Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

The Axman Takes on Public Schools

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Andrea Hopkins with the Bristol Herald-Courier profiles Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, and his Quixotic crusade to promote school choice in Virginia’s public school system. He has submitted school-choice legislation every year for the past four years, and each time, he’s gone down to defeat.

But this year, the Axman got closer than ever before. Writes Hopkins: “A bill that would allow companies and individuals to receive a tax credit for donating to scholarship funds that could be used in public or private schools – passed the House on a 56-43 vote. The Senate let it die in committee.”

Virginia offers less school choice than almost any state in the nation. Not only do we refuse to provide vouchers or tax credits, reactionary educators even discourage charter schools within the public school system. Foes fear that any kind of competition would destroy the public school system. If they’re right… if the public school system is so grotesquely inadequate that it would collapse under the slightest competitive pressure… then maybe it should collapse.

It’s the 21st century, ladies and gentlemen. We’re still laboring under an educational system invented for the 19th century. That system is failing an increasing number of Virginia children at an increasing cost to society. If anything, Saxman isn’t going far enough. Shifting a few thousand students from public schools to private barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done. We must tear down the old system and rebuild a new one based on entirely new principles.

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15 responses to “The Axman Takes on Public Schools”

  1. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Right On!

    Fundamental Change in governance structure includes Fundamental Change in the entire process of how citizens come to understand how to be citizens in a sustainable society, not just the “School System.”

    EMR

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different.

    And when it then becomes worse it must change again.

    Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.
    –Martin Luther

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    School choice is a great idea and competition is a good thing.

    I would only add that Charter Schools, Private Schools, or any entity that wants to accept vouchers maintain student bodies that are made up of the same amount (%)of low-income and ESL students as public schools…..in other words, don’t skim the cream off of the top and then tell me how great they are.

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    anon 1:29

    Fairfax County has already “skimmed the cream off the top” by sending its best and brightest to Thomas Jefferson. It’s a great academic environment precisely because it is filled with smart motivated students who want to be there, in contrast to the compulsory teenage babysitting found in most other public schools filled with “low-income” students whose current culture disdains academic achievement.

    The overwhelming number of National Merit Scholars now come from Thomas Jefferson, with only a few left at other Fairfax County Public High Schools. So much for your socialist utopian egalitarianism.

    Even the Fairfax County Government has abandoned your socialist ideals in order to create the ultimate unequal learning environment for the best and brightest.

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Anon 5:16:

    Should Thomas Jefferson be the exception or the rule?

    I maintain what I said in my first post…”don’t skim the cream off of the top and then tell me how great they are.”

    I have no socialist agenda…only a desire to educate the kids that want to be educated.

    If they are happy in a public school then that’s where they should stay…..they shouldn’t be denied access to places like Thomas Jefferson because they don’t live in the right zip code.

    If school choice would reduce the cost of an education and produce better results like proponents say it will then I am all for it.

    It’s called equal access…..look it up and get back with me.

  6. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I’d like to see public schools challenged in a more competitive environment but I agree with the posters here in that what this is amount is allowing the creation of more schools that cater to the more advantaged and leave the public schools with the much more difficult job of educating those those are disadvantaged.

    I would go along with the entire voucher concept IF … these separate schools HAD to accept for enrollment – disadvantaged – AND – had to produce equivalent SOL results – for the disadvantaged.

    But what we have right now, in my opinion, is more of the same – “stealth” efforts to create separate schools for the advantaged from tax dollars.

    I think this is morally repugnant but even if one does not buy that argument – how about the argument that those disadvantaged kids who don’t get a decent education will ultimately be subsidized and supported by the kids who grow up with superior educations?

    Can our country – afford – in a competitive world economy – to siphon off money from those who were advantaged to pay for those who were not – and are not qualified for world class employment?

    Unless.. we are going to operate like a 3rd world country where there are clear distinctions between the two classes – then we need to realize what we are doing when we seek to create “special schools” for some folks….at the expense of those who are disadvantaged.

    No one can tell me that a 4 year old is doomed to fail – no matter what. It is US and our policies that fail that 4 year old – and in turn fail ourselves.

  7. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    The nation’s schools — and Virginia’s — are already sorted by race and class. The rationing mechanism is real estate. If you’re affluent, you move to an affluent neighborhood in a good school district. These schools have no “riff raff” because the riff raff can’t afford to live in the neighborhoods.

    The point of the tax credit isn’t to subsidize affluent parents but to give give an option to working class parents who can’t afford to live in a pricey school district.

  8. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “The point of the tax credit isn’t to subsidize affluent parents but to give give an option to working class parents who can’t afford to live in a pricey school district.”

    Jim – how does a tax “credit” work when the parents …

    1. – don’t have the “up front” money to start with? Where will they get the money?

    2. – the private school is free to accept (or reject) whoever it wishes without regard to merit?

    3. – the private school, even if it accepts the disadvantaged doesn’t have to be accountable for results?

    4. – the parents .. uneducated themselves simply are AWOL in this equation?

    They could essentially treat the “hard cases” like we currently treat sports “scholars”. Just let them slide.. until they are “graduated”?

    I’ll say again.

    I think this is REALLY about whether or not – we want to have an education system that will allow this country – to compete in a world economy.

    Name an industrialized country where the voucher concept – thrives.

  9. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Larry, I don’t know what your experience with private schools has been, but I can tell you about my experience — not just attending a private school in Washington, D.C., but sending children to two different “elite” private schools — schools considered the haven of the rich and privileged, spoiled and pampered. These schools are *desperate* for cultural, economic and ethnic diversity. They provide scholarships. If a tax credit would help them achieve a more diverse student body, the school administrations would be overjoyed. St. Catherine’s was so desperate for ethnic diversity that it recruited heavily from South Korea!

    The problem isn’t that the private schools are exclusive. The problem is that they can’t overcome the popular perception that they’re exclusive.

    Admittedly, it can be tough being one of only two or three black kids in a class of 100 white kids and the odd Asian or Hispanic, especially during adolescence when kids start dating. But tax credits for private schools might be just the trick to helps private schools recruit enough minorities to create a critical mass where minority students don’t feel like outsiders.

    Larry, as for your question about kids whose families don’t have the “up front” money to begin with… Those tax credits can be combined with scholarships and whatever money the parents can scrape up. The credits could make a big difference.

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “In the just-completed session of the Virginia General Assembly, Saxman’s latest school choice effort – a bill that would allow companies and individuals to receive a tax credit for donating to scholarship funds that could be used in public or private schools – passed the House on a 56-43 vote. The Senate let it die in committee.” From the article.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, Jim Bacon, but it sounds as if the point of the bill in question is to allow individuals and companies a tax deduction if they donate to a fund that would provide scholarships and financial help to “working class parents who can’t afford to live in a pricey school district” or pay for private schools. I would assume that there would be both financial restrictions and merit restrictions. In short, the students would have to show financial need and good grades, studious efforts, good conduct, etc.

    It sounds like a great idea to me. The students who are really getting whacked these days are the generally good students whose parents can’t afford private school or the ritzy neighborhoods where public schools are above average and so get stuck in schools that are swamped by ESL and other mandated special services and are basically neglected, under challenged, or at least over-looked so that they don’t get the educational opportunities that they are perfectly capable of handling.

    Deena Flinchum

  11. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    How would private schools assure equal access and be accountable for ALL attending students achievement regardless of their economic or parental/demographic disadvantages?

    Show me a plan that does assure than any kid has an equal chance at admission and that once admitted, that the school brings all kids up to grade level.

    What happens when these private schools only have 15 openings and 1500 kids who want entrance?

    Like I said. Show me a plan where every kid who wants access can have a legitimate opportunity AND accountability of the school to perform and then we can talk.

    If what these schools need or want is diversity – I have a very, very hard time believing that without vouchers that they can’t achieve that goal.

    So, let’s pass one simple law – Vouchers – can only be spent at private schools that assure equal access for all and give ALL of their kids SOLs.

    Deal?

  12. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    The best, most widely accepted and most enduring legislative bargains are truly bi-partisan or even non-partisan in my view.

    Vouchers – as currently proposed – do not fullfill this bargain and they need to.

    The essential bargain with education is that none of us, of good character and conscience, should accept collateral damage to young disadvantaged kids -as a unintended consequence of vouchers.

    For me – the essence of America – is equal opportunity – and no where is this more fundamental than the ability of those in poor circumstances to be able to escape those circumstances by getting a quality education.

    What I’m NOT hearing from those who favor vouchers is HOW to ENSURE the ability of kids in poor circumstances who don’t get vouchers (for whatever reason) to continue to have a way to obtain a decent education.

    For those of you who do remember Massive Resistance in Virginia – you may also remember what happened to the public schools in those aeras where private schools were formed. The localities de-funded the public schools and the parents used the tax money that used to fund the schools to pay for private school tuition.

    For some of us – Voucher’s have a familiar flavor in this regard.

    That’s why I say – if you really want something that is a good idea to go forward – you need all sides in favor of it.

    So convince me that Vouchers will not have the effect of harming our public school system.

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Show me a plan that does assure than any kid has an equal chance at admission and that once admitted, that the school brings all kids up to grade level.”

    Larry, as you surely must know, no such school exists since no school, not even in the countries with the absolute best schools in the world and a basically homogeneous population, can “bring all kids up to grade level”. One of the worst named federal programs in the history of the US has to be “No Child Left Behind”. If you attempt universal education as we do in the US – and as we know, many countries that we compete with don’t even pretend to do this – you are going to leave some children behind. It is a sad fact that children brought into a stable family who values education and expects achievement from its children can make a great deal of difference in what the children achieve. The good news is that money alone doesn’t have to be the deciding factor, and this program seems to be a plus in this equation. Heck, I’d write ’em a check myself.

  14. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “no such school exists since no school, not even in the countries with the absolute best schools in the world and a basically homogeneous population, can “bring all kids up to grade level”.

    I acknowledge the futility of 100% both with regard to population and achievement levels.

    But the way we are getting beaten by other industrialized countries and why we rank lower than 10th in the world is because we do leave behind those – that need to be ultimately employable and that’s where other industrialized countries beat us.

    It’s not about the “best education” at all except in the minds of those taking a strong interest in their own flesh and blood – which is understandable from a personal perspective but quite stupid from a public policy perspective.

    Do you want your tax dollars to go to educate .. kids – regardless of whether they are yours or not – so that they grow up to be tax-paying citizens themselves ..

    .. or do you want your kids to grow up and have the hell taxed out of them to provide health care and other services to those who lack a sufficient education to be employable in a world-class economy.

    That’s what’s wrong with the dialogue.

    Folks are looking after their own kids – they think – to the ultimate destriment of their own kids – when they grow up.

    What good does it do a kid (perhaps your kid) to go to Princeton and make a ton of money if the government is going to be forced to take most of it away from him/her because others his age – cannot hold a job that pays enough to provide for their own health and welfare?

    No – NCLB – won’t .. ever .. result in 100% – but you don’t need 100% to compete in a world economy – but you do need better than 75%.

    When do ‘we’ … get “smart”?

  15. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: NCLB

    How about we RENAME .. NCLB to be the “USA Economic Security through Better Education ACT”?

    surely .. it’s not something simple like the name of a law that confuses people with the intent of the law… right?

    🙂

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