleven Faithful Followers, might find them interesting, and partly because nothing highlights the problems in a text like posting it live for all the world to see.

Some version of this Talmudic Tale will likely be in the upcoming book. Chances are good, however, that the final results will be considerably more succinct – which is both necessary and a tiny bit sad.

Recap of Part One:  Kiryas Joel was (and is) a community of particularly insular Hasidic Jews (the Satmars) in New York. Most of their children attended private religious schools, but they asked the state for assistance providing care and education for their special needs children. Initial efforts to serve these particular children ran into conflict with recent Supreme Court rulings which struck down several public school efforts to serve high needs kids in religious institutions. New York responded by allowing the Satmars to create their own neighborhood and later a publicly funded neighborhood school tailored to their precise boundaries.  

As a practical matter, it certainly solved the problem. Constitutionally, on the other hand...

Larkin v. Grendel’s Den (1982)

Just a decade before, the Supreme Court had ruled on a case having absolutely nothing to do with religious enclaves or public education, but which would nevertheless complicate the lives of the Satmars just as things were looking up for their special- CONTINUE READING: Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) – Part Two | Blue Cereal Education

DOE Report: Acellus Online Curriculum Violated Religion, Discrimination Policies - Honolulu Civil Beat

DOE Report: Acellus Online Curriculum Violated Religion, Discrimination Policies - Honolulu Civil Beat

DOE Report: Acellus Online Curriculum Violated Religion, Discrimination Policies

The Hawaii Department of Education’s internal review of the remote learning tool found the inappropriate content in lessons to be “severe, pervasive and persistent.”

The controversial distance learning program used by hundreds of Hawaii public schools this year discriminated against protected classes based on race, national origin, gender, religion, ethnicity and socioeconomic status, according to a Hawaii Department of Education review of Acellus Learning Accelerator.

The 140-page report, drafted last month but just posted to the DOE website on Monday, reveals the program violates the state Board of Education’s anti-harassment, anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policy against students by employees.

“Viewed through the lens of BOE Policy 305-10 … the identified discriminatory content rises to the level of being severe, pervasive and persistent,” the report says.

Additionally, the report found Acellus program content promotes religion in the public schools in violation of a BOE policy that prohibits religion in the schools.

The DOE had released a five-page condensed report on Acellus in mid-October but the comprehensive report released this week offers a much fuller and more detailed picture of the extent to which Acellus has featured harmful material to scores of public school students in Hawaii.

Although the full report had been available for more than a month, it’s not clear why the DOE took as long as it did to post the full review. Hawaii Board of Education members were publicly calling for its release as far back as at an Oct. 15 meeting.

Civil Beat had also requested the report on Oct. 19 via the Uniform Information Practices Act. After several follow-up emails, the DOE replied last Thursday by referencing a proclamation by Gov. David Ige that suspended UIPA deadlines due to COVID-19.

At its Oct. 15 meeting, the Board of Education voted to discontinue Acellus by the end of the school year. While some DOE schools have independently chosen to yank the online curriculum from their menu of distance learning tools, other schools are choosing to CONTINUE READING: DOE Report: Acellus Online Curriculum Violated Religion, Discrimination Policies - Honolulu Civil Beat

When Jesus Needs A Visitor's Badge: Church-State Issues In Public Education | Blue Cereal Education

When Jesus Needs A Visitor's Badge: Church-State Issues In Public Education | Blue Cereal Education

When Jesus Needs A Visitor's Badge: Church-State Issues In Public Education

A “Hall of Separation”

That’s a horrible title and I wish I could stop thinking it’s not.

As you probably know, given that it’s pretty much all I talk about these days, I’ve been researching Supreme Court cases involving issues of church-state separation in relation to public education. My hope is to have something ready before the entire system collapses and any benefit one may derive from it is no longer relevant.

Given the state of the 2020 elections as I post this, I’m probably way too late.

Nevertheless, I’ve been wrong before. Democracy may cough and bleed its way through another generation or so in some form, in which case I may sell as many as eleven copies of this lil’ liber sui generis. A few people may even find it helpful, enlightening – or at least mildly diverting.

Who am I kidding with all the humility? So far, it’s bloody brilliant and everyone will want seven copies just to show off.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share three of the books I’ve been reading as I continue researching my own. While the cases I’m including aren’t exactly obscure or difficult to document (most reached the Supreme Court, after all), the issues involved are often less universal than most “landmark” cases. Plus, as the subject suggests, most involve religion on some level. That means that while my trademark wit and brilliance will no CONTINUE READING: When Jesus Needs A Visitor's Badge: Church-State Issues In Public Education | Blue Cereal Education

Betsy DeVos, in anti-government polemic, says America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family - The Washington Post

Betsy DeVos, in anti-government polemic, says America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family - The Washington Post

In a steely anti-government polemic, Betsy DeVos says America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family

In 2015, Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos declared that “government really sucks” — and after serving nearly four years as U.S. education secretary, she has not tempered that view one iota. She gave a speech this week at a Christian college disparaging the U.S. public education system, saying it is set up to replace the home and family.

While blasting the government is nothing new for DeVos — critics see her as the most ideological and anti-public-education secretary in the Education Department’s 40-plus-year history — she gave what may be her fiercest anti-government polemic at the Hillsdale College event in her home state Monday.

She explained how her philosophy was formed by Abraham Kuyper, a neo-Calvinist Dutch theologian-turned-politician who was prime minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905 and who believed that Protestant, Catholic and secular groups should run their own independent schools and colleges. The United States could fix its education system, she said, if it were to “go Dutch” by embracing “the family as the sovereign sphere that it is, a sphere that predates government altogether.”

And she said that if given a second term as education secretary, she would keep pushing for alternatives to traditional public schools. (No surprise there.)

DeVos, the only Cabinet member in history to be confirmed only with the help of a vice president to break a Senate tie, also said at Hillsdale:

• “I assume most of you have never stepped foot inside the U.S. Department of Education. And I can report, you haven’t missed much. These past few years I’ve gotten a close-up view of what that building focuses on. And let me tell you, it’s not on students. It’s on rules and regulations. Staff and standards. Spending and strings. On protecting ‘the system.’ ”
• “At the end of the day, we want parents to have the freedom, the choices, and the funds to make the best decisions for their children. The ‘Washington knows best’ crowd really loses their minds over that. They seem to think that the people’s money doesn’t belong to the people. That it instead belongs to ‘the public,’ or rather, what they really mean — government.”
• “Many in Washington think that because of their power there, they can make decisions for parents everywhere. In that troubling scenario, the school building replaces the home, the child becomes a pawn and the state replaces the family.
• “Sadly, too many politicians heed the shrill voices of the education lobby and ignore the voices of children, parents, teachers and health experts who are begging to get our students back to learning.” [That’s a reference to her support for President Trump’s call for all schools to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic.]
• “From being an early force for abolition to turning away the government’s regulators to rejecting taxpayer subsidies, Hillsdale’s hallmark was, is and always will be independence. And though I always admired that independence, having been witness to the federal bureaucracy at work for nearly four years, I can tell you with certainty: Your decision to decline any help from Washington was wise then and is still wise today.”

The Detroit Free Press reported that after the forum, DeVos said that any succeeding administration in Washington will have to be careful about how it tries to change the things she has accomplished CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos, in anti-government polemic, says America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family - The Washington Post

CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Goes Full Trump: Kuyper, Arrows and the Unholy Mob

CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Goes Full Trump: Kuyper, Arrows and the Unholy Mob

Betsy DeVos Goes Full Trump: Kuyper, Arrows and the Unholy Mob

Generally, when education secretary Betsy DeVos makes a public appearance, you get a rehash of the same old talking points. But put her in front of a friendly, like-minded audience, and she may just let her hair down and let 'er rip, giving us all a clearer picture of what she's really got going on upstairs. 

That just happened this week as DeVos made an appearance at Hillsdale College. Hillsdale College, a super-conservative, uber-Christianish, Euro-centric college in Michigan, known for its strong resistance to federal anything and special treatment for any non-white non-traditional folks. They love Jesus and the free market with notable zeal. They have ties to both the Macinac Center and the Heartland Institute. They have a Charter School Initiative with a whole raft of charter schools (mostly "classical"), and a teacher prep program. In short, these are Betsy DeVos's people. 

DeVos's prepared remarks open with nods to Hillsdale's history of awesomeness, with special attention to how smart they've been to avoid getting help from the feds. And that lets her pivot to her current fave point--that the Covid crisis has "laid bare" all the Bad Stuff of US public education. 

"Sadly," she continues, "too many politicians heed the shrill voices of the education lobby and ignore the voices of children, parents, teachers and health experts who are begging to get our students back to learning."  Not Betsy-- she's a fighter, fighting for students and parents and against anyone who wants the government to be "parents to everyone."

Now she pivots to world history, and a chapter that is actually new--and revealing.

DeVos wants to talk about a guy long associated with her beliefs, named Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Goes Full Trump: Kuyper, Arrows and the Unholy Mob

Indiana: ACB Served on the Board of a School That Discriminated Against Gays | Diane Ravitch's blog

Indiana: ACB Served on the Board of a School That Discriminated Against Gays | Diane Ravitch's blog

Indiana: ACB Served on the Board of a School That Discriminated Against Gays

Steve Hinnefeld, a regular commentator on education in Indiana, regrets that Amy Coney Barrett was not asked about vouchers during her hearings.

He notes that she served on the board of a Catholic school in Indiana that received state voucher funds and that openly discriminated against same-sex families.

Barrett served from 2015-17 on the board of Trinity School at Greenlawn, a South Bend Catholic school, the New York Times reported. Trinity had a policy during Barrett’s time on the board that effectively prohibited same-sex couples from enrolling their children in the school, according to the Times.

That would seem to cast doubt on Barrett’s claim in her confirmation hearing that she had “never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference” and would not do so. It also raises policy questions about whether publicly funded institutions should practice discrimination. READ MORE: Indiana: ACB Served on the Board of a School That Discriminated Against Gays | Diane Ravitch's blog

An Originalist Reading of Public Schools | gadflyonthewallblog

An Originalist Reading of Public Schools | gadflyonthewallblog

An Originalist Reading of Public Schools

Let’s say you went to a restaurant and ordered a big ol’ meat sandwich only to find nothing but straw between two pieces of bread.

“Waiter!” You say, calling over a server.

“What’s wrong, Sir?”

“There’s no meat in my sandwich.”

“Oh, Sir?” He says smiling, examining your plate. “Here at Scalia’s Bar and Grill we adhere to a strict originalist interpretation of language.”

“What does that have to do with my sandwich?”

“Well, Sir, in Old English ‘meat’ meant any solid food, anything other than drink. As in ‘A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland’ (1775), Samuel Johnson noted, ‘Our guides told us, that the horses could not travel all day without rest or meat.’”

“But that’s not what I ordered!”

“Oh yes it is, Sir. You ordered CONTINUE READING: An Originalist Reading of Public Schools | gadflyonthewallblog

The Limits of School Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Limits of School Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Limits of School Choice

There are many reasons to be concerned about the spread of school choice via charters and vouchers. One is that it reduces the funding available for the public schools that enroll the vast majority of students. Most states are barely willing to finance their public schools, so now they divvy up the funds to support choice schools. Makes no sense. Another is that proponents of choice claim that their schools “will save poor kids from failing public schools,” but we now know that this is a false promise. Neither charters nor vouchers get better test scores than public schools, except for the charters that have selective admission and high attrition. Choice schools are free to choose their students and to push out the ones they don’t want, sending them back to public schools, which now have even less funding. Voucher schools.

Stephen Ruis writes a summary of the problems with choice on his blog, “Class Warfare.”

Here is a sample:

I cannot fathom a scenario in which school competition benefits the students most. We have seen charter school after charter school close business, some do this before they have officially opened. In business this is CONTINUE READING: The Limits of School Choice | Diane Ravitch's blog

Will November Election Bring an End to Betsy DeVos’s War on Public Education? | janresseger

Will November Election Bring an End to Betsy DeVos’s War on Public Education? | janresseger

Will November Election Bring an End to Betsy DeVos’s War on Public Education?

In the midst of the most politically chaotic month I can remember, it seems important to imagine something worth hoping for.  Consider this:  If Donald Trump is defeated in the November election, after January, Betsy DeVos will no longer be the U.S. Secretary of Education.

DeVos does not believe in public education: She once declared: “Government really sucks.” And she has consistently attacked the idea of “a system” of public schools: “This isn’t about school ‘systems.'” she declared. “This is about individual students, parents, and families. Schools are at the service of students. Not the other way around.”  Betsy likes school choice via school privatization at public expense.

DeVos’s U.S. Department of Education is, of course, responsible under law for something very different: Its purpose is to administer many programs supporting public schools and protecting the rights of the 50 million students enrolled in public schools across the United States. Her department administers Title I compensatory funding for the schools serving concentrations of poor children, funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and a host of other functions supporting, for example, programming for English language learners and American Indian children in public schools. While, through the Office for Civil Rights, her department is responsible for protecting students from racial, gender, and sexual orientation bias in their public schools, her record for investigating punitive discipline violations and protecting the rights of transgender students, for example, has been lacking.

Betsy DeVos, a lifelong supporter of private and religious schools and the expansion of tax- CONTINUE READING: Will November Election Bring an End to Betsy DeVos’s War on Public Education? | janresseger