Schools of thought
January 26 to February 1 was National School Choice Week. The Nevada Policy Research Center held a free screening of the documentary film The Ticket: the Many Faces of School Choice. After the screening, filmaker Dan Bowden, state Senator Jim Settlemeyer, and Nevada Homeschool Network advocates Frank Schnorbus and Kelley Radow, participated in a roundtable discussion moderated by KOH talk show host Dan Mason.
The Ticket was the story of the School Choice train that travelled in 2013 from Los Angeles to New York with 14 “whistle stops” along the way, highlighting different personal experiences with forms of school choice.
For example, California has passed a “parent trigger” law, that allows a majority of parents in a school district to sign a petition demanding reforms up to removing their children from the school. Settlemeyer said this could be an option for Nevada because Democratic Sen. Aaron Ford introduced such a bill in the last legislative session that passed the Senate unanimously and failed narrowly in the Assembly. He urged participants to contact Sen. Ford and ask him to re-introduce the bill in 2015.
Nevada is lacking in most school choice options, but one area in which we are strong is our homeschooling laws. Since 2007, homeschooling has become relatively easy to do in Nevada. There are at least 6,000 homeschooling families in Nevada, almost 2 percent of the school population. The documentary featured a home schooling family in Kansas. Homeschooled children interact with other children in a homeschooling network. New forms of free online education are making it easier for parents to homeschool by removing the fear of being not qualified to teach different subjects.
The film featured a stop in Cleveland, Ohio, which is the birthplace of the school choice voucher movement. Catholic St. Martin de Porres high school is profiled as a voucher recipient that accepts poorer children of many faiths into its corporate work and school program. It has a much higher college acceptance rate than the public schools in Cleveland.
Vouchers that can be used for private school tuition are the most controversial of school choice options. Vouchers are hated by the education establishment. Some libertarians fear they could lead to onerous regulation of private schools. Many states, including Nevada, have 19th century Blaine Amendments that forbid public funds being used for religious education. However, state courts have usually ruled that vouchers are given to the parents, not directly to private schools, and so are not restricted by Blaine Laws. Arizona gives parents state-funded debit cards that can only be used for educational purposes.
The bad guys in school choice are the Teachers Unions and the Federal Department of Education. In Nevada, a “marginal tax” is on the ballot, which the union claims is for education, although taxes go into a general fund that can be used for any purpose. The teachers unions response to the failures of “universal, free, compulsory public education” is always to demand more money to throw at it. This benefits the union more than students or even teachers. The federal government is behind the “Common Core” initiative that many fear will remove more choice from parents by unnecessarily standardizing education.
Filmaker Dan Bowden advised the group to just concentrate on promoting school choice. Once we have more charter schools, parental trigger laws, vouchers or tax credits, and homeschooling firmly established in Nevada, the bad effects of teachers’ unions and federal interference in education will dissipate. Parents will be firmly in charge of their children’s education in a freely competitive educational marketplace.