It’s probably not described enough in these terms, but our public education system, kindergarten through 12th grade, is a cornerstone of our society and fundamental to a functional democracy. Despite its decentralized nature, Americans view public education as a national initiative. One of the core missions of our public education system is to ensure that every child is allowed to achieve the knowledge and skills to contribute to a productive and caring society. An educated and informed citizenry predicates the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
Our public school system is responsible for educating 9 out of 10 of the 54 million school-age children in the United States. Public education spending for 2023 was $794.7 billion or approximately $16,080 per student annually. Due to its decentralized structure, states and localities primarily fund public education. The disparity between states is vast. New York spends $25,139 per student, while Idaho spends $7,985. While not dispositive, per-pupil spending is essential in determining the quality and resources available in the education system. Correlationally, higher spending per student often results in better educational results. https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/18/1/1/109966/The-Effect-of-Extra-School-Funding-on-Students
Despite regional differences, there should be one thing we could all agree on: money and resources spent on public education are an investment in the future of our children, our democracy, and our nation. If we can agree on this, why is there a concerted effort on the part of Republican politicians and right-wing groups to destroy and undermine this venerable institution?
The anti-public school movement has evolved into a multi-headed monster made up of Republican politicians, well-funded right-wing organizations, and Christian nationalists. Their primary objectives are:
- Deconstruct free public education and privatize primary and secondary education.
- Weaponize school curriculums to promote discriminatory and antisocial behaviors.
- Control the historical narrative through lies, distortions, and omissions.
The Concerted Attack Against Public Education
Some Americans have a profound fear and suspicion about the existence of a deep state. This deep state is supposed to consist of a clandestine network of federal government employees that work closely with financial and Industrial entities as puppet masters. I am not a conspiracy theorist and do not have nightmares about elaborate plots and schemes lurking around every corner. Still, the closest thing I’ve seen to the deep state is an organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC is a 501c3 organization comprised of major corporations, Republican state legislators, and right-wing billionaires. ALEC is a clandestine network of financial-industrial entities, but they go one step further; instead of government bureaucrats, they have co-opted state governments and state legislatures. It wasn’t until 2011 that most Americans heard about this organization, which was established in 1973. ALEC’s corporate board members included corporations like Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, Koch Companies, Pfizer, and AT&T. They served on the board along with 23 state legislators and foundations like PhRMA. The National Rifle Association and donors like Charles Koch influenced legislation and policies that impacted every facet of American life.
ALEC has been responsible for the passage of more “anti-legislation” than any entity or individual in three decades. They have been primarily responsible for the passage of legislation that is anti-tax for the wealthy and corporations, anti-environment, anti-gun control, and, yes, anti-public education. How are they so successful? ALEC has created a model that, as a 501c3 organization, cloaks itself as a non-profit. At the same time, it nefariously recruits Republican politicians to go back to their states and enact legislation and policies formulated by ALEC. ALEC creates draft cookie-cutter legislation and tells their legislative puppets to pass it.
Legislators’ sloppy and lazy work exposed this practice in at least two cases. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon vetoed legislation that included a drafting error from ALEC model legislation that the governor said parroted the ALEC model act without alteration. The second case involved a Florida State Representative, Rachel Burgin, who did not remember to remove ALEC’s mission statement from a bill she introduced.
In 1985, ALEC wrote in their Education Sourcebook, “Public Schools meet all of the needs of the people without pleasing anyone.” Their solution was to take funds away from public education and privatize primary and secondary education. A better system, they argued, would foster educational freedom and quality through various forms of privatization/vouchers, tax incentives for sending children to public schools, and unregulated private charter schools. ALEC, a master of euphemisms, calls their efforts, school choice, and scholarships.
At its core, ALEC’s agenda is ideological, political, and unethical. In many cases, it was downright cruel. Let’s start with that they were not concerned about fulfilling the primary mission of educating everyone. The efforts to privatize public education were a money grab, falsely claiming that market competition was the remedy to improving public education. Not only would this result in straining public education budgets that were already at risk, but it would not have to address any additional support required for disadvantaged and disabled children. ALEC and their allies’ legislation and policies would not require accommodation for these students. Defunding public education would lead to deteriorating school facilities, fewer school supplies, less subsidized transportation, and free lunches. Who would pick up that slack? Parents, many of whom already have.
The goal of ALEC, which represents right-wing corporations, politicians, and constituents, is to dismantle our public education system. Their proposals will divert taxes to support for-profit institutions and parents that send their children to private schools, dismantle public unions, specifically teachers’ unions, and control education content. Public school teachers are arguably the most maligned profession in our country. A quote from Christopher Ruffo, a right-wing opponent of public schools, best exemplifies the intent of these groups: to get to universal school choice, you need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust. He also told his audience they must be ruthless in promoting this propaganda.
ALEC introduced over 100 proposed bills that would fundamentally destroy the purpose of public education, ensuring that all children have equal access to educational opportunities. Their bills are “wolves in sheep’s clothing” with titles like The Founding Fathers Philosophy and Principles Act, which require a class based on Heritage Foundation civic principles. Students must pass it to graduate.
Then, there are the two acts entitled the Special Needs Scholarship Program Act and the second is the Autism Scholarship Program Act. Both proposals are cruel because the passage of these acts would turn that which is already an obligation in public education into a lottery. Private schools are not obligated to comply with the American Disability Act or the mandate to provide these students with the required assistance, and charter schools weed out disabled students in their selection processes (lotteries are not a solution). It also draws funds from public schools designated or required to provide those services.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the group I call the “Do-Gooders.” Most Do-Gooders are politicians, usually Democrats, who have advocated wrong-headed and punitive policies, individuals who have amassed incredible wealth, or individuals who have established themselves as education policy experts with legitimate concerns about public education. They set out to revolutionize it, often with models that believe corporate principles can lead to better public education results. Bill Gates promoted a model that created mini-schools within existing schools, creating capacity problems or additional expenses to pay for facilities and maintenance for these new schools. Diane Ravitch, a renowned education policy expert who was once an advocate of market-based education reform, has recently said:
“Turning public education into a free market system of choice is a terrible idea. No high-performing nation in the world has done this. In a democratic society, all citizens are responsible for paying taxes to educate the next generation, even those who have no children. Public Education is a public service tool available to all. When education becomes a consumer marketplace, every family is on its own in choosing a school.”
“The creation of competing publicly funded sectors, one public, the other nonpublic, has not improved education. Instead, it has divided communities. And it has created a booming and politically powerful “education industry” where the big prize is profits, not educated citizens.”
(The Death and Life of The Great American School System, Diane Ravitch, pg. xix)
This idea that the “invisible hand of the market” is the solution to the challenges confronting public schools is the antithesis of the solution. The mythology that the private sector delivers better results when delivering vital governmental services has been debunked regularly. Privatizing essential services introduces the profit motive, which emphasizes how profitable one is, not the quality and level of services needed. Some will say that commercial enterprises are interested in the quality and level of those services, but no one should believe that hype. It’s about efficiency and profit margin. Two other problems created by privatization are a lack of transparency and democratic accountability. Citizens need more access to information and more ability to participate in decisions.
One of the more potent arguments I have heard against privatizing public education came from a woman living in a rural community who placed a video on X/Twitter. She stated that privatizing public education would destroy their communities. She said private entities would have little incentive to invest their money in most rural areas. Acknowledging this fact has resulted in some state Republican officials voting against privatization and school vouchers. Texas State Representative Gary VanDeaver and dozens of other representatives have forced them to remove school vouchers from Texas’s education bill. Ironically, privatization poses the same threats to urban schools and communities.
Promoting Hate and Chaos In Public Schools
As dictatorial and destructive as organizations like ALEC are, there is a segment of the anti-public school movement that is as onerous and despicable. That segment includes Republican politicians and what I call the “morality police” of our nation. They are making gay and transgender teachers and students targets to gain political power and impose their hateful and radical social agenda. State legislatures have enacted laws that take direct aim at those teachers and students who are gay or transgender.
In 2023 alone, 17 states enacted anti-LGBTQ curriculum laws. In theory, these laws regarded Sex Education classes, but their usage has been much broader. The poster child for this movement is Florida. The Parental Rights in Education Law and Florida Board of Education policy bans education on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” unless it is mandated under state academic standards. Florida’s expanded version of The Parental Rights in Education Law prohibits such instruction from prekindergarten through eighth grade and restricts health education from 6ththrough 12th grade.
Claims that these laws and policies are necessary to protect children and enshrine parents’ rights is a Trojan Horse. The agenda of politicians like Ron DeSantis and groups like Moms for Liberty is to demonize LGBTQ people for political and personal gain. They have gone as far as targeting anyone supporting age-appropriate inclusion of these topics in a school setting as “groomers.” The objective is to persecute and intimidate. In the meantime, one of the founders of Moms for Liberty, a group that leads this assault, Bridget Ziegler, and her husband are currently under criminal investigation for sexual assault. You can’t make this stuff up.
The second line of attack is against young transgender athletes and their desire to participate in sports that agree with their gender identification. As too often is the case, opponents of social change or inclusion worked feverishly to vilify the beneficiaries of these changes, and their answer is always to ban any efforts to resolve these issues effectively. There are at least 23 states that have statutory bans on transgender athlete participation. These bans directly affect public school students.
To add some context, despite there being no official count, there are an estimated 1.4 million adults who identify as transgender. That is calculated to be less than 1% of the population in each state. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School, one in five out of the group is under 18. CBS News states that at least 50 trans women compete on female sports teams in the United States. I share this information because Republican politicians in groups like Moms for Liberty would have you believe this issue poses an existential threat to society.
Recent polls estimate that 1/3 of Americans support transgender athletes participating in sports, corresponding with their gender identification. It seems that there are several contributing factors to this result. First and most importantly, the idea of transgender women (I say women because transgender gender men are rarely mentioned) participating against cisgender women is viewed as unfair. In my opinion, there is a legitimate concern, but we need to call out those who use this concern to promote hateful and discriminatory policies.
That brings me to my second point. The politicians and groups that demonize transgender people have filled the information void with fear-mongering and damaging misinformation about transgender people. These groups and individuals have used their time and resources to impact how Americans view this issue. Children do not deserve this persecution or to be utilized as political avatars to gain political power, and it is not a healthy environment for any child. Ultimately, the appropriate way to address this situation is to consider scientific, psychological, and societal factors and impacts.
Rewriting History
One of the most salient and thought-provoking quotations is:
“Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” George Orwell 1984
There is a movement by Republican politicians and approximately 43 percent of their supporters to seize and control the historical curriculums and perspectives taught in our public schools. These efforts to control historical narratives are promoted as an effort to protect White children from hating themselves because of the color of their skin. That assertion is heaped with hypocrisy and perilous irony. Black people (children) have been enslaved, persecuted, and bestialized since 1444. Arguably, the oldest and most persistent challenge our country has not confronted adequately is systemic racism. The Republican politicians and supporters want to tell children that it does not and has never existed. They hold these positions despite 75% of voters approving teaching about the history of racism, according to a Monmouth University poll.
The term indoctrination has a high usage rate by Republicans when discussing curriculum matters and what is taught in our public schools. Usually, it is associated with attacks and allegations against public school administrators and teachers deemed too concerned about the social consequences of our policies and pedagogical decisions. The allegations usually target Democratic politicians, school administrators, and public school teachers, especially LGBTQ individuals, as often is the case attacks from the right are textbook cases of transference.
Republican politicians, groups, and supporters have constructed a relentless, coordinated strategy to negate and distort history, especially any history dealing with slavery and its pivotal role in society, past and present. While despicable attacks were launched against LGBTQ individuals, many of the same parties were staging a metaphorical blitzkrieg against historically accurate scholarship in public schools. These efforts took several different approaches.
- Claim that teaching our country’s factually accurate, age-appropriate history is debilitating to children and our nation.
- Promote that history about Black people has no value. Many dispute its existence.
- Create curriculums that institutionalize lies and disinformation to indoctrinate students.
These attacks on public education are nothing new, but the visceral nature of the attacks on public education has been relentless. Their efforts to substitute facts and critical thinking with conspiracies and indoctrination are an existential threat. Historians trace the growth of the anti-public school movement to efforts to block the desegregation of public schools in the South. When the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the concept of “Separate but Equal” was unconstitutional in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, White parents and their benefactors created private and religious schools to undermine the decision. The current anti-public School movement is not organic. The segregationists that fought Integration in public schools in the South was an organic movement, racist, but organic.
Governor Ron DeSantis and other Republican politicians in 23 different states have virtually banned the teaching of Black history, slavery, and African American studies in primary and secondary public schools. De Santis blocked an Advanced Placement course in African American studies at the high school level. The state’s Department of Education wrote that the course “significantly lacks educational value.” De Santis has stated that the course amounted to indoctrination. De Santis and the Right have created a “straw man,” Wokeism, that places a target on any institution or effort that does not represent a sanitized, propagandistic version of American History. They resort to historical negationism, which is a denial of the historical record.
An example of this is their support for the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy,” which contends that the Civil War was not about slavery; it was a heroic stand for state rights. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley recently promoted this belief in her response to a town hall question about the causes of the Civil War. Haley’s answer focused on “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do. “Not once did she utter slavery as a cause.
Throughout American history, anytime there has been any progress or effort to “walk the talk” about achieving a more perfect union, there has been an immense backlash. Reconstruction, desegregation of public schools, and, Lord have mercy, a Black President. These movements to impede progress or to return to “the good old days” unavoidably impact our public and private education systems. Whether it’s segregation in education, attacks on affirmative action, or using education as a propagandistic tool, you can bet that the backlash will impact our children. One area in particular is history.
In 2019, an initiative called the 1619 Project was published and introduced to the public. Nikole Hannah-Jones conceived and constructed the project for which she received a Pulitzer Prize for her flagship essay. The project observed the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in the 13 colonies when the Dutch vessel, The White Lion, arrived on the shore of Virginia with 20-30 enslaved Africans. The goal of the project was to view the establishment of our nation, centralizing the significant role that slavery and its aftermath have played and continue to play in American society. This project was earth-shattering because it broke the traditional historical model that portrayed the forefathers and people like President Abraham Lincoln with the most flattering narratives and noble intentions.
The majority of the participants and contributors were Black. The 1619 Project was developed with academic rigor and adherence to the historical method. Reputable and renowned historians, social scientists, legal historians, journalists, and artists contributed to this project. The reception to the project was overwhelmingly positive. The project was so successful and impactful that it developed a podcast, books, a documentary, and high school-level educational materials based on the original concept. Despite the positive reception, the project did have its share of critics. Of course, these critics consisted of cynical ideologues and charlatans like the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich. Still, some reputable individuals took issue with certain things about the project.
The most prominent criticism was the project’s contention that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. Nicole Hannah Jones later conceded that she may have expressed that point too strongly. That may be the case, but you can’t say with a straight face that it was not an essential issue to five of the 13 colonies that sanctioned slavery. Despite these criticisms, many of these same individuals acknowledge the importance of the project.
The backlash from Republican politicians and right-wing provocateurs was loud and swift. They believe anything that teaches our children that the history of the United States was anything but a principle-driven Shangri-La needs to be banned. Accusations of indoctrination and characterizations of propaganda were hurled against the wall as if it were ketchup. They even made attempts to ban teaching the project legislatively.
“In July 2020, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas proposed the “Saving American History Act of 2020”, prohibiting K-12 schools from using federal funds to teach curriculum related to the 1619 Project, and making schools that did ineligible for federal professional-development grants. Cotton added that “The 1619 Project is a racially divisive and revisionist account of history that threatens the integrity of the Union by denying the true principles on which it was founded.” [66] On September 6, 2020, Trump responded on Twitter to a claim that the State of California was adding the 1619 Project to the state’s public school curriculum. Trump stated that the Department of Education was investigating the matter and, if the aforementioned claim was found true, federal funding would be withheld from California public schools.[67][68][69] On September 17, Trump announced the 1776 Commission to develop a “patriotic” curriculum.” (Wikipedia, The 1619 Project).
On the state level, Ron DeSantis and his administration banned the 1619 Project from being taught in Florida public schools. It was banned twice, initially in an amendment by the Florida State Board of Education and subsequently in the Stop Woke Act. At least 23 states have taken steps to invalidate and or ban the 1619 Project, yet they’ll spend taxpayers’ money to promote the “educational material” from a fake university (Prager University) that lies and distorts indisputable historical facts in our public schools. I had to look at some of them for writing this piece. They had Frederick Douglas (the great Black abolitionist who heavily influenced Lincoln’s decision-making about slavery) hawking for and being empathetic toward enslavers. The banning of books about Black history is part of a strategy to perpetuate institutional racism and maintain a social caste system that discriminates against people not like them.
The assault on the 1619 project is not an isolated incident. It is a bellwether of a trend, and these campaigns are widespread. The battle over curriculum and materials dealing with Black history and culture is part of a larger objective that dictates what can and can’t be taught, discussed, or considered in our public schools. The tool is often fair. Right-wing politicians are always looking for ways to make White people scared, very scared.
An example of this is Critical Race Theory (CRT). White parents were told that a) Critical Race Theory teaches White children to hate themselves and their country, and b) CRT was being taught K through 12. Neither of these claims are true.
Critical Race Theory is a graduate school-level academic and legal area that studies institutional and legal racism and its impact on Black Americans and other impacted groups. Right-wing groups and politicians turned a decades-old scholarly area of study into an existential threat to White people and Whiteness. How did they do this? They made it about the children. They said public elementary and secondary schools were teaching children this advanced legal theory, and it was promoting self-hate to White children. No evidence exists that K-12 public schools discuss or include CRT in school curriculums. Their objective is to undermine trust in public schools, especially public school teachers, which is a primary goal of these groups.
Republican politicians used this campaign against CRT to attack Black History and African American studies. There have been at least 23 states that have banned or are in the process of banning CRT. Republicans are adept at creating a problem where there is none. They have equated anything teaching and discussing the history of Black people and their experience in our country as divisive while at the same time treating it like it’s inconsequential. Similarly, they have taken the same tact with LGBTQ persons and history. An example of a politician who gained from this cynical strategy was Glenn Younkin, the current governor of Virginia. Despite their successes in employing this strategy, it has to be said that it takes heightened levels of cowardice and cynicism to tell Americans they can’t “handle the truth.”
The adoption of these strategies (historical denialism and distortion) has led to Republican politicians, organizations, and supporters using tactics that should infuriate all Americans. Book bans, attacks on educational institutions (all levels), and targeting specific groups as inhuman and existential threats are from the authoritarian playbook. Groups threatening and intimidating administrators, teachers, and school boards while describing it as parental control and civilized discourse, are chaos agents. Clamoring for “patriotic education” is another red flag. These acts are antithetical to a democratic society. Preventing children from learning about our nation’s triumphs and failures is a dereliction of duty that leads to a pervasive national ignorance that threatens everything we aspire to be as a nation.
Organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Conference (ALEC), billionaires like the Kochs, and zealots who want to make America a religious state fuel today’s anti-public school movement. Throw in the profiteers and a handful of rich people who think that they’re smarter than everyone else, and you pretty much have the anti-public-school movement.
Advocacy groups with oxymoronic names like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education attack public School administrators and teachers relentlessly while going under the guise of grassroots movements. Their mission is to delegitimize one of the most foundational and democratic institutions of our nation for the sake of power, profit, and ideology.
Sources:
- https://www.adl.org/resources/tools-and-strategies/what-critical-race-theory-and-why-it-news-so-much
- https://alec.org/issue/education/https://www.oxfordeagle.com/2018/02/02/alecs-fighting-control-public-education/
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