An AJC staffer recently published a political op-ed as a pre-emptive strike against upcoming legislation regarding money-follows-the-child vouchers dragging out all the usual objections cloaked in subjective comparisons. The problem with these pieces is they require a setup before the big pivot. The setup was far more revealing than the predictable "we hate vouchers" coming from a voice noted for chanting "public school, public school, uber alles."
In this case the setup was all the federal money, soon to run out, that was thrown at public schools...because CoVid.
The federal bandaid on their self-inflicted crisis (assisted by AFT) is about to be ripped off, though Cardona prefers to present this as passing the baton to the states. This is predictable and has worked before. It is a common practice for the feds to dump in money to get local governments to start programs which then must be continued, at local expense. The feds have tried this with medicaid expansion that has been successfully resisted by only a few states. And this sell-off of local control happens at all levels. Dunwoody has been doing this through grant-grubbing since its inception.
It gets better. The tee-up includes the rationalization that this money was needed, and used, to address learning loss and mental health issues (how is that education?) caused not as much by CoVid but by the federal government's and teacher union's insistence on closing schools. This has been proven, throughout the world, to be an unnecessary and harmful over-reaction. Unless you were a teacher holding online classes from a beach in the Caribbean. The schools ceded local control to the feds and now they want the money to continue. They have a point: it is all but impossible to shrink, let alone eliminate, a government program. Think: REA.
But public schools are facing more than a loss of federal funds or parents who have pulled back the curtain in their Emerald City. They are facing the disruption of AI, good for parents and their children, but for public schools-not so much. What parent would not want an IEP for their child, especially the parents of high achievers whose potential is never fully addressed in "bring up the back end" public schools? Who wouldn't want an individual tutor, knowledgeable in all topics? A tutor who is constantly training, who is intimately familiar with your child's current standing and trajectory-long term and short term? And when taxpayers find out the bill for this is much, much lower than the system we have, a system we would not build if we had no system at all, these taxpayers will demand a revolution. Will there be a King Ludd to save public schools? Probably not.
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