This opinion piece appeared in today's Bozeman Chronicle. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My commentary interspersed in bold.
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(Before I get started, does the title of this opinion piece seem Orwellian? If there are other schools to chose from, how does that reduce choice? And how do private schools reduce innovation? And why would they have impact on local control? Let's see if these questions get answered by the authors.)
By DENISE ULBERG, ERIC FEAVER, DAVE PUYEAR, LANCE MELTON, MARK LAMBRECHT AND KIRK MILLER
Guest columnists In recent public policy discussions regarding the use of public funds to pay for private education in Montana, there are critical facts that are lost in the details (Well, there is no such thing as "public funds." Government has no money of its own. It must take private money from private individuals before it has any money at all. So the authors believe there are critical facts missing from the debate? Let's see if there are "critical facts," or even if there are "facts" at all.).
Using public funds for private education essentially makes “private” education now “public,” (Actually, allowing taxpayers to keep their own money to spend as they see fit is not making "private" education "public". The only way this can be viewed this way is if a person's money does not belong to them, that is, all money belongs to the government.)
only without the accountability, rights and choices made available to the public when interacting with their existing public schools. (Their perspective seems to be that private activities like private schools ought to function as an arm of government and fulfill government's objectives. But private entities are private for a reason. They have their own objectives. The fact that private schools have different objectives than public school goals is the precise reason why they exist!) Each of the following rights or choices under current law would be notably absent if public funds were used to support private schools:
1. Your choice of which trustees to vote for and elect to represent the community and oversee how the school district spends taxpayer funds (Do private schools not have boards? Of course they do, and they are invariably selected by the parents of students. If anything, the choice is better, since parents chose according to their world view).
2. Your choice of whether to support requests for funding and other voted matters required to be placed before the voters by public schools (What? Private schools are funded by tuition paid by the parents, as well as by charitable gifts and other fund raising. Parents "choose" request for funding by selecting the private school and paying the tuition.).
3. Your right to observe, participate in and challenge the deliberations and decisions of public schools through open meeting laws (The puzzlers stack up. Private schools have board meetings according to their bylaws. Their meetings are as they choose to have them. Public school boards have closed meetings regularly. What are the authors talking about?).
4. Your right to know and assess how well the schools you are supporting with your taxes are performing on various standardized measures of student performance. Private schools are exempt assessing and disclosing their performance to the public (Parents will not allow their student to attend any school for very long if they think their child is not being adequately educated. Most certainly these parents know how their schools are performing! As far as the public's right to know, it doesn't exist when it comes to what private individuals and organizations are doing. The public has no right to know what takes place at a private school. If they want to find out, well, they probably know how a phone works. I'm quite sure that most private schools would be happy to answer their questions).
5. Your right to enroll your child in a school. Unlike public schools, which are required to serve all resident school-aged children, private schools have the right to deny admission for a variety of reasons that would be unlawful if used as a basis for denial of admission in a public school (Enrolling your child in a private school is a mutually voluntary agreement, with an exchange of value. The parents pay the school, and the school educates their children. It is quite proper that there is no right to enroll, because a private organization serves its own interests.
The authors seem to be complaining that the obligations and burdens public schools labor under as imposed by a myriad of laws and regulations ought to be imposed on the private sector as well; that is, because it's bad for them, it ought to be bad for private schools too.
However, private entities are not government entities. They do not serve anyone else's purposes but their own. They do not advance the societal goals of government. They have no obligation to kowtow to the latest pop culture initiative. That's exactly why parents choose them.).
Innovation and an ever-expanding range of options and choices within our public schools:
Montana’s public schools have innovated throughout the state to meet the needs of children in each community (This is irrelevant. What public schools do or not do does not come to bear on a parent choosing a private school. And on what basis do the authors claim that public schools are unique in this regard? These "innovations," are they automatically beneficial? I remember my public school experience at a progressive public high school. Innovative? Sure. Effective? No.
A fine-sounding yet empty claim. In what way do they innovate? How specifically are these innovations different or better than private schools? Does the result of these innovations actually meet the needs of children in each community? How? And why should this override a parent's decision to put them in a private school?).
Montana’s school districts are eager to engage their communities in meaningful and thoughtful discussions regarding how to best serve Montana’s school-aged population (Good for them. Again, irrelevant, because parents choose privates schools according to what they value, not what the authors value.
And just try to disagree with public schools staff. Heaven help you if you contest an inappropriate book or want to keep your child out of questionable classroom activities. You'll find out very quickly how they value discussion.
If you do manage to engage a discussion, you'll likely experience a variation of the Delphi Technique, which is a way of conducting meetings that manipulate decision-making, discourage dissent, shame dissenters, and achieve pre-determined outcomes while simultaneously making it seem like the decision was reached by consensus. You can be sure that if you showed up at a public school board meeting that your dissent would not be tolerated.).
These discussions have resulted in choices that flourish throughout the state. (How can choices flourish? Does this mean as a result of choices, certain things are flourishing? Or that there are many choices now? Choices don't flourish.)
Open enrollment with no tuition for out-of-district students in a large majority of our public schools; four-day school week programming; online learning options available through the Montana Digital Academy; courses taken for concurrent high school and college credit; Montessori schools; International Baccalaureate programs; parttime enrollment for home school students; and even religious instruction release time are just a few of the innovations available in Montana’s public schools (Isn't amazing what can be done with oodles of taxpayer money? And did you notice the "release time" for religious instruction? This "innovation" has been around for decades, but fell out of favor for a while because of "church-state" issues. So apparently it is innovative to eliminate inflexibilities. In other words, "we were not doing this well, so we fixed it, and then we call it innovation.").
The bedrock principles that promote innovation and choice in Montana’s public schools include:
1. Collaboration with parents and taxpayers (This "collaboration" yields unnamed benefits.).
2. Accountability to voters through their rights to elect trustees; approve or disapprove discretionary levies; and demand transparency through access to information regarding school performance and expenditures (Making the same points again, as if private schools do not do these things).
3. The engagement of classroom teachers and other educators as the sources of both ideas for innovation and delivery of instruction, (Sounds like the authors are starting to scrape bottom in search of bullet points.) and
4. The assurance that all such offerings are provided on a nondiscriminatory basis in pursuit of the full development of the educational potential of each student as required under the Montana Constitution. (Which is one of the many reasons parents choose private schools, I'm sure.)
With all of the choices available within our accountable statewide system of public schools, why would we sacrifice any, much less all of the benefits for children above by using public funds to pay for private education in any form that lacks the accountability, transparency and voter control present in our public schools? The short answer is that we should not accept anything less and should in fact be pursuing an increased presence of the voice and role that the public currently enjoys in influencing the decisions of our public schools as they work to serve the children of this state.
Denise Ulberg is executive director of the Montana Association of School Business Officials; Eric Feaver is MEA-MFT president; Dave Puyear is executive director of Montana Rural Education Association; Lance Melton is executive director of Montana School Boards Association; Mark Lambrecht is executive director of the Montana Quality Education Coalition; and Kirk Miller is executive director of the School Administrators of Montana.
(After reading their point-by-point elucidation of the superior nature of public schools, are you left feeling like this is pretty thin stuff? It seems like the best they can say is that "private schools aren't like us," yet these grand differences are overblown, being primarily in terminology and presentation rather than substance. Private schools are not public entities seems to be their chief complaint, yet it is very thing that prompts parents to choose private schools.
And given the manifold flaws of government-run enterprises, it's a wonder there are any students at all attending them. Granted, Montana fares better than a lot of places, but remember that the authors are supporting public schools as a concept, not necessarily Montana schools specifically.)
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