Black Progress Does Not Come At White Expense

We need to demilitarize law enforcement. We need new training programs that emphasize de-escalation of violence – not a shoot-first-ask questions-later mentality.

And it’s hard to focus on that when racism and prejudice get in the way. We need to fix racism first. Only then can we address the root issue.

Here’s another example.

Let’s say we had truly integrated public schools.

No run down under-resourced schools that just happen to serve mostly students of color and yet across town we’ve got the Taj Mahal with marble columns and a broad curriculum that just happens to serve the best and whitest.

Instead we’d have schools that serve everyone – a broad mix of cultures, races and ethnicities all properly resourced and offering a broad range of curriculum and extra-curricular activities.

Would that hurt you?

I don’t think so. In fact, it would actually help because every child would get what he or she needs to succeed. Crime would drop, and even prejudiced and racist attitudes would begin to disappear because it’s harder to hold xenophobic views about people who you actually know because you’ve learned everything with them since you were in kindergarten.

There’s one thing you have to understand. Racism isn’t an ideology. It’s a sickness. It’s a virus that blinds people to real truths about the world and makes them more prone to holding views that are just plain wrong.

The same with sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and a plethora of modern day maladies that should have gone the way of small pox and polio.

Inoculating yourself against prejudice will not hurt you. Living in a society where everyone has the same rights doesn’t impinge on those you already have.

Yes, it will mean dismantling white supremacy. But that’s a good thing. You don’t really want the world to prize you just because of the color of your skin.

Do you?

Do you want to get into college just because you’re white?

Do you want to get a job just because of the hue of your epidermis?

Do you want the sum total of your value as a human being to be dependent on the way light reflects off your skin?

I don’t.

I’m white, and I don’t want that for me or my posterity.

I want people to judge me for me – not some preconceived notion of who I am based on culturally received generalities and the amount of melanin in my outermost cells.

Fuck that shit.

I’m me. And if that’s not good enough for anyone they can just go and jump in the river.

I don’t need white supremacy. And I don’t want it.

I refuse to sit back and accept things I don’t deserve while others are denied what they do deserve just so I can get some free stuff.

I refuse to let my society continue to be built on a foundation of prejudice and cruelty.

We’re all human beings. It’s time we treated everyone as such.

That means everyone gets the same human rights.

To paraphrase Oprah – YOU get human rights, and YOU get human rights and EVERYONE gets human rights!

For white people that means losing a certain sense of normativity.

White will no longer be considered normal. Neither will male.

It’s just another way to be – no better or worse than any other.

That doesn’t mean being ashamed of your whiteness. Hell. We can revel in it.

Imagine reconnecting with all the messy ethnicities we’ve plastered over to claim this homogenous white overclass! Imagine being Polish again, and Czech and German and Scandinavian and so many other nationalities that we barely connect with because we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves as anything other than white — That’s me. Just white. Plain white. Nothing to see here. White.

We’ve had to sacrifice a whole lot to get that status. But we don’t have to keep sacrificing. We can be who we are, too.

The Alt-Right Nazis are out there in the streets chanting, “You will not replace us.”

How about we replace ourselves.

Why don’t we redefine who we are as – who we are.

Not homogenous. Not white. But specific human beings belonging to various cultural, ethnic and religious groups and societies.

Human beings all taking part in the symphony of homo sapia, engaged in a robust love of all things people and a recognition that all people are human.

Think for a moment what that truly means.

Take a deep breath.

Let it in. Let it out.

It means letting go of this irrational fear that anti-racism is anti-white.

So, let me say it again – no. Black progress will not come at white expense. Nor will female progress or anyone’s progress.

Because we go through this life together.

We are one race. We are one people – though we are also many – and we will survive or perish together.

Take my hand and let’s build a better world for all of us.

Let us all benefit.

Let us all progress.

Together.

Do We Still Have a Functioning Democracy?

November 8, 2017 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Campaign Donations, Congress, Democrat, Donald Trump, Dr. Jill Stein, Election, Election Reform, Gerrymandering, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, Politics, President, Racism, Republican, Sexism, voter suppression, voting Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election, Election Reform, Hillary Clinton, plutocracy, Politics, Republicans, Vote, voter supression, voter turnout

Do we still have a functioning democracy?

Really.

Do we?

Because when I look around at the mess we’ve got here today, I honestly don’t know.

I went to my polling place to vote, and it was nearly deserted.

The candidates’ signs were still there, stuck in the ground like some kind of seasonal weed in need of a gardener.

But there were no people.

Well there was one nice lady sitting on a bench who smiled and handed me a flier from the county Democratic committee.

When I got inside, the poll workers were as cheerful and friendly as ever. I’ve known these ladies since I was a little kid. They remember when I worked at the local newspaper and could probably recite some elements of my resume better than I can.

They made polite conversation asking about my parents and grandparents as they looked up my information and geared up the machine to take my ballot.

There was something almost frightening about the whole thing. It was both familiar and tainted – kind of like returning to the scene of some grisly murder.

Just a year ago, this was where we knowingly voted for Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States.

When I say “we” I don’t mean me.

I didn’t vote for that tiny-handed racist asshole. But I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, either.

And when the whole thing was done last year, I had terrible chest pains that sent me to my doctor and then the hospital with my first-ever heart attack.

That election literally sent me to the ICU.

And yet today here I was standing on my own two feet getting ready to do it all over again.

I stood there staring at the choices on the machine, looking at my helpful Democratic flier and even referring to an email on my phone from my union.

“Why is the union recommending a bunch of Republicans?” I thought.

“Their chosen candidates want to dismantle the very institution recommending I vote for them!”

And then I looked at the list of Democrats. I didn’t know any of them.

Some of their names were familiar from hastily aired campaign ads that told me a folksy story about their families or education or how they’d never called off a day in their lives – but nothing about their beliefs, their values, even their politics.

How am I supposed to choose between these people?

I thought about just voting for the Green candidates but there was a whole one to choose from in only one race.

So I ended up voting for the Democrats. At least I have some nominal idea where they stand.

And I have to admit when it was all over and I pressed “VOTE,” I felt really good.

The machine made that metallic buzz like it was tabulating my ballot, and I felt like I had really accomplished something.

Then I went out into the nearly deserted parking lot and got hit by a wave of depression.

“What the fuck just happened?” I asked myself.

And I answered, “You got played, son.”

“Again.”

Trump is still President. And he’ll be President tomorrow and probably tomorrow and tomorrow.

And even if he was magically ushered from the scene, there’s another nearly identical Republican ideologue waiting to take his place. And another to take his. And another…

Meanwhile, the Democrats are little more than a steaming crater in the ground. They hold fewer political offices than they have at any point in my lifetime. And it doesn’t appear like that will change anytime soon.

We just had a grassroots, people-powered revolution demanding American politics move back to the left. We had a popular progressive candidate overflowing huge stadiums, an influx of young people committed to fighting against intersectional issues like racism, sexism and class warfare. And it was crushed by the Democratic nominee who coopted the process and the party with big money.

Maybe we were all just incredibly naive. I mean how can you get money out of politics when the system is already corrupted by money?

Laws aren’t made by consensus anymore. They’re made because lawmakers get paid.

And lawmakers aren’t elected because people vote for them. They’re elected because they have big money behind them – because these are the people the donors want to offer the rest of us as a choice. And no one else. Republicans and Democrats picked by the same oligarchs to make it look like us, plebeians, have a choice.

Occasionally an outlier sneaks in, but that’s rare, and the plutocrats – the real owners of this country – spend hundreds of millions of dollars to stop them.

So what do we do? Strengthen a weak and disorganized third party? Even under the best of circumstances, that would take decades. In the meantime, the environment would be destroyed, millions would have died in unnecessary wars and what little majority rule we have would have inevitably been repealed long ago.

I wish I had some more optimistic note on which to end. But I don’t.

All I have is this question: Do we still have a functioning Democracy?

And I put it out there in the real hope that readers will consider it deeply.

No kneejerk reactions. No received wisdom from this pundit or that anchor or that party hack.

It’s a question we all have to answer – and soon.

Because if the answer is “no,” what the heck can we even do about it?

Mr. and Mrs. Public School Sabotage

October 27, 2017July 22, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, Campaign Donations, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, church and state, Civil Rights, Common Core, Compassion, Competency Based Education, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Obama, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, President, privatization, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Teachers, VAM Betsy DeVos, Bill and Melinda Gates, Bill Gates, charter schools, common core, Donald Trump, plutocracy, Politics, Privatize, public schools, sabotage, school vouchers

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America’s public schools are in crisis.

Because people make money when America’s public schools are in crisis.

And who sits atop this mountain of bribery and malfeasance?

Who gives the money that buys the politicians who make the laws that hurt the kids and profits the donors?

It’s none other than Mr. and Mrs. Public School Sabotage!

Systemic underfunding, laissez-faire segregation and privileging privatization – this is what our children face every day.

It’s time we as a nation stop, take a moment – and offer our hearty congratulations to this years most pernicious saboteurs.

And what a year it was for disrupting education!

Charter schools, voucher schools – no one has benefited more from chucking the public school model in the trash in favor of control by corporations and bureaucrats than Betsy DeVos.

Because she’s both a dark money influence peddler AND a government flunky!

A two-for!

She turned complete ignorance and animosity toward public schools into the highest federal government job overseeing education! Her only qualification? CA-CHING!

But coming up right behind Ms. DeVos is this year’s crowned king.

He certainly knows a thing or two about CA-CHING!

It’s Bill Gates!

Progressive philanthropist by day, by night he transforms into the largest single purveyor of palm grease in the nation. No one has turned tax avoidance into influence more than Gates, the money behind the Common Core, evaluating teachers on student test scores and a plethora of irrational, untested ideas that are only considered mainstream because they have literally trillions of dollars behind them.

So there you have it, America! Your Mr. and Mrs. Public School Sabotage!

Let’s take a closer look at these… winners.

DEVOS

As U.S. Secretary of Education, she’s proposed cutting $10 billion in public school funding, announced changes to make it harder for college students to report sexual assaults, and put struggling university students at risk of higher debt payments with changes to student loans.

But that’s child’s play for the billionaire heiress who married into even more money.

Now she’s planning to weaken the rights of students with disabilities.

That’s right – Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger, they all went after those pesky post-graduate teenagers. But none of them had the audacity to go after kids with learning disabilities!

It’s not that DeVos is undoing any laws. She’s erasing decades of government guidance about how the laws are to be interpreted. And though she claims these 72 directives are simply “outdated unnecessary or ineffective,” she’s not replacing them with anything else. They’re just – gone.

Of the 72 guidelines, 63 affect special education and 9 affect student rehabilitation. And these aren’t simply undoing the work of the Obama administration. Some of these regulations have been in place since the 1980s.

The rescinded policies include “Satellite Centers for Independent Living,” “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Handicap in Programs and Activities Receiving or Benefiting From Federal Financial Assistance,” and “Information on the Provision of Vocational Rehabilitation Services to Individuals With Hearing Loss (Deaf and Hard of Hearing).”

Bah! Who needs all this paperwork?

Parents and students. That’s who.

These guidelines have helped parents of disabled and special education children advocate for their young ones’ rights. Without them, it may be more difficult for parents and teachers to ensure all children are receiving a free and appropriate education.

That’s some seriously stone cold sabotage, Ms. DeVos!

But at least her motivation is obvious to anyone with eyes.

She’s not purposefully making the lives of K-12, special education and college kids more difficult. Well, she is, but she’s not doing it out of spite. She’s doing it because it helps her investment portfolio.

How can she continue to promote charter and voucher schools that don’t provide the same kinds of quality services for special education and disable students as public schools do? She needs to degrade what the public schools provide, thereby making the privatized alternatives more marketable.

How can she keep making money off predatory lenders unless she loosens the rules to allow them more freedom to gorge on student debt? And how can she keep her lucrative job bending the rules in her favor unless she throws some red meat to the racists, misogynists and anti-Semites who helped elect her boss into the Oval Office?

And if kids get hurt, well those aren’t the people she’s looking out for, are they?

She’s only out for the other rich elites like herself making a mint off of our public tax dollars!

It’s almost enough to make you miss Arne Duncan.

Almost…

(Nah. Not really.)

GATES

Bill Gates, on the other hand, is more contrite.

His Common Core initiative has kind of exploded in his face.

No one likes it. NO ONE.

In fact, it was one of the key talking points President Trump used to garner support. The public’s hatred of Democratic plutocracy made them suckers for the Republican variety.

The problem isn’t so much political. It’s economic.

It’s rich people who think they can do whatever they want with the rest of us and our children.

More than anyone else, Gates is guilty of that kind of unexamined, unrepentant hubris.

Yet to hear him talk, after a string of education policy disasters, he’s learned his lesson.

He’s sorry – like a crack addict is after hitting rock bottom. But he’ll somehow find the courage to light up again.

Gates now admits that the approximate $2 billion he spent pushing us to break up large high schools into smaller schools was a bust.

Then he spent $100 million on inBloom, a corporation he financed that would quietly steal student data and sell it to the corporate world. However, that blew up when parents found out and demanded their children be protected.

Oops. His bad?

He also quietly admits that the $80 million he spent pushing for teachers to be evaluated on student test scores was a mistake. However, state, federal and local governments often still insist on enacting it despite all the evidence against it. Teachers have literally committed suicide over these unfair evaluations, but whatever. Bill learned a lesson.

When it comes to Common Core, though, Bill refuses to take his medicine – even to mouth the words.

By any metric, these poor quality uniform academic standards are an abject failure. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars for development and promotion. He influenced trillions of taxpayer dollars to be poured down the drain on it. All to no avail.

Instead, he’s quietly backing away. No explanation. No apology. Just on to something new.

Kind of like: “That didn’t work. Let’s try something else!”

His new plan – spend $1.7 billion over five years to develop new curriculums and networks of schools, use data to drive continuous improvement, and give out grants to high needs schools to do whatever he says.

What’s so frustrating is that Gates shows glimmers of self-awareness.

“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade,” he said during a speech at Harvard in 2014.

But then when he sees it isn’t working, he just doubles down on the same crap.

While he may not be committed to any one policy, Gates is committed to the idea that he knows best. Whatever nonsense bull crap that floats through his mind deserves to be tried out on a national scale.

No asking experts. No asking teachers, parents or students. Just listen to me, Bill Gates, because I’m rich and that makes me better than you.

No, it doesn’t Bill. It makes you just like Betsy DeVos.

So there they are. Mr. and Mrs. Public School Sabotage.

Short may their reign be.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Donald Trump is a Pathetic Excuse For a Human Being

October 1, 2017October 1, 2017 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Donald Trump, Feminism, Politics, President, protest, Racism, Republican, satire, Social Justice, Uncategorized, voting, White Privilege Donald Trump, pathetic, Politics, racism, satire, sexism

I’m not going to pull any punches here.

Donald Trump is not just a bad President.

He’s a bad person.

No. That doesn’t go far enough.

He’s one of the worst people ever to hold public office in this country.

He’s a pathetic excuse for a person. A narcissistic and incurious fool.

Donald Trump is what happens when you spoil a child and he never has to prove his own worth.

He is the fruit of our worship of wealth and the ruling class. He is the lie of trickledown economics. He is what happens when you give someone all the rewards our society has to offer – just for showing up.

But he’s not a racist.

Not really. Not in the strictest sense. That would require some kind of commitment.

Nor is he a sexist. That would require ideology.

Trump doesn’t hate anyone. He doesn’t divide people up into categories. He just loves himself so much that his regard for anyone else seems lacking.

In Trumpland, there are only two personas – himself and everyone else.

And make no mistake – he sees the world as containing only one important personality – Donald J. Trump. Everyone else is subordinate. Even his own family is important only in so much as they reflect him and meet his expectations. (Tiffany Trump, anyone?)

Trump is the sole practitioner of a solitary religion where one individual can serve as both penitent and deity. He writes his own hymns and sings them to himself every morning during golden thrown Twitter church services.

And anyone who dares to deny the fact of his own exceptionality is not good. They’re Bad. Sad.

They get low ratings. Such low ratings. Fake news. Or whatever other nearly monosyllabic criticism his atrophied brain can defecate out of his sloppy mouth.

Other people’s suffering just doesn’t matter. Puerto Rico, NFL players, people of color unjustly targeted by police, the middle class – none of us matter to him.

Not black people.

Not Hispanics.

Not women.

No one. Literally no lives matter to Trump.

This is a fact borne out by his actions over decades in public life.

It’s no accident that Bret Easton Ellis made Trump the role model of Patrick Bateman, his fictional unhinged everyman businessman protagonist in “American Psycho.”

Trump may not be psychopathic, but he is clearly a solipsist, a sociopath. The outside world is not real to him, and we are not ends in ourselves. We are illusions who only merit if we increase his own self-worth.

Even from a conservative heteronormative viewpoint, men do not represent the possibility of friendship or camaraderie to Trump. They are pawns to be used or adversaries to be avoided.

Women do not represent the possibility of intimacy or understanding. They are pure shape, status and physicality – objects to be ordered, groped, controlled and tabulated.

Likewise, his constituents are important only to the degree that they support him. He has no reciprocal responsibilities toward them. He may have promised to “Make America Great Again,” but to this stunted individual, America, itself, is best represented by one thing – Trump.

He is the poster boy for all that is wrong with our society.

He is petty, unintelligent, and mean. Everything he has was handed to him. In fact, he’d have more if he just held onto it, but he had to try to prove he deserved this stuff so he lost more than what he was given.

And he doesn’t even know how to enjoy what he has.

His wife is a product he bought and modified to his liking. His children are indentured servants made to reflect his brand. He doesn’t even understand how to extract the best flavors from the expensive foods he eats.

He spends most of his time obsessively playing a game that requires wealth as a prerequisite, that isn’t particularly athletic but bestows a certain image on its practitioners. And somehow he must think hitting a little ball with a hooked stick proves – what? Something about him? Maybe it proves his physical prowess, his identity as a man of wealth and privilege?

He is the illusion Gatsby tried to portray to win Daisy – but the only love Trump covets is his own.

He both demonstrates the lie at the heart of the American Dream – that it is possible anymore for any of us to achieve – and that the dream has any inherent value.

Wealth does not make one happy. Look at Trump. He is a miserable son of a bitch. And he would be the first to tell you so if he had even a smidgen of self-reflection.

You can see it on his face in those candid moments when he isn’t talking and talking and talking.

This is a man begging to be told he is doing a good job, but the only opinion he trusts is his own, and that one not even so much.

He is a lost soul telling himself lies he only half believes. He’s an apparition, a ghost, a zombie that never was really alive in the first place.

And we, the people of the United States of America, are gathered here around him in an ever closing circle watching this tin pot dictator getting ever smaller by the hour.

One fine day he will simply disappear. And we’ll all be left staring at the space he left behind.

Perhaps this vanishing act will be accompanied by a “pop,” a “hiss” or just a silence deeper than background static.

And the only question that will remain will be if we’ll all be sucked into the maelstrom of his leaving.

Or if we’ll all shake our heads and wonder…

What the Hell had we just been looking at?

Betsy DeVos Wants Fewer Rights for Rape Survivors & More for Alleged Attackers

September 13, 2017 stevenmsinger Betsy DeVos, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Credibility, Donald Trump, Education, Feminism, Obama, Politics, Prejudice, President, Republican, Schools, Teachers Betsy DeVos, Candice Jackson, Civil Rights, Department of Education, Donald Trump, education, public schools, Rape, Republican, Sexual Assault, teachers

As a public school teacher, you see a lot of ugly things.

You see children with bruises under their sleeves. Kids who cringe when your voice gets too loud. Young people traumatized by sexual violence.

Even in middle school.

So when Betsy DeVos decided to take up for alleged rapists while making it harder for survivors of sexual assault to come forward, I took it kind of personally.

Last week, the Secretary of Education for the United States of America blithely announced her plan to no longer require colleges and universities that receive federal funds from prosecuting on-campus sexual assault with the same severity.

Yes. Seriously.

“The prior administration weaponized the Office for Civil Rights to work against schools and against students,” she said at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.

“The notion that a school must diminish due process rights to better serve ‘victims’ only creates more victims… If everything is harassment, then nothing is.”

In other words, the billionaire heiress in charge of protecting students’ civil rights thinks there is a power imbalance between rapist and victim. And she’s right. Except that she thinks the alleged rapist is on the losing end of that imbalance.

This may be the most preposterous thing she has ever said. And she’s infamous for saying preposterous things.

In matters of sexual assault, all the power lies with the accuser!?

Has Ms.DeVos ever met a survivor of sexual assault?

I have. I’m sorry to say that I’ve met some while working in our public schools.

To put it bluntly – they were my students.

Little children afraid to go home. Kids with backpacks and cartoon animals on their shirts. Barely teens who kept to themselves, arms locked across their chests. Youngsters who just wanted to stay in class as long as I was staying, who would draw and hum and soak up the least bit of human kindness.

Some of them eventually would confide in me, their teacher. Not that I asked. I would have preferred letting the guidance counselor handle it. I really wasn’t trained for it. But there’s only one thing to do when someone wants to tell you their story – you listen.

And that’s exactly what DeVos is telling us NOT to do.

Don’t listen to accusations of sexual assault unless there is a preponderance of evidence. Start from a position of skepticism and unbelief even so far as making accusers confront their attackers.

After all, it’s the only way to protect from false allegations. As if that were at all common.

Only someone devoid of empathy or intelligence could say such a thing with a straight face – much less present it as a statement of public policy.

Yet DeVos isn’t the only high ranking member of the Education Department voicing it.

Two months ago, Candace Jackson, the official responsible for enforcing campus sexual assault laws for DeVos’ department, told reporters that “90 percent” of sexual assault accusations “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.’”

Jackson, who heads the Department’s Office of Civil Rights, apologized for the statement after public backlash.

But now it’s federal policy!

Like much else from the Trump administration, it flies in the face of the facts.

False accusations do happen, but they are much less frequent than sexual violence. Only between two and ten percent of rape allegations are untrue, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

Moreover, the same report found that 63 percent of sexual assaults are never even reported to police. Survivors of this heinous crime rarely come forward because of shame, fear and embarrassment.

That’s something I saw first-hand from my students.

They weren’t bragging about an experience they’d lived through. They wanted more than anything to forget it, to ignore what had happened, to get on with their lives. But they just couldn’t. They felt so betrayed, so vulnerable, so guilty, so frightened.

DeVos’ new policy will do nothing to change that. If anything, it will only embolden would-be attackers to attempt more assault – a crime that already affects nearly a quarter of college women.

According to a National Institute of Justice report, 20 percent of young women will become the victim of a “completed or attempted sexual assault” while in college. And more than 6 percent of men will also be assaulted.

We shouldn’t be making it harder for people who have been brutalized to seek justice. The accused should have due process, but that’s what an investigation is. In the rare instance of false allegations, those unduly impugned should be exonerated.

Despite what she says, DeVos’ recent actions have nothing to do with that. Before passing down her decision, she met with “Men’s Rights” groups like the National Coalition for Men – organizations that I can honestly say, as a red blooded American male, certainly don’t speak for me.

This is politics, not any concern for justice. It’s no accident that DeVos serves at the pleasure of a President who was caught on a hot microphone bragging about engaging in sexual assault. It’s no accident that his base includes white supremacists. It’s no accident that his party continually stomps on women’s rights.

If we really wanted to help survivors of sexual assault, we’d take steps to make sure the crime they lived through never happens again. At very least, we could take steps to make it more rare.

Imagine if instead of abstinence only sexual education classes, our children were taught actual facts about human sexuality. Imagine if every child learned the meaning and necessity of consent. No means no. Period.

That could have a real impact on these crimes. Over time, we could create a culture of respect and understanding. That certainly seems a worthier goal for a Secretary of Education than removing support for victims of sexual assault.

As to the handful of students who turned to me for help, I really can’t tell you what happened to them afterwards. In most cases, I don’t know myself.

In each instance, I turned to the authorities to ensure my students received the help they needed.

I hope they got it.

Unlike Ms. DeVos, I put them first.

Surprised by Charlottesville? You Haven’t Been Paying Attention

August 18, 2017 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Black Names, capitalism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Feminism, Guns, Hate Crimes, immigration, LGBT, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, Propaganda, protest, Racism, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, White Allies, White Fragility, White Privilege, Whiteness Alt Right, Charlottesville Virginia, colorblind, feminism, KKK, LGBT, Nazi, People of Color, prejudice, racism, segregation, white culture, white supremacist, Whiteness

America is a funny place.

On the one hand, we’re one of the first modern Democracies, a product of Enlightenment thinking and unabashed pluralism and cultural diversity.

On the other, we’ve built our entire society on a cast system that is the basis of our economics, politics and cultural mores.

We’re the land of Benjamin Franklin, the Wright brothers, Duke Ellington, Toni Morrison, and Sandra Day O’Connor.

But we’re also the land of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Charles Lindberg, Bull Connor, and David Duke.

Tolerance and love are as American as apple pie. But so are racism, sexism, prejudice and anti-Semitism.

“It is not as though the United States is the land of opportunity, or a hypocritical racist state,” says sociologist John Skrentny. “It is one or both, depending on context.”

So this week when people saw Nazis marching openly in Charlottesville, Virginia, the only thing that was really so surprising about it was how surprised so many people seem to be.

“That’s not my America!” they seem to be saying.

To which I reply, “Hell, yes, it is! Where have you been the last 241 years!?”

We base our salary scales on genitalia! You think we’re really so freaking advanced!?

The shade of your epidermis determines the likelihood of police arresting you, charging you, even killing you regardless of your having a weapon, whether you resist arrest or simply lay on the ground with your hands in the air.

Regardless of the evidence, if you’re convicted, the length and severity of the sentence are all partially determined by the amount of melanin in your skin. The cultural derivation of the name on your resume determines the likelihood of employers calling you back for an interview. In many places, your rights are legislated based on whom you love.

Our schools are segregated. Our taxes are levied most heavily on those with the least means to pay. Our prisons house more black people today than did slave plantations in the 1860s.

Yet a bunch of white dudes carrying Tiki torches shouting hate filled puns (“Jew will not replace us”? Seriously?) somehow doesn’t compute?

Come on.

This is America.

Racism and prejudice are not threats smuggled in past border security. They’ve always been here. At least since Europeans came offering trade and peace with one hand and guns and smallpox with the other.

The land of the free was stolen from the Native Americans. Our national wealth was built on the backs of slaves. Our laws and electoral system were built to empower one group at the expense of others.

Yet reformations in this process are rarely met with celebration. Instead of memorializing the end of slavery, we embrace the institution with fond remembrance.

Nor did prejudice and bigotry end when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, after Brown vs. Board, the Voting Rights Act, Freedom Rides, sit-ins or civil rights protests.

America has always been a place hostile to the under privileged, the second sex, religious dissenters, the brown skinned.

At most, we had become less confrontational in recent years, but we never really changed our core values, our social structures, who has power and who does not.

During my lifetime, people started to equate having a black President with the end of racism. Somehow they ignored the everyday reality for most black people.

They ignored the constant prejudice against the poor, the continued bigotry against LGBTs, the Islamophobia, the increase in hate crimes.

If there has been any change during the past eight months, it hasn’t been with the degree to which Americans are prejudiced. It’s the degree with which we’re willing to hide it.

Whereas before racists would claim to be colorblind, that their actions were completely devoid of racial bias, today they sigh and repeat the dusty slogans of Jim Crow Alabama or 1930s Berlin.

And somehow people are actually surprised about this.

It’s because too many of us have swallowed the lies about living in a post-racial society.

You thought we were beyond all that. It was a brave new world, morning in America, and we were finally treating everyone equally – unless you looked at what we were actually doing.

Mainly this is the reaction you get from white people. They rub their eyes and just can’t believe it.

You don’t see this too often from people of color, Muslims, LGBTs and some Jews. Why? Because they never had the luxury to ignore it.

That’s what we white folks have been doing since the beginning.

Whenever these issues come up, we have a knee jerk reaction to minimize it.

Things aren’t that bad. You’re just blowing it out of proportion.

But, no. I’m not.

That’s why you’re so damn shocked, son.

You haven’t been looking reality square in the face.

So when we’ve got undeniable video footage of angry white males (mostly) marching through Southern streets brandishing swastikas and assault rifles, it catches many white folks off guard.

They’re not prepared for it – because they haven’t been doing their homework.

We’ve been living in a bubble. Especially those living in major metropolitan areas.

That kind of thing never happens around here, right?

Of course it does!

Just because you live above the Mason Dixon Line doesn’t mean you’re safe.

You have a black friend, you like authentic Mexican food and you laugh while watching “Modern Family.”

But you haven’t opened your eyes to the reality outside your door.

You send your kids to private school or live in a mostly upper class white district. You have an exclusive gym membership that keeps out the riff-raff. You work in an office where that one token person of color makes you feel sophisticated and open-minded.

You’ve got to wake up.

You’ve got to educate yourself about race and class in America.

Because those people you saw in Charlottesville aren’t an anomaly.

They are an authentic part of this country, and if you don’t like it, you have to do something about it.

You can’t hide behind denial.

You have to take a stand, pick a side, and be counted.

Because one day soon, the torches will be outside your door.

You have to decide now – do you want to brandish or extinguish them?

Pity the Corporate School Reformers

August 4, 2017 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Campbell Brown, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, church and state, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Eugenics, immigration, Local Control, NAACP, Obama, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Teachers, White Allies Betsy DeVos, charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, Donald Trump, education, Education Post, neoliberal, Politics, School Choice, school vouchers, standardized testing

It’s gotta’ be tough to be a corporate school reformer these days.

Betsy DeVos is Education Secretary. Donald Trump is President. Their entire Koch Brothers-funded, ALEC-written agenda is national policy.

But their stripes are showing – big time.

The NAACP has turned against their school privatization schemes. The Journey for Justice Alliance is having none of it. The Movement for Black Lives is skeptical. Even their trusty neoliberal Democratic allies are seeking to put some distance between them.

And it’s making them look… sad.

You’d think they’d have much to celebrate. Their policies are right up there with voter disenfranchisement, the Muslim ban and building a wall.

Charter schools – YES! Voucher schools – YES! Public schools – NO.

High stakes testing is going gangbusters pushed by the federal government with little interference from the states.

Common Core is in almost every school while the most state legislatures do about it is consider giving it a name change.

And in every district serving students of color and the poor, budgets are being slashed to pieces to make room for another juicy tax cut for the rich.

They’ve taken George W. Bush’s education vision – which neoliberal Barack Obama increased – and somehow found a way to double-triple down on it!

They should be dancing in the streets. But somehow they just don’t feel like dancing.

What’s wrong, Michelle Rhee and Campbell Brown? Is that a tear I see in Peter Cunningham’s eye?

Perhaps they’ve seen the error of their ways. Maybe after all this time, they’ve finally realized all children deserve a robust, authentic education, not just the market-driven chance of – maybe – a quality education.

But no.

It’s not that.

It’s the way the Trump administration is going about it.

You see, he’s being – gulp – honest.

He’s actually saying what he means. He’s throwing back the curtain exposing all the racist, classist, capitalist motivations behind corporate education reform.

Even when he lies – which is often – he’s no good at it. His real motives are plain as the weave on his head.

Under Obama, they could do almost the same things, but at least Barack would apologize for it. He’d clothe it in the language of civil rights and make it sound all noble. He’d excuse systemic inequality as the deserved results of competition.

But Trump!? He’s championing all their favorite causes while tweeting skepticism about the very concept of civil rights, ignoring poverty as fake news and just making an all out ass of himself and everyone with whom he associates.

That’s YOU, corporate education reformers.

That’s you. And you’re being forced to own it.

I almost pity you.

What a dark world you must inhabit. To take these sinister schemes that brutalize children and actually believe in them!

Take charter schools.

Imagine sincerely believing that poor black kids deserve to go to schools that aren’t controlled by school boards but instead by unelected bureaucrats. Imagine thinking the color of your skin should determine whether you have a say in your child’s education. White folks get to elect the people running their schools, but not black folks. And you know what, it’s for their own good, say the reformers!

Imagine thinking that the amount of melanin in your skin should determine whether your schools are transparent or not – whether they’re required to have open records, open meetings, even whether they have to follow the same safety protocols and regulations as traditional public schools!

WHITE SCHOOLS – not for profit, spend the budget all on the students. BLACK SCHOOLS – CA-CHING! CA-CHING!

And when it comes to voucher schools, imagine selling a tax cut to a wealthy family as if it somehow benefited poor folks. Letting the Walton’s pocket a few thousand from their kids exclusive private school tuition doesn’t help Ma and Pa Six Pack. Nor does offering a discount to the kind of parochial schools that brainwash kids into thinking that evolution is evil, climate change is a Chinese conspiracy, and slavery was just God’s will.

It’s the difference between trying to sell a glossy fraud like KIPP’s charter school network and an obvious one like the President’s Trump University.

But now everyone sees they’re essentially the same.

No wonder these faux reformers look so down.

Imagine pushing standardized tests as if they were a technological breakthrough. They’ve been around since at least China’s Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). If that’s cutting edge, I think you’ll like my new APP. It’s called The Wheel!

In America, standardized tests have been around since the 1910s where they were a leading feature of the eugenicist movement. They were a tool to “prove” the racial imperfection of black and brown people and the superiority of whites. Imagine demanding something like that as a civil right!

I couldn’t do it with a straight face. But they did!

And it worked! For a little while.

Now their whole pyramid scheme is just too damn clear. Make the kids take unfair, biased tests that will show how few resources poor black kids get and then use that as a justification for giving them fewer resources, closing their schools and privatizing them. No one’s even tried a scam that blatant since Bernie Madoff went to prison!

What do they have to gain by all this? Money.

Standardized testing is a multi-billion dollar industry. School privatization is a multi-billion dollar industry. If you can find a way to suck up federal, state and local tax dollars meant to educate children and divert that into your private bank account, well you’ve just struck it rich!

Racism pays, folks! Prejudice pays! Because the majority doesn’t mind so much when you take advantage of the underprivileged. That’s why they’re underprivileged in the first place!

And when people like me speak out against them, the best they can do are Ad hominem attacks – you’re too white to question policy affecting black people, or your friends are black but (somehow) not black enough. Today I actually read a response to an article I wrote that came down to these insightful criticisms – Nu-uh! And How dare you! Which we can add to their response to criticisms that charter schools increase segregation – I know you are but what am I?

The folks at the Education Post, a propaganda network passing off most of this nonsense as if it were legitimate news and funded by $12 million from the Broads, the Waltons and other usual suspects, they must really be desperate.

They’ve sold their souls to the Devil and may not even get a good return on the investment.

You see, they’re betting that by the time the Trump zeppelin explodes, their policies will be irreversible.

The problem is that he’s been extremely ineffective. He’s pushing their agenda, but isn’t getting much done.

And with multiple new scandals everyday and increasing calls for impeachment, time is running out.

It’s enough to stoke pity in the hardest of hearts.

Sure these folks have sold out our children for thirty pieces of silver, but they’re still people, after all.

They deserve our empathy, kindness, pity.

Well almost.

Bring Your Gun to School – Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Senate

June 29, 2017 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Charter Schools, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Mass Shooting, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, President, Propaganda, Republican, School Funding, school violence, Shooting, Teachers, Tom Wolf, Violence Against Children, voting charter schools, Gun Control, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, PA Senate, Pennsylvania, Politics, public schools, school funding, schools

Next school year, I may be able to bring my gun to class.

The Pennsylvania state Senate voted 28-22 today to allow school employees like me to start packing heat.

Hooray!

My class sizes will be larger because of almost $1 billion in budget cuts the legislature couldn’t be bothered to heal over the last seven years. I’ll have to teach more sections because my district is bleeding money from charter school vampires that the legislature couldn’t be bothered to regulate.

But now I can be fully armed.

Priorities.

Bullets over books, I guess.

As a more than 15 year veteran of the public school system, I can’t wait to get back in the classroom wondering which of my fellow teachers, principals, custodians or rent-a-cop security guards is fully locked and loaded. I can’t wait until my elementary school daughter is finally protected by being in an adult’s daily line of fire.

This is going to make us much safer.

At my school, we fired a security guard for slamming a student’s head into the table. I’m sure having these folks armed will have no negative effects at all.

And the extra stress from added responsibilities being piled on my back will just make me more vigilant in case I need to take out my piece in class and chase away Black Bart with my Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model… uh… rifle.

Maybe I can get one with a compass in the stock and a thingie that really tells time, too!

Seriously, it’s hard to believe that grown adults actually voted on this ridiculous farce of a law. The only positive thing is that it still needs to be passed by the House and signed by the Governor.

Bad news: state Representatives just might be as stupid as their Senate colleagues. Good news: the Governor isn’t. There is less than a snowball’s chance in Hell that Gov. Tom Wolf is going to sign this piece of crap.

This is what happens when you have a Republican-controlled legislature and a Democratic Governor. The kids say they want nothing but candy for dinner and Dad says “No.”

Now, with a reality TV star con man in our highest national office, GOP-controlled state legislatures like mine all over the country have become emboldened to pass even worse excrement knowing full well that it has zero chance of ever becoming law. But at least they’ll prove to their gerrymandered Republican voting districts not to primary them with even further right leaning Tea Party mental defectives.

It’s a game of chicken with our most vulnerable residents held hostage in the middle.

You know, if lawmakers think that guns are such a great idea in schools, why don’t they make them legal at the state capital?

You can’t go in that building without passing through a metal detector. If you try to bring a gun in there, the best thing you can hope for is to be refused entry.

The same thing at Commonwealth courts, military bases, mental hospitals, prisons and even the security checkpoint at the airport.

And it’s pretty similar in most states. Certainly at federal institutions. You can’t take a firearm with you to visit your Congressperson – or on a tour of the White House.

Heck! Guns aren’t even welcome at Donald Trump’s political rallies, or most of his hotels, golf courses or other properties. Same at conventions held by the National Rifle Association and the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Gee. Why are so-called conservatives so darn concerned with making sure teachers are armed, but they don’t want to offer the same “protection” to themselves in government, at their businesses, rallies and places of leisure?

Why? Because it’s bullshit.

That’s why.

Most of them don’t really want guns in schools. They know it’s a terrible idea. They just want to look like they support it. Their propaganda networks spew out all this nonsense that they have to pretend to believe.

When they let protesters enter the capital building open carrying automatic weapons, THEN I won’t doubt their sincerity.

When they let Black Lives Matter activists strapping rifles across their shoulders into their rallies among the angry and confused hillbillies, THEN I’ll know how serious they are.

And when the upper crust private and parochial schools where they send their own children start arming their teachers, THEN I’ll believe them.

Until that day, I call bullshit on this whole ridiculous endeavor.

Betsy’s Choice: School Privatization Over Kids’ Civil Rights

June 7, 2017June 8, 2017 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Campaign Donations, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Obama, Politics, Prejudice, President, privatization, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Sexism, Teachers Betsy DeVos, charter schools, children, church and state, Civil Rights, Donald Trump, LGBT, Privatize, Republicans, School Choice, school vouchers

Betsy DeVos attends education meeting at the White House in Washington

Betsy DeVos seems to be confused about her job.

As U.S. Secretary of Education, she is responsible for upholding the civil rights of all U.S. students.

She is NOT a paid lobbyist for the school privatization industry.

Yet when asked point blank by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) whether her department would ensure that private schools receiving federal school vouchers don’t discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) students, she refused to give a straight answer.

She said that the these schools would be required to follow all federal antidiscrimination laws but her department would not issue any clarifications or directives about exactly how they should be doing it.

“On areas where the law is unsettled, this department is not going to be issuing decrees. That is a matter for Congress and the courts to settle,” DeVos said at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education yesterday.

“I think you just said where it’s unsettled, such discrimination will continue to be allowed under your program. If that’s incorrect, please correct it for the record,” Merkley replied.

DeVos did not correct him.

Instead she simply repeated, “Schools that receive federal funds will follow federal law, period.”

Merkley said she was dodging the question.

“I think that’s very important for the public to know, that today, the secretary of education, before this committee, refused to affirm that she would put forward a program that would ban discrimination based on LGBTQ status of students or would ban discrimination based on religion,” he said.

“Discrimination in any form is wrong. I don’t support discrimination in any form,” DeVos replied.

But that doesn’t mean she’ll fight against it.

She held firm to her position that it is not her job as Secretary of Education to fight for students’ civil rights. That is the responsibility of Congress and the courts.

But she’s wrong.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is part of the Department of Education.

According to the department’s own Website, the “OCR’s mission is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence through vigorous enforcement of civil rights in our nation’s schools.”

There is nothing “unsettled” about that at all. What IS unsettled is how and if the U.S. Constitution allows federal funds to be spent on private schools in any manner whatsoever.

At very least, it has been argued that giving tax dollars to parochial schools violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment guaranteeing a separation of church and state. Moreover, the degree to which voucher schools that don’t explicitly teach religion would have to abide by federal laws about what they can and should do is likewise “unsettled.”

Yet DeVos has no problem advocating for the school privatization industry. In fact, it has been her lifelong calling. As a billionaire Republican mega-donor, that’s exactly what she’s done for years – shoving bundles of cash at candidates and lawmakers to support school vouchers and charter schools.

Someone needs to remind her that that is no longer her role. In her official capacity as Secretary of Education, her job is not to advocate for school choice. But it IS her job to protect students’ civil rights – regardless of the type of school those students attend.

If a school is at all public, she is responsible for ensuring those students’ rights. And receiving public funds makes a school public.

Specifically, she is responsible for ensuring no child is discriminated against on the basis of race, color and national origin, according to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This includes protecting children who are being treated unfairly due to limited understanding of the English language or who are still learning to speak the language. This includes children experiencing bigotry as a result of their shared ancestry, ethnicity or religion such as Muslims, Sikhs or Jews.

It is also her job to protect children from sexual discrimination as per Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. No matter her own personal conservative views, she must protect pregnant teens or teen parents. And to speak toward Merkley’s point, according to the Department’s Website, this explicitly includes, “…sex stereotypes (such as treating persons differently because they do not conform to sex-role expectations or because they are attracted to or are in relationships with persons of the same sex); and gender identity or transgender status.”

She is also required to be a champion of students with disabilities as per Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Moreover, Title II explicitly forbids public entities – whether or not they receive federal funds – from demonstrating any partiality against students with disabilities.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She has to protect against age discrimination per the Age Discrimination Act of 1975 and enforce the Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act. She is responsible for investigating complaints about equal access to youth groups conducting meetings at public schools and/or that receive federal funding.

To quote the Website, one more time:

“These civil rights laws extend to all state education agencies, elementary and secondary school systems, colleges and universities, vocational schools, proprietary schools, state vocational rehabilitation agencies, libraries and museums that receive federal financial assistance from ED [the Education Department].”

I’m not so sure DeVos understand this – at all.

Nor do I expect her to get much help from the political ideologues she’s using to staff the department.

Take her choice for Assistant Secretary in the Office for Civil Rights, Candice Jackson.

She’s an ANTI-Civil Rights activist. She literally doesn’t believe in the office she’s running.

The 39-year-old attorney is anti-women’s rights, anti-distributive justice and possibly even anti-compulsory education and anti-Civil Rights Act of 1964!

She once filed a complaint against her prestigious college, Stanford University, for discriminating against her rights as a rich, white person by refusing to allow her access to free minority tutoring.

For all its faults, the Barack Obama administration took civil rights seriously. So much so that conservatives often criticized the Democratic organization as being overzealous in the execution of its duties.

The Obama era Education Department issued so many clarifications of the law that it received a record number of civil rights complaints. This required hundreds of additional lawyers and investigators and increasing the civil rights division by 30 percent.

Complaints went from more than six thousand in 2009 to almost ten thousand in 2015. Of these, the largest increase was in complaints of sex discrimination.

However, President Donald Trump has recommended the Department be downsized in his budget proposal.

The Reality TV star would cut the Department’s budget by 13 percent, or $9 billion, eliminating after-school and summer programming for kids and professional development for teachers. Instead, he would invest $250 million in a school voucher incentive program and an additional $168 million for charter schools.

Also, getting a boost is personal security for DeVos, herself. She is spending an additional $1 million a month for U.S. Marshalls to guard her against protesters.

It should come as no surprise that Trump and DeVos don’t support the mission of the Department of Education. Both have expressed interest in disbanding the office altogether.

In a February magazine interview, DeVos said, “It would be fine with me to have myself worked out of a job. But I’m not sure that – I’m not sure that there will be a champion movement in Congress to do that.”

Likewise, Trump wrote in his 2015 book “Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America” that “if we don’t eliminate [the department] completely, we certainly need to cut its power and reach.”

That is exactly what DeVos is doing.

Under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, it could be argued the Department was guilty of overreach. But Trump and DeVos are going in the opposite extreme.

Someone has to look out for students’ civil rights. That someone has traditionally been the Department of Education. With DeVos abdicating her responsibilities and continuing her role as a school privatization cheerleader, it is anyone’s guess who – if anyone – will step into the void.

Charter Schools and Voucher Schools are Virtually Identical

May 18, 2017 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Campaign Donations, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Obama, Politics, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teachers Betsy DeVos, charter schools, church and state, Democrats, Donald Trump, education, neofascist, neoliberal, Politics, Privatize, rebranding, Republicans, school vouchers

Screen shot 2017-05-17 at 8.30.20 PM

The stark orange monolith that was Donald Trump is starting to crumble.

And with it so are the dreams of corporate education reformers everywhere.

Where in previous administrations they could pass off their policies as Democratic or Republican depending on whichever way the wind blows, today their brand has been so damaged by Trump’s advocacy, they fear it may never recover.

Under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, they could champion both charter schools and school vouchers with impunity. But now the privatizers and profiteers hiding in progressive clothing are trying desperately to rebrand.

Not only is Trump’s voucher plan deeply unpopular, but the public has already begun to associate any kind of school privatization with a doomed President.

So like cockroaches, neoliberals have begun to skitter to one type of privatization over another. Fake Democrats hide beneath unfettered charter school expansion. Bought-and-sold Republicans cling to the idea that we should spend taxpayer dollars on private and parochial schools.

But is there a real substantial difference between each of these so-called “choice” schemes? Or are they both just scams when compared with traditional public schools?

THE DIFFERENCES

Charter Schools and Private Schools are basically the same thing.

The biggest difference between the two is funding.

Charter schools are completely funded by tax dollars. Private schools – even when school vouchers are used – often need to be subsidized by parents. For instance, many private schools charge tuition of $30,000 – $40,000 a year. Vouchers rarely provide more than $6,000. So at best they bring the cost down but still make it impossible for most students to attend private schools.

Sure they may start as an effort to allow only impoverished children to use tax dollars towards private and parochial school tuition. But they soon grow to include middle class and wealthy children, thus partially subsidizing attendance at the most exclusive schools in the country for those families who can already afford it.

Parochial schools, meanwhile, are exactly the same except for one meaningful difference. They teach religion.

Their entire curriculum comes from a distinctly religious point of view. They indoctrinate youth into a way of seeing the world that is distinctly non-secular.

Progressives complain that using tax dollars to pay for student tuition at such schools – even only partial tuition – violates a foundational principal of our nation.

Using public money to pay for religious teaching has historically been interpreted as a violation of the establishment clause of the first Amendment to the Constitution – namely, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Thomas Jefferson called it “a wall of separation between Church and State.”

This is further exacerbated in many parochial schools where religious teaching includes a blatant political bias toward conservatism. Children at many of these schools are taught that supply side economics, voter disenfranchisement and prejudice are normative bedrock truths.

These are the main distinctions between voucher and charter schools.

In short, they’re not all exactly the same. And corporate reform apologist are trying to rebuild their brand on these split hairs.

But the similarities between these types of school are much more striking.

THE SIMILARITIES

The biggest commonality between these types of educational institutions is how they’re run. Unlike traditional public schools – which are governed by duly-elected school boards – charter, private and parochial schools are overseen by private interests. They are administered by independent management firms. They rarely have elected school boards. Their operators rarely make decisions in public, and their budgets and other documents are not open to review by taxpayers. This is true despite the fact that they are funded to varying degrees by public tax dollars.

So in all three cases, these schools are run privately, but taxpayers pick up the tab.

It’s ironic. Sending kids to charters, private and parochial schools with public money is called school choice. However, each of these types of schools gives taxpayers much less choice about how their money is being spent.

The community funds the school, but almost all decisions are made by people outside of the community – people appointed, in fact, by bureaucrats or business managers.

To be sure, parents can express their displeasure of administrative decisions by disenrolling their children in the school. But beyond this nuclear option, they are powerless. Even more troubling, taxpayers without children or with children who do not attend these schools have no say whatsoever about how their money is spent.

And to add insult to injury, it doesn’t even really allow the parents to choose which schools their children attend. They can put in a request for their kids to attend a choice school, but enrollment decisions are made by these same private equity managers. In short, administrators make the ultimate choice – not parents.

If the religious school doesn’t want to accept your child for whatever reason including operators’ disapproval of your religious beliefs, they don’t have to accept him. If the private school doesn’t want to accept your child based on race, gender or nationality, they don’t have to accept him. If the charter school doesn’t want to accept your child because of bad grades or troublesome behaviors, they don’t have to accept him.

The traditional public school, however, cannot refuse a child who lives in district borders for any of these reasons. In effect, school choice really isn’t about parental choice. It’s about increasing choice for the operators of privatized schools – letting them choose their students and how to spend your money without any meaningful input from you.

And it’s true at all three types of school!

Those are pretty considerable similarities. Moreover, they highlight major differences between these so-called choice schools and traditional public schools.

This is important because we don’t even have to get into the academic records of individual schools. The way each type of school is structured shows the clear inferiority of choice schools compared to traditional public schools.

By their very structure, public schools give parents and taxpayers much more agency in children’s education and how taxpayer money is spent.

Second, the latitude for school administrators to perpetrate fraud on the public is maximized in so-called choice schools and minimized in public schools. This doesn’t mean public schools are perfect, but it is much better to have a school under public scrutiny and local control than otherwise. This is demonstrated by the huge numbers of charter school scandals popping up in the news every day, where charters close suddenly, money is misspent on luxury items for operators that have nothing to do with education, and – especially in cyber charters – the quality of education students receive is literally lower than having no formal education at all.

Finally, if public schools struggle, it is almost always due to a lack of equitable funding and a surplus of impoverished students. It is no accident that poor students receive less resources and larger class sizes than middle class or wealthy ones. Nor is it an accident that we judge the effectiveness of schools primarily on standardized tests which are so good at highlighting the results of lack of resources rather than any academic deficiency.

If we spent our education dollars ensuring equitable resources instead of funneling tax dollars to charter, private and parochial schools, we would better increase the quality of children’s education. But for the last few decades that has not been the goal of education policy. It has instead been to enrich these same privatized school managers and investors – the corporate education reform industry. Nor is it a coincidence that this industry and its subsidiaries counts itself as major donors to both political parties.

Before she was elevated to Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos was exactly that – a billionaire mega-donor pushing school privatization while getting richer off investments in the same. Now that she’s driving school vouchers off a cliff in the Trump train, her co-conspirators are getting nervous.

Neoliberal Democrats may try to save the movement by claiming charter schools are completely different. But they aren’t. They are fundamentally the same.

The public sees the clear similarities between these kinds of schools. And much of that is thanks to the incompetent boobery of Donald J. Trump.

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"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

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