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- Hurtling down the slippery slope now
Hurtling down the slippery slope now
Kay W.
May 02, 2025
I’ve followed efforts by both the Center and the Right to destroy public schools for decades now. Ohio is a leader in following dumb Right wing dogma on education under the banner of “education reform”, wholly embraced by Republicans and centrist and Right wing Democrats.
We have the entire menu of “school choice” in Ohio - corrupt charters, religious school vouchers that discriminate against students, “virtual schools” that are absolute garbage yet churn through tens of millions in public funding every year, with little or no oversight. How has this policy choice performed over the last 25 years? Ohio went from 11th in the country for quality of public education to 26th. The magic of free markets strikes again.
When “education reform” began, public school advocates said it was a Right wing plot to privatize public schools. Those advocates were jeered at by our learned center Right punditry chorus who insisted they would never, ever privatize schools.
This is the bottom of the slippery slope, where we ended up:
The Supreme Court appeared open on Wednesday to allowing Oklahoma to use government money to run the nation’s first religious charter school, which would teach a curriculum infused by Catholic doctrine.
The main question in the case is whether the First Amendment permits — or even requires — states to sponsor and finance religious charter schools, which are public schools with substantial autonomy. A decision endorsing such schools would spur their spread, extend religion’s extraordinary winning streak at the Supreme Court and further lower the wall separating church and state.
The Oklahoma school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, is to be operated by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, and it aims to incorporate Catholic teachings into every aspect of its activities.
After Oklahoma’s charter school board approved the proposal to open St. Isidore, the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sued to stop it.
Couple of things: First- Justice Coney Barrett recused. She should have recused- she has a close personal and professional relationship with one of the school’s advisers, still it’s good to see some measure of ethics and honesty in any US institution. Second, this case came out of Oklahoma. Oklahoma, where this just happened:
Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to learn about President Trump's debunked claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud. The lesson will not be part of a course on conspiracy theories, but an official component of the new social studies curriculum created by Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R).
Oklahoma is nutty, insanely far Right on education.
Still, the AG of Oklahoma is arguing against this wholly publicly funded effort to force the public to pay for indoctrination into the Catholic religion. We’ve slid so far down the slippery slope on “public” schools this is where we are - with privatization dogma that is too far Right for Oklahoma to swallow.
If we have elections again, we Democrats need a coherent, evidence based public education policy to replace the center Right “ed reform” policy we’ve adopted the last 25 years. Unless the objective was to eradicate public schools, ed reform failed. Time to move on from it.
*photo is (what was) my local elementary school, built in the 1930’s. The school has been demolished and replaced by a new facility, but the two arched doorways you see in the photo were separate entrances for boys and girls.
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