A few years ago I ran a piece by Joanne Barkan about the
long history of the movement to privatize public education. It began:
When
champions of market-based reform in the United States look at public education,
they see two separate activities—government funding education and government
running schools. The first is okay with them; the second is not. Reformers want
to replace their bête noire—what they call the "monopoly of
government-run schools"—with freedom of choice in a competitive market
dominated by privately run schools that get government subsidies.
Today, that privatization movement is alive and pushing ahead,
with Republican legislators in 16 states actively pushing bills to
create or expand school vouchers and/or charter schools that are part of that
movement.
This post—a continuation of sorts of the Barkan article—is a
discussion with a man named Charles Siler, who was once a lobbyist for school
privatizers but who came to oppose the very thing he was working toward. Siler
worked for two privatization organizations, including the Goldwater Institute
in Arizona, where his job was to persuade legislators to pass laws that
privatize public services, especially K-12 schooling.
In March, Siler had a conversation with education historian and
activist Diane Ravitch as well as with podcaster Jennifer Berkshire, in which
he provided insight into the playbook used by “school choice” proponents, the
belief system that drives them and their long-term objective. He makes it very
clear: Their ultimate goal is to dismantle K-12 public schools.
Carol Burris, a former prizewinning principal and executive
director of the nonprofit advocacy group the Network for Public Education, did
a Q&A with Siler on the same issues. Here’s the interview Burris did with
Siler:
BURRIS: Charles, can you tell me about
yourself—specifically, for whom did you work as a lobbyist for privatizing
public services, and why did you leave that work?
"I
grew up truly believing the best way we could help the most people was to get
the government out of their lives. But if you take a look at the actual impacts
of libertarian policies when they're implemented, it becomes apparent, they
aren't helping people, and in fact, they make people worse off."
SILER: I am Charles Siler, former
Army public affairs and graduate of George Mason University with an economics
degree. I lobbied and did public relations for the Goldwater Institute in
Phoenix, Arizona, and the Foundation for Government Accountability in Naples,
Florida. Both organizations are part of the State Policy Network, a collection
of libertarian/conservative policy organizations around the country. While
there, I promoted medical freedom legislation, programs to increase limitations
on public assistance programs and school privatization programs.
I eventually left as I realized I wasn't a great fit for that
work. The outcomes weren't aligning with my values. I grew up truly believing
the best way we could help the most people was to get the government out of
their lives. But if you take a look at the actual impacts of libertarian
policies when they're implemented, it becomes apparent, they aren't helping
people, and in fact, they make people worse off. I couldn't continue to do the
work I had done. Now I work to educate people about the problematic programs I
had helped promote and how we can build something better.
BURRIS: Let’s get straight to the
point. It is becoming more obvious that all of the voucher and charter
expansion legislation we see this year is part of a larger mission being pushed
by libertarian Republicans. First, am I right? And second, what is the ultimate
goal?
SILER: There’s virtually no other
initiative in the education space that’s a bigger priority for the right today
than creating and expanding unaccountable, unrestricted, universal voucher
programs. The easiest way to recognize this reality is to look at the
incredible number of school voucher bills being pushed across state
legislatures just this year.
They aren’t doing it because their constituents are demanding
these programs. Voters continually reject voucher programs, and in any state
where a public response is permitted, the wave of public opposition to these
programs dwarfs the AstroTurfed support for them. They also fervently refuse to
include any kind of measures to mitigate fraud, waste, abuse and lack of
accountability in these voucher programs despite having evidence from
established programs. But simply setting up voucher programs isn’t their
ultimate goal; it’s just the current next step towards their ultimate goal.
Their ideal is a world with as minimal public infrastructure and
investment as possible. They want the weakest and leanest government possible
in order to protect the interests of a few wealthy individuals and families who
want to protect their extraction of wealth from the rest of us. They see
private wealth accumulation as a virtue signal because a person can only become
wealthy by creating something of exceptional value for the public. In their
world view, the more money someone has, the more moral life they've lived, and
any attempt to take that money through taxation or other means is a moral
issue.
"Their
ideal is a world with as minimal public infrastructure and investment as
possible. They want the weakest and leanest government possible in order to
protect the interests of a few wealthy individuals and families who want to
protect their extraction of wealth from the rest of us."
That's why they work so diligently to undermine public
infrastructure, whether that's public schools, public transportation, military
spending, and even the carceral system.
They also work to undermine collective action in the form of
unions, voting blocs, protests and more. To them, it’s equally immoral for a
union to demand higher wages of a business owner as it is for voters to impose
a higher minimum wage on business owners. The same people pushing for school
privatization are the same ones pushing for voter suppression, and that’s why.
They fear the power of people.
BURRIS: In many states, we see a
multiplicity of voucher programs—all functioning differently and all with
different names. Why?
SILER: The hodgepodge of voucher and
privatization programs is a result of their unpopularity. Since they are
pushing an unpopular agenda across the country, each state presents different
opportunities and challenges for school privatizers.
The programs have to have different names to create a sort of
moving target. When advocating for voucher programs, I never used the term
“voucher” because we knew it was already tainted and politically unpopular.
That's why we called them Education Savings Accounts, or Personal Learning
Scholarship Accounts, and so on. We knew that the public didn't support our
efforts, but there's also a sincere belief that the public doesn't truly
understand what is best for them, so we have to trick them into buying what
we're selling. So much of our outreach was obfuscation. I spent many phone
calls with reporters trying to explain to them why our program wasn't a voucher
program and shouldn't be labeled as such.
At the end of the day, the multiplicity you see is a direct
result of the unpopularity of vouchers, but make no mistake, they all have the
same purpose: To undo public education — not only the institution but also the
public funding of schools.
BURRIS: We are now seeing charter
expansion legislation paired with voucher legislation. How do charter schools
fit into the agenda?
SILER: Charter schools are part of
the incremental march towards full privatization. Sometimes charter schools are
part of the hook for large donors. A number of wealthy privatization financiers
have become part of the movement by funding large grants and other programs for
charter schools.
Also, charter schools can be set up in a number of different
ways depending on the local political climate, all while starting the shift of
public funds into private investments. Charter schools also help garner the
support of White voters as charters often find creative ways to discriminate
against students of color, increasing segregation. Charters create a number of
loopholes in the public education space, from financial and academic
accountability to legal protections for marginalized students, which begin to
normalize those problems for the general public. In many ways, charter schools
are the gateway to total public school dismantling.
BURRIS: What were some of the tricks
of the trade, so to speak. Were there certain individuals you searched out to
carry the message?
SILER: We would seek out people
with sympathetic stories, families or individuals with sincere struggles. The
goal was to find people with whom the general public could empathize.
When Florida's voucher program faced a lawsuit by the teachers
union there in 2014, I flew to meet with a handful of families who had children
with disabilities to create a video series promoting the value of the voucher
program. I met with a single mom whose daughter had Down syndrome and needed
highly individualized care and therapy. I met with a home-school mom who taught
her five kids, but one had severe autism, and she struggled to meet his needs
on her own. I met with other families hoping to enroll their kids in special
schools that focused on their kids' specific needs. These people were part of
the campaign's public face around the legal defense of the voucher program.
Also, if we could ever find minority families willing to speak
up about their struggles and desires for school privatization, we'd work to put
their faces in as many places as possible. It's one reason privatization
advocates focused so heavily on promoting vouchers within the Navajo community
recently in a bid to leverage their tribal identity to expand their state's
voucher program. In many ways, there's an emphasis on playing identity politics
to subvert actual equity efforts, especially when it comes to privatization.
BURRIS: Why is it that many voucher
programs start small—with children with disabilities or with military families?
SILER: It goes back to the
unpopularity of these voucher and privatization programs, not just with the
public but also with many lawmakers. If possible, privatization advocates would
completely dismantle public schools tomorrow, but they don’t have the political
leverage to achieve that right now, so they have to engage in incrementalism.
Just this year, we’ve seen pushes to pass expansive, universal voucher programs
in some states, showing that privatizers will abandon elements of
incrementalism when they think they have an opportunity.
So, when they can't pull that off, they choose a population they
think will be politically unassailable, like children with disabilities or kids
in foster care. The idea is that by presenting a small program focused on a
small group of vulnerable students, it will be difficult for pro-public
education advocates to be directly critical of the programs. It's a “human
shield” strategy so they can get any aspect of the program started as it's
almost always politically easier to expand something than it is to establish
something new. And that's why these voucher programs never stay focused on
their original population. They are continually expanding eligibility to more
and more students, sometimes at the expense of the initial group of kids the
program was established for.
BURRIS: Who are the major funders of
the so-called school choice movement, and why are they hostile to public
education?
SILER: I can’t speak about specific
funders or donors who haven’t been identified already in a public way, but some
are pretty obvious. Former secretary of education Betsy DeVos has made
dismantling public schools part of her life’s work, and through the DeVos
Family Foundation, she funds privatization efforts across the country. Her work
as a financier likely has done and will do more damage to public schools than
her entire tenure with the Trump administration.
The heirs of the Walmart fortune, the Walton family, also funds
privatization across the country—especially charter schools. The Koch
Foundation is probably the most publicly villainized supporters of dismantling
public schools, and in many ways, there wouldn’t be such a vast network of
pro-privatization advocates had it not been for the tireless support of Charles
and David Koch. There’s also the Bradley Foundation, which contributes to
numerous conservative groups and is also a financial driver of school privatization.
But it's not just billionaires. It's also local businesses
funding privatization efforts, either through donations made by their owners or
investments into state and local chambers of commerce. It's individuals, small
donors, too. But they really aren't sufficient to make the entire machine, the
industry of school privatization, function. It truly takes the massive
investment of the exceptionally wealthy to drive the privatization agenda.
"Public schools are also incredibly popular, and they don’t
want the general public to view public institutions as effective or
popular."
Their hostility to public education is best described as being
the nexus of three parts. First, they want to minimize any government spending
whatsoever, and public education is one of the largest line items in any state
budget. Getting rid of public education spending would massively reduce the tax
burden on wealthy individuals at the state level.
Public schools are also incredibly popular, and they don’t want
the general public to view public institutions as effective or popular. It’s
why they’ve driven a false narrative about “failing schools” for decades now,
and it’s also why they continually attack Social Security, Medicare, public
pensions, public transportation and more because they know it’s impossible to
get people to share their vision for limited government when people have so
many positive experiences with government programs. And lastly, it’s about
diminishing collective power. Taking down public schools also means taking down
teachers unions, PTOs, local school boards and all the other ways those of us
who aren’t exceptionally wealthy come together to push for collective
investment in our communities.
Public schools and the communities around them represent the
kind of togetherness privatization advocates despise.
BURRIS: I know that one of the
principles that school choice advocates believe in is “backpack funding,” or
“the money follows the child.” If that were to happen, what would prevent the
money in the backpack to become less and less, with parents required to finance
the rest? Is that the plan? Is that ever discussed?
SILER: The idea of “backpack funding”
is absurd on its face since public investments are in institutions to educate a
community rather than any individual. We don’t have money for each student,
because we have money for schools. And privatizers rarely tell you what all you
leave behind when a family decides to take their “backpack,” like federal
protections against discrimination, protections for disability services,
mandatory reporters and much more.
To your question, though, we can already see that privatizers
have no interest in increasing the funds in the “backpack.” In Arizona, where
voters passed a new tax to increase public education funding, which would, in
turn, increase the value of vouchers in the state, that tax is being actively
undermined by privatization advocates. They are actively working to continue
their divestment of our public education system, even at the expense of funds
to voucher families, because these programs are not designed to help anyone.
They are simply designed to exacerbate the destruction of public funding for
education.
If the privatizers could create their ideal education model,
which they are building towards every day, individual families would determine
how important their children’s educations are to them by funding that education
on their own. They would create a model similar to what we have for higher
education, where individuals can take out loans to cover the cost of their K-12
education. The premise being that if education for an individual is truly a
worthwhile investment, then the individual receiving the education should bear
those costs. School privatizers want to empty the public “backpack” entirely and
leave individual families to figure out funding for their education expenses.
BURRIS: For several years now, I have
feared that the school choice movement is not about providing families with
choices, but part of a bigger vision that seeks to make the education of
America’s children a service to be paid for by parents, with a poorly funded
public option for those who cannot pay. Now former insider Charles Siler
confirmed that fear.
This discussion is relevant not only at the state level but also
at the federal level. The fiscal year 2022 federal budget, which is in
development, is likely to include funds for the Charter Schools Program (CSP), a program
whose purpose is to expand charter schools, which are privately operated but
publicly funded. The CSP is about charter school expansion — which plays right
into the right-wing/Libertarian agenda that former lobbyist Siler was hired to
expand.
There may be well-meaning elected officials in Washington and
state capitals who think charters and vouchers are about helping disadvantaged
students. And no doubt some families have enjoyed choice. But every bill that
passes and every program funded furthers the agenda of the radical libertarian
right and Betsy DeVos. They know what their endgame is, and they are rapidly
making progress.
(Common Dreams)
Valerie
Strauss writes the Answer Sheet blog for the Washington
Post.
Carol Burris is
a high school principal, former teacher, author, and a fellow with the
National Education Policy Center. In 2013, she was chosen as the New York State
High School Principal of the Year by her colleagues. Her most recent book is,
"On the Same Track: How to Join the 21st Century Struggle
against Re-segregation." Follow her on Twitter: @carolburris
