School Leader

Kentucky's National School Choice Week Celebration 2023

I was honored to speak at Kentucky's 2023 National School Choice Week event in Frankfort this last Tuesday, January 24. This year we held a press conference highlighting the current status of school choice efforts in Kentucky. I was joined on the stage by EdChoice Kentucky President Andrew Vandiver and Mindy Crawford, director of the Providence School, a private, faith-based school serving students with special needs. You can read coverage of the event from Kentucky Today here.

Kentucky families were dealt a blow last month when the Kentucky Supreme Court, in a decision that contradicted the legal reasoning of numerous state courts and even the US Supreme Court, unanimously struck down the new Education Opportunities Account law. As Mr. Vandiver pointed out in his remarks at our press conference, every neighboring state around Kentucky now has at least one or more school choice policy programs that help give low- and middle-income families or families with special needs children additional education options.

However, the fight for education options will go on in Kentucky and advocates are motivated like never before. Below is the full text of my remarks:

I’m so pleased to be here today to celebrate National School Choice Week. Of course I am not speaking to you today on behalf of my employer, but I am here as a career educator of 25 years.

Education is my life’s passion, and I’ve been blessed to work in and visit so many schools over the two and half decades I’ve served students and their families as a teacher, principal, district administrator, and professor. Many of those schools have been outstanding, but one of the things I’ve learned, both as an educator and especially as the dad of my own school-aged children, is that no school, no matter how good, can be a perfect fit for every child. That’s why I believe every family, no matter their income or zip code, should have access to the same kinds of excellent school choice options, both public and private, that my own family enjoys. It's time for Kentucky to finally get with the program and join the many other states that are funding students, not systems.

And I’m not alone in feeling this way. Polling data has shown again and again that Kentucky families want more education options. Not only do they want more options, they are also exercising their choices whenever they can.

In a research report I conducted for EdChoice Kentucky last August, I reviewed public school enrollment data over a five-year period, from 2018 to 2022. What we found is that the number of Kentucky families choosing to homeschool or send their children to nonpublic schools has skyrocketed. Across Kentucky, the number of children being educated in nonpublic school settings has risen by more than 20,000, a percentage increase of 26 percent, to an all-time high of almost 100,000 students. Last school year alone, Kentucky nonpublic school participation increased by more than 8 percent.

When you consider that some undetermined number of families are also choosing to send their kids to a public school outside of their own district boundaries, these numbers make clear that there is a strong demand for school choice. But unfortunately far too many families are unable to exercise such options.

Many of my good friends in the education establishment are afraid to give families choices because they worry it will hurt public schools. But that has not been the case in states that have embraced educational choice.

As an example, Florida has one of the most robust school choice policy environments in the country, with more than one and a half million students - almost half of the state's entire student population - choosing to attend a school other than their assigned public school option. Far from harming public schools, Florida enjoys higher levels of public school student achievement than Kentucky. In fact, Florida’s public school students outpace Kentucky’s public school students academically across every demographic.

Just last weekend I was blessed to visit Cristo Rey Salesian High School in Tampa Florida, which serves 200 students – and more every day – all from low-income families who otherwise could never access the kind of robust, faith-based, college preparatory program offered by Cristo Rey – except for Florida’s school choice policies.

Kentucky’s students deserve the same opportunities as students in Florida and the many other states that provide some form of education choice. Kentucky is an outlier in systematically denying low and middle income children education options enjoyed by every affluent family.

But not for long. The demand is clear and Kentucky will not give up the fight to make sure every student and every family is empowered to find the learning environment that best meets their needs. Like so many other states, Kentucky will break down those establishment barriers and find a way to fund students, not systems. The day is coming and I relish being a part of the fight and the inevitable victory for education freedom.

School board candidates challenge the status quo

In my latest for Commonwealth Educational Opportunities, I argue that the upcoming November election will be the next important chapter of parent empowerment in education. Across Kentucky and across the country conservative candidates are trying to wrest control of local boards of education and challenge the status quo. Read the full article here. 

Kentucky nonpublic school enrollment skyrockets

In the last five years, the number of Kentucky students being educated at home or in private schools has grown by more than 26%, to nearly 100,000 children, representing more than 15% of the state's student body.

In a report tracking these trends for EdChoice Kentucky (where I serve on the board of directors), I analyzed data available from the Kentucky Department of Education. These data show that homeschooling participation in Kentucky has doubled since 2017, to almost 20,000 students. Private school enrollment has grown by 10 percent during the same time.

Last year alone Kentucky saw an 8% surge in nonpublic education participation. Homeschooling grew by 11% in 2021-2022.

Last year's data also show record numbers of students with disabilities and English language learners being educated at home or in private schools. Contrary to the claims of some in the education establishment who assert that our most vulnerable students can only be successfully served in public schools, 25,000 Kentucky children with disabilities are being educated elsewhere. The number of students from immigrant families being served in nonpublic settings quadrupled last year alone. See Table 1 below from the report Ending the Status Quo: Kentucky's Parents Increasily Choose Nonpublic Education Options.

The data reports from the Kentucky Department of Education upon which this analysis are based can be found below:

Download 2018 Declartaion of Participation PNP Homeschool Totals

Download Declaration of Participation Report Summary for FY 2022

Download Copy of FY23 Declaration of Participation Report Summary with change from FY22

These data trends demonstrate a clear demand on the part of Kentucky familes for new education options, and policymakers should respond by making sure every student has access to those options, no matter where they live or their family's income. As I wrote in Ending the Status Quo,

At least since 2018 and in rapidly increasing numbers, Kentucky parents have challenged the status quo that dictates children have no education options other than what the local public school district provides. Massive surges in homeschooling and private education demonstrate there is a clear demand for school choice, and Kentucky’s leaders should respond accordingly.

Related posts:

• Homeschooling surges in Kentucky
• Kentucky General Assembly 2022 education recap
• Fund students, not systems

KY General Assembly 2022 Education Recap

The 2022 Kentucky General Assembly concluded its work last month. The Republican-dominated legislature made record financial investments long desired by the education establishment, but failed to pass all but the most modest bills that would further empower Kentucky parents with more choices and stronger voices in their children’s education.

The budget passed by lawmakers and signed by Governor Beshear invests billions of general fund dollars into Kentucky schools for each of the next two years. That investment includes $130 million to fund full-day kindergarten classrooms (almost all districts already provide full-day kindergarten but pay for half of it from local funds). The budget also includes $274 million in transportation funds, another major expense that local districts have been subsidizing themselves for years. Both of these provisions have been top priorities for educators since at least my own years of service on the Kentucky Board of Education (2016-2019).

The budget also fully funded the Kentucky Teacher Retirement System, allocating more than $2 billion over the biennium, far more than the actuarial amount required by law, and raised the base state education funding allotment to a record level of $4,100 per pupil per year next year and then $4,200 per pupil the following year. Millions and millions of dollars of new funds were approved for career and technical education, gifted and talented programs, early learning, and Family Resource-Youth Service Centers (FRYSC).

The left-leaning education establishment has long (and falsely) painted the Republican majority in the General Assembly as anti-education meanies, and in their typical fashion, I did not see much public gratitude to lawmakers for their lavish beneficence. In fact, some teachers took to social media to lambaste lawmakers for not also mandating a teacher salary increase like they provided for state employees.

These educators are barking up the wrong tree. The many millions of dollars local districts will now save on kindergarten and transportation can certainly be used for salary increases if local boards of education want to use those funds accordingly. A little gratitude seems in order here.

I’ve never objected to overall increases in education spending, though I don’t see any evidence doing so will have any meaningful impact on student learning if those dollars are spent indiscriminately. And I have never favored pouring more money into the system itself without greater accountability to parents through school choice. We ought to be finding ways to fund students, not systems.

Sadly, this year’s General Assembly passed up the opportunity to make significant strides in that direction. HB 305 would have corrected problems in last year’s education opportunity accounts law, but House leaders refused to even place it in committee for a hearing. And while HB 9 started out as a strong bill to restore charter school funding and improve authorization, the version of the bill that was ultimately passed (over Gov. Beshear’s veto of course) is likely the weakest charter school law in the country.

Other policies that would further empower parents and the public met similar mixed results with this general assembly.

SB 1 shifted principal hiring and curriculum decisions away from unaccountable School-Based Decision-Making Councils to the local district superintendent. That is a step in the right direction because at least superintendents are accountable to locally elected boards of education.

But far too often those local boards defer blindly to the recommendations of education bureaucrats or powerful adult interests like teachers’ unions. HB 121, which passed without the Governor’s signature, requires every regular local board of education meeting to include at least 15 minutes of public comment. That’s good, considering that some districts had stopped allowing the public to speak at their meetings when local citizens started voicing concerns about critical race theory (CRT), mask mandates and other topics.

SB 1, through its merger with SB 138, also addressed – in an indirect way – widespread public concern about CRT by improving the state’s social studies standards. Rather than restricting CRT, SB 1 stipulated  certain concepts that should be included in Kentucky social studies classrooms, including a set of important historical documents that previously did not appear in the state’s standards.

Again, this is a step in the right direction, and I think SB 138 avoids some potential unintended consequences of some of the other CRT-related bills. But it will not stop political indoctrination from taking place in Kentucky classrooms. To address that issue – which ultimately must be done at the local level - Kentucky needs to further empower the public to have direct access to the instructional materials being used in classrooms. Transparency provisions like this got no consideration from this General Assembly.

Likewise, lawmakers failed to protect parental rights over their children when it comes to health-related mandates. HB 51 would have given parents the right to opt out of school district mask and vaccine mandates. This bill passed the House but was not heard by the Senate.

What this legislative session suggests is that except for wildly popular (and justified), red-meat conservative issues like requiring Kentucky athletes to play sports according to their biological gender (SB 83), so-call conservative Republicans routinely demur when it comes to standing up for parents and the public against the education establishment.

This is bewildering because kowtowing to these groups will never earn their support when it comes election time. The establishment will always and forever favor Democrat candidates who just parrot their endless calls for more money and less accountability. School choice, educational transparency, nonideological instruction, and freedom from mandates are popular, not just within the Republican base that elects these lawmakers, but among voters in general.

The lessons of the 2022 General Assembly are clear: all the meaningful arguments in Kentucky policy are taking place on the right side of the political divide, and time and again the political establishment is siding with the education establishment. Voters are going to have to exercise a political solution if they want to see more common sense, transparency, choice, and accountability in the state’s education system.

Image: RXUYDC, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Will charter schools finally come to Kentucky?

The Kentucky legislature has decided to redeem its failure to follow through on its flawed 2017 charter school law by trying again. HB 9 was introduced this week, and if passed as written it will correct a number of important problems with the 2017 law - which never yielded a single charter school - and may open the door to new educational options for thousands of Kentucky students.

As a long-standing supporter of charter schools, there is much that I admire in HB 9. It doesn't fully fund students, instead of systems, as I would prefer, but it goes a long way to creating a real possibility for high-performing charter options in some of our neediest districts.

Charter schools are public schools operated independently of local boards of education. They are tuition-free and open to all students. Most importantly, they are schools of choice, meaning no one can ever be compelled to attend a charter school. Students always go there because it's the first choice of their parents. And charter schools have consistently demonstrated outstanding student achievement results for students of color in urban areas. Read more about how charter schools work here.

Kentucky is one of only six states without charter schools.

In 2017, the state legislature passed a statewide charter school bill, but included a one-year funding mechanism. The next year they failed to take up the funding provision, and therefore no charter schools have opened in Kentucky. For five years Kentucky families who might have enjoyed the benefits of a charter school have been denied that option.

HB 9 addresses this problem by establishing a mechanism that would allow state and federal dollars to flow with a student to his or her chosen charter school. As long as the charter school is  also in the district where the student resides, local dollars would also follow, and also transportation dollars unless the district chose to deliver students to the charter school.

Other than fundraising, this transfer of dollars is the only way charter schools have of generating revenue. They depend on families choosing their services, and if they can't attract students, they can't stay open. HB 9 will mean charters that can draw students will have a reasonable shot at success.

HB 9 also addresses another serious problem with the 2017 law, which made local school districts the only entity that can authorize a charter school (the mayors of Lexington and Louisville could also choose to be authorizers, but neither has done so). Authorizers are the contract holders for charter schools, approving their application, providing oversight and making sure they meet their performance targets. But local school districts are never going to want to authorize a charter school that is going to compete directly with them for students. That puts both the charter applicant and the district in an unwinnable position. 

Also under the 2017 law, if a district denied a charter application the only appeal was to the Kentucky Board of Education. But in 2019, Governor Beshear fired all the members of the KBE on his first day in office, precisely because we were supporters of school choice. It's highly unlikely that the current board - appointed entirely by anti-school choice Beshear - is going to support a charter applicant in their effort to compete with local districts. 

HB 9 fixes these issues by creating new authorizers and a new appeals pathway. College and universities may select to be authorizers and special non-profit entities can be established for this purpose. More importantly, HB 9 creates a new statwide authorizing comission. While the governor will still appoint members of the commission, the bill tries to make the commission more politically independent and requires members to "have a stated commitment to charter schooling as an effective strategy for strengthening public education."

Applicants who are denied a charter by their first choice of authorizer my also appeal to the state authorizing commission instead of the Kentucky Board of Education.

Not every application for a charter will be high-quality. Authorizers should reasonably ensure that charter applicants have demonstrated a demand for a charter in their proposed community and assembled a plan for successfully meeting the needs of students. Applicants who don't should be denied. But charter applications should never be denied simply because authorizers or appeals boards don't want families to have choices other than the local public schools.  HB 9 strikes the right balance in this regard.

Unfortunately, HB 9 walks back the statewide nature of the 2017 charter law, stipulating that in any district with less than 5,000 students, the applicant must obtain a memorandum of understanding (MOU) from the local board of education, essentially offering their approval of the application. This will never happen, of course, unless the charter school is initiated by the local board itself. There is no appeal of this component of the bill. 

Less than 25 of Kentucky's 171 school districts have more than 5,000 students enrolled, so many, many communities are going to still be without the possibility of a charter school. This provision is clearly meant to give rural lawmakers cover to suport the bill since charters will not pose any competition to their local schools.

If there is a silver lining to this concession, though, it is that the demand for a charter school in small communities is probably already low. The districts serving over 5,000 students represent more than half of Kentucky's student population. And under public school choice provisions passed last year, students can cross district lines to attend a charter school, although local education dollars may not follow with them.

I wish HB 9 would have kept the option for charter schools statewide, but it nevertheless still represents a huge step forward in giving families new public school options.

For those who also support giving families more access to nonpublic schools, HB 9 also includes a provision that states that if the courts strike down last year's Education Opportunities Accounts (EOA) law, which only applied to the 8 largest counties, that program will immediately become statewide. This is a helpful failsafe to fend off the legal attack against school choice launched by public school districts last year.

It is not, however, sufficient to strengthen the EOA law and allow it to serve a maximum number of students. So lawmakers should continue to pursue and support HB 305 and SB 50 to make sure other education options besides charter schools are also available.

Of course the public school establishment will fight hard against this charter school bill, just like they fought hard against EOA's last year. Their loudest complaint is that charters are insufficiently "accountable." But charter schools face all the same accountability, transparency, and testing requirements as traditional public schools. They are more accountable, because if parents are unsatisfied with the services they are receiving, they can walk away. Low performing, poorly operated charter schools can be shut down, whereas low performing, poorly operated traditional public schools continue to suck down taxpayer dollars forever.

The real reason the establishment hates charter schools is that charters, homeschooling, private schools, and choice in general are a threat to their education monopoly for low and middle-income families (affluent familes already have school choice). Whatever value might accrue to those students by having another education option, the establishment values the dollars they represent far more, and are willing to bar the door to keep those children from leaving.

It's time for Kentucky to finally break down that door and give every family, regardless of income or zip code, the same kind of schooling options the affluent enjoy. HB 9 and HB 305 are important steps in that direction.

The image above is from the website of East End Preparatory Academy, a successful Nashville charter school serving high numbers of low-income minority students. Kentucky charters may provide similar opportunities for some our most vulnerable students.

Related posts:

• Kentucky charter school basics
• Charter schools and the profit question
• Does giving parents education options "divert money" from schools?
• Why the education establishment feels so deeply threatened by school choice
• How to give all schools charter-life autonomy
• A School Choice Primer, Parts I, II, and III.

 

SB 138 strikes the right balance in addressing CRT, social studies standards

I've written extensively on this blog and elsewhere about the legitimate need for parents and the public to confront the risk of critical race theory (CRT) being taught in Kentucky's schools, and also about deficiencies in the state's social studies standards. A bill currently under review in the Kentucky Senate makes major strides to address both of these issues and is worthy of the public's support.

As with many other states, multiple bills have been introduced in the Kentucky legislature this year that limit the way certain concepts related to critical race theory can be featured within instructional materials in public schools. These bills reflect a legimitate concern, because the assumptions of CRT are poisonous, ahistorical, and contrary to the founding principles of the United States and the values of most Kentuckians.  Schools should not promote these assumptions to students as fact. 

But there is another legitimate concern, expressed by many educators, that these bills could have the unintended effect of stifling meaningful classroom discussions about race and the role racism has played in the history of our country. I personally believe that these bills are not intended in any way to have this effect, or that they actually would in practice based on the way they are written. 

SB 138, sponsored by Sen. Maxwell Wise, chair of the Senate Education Committee, avoids this risk by stating in positive terms the underlying assumptions upon which the Commonwealth's social studies standards should be based, rather than outlining a list of assumptions that should not be featured in any school's curriculum. These core concepts include the following:

(a) All individuals are created equal;
(b) Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law;
(c) An individual deserves to be treated on the basis of the individual's character;
(d) An individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race or sex;
(e) The understanding that the institution of slavery and post-Civil War laws enforcing racial segregation and discrimination were contrary to the fundamental American promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but that defining racial disparities solely on the legacy of this institution is destructive to the unification of our nation;
(f) The future of America's success is dependent upon cooperation among all its citizens;
(g) Personal agency and the understanding that, regardless of one's circumstances, an American has the ability to succeed when he or she is given sufficient opportunity and is committed to seizing that opportunity through hard work, pursuit of education, and good citizenship; and
(h) The significant value of the American principles of equality, freedom, inalienable rights, respect for individual rights, liberty, and the consent of the governed.

These are reasonable, unifying concepts, consistent with the principles of the American Founding, that the vast majority of Kentuckians would agree are fundamental to our prosperity and freedom, and that should be part of the education of every American.

SB 138 makes explict that none of the above should be construed to limit instructional materials or lessons about the following:

(a) The history of an ethnic group, as described in textbooks and instructional materials adopted by a school district;
(b) The discussion of controversial aspects of history; or
(c) The instruction and instructional materials on the historical oppression of a particular group of people.

This subsection of the bill should put to rest any concerns that it would "whitewash" the teaching of American history .

SB 138 goes on to require the Kentucky Department of Education to update the state's social studies standards to include a list of important historical documents, including the Declaration of Independence, selected Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of the Rights of Women, and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and Letter from the Birmingham Jail, among others. 

Again, these are documents we should all agree are essential to the American experience and with which all Kentuckians should be familiar. Sadly, Kentucky's current social studies standards mention almost none of these documents. 

More work needs to be done to address the deficiencies in the state's social studies standards, but SB 138 represents a huge step in the right direction. 

SB 138 also requires the discussion of all controversial topics to be age appropriate, "nondiscriminatory, and respectful to the differing perspectives of students" and prohibits schools from requiring or rewarding a student to "advocate in a civic space on behalf of a perspective with which the student or the parent or guardian of a minor student does not agree."

Finally, SB 138 prohibits schools and districts from requiring employees to "engage in training, orientation, or therapy that coerces the employee to stereotype any group."

SB 138 is a reasonable piece of legislation that addresses a number of legitimate problems in education. The bill has passed out of committee and is awaiting approval by the full Senate before going on to the House of Representatives for further consideration.

Related posts:

• Equity and diversity are good; CRT is not
• Kentucky's SBDM Councils and critical race theory
• No, CRT is not just having a conversation about racism
• Beshear, Glass defend critical race theory in the classroom
• Critical race theory prevents real progress on closing achievement gaps
• Living not by lies in education.
• Warren County curriculum shows why parents, community need to be more aware and involved
• Fighting racism, rejecting critical theory
• Kentucky teachers are being encouraged to use "inquiry methods" to indoctrinate students in Leftist attitudes
• See for yourself: Biased Kentucky teacher training materials for social studies
• Kentucky's social studies standards get a "C"
• Kentucky's social studies standards need more work

My war with the education establishment

A recurring theme in my life over the last eight or so years has been how frequently I get painted, especially on social media, as an enemy of public schools.

Sometimes I can laugh it off. After 25 years of working mostly in direct or indirect service of public schools, if I have an agenda to destroy public education I must have an awfully odd - and ineffective - way of going about it. 

The truth is I am not an enemy of public education. But I am quite frequently at odds with the education establishment. In my latest essay for Chalkboard Review, I distinguish public school teachers - most of whom I admire very much - from the establishment: 

When I say I am at war with the education establishment, I’m not talking about ordinary classroom teachers or school principals. I’m talking about the cabal of teachers unions and professional associations representing administrators and school boards that constitute the most powerful lobby in our state capitol. The education establishment ferociously defends adult interests against changes that might benefit students, families, and even teachers themselves. This education establishment does not represent the voice of most teachers in Kentucky, although they try relentlessly to shape the opinions and mobilize the political influence of ordinary educators. Because I am for public schools, I must be against this establishment.

My commitments are not to the infrastructure of public education, but to students, their families, and to teachers themselves:

I did not become a teacher to defend the infrastructure of public education. My commitment is first to students and their families, especially families that are marginalized by poverty and lack the ability to vote with their feet if they are unsatisfied with their child’s education. 

My second commitment is to teachers themselves, who are often hamstrung in their effectiveness by the bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all, change-resistant structures of education. Teachers have much to gain by the flexibility and innovation they could enjoy in a rich school choice environment and with greater freedom to earn their credentials and advance their careers. 

These ordinary families and ordinary teachers don’t have a powerful, taxpayer-funded union or professional association to represent their needs in the state capitol. That’s why I dedicate my public policy efforts to them, rather than promoting or defending “public education” writ large.

Read the whole thing here.

Yes, it's time to reform Kentucky's School-Based Decision-Making Councils

In my latest guest editorial for Kentucky Fried Politics, I argue that it's past time to reform Kentucky's law governing School-Based Decision-Making (SBDM) Councils.

But unlike proposed legislation that would divest SBDM Councils of all their power and give it to the district superintendent, I argue that a better path would be changing the make-up of the Councils to give parents and the public an equal seat at the table with educators:

Superintendents are only as accountable to the public as the local boards of education make them. And as many voters have discovered over the last year when it came to mask mandates or addressing legitimate concerns about what is being taught in schools, local board members can be highly defensive and, especially in districts where they are controlled by teachers unions, utterly deaf to the voices of ordinary parents.

SBDM Councils have the capacity to be much more responsive to parents, but only if their basic power structure is changed. Lawmakers should consider changing SBDM law to give parents and equal number of seats on the Council as teachers hold and add another seat for a non-parent member of the community.

Read the whole thing here.

Related posts:

• Kentucky's SBDM Councils and critical race theory
• Unleashing parent power in education

 

Fund Students, Not Systems

Last Saturday I was greatly honored to be a guest speaker at the first statewide event sponsored by No Left Turn in Education - Kentucky. 

NLTE-KY is the state chapter of a national organization dedicated to fighting against leftist indoctrination in K-12 school curricula, promoting greater transparency in what is being taught in K-12 schools, and empowering educators and parents. Saturday's conference, called "Irrigating Deserts," took its name from a quote by C.S. Lewis in Abolition of Man: "The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts."

Fellow speakers included Dr. Wilfred Reilly, associate professor of political science and Kentucky State University; Dr. Bonnie Snyder from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and Pastor Cecil Blye of More Grace Christian Academy in Louisville. You can watch the conference in its entirety here. Below is my talk, "Fund Students, Not Systems."

In the speech I try to argue why education is a highly personal public good that should be treated like other public goods where the beneficiary gets to choose their own provider. I explain why the monopoly-like character of traditional public schools aggravates its many problems. And I explain different school choice policy mechanisms (charter schools, scholarship tax credits, and vouchers) and the status of each of those policies in Kentucky.

One point I started to make but got sidetracked was distinguishing the "education establishment" from rank and file teachers. There is no doubt that the education establishment is ferociously opposed to the idea that we should fund students, not systems. The establishment - the cabal of teachers unions, administrator organizations, and school boards associations - exist for the very purpose of defending the existing system. But I meet ordinary teachers and administrators every day who (quietly) express their agreement on school choice and a variety of other education reforms. 

I think I'm clear that my commitment is to students and their families, not systems, but part of the reason I fight so hard for this issue is also for my fellow educators who have so much to gain by letting every family choose the school that is the best fit for their child.

The fight for school choice in Kentucky - an update

Education history was made in Kentucky earlier this year when the state legislature passed - over the expected veto of Gov. Andy Beshear - one of the nation's most expansive school choice laws. But now the education establishment, in a last ditch effort to preserve their monopoly, is trying to use the court system to stop the law from being implemented. In this post I'll try to provide background on this issue, where things now stand, and what comes next.

Background on HB 563: The Education Opportunities Account (EOA) Act

HB 563 did two major things: a) changed state law to make it easier for families to choose a public school outside of the district where they reside, and b) set up a tax credit that encouraged private donations to scholarship programs (called educational opportunity accounts) that help low- and middle-income Kentucky families afford a wide variety of educational services. In the final version of HB 563, those services included using the private scholarship funds to offset tuition costs to attend private schools, but only for families in Kentucky's eight largest counties. 

Private scholarship programs to help families attend private schools already exist but the demand for these scholarship dollars far outpaces the amount of donations they currently receive. HB 563 encourages more donations by providing a non-refundable tax credit to donors. You can read more about HB 563 and how it works here.

Opposition from the education establishment - and their allies

The public school establishment opposes school choice in all its forms (scholarship tax credits, charter schools, vouchers, etc.) because they believe if families actually use these policies to choose a different school for their child, they will lose funding in one way or another. Of course, taking such a stand assumes that education dollars are for propping up systems (government run schools, their employees, and their infrastructure) rather than for helping students.

Here in Bowling Green, no one EVER says we are "stealing money" from Greenview Hospital if someone uses their Medicare benefit at the Medical Center. We don't think that way because we understand that Medicare is a benefit for individuals who should get a choice in who provides their care. It should be the same for education, except that we have a massive education bureaucracy that thinks taxpayers owe THEM something regardless of whether parents are satisfied with the education they are getting. They want to preserve their monopoly on education delivery for low and middle income families (higher income families already have school choice; they can buy houses in their desired school zone or afford tuition for a private school).

But in the case of HB 563, we are not talking about a transfer of public dollars like Medicare, but rather private dollars that are freely donated by individuals to help give families additional educational choices. Read more about how the arguments of opponents of EOA's don't make sense here and why it's wrong to ever argue that school choice "steals money from public schools" here.

Nevertheless, the education establishment in Kentucky is the single most powerful lobby in Frankfort, and they exerted enormous pressure on lawmakers to keep this bill from becoming law. Ultimately HB 563 passed the Kentucky House of Representatives by only one vote. Here in Warren County where I live, not a single member of the county's House delegation voted in support of school choice. In other words, "conservative" Republicans Reps. Sheldon, Meredith, Petrie, Riley, and McPherson all voted with ultra-left Rep. Patti Minter and Governor Andy Beshear in opposing the bill (McPherson voted no in spite of having signed a pledge to support school choice legislation). Happily, Sen. Mike Wilson of Warren County is one of Kentucky's long-standing and most stalwart supporters of school choice, and both the Senate and House overrode the Governor's expected veto of the bill.

Using the courts to preserve the education monopoly

We know from the experience of other states that when the education establishment loses a fight in the legislature, their very next move is to try to stop families from exercising their new education opportunities by suing in court. That's exactly what happened next.

In August, the so-called Council for Better Education, which is essentially a collaboration of public school districts, and led by the Warren County Public Schools, filed a lawsuit to stop implementation of HB 563. Participating districts agreed to commit at least 50 cents for every student enrolled to the legal effort. For Warren County, this means approximately $8,000 of taxpayer money will be used to stop Warren County families from access schooling options other than those offered by the Warren County Schools. 

Their shameless effort met with temporary success, however. In October, Franklin Circuit's reliably biased Judge Philip Shepherd sided with the districts and ruled that the EOA provision of HB 563 was illegal under Kentucky's Constitution. Shepherd ruled that the tax credit provision is an indirect appropriation of tax dollars to religious schools, something that is specifically forbidden under Kentucky's Constitution, even though a multitude of other court cases related to scholarship tax credits, including a ruling by the United State Supreme Court, rejects this logic. Shepherd also argued that singling out the 8 largest counties for family eligibility violated Kentucky's provision against "special legislation" but applies a legal standard previously unheard of in case law related to this issue.

Lawyers with the Institute for Justice, which is representing parents in the case, have appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court and are confident based on Kentucky law and legal precedent that HB 563 will be upheld. I would love to see a hearing and rulings from the Supreme Court before the end of the calendar year, but it may well be into the next state legislative session, which begins in January, before we know the fate of the bill.

Where we go next: fund students, not systems

Regardless of when the legal challenge against EOA's is resolved, the state legislature needs to keep up its momentum with school choice. Lawmakers should expand HB 563 to make families eligible to participate statewide (which would deny the districts one of their legal arguments) and to remove a 5-year sunset provision that will make the law disappear if the legislature doesn't take action, as well as create a provision that will allow the program to expand if scholarship programs are successful in raising money for eligible students.

Beyond the EOA Act, however, lawmakers need to advance the idea that education dollars are for funding students, not systems. Education should be like every other highly personal public good that receives a public subsidy, including Medicare, Medicaid, Pell grants, and even the food stamp program, which gives beneficiaries the chance to choose a provider that best meets their needs. 

Finally, local boards of education that are using taxpayer dollars and public resources to oppose school choice should be held accountable to voters. Board members represent taxpayers and families, not the education bureaucracy, and voters need to remind them of that in the most direct kind of way.