Great book review by Steve Hinnefeld’s School Matters blog on a book called “the Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers” written by Josh Cowen. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but generally, the origin story of vouchers generally starts with a paper by economist Milton Friedman seized upon by segregationists after Brown v. Board of Education. The idea was to defund public schools and divert the funds to all-white or nearly all-white “segregation academies.” This aligned with the sensibilities of a certain strand of libertarianism. Add funding and structural support from a handful of sympathetic billionaires and their foundations, and we were off to the races.

Vouchers don’t work.

No state’s voters have ever voted straight up for this kind of school privatization. What’s more, vouchers don’t work if, by “work” we’re talking about good educational outcomes. In Indiana, the original pretense was that vouchers were necessary to get children of poor families out of failing schools and into better ones. Now there is barely any income qualification, they’ve removed any requirement that a kid ever have attended a public school, and certainly there is no requirement that the private school receiving a voucher provide a superior education to the public school in question. Which is lucky for the private schools receiving vouchers – “larger studies since 2015 of statewide programs, including Indiana’s, have found large learning losses for students who moved from public to voucher schools.”

As the original pretense for vouchers wore thin, advocates simply shifted rationales. Now it’s all “about ‘choice,’ ‘education freedom,’ and ‘parent rights,’ the latter referring to a right to avoid ideas and information that might conflict with religious fundamentalism.”

Finally, I was particularly struck by this line:

“To get universal school choice, you really need to operate from the premise of universal public school distrust.”

And, to that end, we’ve seen a persistent sowing of distrust in our public schools from those who want to subsidize religious education, weaken teachers unions, and divert public funds to private interests.  Definitely worth reading Hinnefeld’s full review and, likely, moving on to Cowen’s book.

Scott Feller, professor and president at Wabash College, has a good op-ed in the Lafayette Journal & Courier entitled “Look beyond headlines: college does matter.” As an initial matter, we’re damaged by the “if it bleeds, it leads” aspect of a lot of media coverage. He doesn’t put it quite that way, but media outlets tend to be focused on the edge cases. In the context of higher education, that means the most expensive colleges and the highest debt loads. The cost of a bachelor’s degree at a state college is going to be different than the cost of a graduate degree going through private colleges.

The perception that college doesn’t pay off in the labor market is damaging in multiple ways. The number of Indiana high school graduates going on to college has declined from 65% to 53% in the last 10 years. High school graduates without a college degree are estimated to incur a million-dollar loss in lifetime earnings. As Ball State economist Michael Hicks has researched, it also puts the state’s economic future at risk given that the majority of new jobs being created are going to college graduates.

And that’s just looking at the vocational aspects of college. Education adds value to life and to society in other, non-vocational ways as well. That drop from 65% to 53% is going to make a dent on the State’s future prospects.

Steve Hinnefeld has a well-written post, explaining some of the twists and turns in the State’s plans to overhaul high school diploma requirements. I have not dug in on the subject and have been a little confused by some of the information I’ve seen. Steve does a good job of not losing me in the weeds. The plan would dump the existing CORE 40 and Academic Honors diploma, replacing them with “Graduate Prepared to Succeed” (GPS) and GPS Plus diplomas.

Read the School Matters post, but the even shorter version seems to be that the plan seems to discourage college readiness in favor of vocational training and job-based learning. But, as to the latter, the infrastructure is not in place to emulate “the Swiss model” of vocational training and internships. For example, Indiana doesn’t have a lot in the way of employer-funded internships or transportation enabling young people to get to and from jobs. Our current pool of counselors is likely inadequate to keep students on track and connect them with those opportunities that are available.

Educational attainment is a key factor in individual success and overhaul economic health of the state. This plan seems like it would exacerbate Indiana’s already comparatively low college enrollment rates. “The consensus seems to be that the GPS diploma will lower academic standards to where students may not be admitted to college while the GPS Plus option will be so demanding that very few students will pursue it.”

Ball State economist, Michael Hicks, has a column about Democratic run areas of the country getting richer while Republican run areas are getting poorer. He notes that the U.S. is seeing its best economic performance in the last half century but the benefits are not being distributed uniformly. He doesn’t lay the blame on one party or another because some of the underlying reasons were a long time in the making. But he does underscore the significance of educational attainment in the dynamic.

It is difficult to lay the blame for worsening economic conditions at the feet of one party or the other. For the past 50 years, there was considerable overlap in state policies, so conservative Democratic states behaved a lot like more progressive Republican states in tax, education and economic development policy.

However, today there is a growing understanding that differences in economic outcomes are mostly connected to differences in educational attainment between places. Other factors, like tax rates, tax structure, regulatory environment or economic development policy, are of declining importance.

I would go even farther in concluding that differences in tax policies explain almost none of the differences in affluence or growth. That is a major departure from the start of my career a quarter-century ago, when tax differences were important. Today, differences in economic conditions are almost exclusively caused by the level of education of residents.

…

The 15 states that have seen the biggest relative drop in educational attainment are all solidly Republican states—and poor. Indiana ranks 10th on this list. The top 15 states are all solidly Democratic—and affluent. This gap will worsen as states with a large share of well-educated adults are attracting more, while states with a shortage are losing them.

The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment in favor of Carmel Clay Schools and against Valor charter schools (also known as “Indiana Classical Schools.”) As we’ve discussed before, the “dollar law” is a law that requires local public schools to give buildings away to state charter schools, even if local taxpayers (rather than taxpayers statewide) funded construction of the public school building.

This one is tough to read because the General Assembly has made such a rat’s nest out of the Dollar Law’s legislative history – amending it year after year. The Court dutifully went through all of the changes. But, basically, Carmel Clay never triggered the Dollar Law. In 2018, when it made the decision to close the elementary school in question, the school corporation nevertheless continued to use the facility for classroom purposes for the next couple of years. When the building stopped being used for classes, it continued to be used for other school purposes — storage and the like. However, by the time classes moved out, the statute had been amended such that using the building for classroom purposes was no longer required to avoid triggering the Dollar Law. At that time – 2019, I think – the statute had been amended such that the building had to be vacant or abandoned before it was subject to the Dollar Law. (Fair warning, I have no idea how it reads right now; and the Court advised that the opinion was not analyzing the statutes as amended in 2023 and 2024.)

The Court dropped a footnote questioning whether the charter school had a private right of action under the law. (In other words, it seemed to cast some doubt on whether Valor could even bring this kind of suit directly or if it would be up to the State of Indiana to bring any enforcement actions.) However, neither party seems to have briefed the issue and the trial court didn’t decide anything about that question; so the Court didn’t answer the question.

And, I continue to question whether the law is in violation of a violation of Art. 10, §1 of the Indiana Constitution which provides requires the General Assembly provide a “uniform and equal rate of property assessment and taxation.” The reason higher local tax rates are permitted under this section is because additional local taxes pay for local benefits. See City of Richmond v. Scott, 48 Ind. 568, 572-73 (Ind. 1874) (determining that unequal rates of municipal taxation do not violate Art. 10, §1 because taxes for corporate purposes cannot be equal. The wants and necessities of towns and cities cannot be equal. Some require a higher and some a lower rate of taxation.) If the state is taking a locally financed building and using it to benefit the state generally, that rationale for unequal taxation evaporates.

#PSW24

My local school district posted the above image with a reminder that it’s Public Schools Week. On Facebook, I noted my gratitude for the public schools that educated me. I’ve honestly never felt outmatched by my private school counterparts.

On the larger issue of our public school system generally, this is a repeat, but we owe our public schools in Indiana to Caleb Mills, and I’m reminded of a passage from his Second “One of the People” addresses, published in 1847 and addressed to the Indiana General Assembly. Professor Mills wrote:

Awaken the public mind, and concentrate it on the question, “Am I not interested in the proper education of all that are socially and politically connected with me?” The bearings of such a question have not been duly considered. It needs to be discussed and examined. We are a shrewd people where dollars and cents are concerned. Many have never taken that view of their duty, and when it has been presented to them have frankly acknowledged that they have never thought of it in that light. Does not the Farmer derive as large a percent upon what he expends in the education of his children, as from any investment he can make of his funds? Does the amount which he pays to sustain a good school for the instruction of all the children in the district or township in which he lives, never find its way back again to him in the improved character of the community for intelligence, enterprise, and morals? Is not real estate in such a community more valuable, capital more productive, and enterprise more intelligent and successful? Would not the general thrift and prosperity caused by this intellectual and moral elevation, lighten public burdens, increase social enjoyments, enhance the value of property, multiply the facilities for its acquisition, and increase the security of its possession? Such cultivation could not fail to diminish pauperism and crime, lessen poverty and suffering, throw around the gardens, orchards, and the products of the field, an enclosure that would never be passed, improve the highways, and materially increase the substantial comforts and conveniences of the house, the farm, and the implements of husbandry.

Our public schools are not just for the benefit of the children being educated. They enhance our community and even if a kid’s education is of no interest to a citizen, his or her own self-interest should persuade them to support the public school system. Our own individual efforts are doomed to failure if we are surrounded by people who are ignorant and vicious.