To the editor:
Iowans: I need you to read this, and I need you to act now to protect public education in our state.
We are at a tipping point, and the voucher bill making its way through the Iowa Legislature will be devastating and have lasting implications for the quality of public education in our state.
There are many insulting and demoralizing laws being introduced right now in the Iowa Legislature. Most of them are designed to make a name for individual representatives and senators who believe stoking the divide between public schools and the communities they serve will help them politically.
Even more concerning, some of these bills appear to simply be red herrings. I worry that while we are all distracted by the outlandish laws being introduced, Iowa’s public schools are going to be delivered the critical blow that Iowa Republicans have been struggling to pass for years now: Vouchers.
Gov. Reynolds has attempted to pass a voucher bill now for years but has hit resistance from thousands of Iowans from across the state and even members of her own base. Yet here we are again, fighting against a governor and Republican state legislators who refuse to listen to Iowans who resoundingly want them to protect and adequately fund the state’s public schools.
I’m going to be very direct about the governor’s voucher bill making its way through the Iowa Legislature: It isn’t about improving education in our state. It’s about buying votes and furthering the governor’s own political ambitions. The governor wants Iowans to believe the bill will help poor students and special education student escape failing schools, but that is not what it does.
In fact, it will do the opposite. Vouchers will be offered based on two criteria:
1) Families that make less than 400% of the poverty income guidelines.
2) Special Education students with IEPs
These criteria are designed to deceive Iowans. First, if 400% sounds high, it’s because it is. The income guidelines mean that 80% of Iowans would be eligible. This is not a bill to help “poor” students. It will almost exclusively be used by middle class Iowans.
The poorest Iowans still won’t be able to make up the difference between the $5,359 the voucher program will pay, and the cost of tuition at most private schools which is thousands higher than that.
Furthermore, most families living in poverty often don’t have the ability to transport their kids across town to a private school. Families living in poverty want strong community public schools that are designed to uplift and support their children.
The call for vouchers has never come from poor Iowans, it has always been driven by those with the most wealth. That should tell us something.
Second, most private schools don’t offer special education services. Many private schools coordinate with public schools so that kids can receive the services they need from the public school’s special education teachers. Those that do have special education departments only have services for students with certain disabilities.
Most private schools don’t have teachers with the appropriate licensure to provide services to kids with more severe disabilities—public schools do. Private schools also can expel students with behavior disorders, even if their behavior is caused by a disability. Public schools don’t expel kids with disabilities because we know that it’s unfair to the kid, and it’s bad for society.
Kids with behavior disorders need specialized education, and they require some of the hardest working educators in the world to deliver that: the type of teachers you can find in Iowa’s public schools.
So what this bill will actually do is further segregate Iowa’s schools. Up to 10,000 middle-class Iowans will leave public schools for private schools, and Iowa’s public schools will lose funding while being left to continue serving all students—students living in poverty and all students with disabilities, no matter how severe that disability is, or if it manifests itself in behaviors that private schools may find difficult or undesirable.
Okay, so the bill’s criteria are misleading, but why do I say this bill is about buying votes and not about improving education?
That answer is simple: Vouchers don’t work.
There are several studies from other states that have implemented voucher programs that demonstrate that students who leave their community public school for a private school using a voucher, actually perform worse at the private school.
In other words, private schools often have better test scores than their nearby public schools simply because they serve wealthier families, not because they are providing higher quality education.
Vouchers don’t improve outcomes for kids, but they do shift resources to for-profit private schools and leave underfunded public schools with even less resources.
Okay, so the bill’s criteria are deceiving, and vouchers don’t improve education, but why is this bill about buying votes?
Well, Reynolds didn’t try to hide this very well. First, families who send their kids to private schools are much more likely to be conservative, especially in Iowa, where the vast majority of private schools are Christian schools.
Additionally, voucher bills are almost always funded and supported by conservative PACs and religious groups. Conservatives know their base is bolstered when more kids are taught in private Christian schools — this is a huge driving force behind why ALEC and the Koch Brothers have put so much funding behind voucher programs across the country.
But this bill goes even further to pander to the governor’s base. In past years, vouchers have met opposition from rural Iowans because they (correctly) fear that rural community schools will be hurt by school vouchers.
So this time, Reynolds attempted to appeal to her base by arbitrarily saying that for every $5,359 voucher given to a private school, the state will also allocate $2,270 to the smallest 102 school districts in the state (any district with fewer than 500 kids).
So if a student leaves an urban school to attend a private school, more than $5,000 is shifted to the private school, but another $2,270 is directed to a small rural school. Does this make sense? No, it doesn’t.
Reynolds and the Iowa Republicans know this bill hurts public schools. However, they are only worried about how it will effect rural Iowa’s public schools, which is where the most conservative Iowan’s live. The damage this bill will do to urban public schools doesn’t seem to bother the governor — perhaps because she knows they already aren’t voting for her?
So here is the bottom line: Voucher programs don’t work. They don’t improve outcomes, and they have been riddled with fraud in every state they have been implemented in. They hurt public education and since the vast majority of Iowans attend public schools, this bill will hurt our kids in this state.
The governor has introduced a bill that attempts to deceive Iowans, but Iowans aren’t ignorant as she seems to believe. We have a history of strong public schools, and it’s one we are proud of.
It’s time to stand up to the governor and her friends in the Iowa Senate and House.
Please email your representative, and tell them to vote No on any bill that proposes using taxpayer money to fund private schools. Tell them you support public schools and want your taxpayer money to stay in schools that guarantee a high-quality education to all students.
Tell the politicians that you want to be proud of Iowa’s public schools again, and any bill that isn’t designed to do that will cause you to reconsider your vote for them in the next election cycle.
Tell them you vote for public schools. That’s the only way they will listen.
Leland Michael
Des Moines
Thank you for that insight. I cannot believe that we are having to fight this fight yet again. I believe that the proposal to put monitoring equipment in schools so parents can listen in and threaten to ruin teachers financially at their whim is another part of her ruse. This is not about implementation. It’s about intimidation, driving teachers away from the public school system. Besides the expense, insuring the privacy and security of our children makes the plan unworkable, yet Gov. Reynolds puts it forward.
The GOP direction troubles me. They want to eliminate the reading of many books. They actively spread mistrust in science. They want to make teaching history a crime. Civics, social studies and health education are all but gone. Music and the arts are seen as an unproductive waste of money. Teaching math and logic threatens their alternative facts and statistics, and that could be under attack next.
If this continues, there will be nothing left to teach but their doctrine.
Wm Romanowski has nailed it. The brutal, devious and calculated attack on our public school system is just one of the many battle fronts of our current culture war.
Since the end of World War II, many of us here in the United States have seen and been part of a liberation of consciousness unseen in recorded western history. Millions have come to realize just how twisted, perverted, hideous and oppressive the old ways of thinking were. We learned that religion and spirituality are supposed to liberate us instead of ensnare us in mental slavery. We have discovered just how patently racist almost all of us white folks are, including even the most liberal of us. We have grown accustomed to women and the LGBQ community asserting themselves and not necessarily being derided or abused for advancing themselves.
To the extent that the various liberation movements have taken hold, it has been because of an open media, faith in accredited experts and public education, the latter being the most important.
With that in mind, we are telling you flat out just how appalled we are that rich, powerful and manipulative people have convinced a giant segment of our citizenry to vote against their own best interests. We have seen the gullible bombarded with disinformation, politically retrograde indoctrination and religious bigotry. This is done to foster a culture of intolerance and keep the masses in a perpetual state of ignorance. To the mighty ones, the ignorance of the populace is their key to controlling us and maintaining their privileged status. To that end, they intend to destroy public education.
It’s very possible the GOP may very well achieve its sordid goals for a while. No matter. Time and truth are on our side. We will not yield to them. We will not go away. We will not shut up. We will not allow any kind of secession. We will never stop fighting and, I repeat, we are not going anywhere. May they enjoy their dominance . . . for now.