On February 13, President Joe Biden's Education Secretary Miguel Cardona did something Democratic officials rarely do in public. He told the truth about what's behind the relentless attacks on public schools by right-wing advocacy groups and their financial backers. .
as HuffPost One of the topics that came up during Cardona's meeting with Black journalists at the Department of Education was the introduction of legislation passed in mostly red states targeting K-12 schools and higher education programs. It was reported that there was a recent wave of new laws. Education that addresses diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Supporters of DEI programs believe they are needed to ensure the academic, health, and social outcomes of students who often face discrimination and reduced educational opportunities based on race, class, religion, gender, and ability level. It is claimed that. Opponents say it humiliates white students and causes “reverse discrimination.”
Cardona said the new law passed by Republican state lawmakers to eliminate the DEI program “requires schools to be inclusive and welcoming places for all students, especially students from different backgrounds. “This is a deliberate attack on efforts to ensure that.”
But Cardona goes beyond simply defending schools that embrace DEI, further criticizing the intent behind these attacks on the program, saying he wants to “create divisions within schools so that the private option sounds better.” “This is a very deliberate attempt to ask for it.” [emphasis added] For my parents.
“Every year, there are divisive entities trying to disrupt public schools and diminish trust in public schools,” he said. “Four years ago, it was masks. [Critical race theory] That was a year later. [Now,] DEI, [and] Ban books. ”
The series of crises that groups such as Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation unite with each year to whip up fear and suspicion about public schools has been the subject of extensive media coverage.
But when major news outlets report on these outbursts of right-wing anger, stories tend to focus solely on the legitimacy of specific grievances, rather than considering whether the attacks themselves could be a tactic in the long term. There is.
An NBC News analysis found that “at least 165 local and national organizations” have been involved in protests, threats and violence targeting public schools. Many of these groups have ties to prominent national right-wing advocacy groups and think tanks, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and FreedomWorks.
In his study of Mamas for Liberty's funding sources, former University of Massachusetts professor Maurice Cunningham revealed that the group's financial records were linked to conservative underground finance organizations such as the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Leadership Institute (LI). associated with.
The campaign to convince parents that public schools are the “boogeyman” has been kept under the radar for years.
According to Cunningham, the CNP and LI share a common desire to “destroy public education and privatize schooling.” . . To reorient education toward Christian nationalism and transform the culture of this country. ”
Writer nationeducation journalist Jennifer Berkshire and education historian Jack Schneider have reached similar conclusions.
Groups like Moms for Liberty may say their goal is to aggravate parental dissatisfaction and enact more conservative curricula, but funding these groups The “holy grail” of these groups is to “privatize education” by expanding school voucher programs and attracting tuition assistance. Parents should pursue educational options other than local public schools.
To strengthen their argument, Berkshire and Schneider cited the Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo as an example, in a speech at Hillsdale College in 2021, who used the culture war to scare parents into public policy. He laid out a strategy to keep children away from schools, saying: Achieving universal school choice requires acting on the assumption that there is a universal distrust of public schools. ”
The campaign to convince parents that public schools are, in Cardona's words, a “boogeyman” has been kept under the radar for years.
As Milwaukee-based education journalist Barbara Miner writes: progressive “It may seem un-American to abolish public education,” he said in 2004. But a growing number of movement conservatives are signing the Alliance for Separation of Schools and State manifesto, which supports “ending government involvement in education.” ”
At the time, Miner felt the Republican agenda was all about politics. And the Republican goal is primarily to weaken the political influence of teachers unions and persuade more non-white families to support Republican politicians who have fabricated tuition assistance and other civilian benefits. That's what he felt. Educational Choices as “The Civil Rights Movement of Our Time.”
Miner said:[o]At times, Republican strategists have acknowledged that vouchers, which divert public money to private schools, are politically charged, and the purpose of the stealth campaign remains largely hidden.
But after Barack Obama was elected to the White House in 2008 and the rise of the Tea Party movement, a precursor to today's MAGA uprising, right-wing claims to abolish public schools became even more intense. In the open air.
As reported by ThinkProgress reveal the truth In 2011, Tea Party leaders openly claimed that the movement's “ultimate goal” was to “close public schools and establish only private schools.”
Prominent Democratic policy leaders have been unable or unwilling to argue the substance of this Republican policy until Mr. Cardona's recent remarks.
It didn't take long for prominent Republican politicians to take up the cause publicly, including former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum in 2012 after his unsuccessful campaign to become the Republican presidential nominee. At the time, he called for the abolition of public education. “This country hasn't had government-run schools for a long time,” he said, according to CBS News. “We received a private education.”
Mr. Santorum may have been a dud as a presidential candidate, but it took time for his proposal to abolish public education to become a centerpiece policy of President Donald Trump's administration under the leadership of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. It didn't take long.
What DeVos' agenda made clear to the nation was that pushing new voucher programs through state legislatures could be highly effective in undermining public education.
Meanwhile, prominent Democratic policy leaders have been unable or unwilling to argue the substance of this Republican policy until Mr. Cardona's recent remarks. The reason for this is unclear, but perhaps this reluctance has a lot to do with the fact that the last Democratic lawmaker to hold Cardona's office for a long time was Arne Duncan during the Obama administration.
Duncan routinely bashes public schools, ignores educators who don't agree with his policies, and supposedly pushes previous education secretaries to establish private charter schools as a legal and active alternative to public schools. He would have done more than anyone else.
Right-wing operatives have spent decades strategizing and investing money in campaigns to abolish public education, and Democratic leaders are reluctant to understand and publicly oppose that campaign. Considering this, it is no wonder that public education is now facing its most serious existential crisis. modern crisis.
Public Education Network 2024 Report American public schooling: Measuring states' commitment to democratically governed schoolswarns.[T]His “choice” movement aims to destroy public schools in democratically governed districts.
The report evaluated each state's commitment to democratically governed public schools, and only five states received an A rating. 13 people got her B. 9 is C; 7 is D; “In short,” NPE says, “the ultimate goal of libertarians and the radical right is the Back to the Future dream of a pre-Horace Mann American schooling.” I concluded. He is often considered the founder of the movement for universal, free, nonsectarian public schools in the United States.
In fact, Mr. Santorum was right when he declared in 2012 that this country had not had “public schools” for “a long time.” What he left out was that the largely private system of the past was off-limits to almost everyone except able-bodied people and wealthy white men.
Fortunately, we finally have education policymakers in Washington, D.C., who understand that.