#WTH School choice, parental rights & discrimination
A conversation with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds
Three things from this week’s pod with the author of one of the nation’s most sweeping school choice laws…
The NAEP report card makes clear what so many saw during COVID: Shutdowns devastated learning, and the hardest hit were minorities and the poor.
School choice ultimately comes down to parents vs teachers’ unions.
Public schools should compete with private and parochial schools on a level playing field. Competition will lift all boats, and the students will benefit.
Marc lays it out clearly in the pod intro:
For the first time since the 1970s, nine year olds lost ground in math. Scores in reading fell by the largest margin in 30 years. So we've got kids in crisis in our schools and the most damage has been done to kids in majority Black and Hispanic school districts. Those schools were closed longer than white majority districts. …One study found that for some of these kids, the Black and Latino kids in these poor school districts, a 25% reduction in lifetime earnings. I mean, think about what that means for the American Dream.
It’s never been clear why it’s right to mire the neediest among us in America in the worst schools. Or why parents don’t deserve to take the tax money being paid for a subpar education and repurpose those dollars for a better education, and in the longer term, a better life for their kids? Teachers’ unions and other opponents of school choice insist the right option is to spend more on public school. But in persistently underperforming school districts, more money hasn’t solved the problem.
In Iowa, which just ushered in the most sweeping school choice laws in the nation, more than 50 percent of the state budget has gone to education for years. But more money hasn’t meant better performance. And like Iowa, Texas and Florida are trying to put more power in the hands of parents, less in the hands of unelected administrators, ever eager to abandon the old stalwarts of reading, writing and ‘rithmetic for indoctrination in the latest fad ideology.
If the argument is that only affluent Americans should have the right to pull their kids out of failing public schools, that seems… wrong. If the argument is that parents aren’t the best judges of their child’s education, that seems… wrong. And if the argument is that public schools aren’t failing, well, the nation’s report card suggests otherwise. It’s always troubling when your child is bringing home bad grades. You do what you can… work with him, meet her teachers, strive to improve. But when our teachers bring home bad grades, who holds them to account? Voters should.
HIGHLIGHTS
Tell us about Iowa’s new school choice law?
KR: Basically, what it does is it allows approximately $7,600, which is the per-pupil funding for both the individual for ESAs [Education Savings Accounts] to go to private school and [additional] public school funding. As I said, we phase it in over three years. So the first year, all kindergartners have the option, all kids in K-12.
I also provided some flexibility for public schools. As I was trying to get this across the finish line, I had a lot of support, but I was getting some pushback from rural lawmakers even in my own party. So spent a lot of time sitting down with administrators across the state, really trying to understand what some of their concerns were and how we could help them be more competitive in the process. And so we found a way to provide some flexibility not only in their requirement, we were too prescriptive, but to also provide some flexibility in salary so that they could be more competitive in paying our teachers that are doing all the hard work in the classroom.
Critics say this costs too much for the taxpayer, and universal pre-K would be better…
KR: I've signed three tax bills since I took office, cutting taxes in five years. I've made it very clear that I want to continue to be able to cut taxes. But I said, "In doing that, I also want to be able to fund priorities that are important to Iowa." K-12 education is one of them. So we did a two-year, a five-year. We did all kinds of stress testing. Because we've been cutting taxes, we're seeing our revenue continue to grow.
So that is absolutely not true. I would say just the opposite, that it's not a zero-sum game. I don't understand why the ability for parents to decide that best environment for their child to thrive and be the best that they can be should only be for individuals and families who have the resources to have that decision. Education is a great equalizer. I saw that through COVID. I think that really put a fine point on it for me.
They also say more money for choice is less for public schools that need it?
KR: Again, it's not a zero-sum game. We disprove the fact that more money into a system without systemic reform is the only way to improve education. Their only idea was more money, more money, more money. It's 56% of our state budget right now, education. K-12 is 46. And so without anything else, without doing anything else...
So my response back to them, "What's the magic number? Is it 60%? Is it 65%?" And still, we remain stagnant. Now, we've elevated because everybody else dropped in the NAEP scores around the state because we kept kids open. But we are far from where we need to be. We need to up our game. And I believe that by giving parental choice, we elevate all of education. We will see that, and we have seen that in states that are doing it.
How do public schools get more money?
KR: If you're a public school that has a private school in your district, the kids that are in the private school [using an ESA], that public school gets $1,205 for every kid in the private school, and that's new money that they never got before. Does that makes sense?
Because it's based on a per pupil, the pot grows, too. Yes, it will ultimately be... well, could potentially mean more money for public schools and savings based on the total funding that actually goes per student into the classroom.
Some [legislators and newspapers] have suggested you don’t care about the less fortunate…
KR: I finally just looked at them and said, "Are you kidding me? This is the one thing that absolutely can address it, that does more for these kids than anything else that we can do for them is to just to be able to have access to a quality education, to be the best that they can be." Really, they had no response to that whatsoever.
Again, you didn't hear any of that in the argument. If you go back and listen to the floor debate, all they... well, I mean, they didn't think there was accountability, they thought we were picking and choosing, and none of that is true. These are accredited private schools, they have a full list of issues that they... or, they have a whole list of accreditation that they have to follow in order to be able to be eligible for the educational savings account.
But mostly, all you ever heard was money. I mean, that was what they talked about over and over and over. They really don't have a valid argument when it comes to trying to understand why the minority, the poor, these individuals that will benefit the most from having parental choice. There is no argument to that.
When you look at school closures during Covid, Black and Hispanic majority schools stayed closed longer. How is that fair to those kids?
KR: It is regressive, and I saw it, and we saw it during COVID. I mean, we have data, there is data nationally. We saw test scores plummet in reading and math and, especially to your point, in our minority communities. It's just unconscionable what they did, unconscionable what they did in the Des Moines Public... I mean, to sue me to keep the kids out of school?
Some of these kids, Marc, will never recover. I mean, that's just horrible to say, but they've gone to the streets, and they're a part of a gang, and we lost them. So, it's just unconscionable, and this is the quickest way we can turn it around.
There’s word the Biden administration will use Title IX to impose new DEI regulations nationwide on schools… What will you do?
KR: We've got a parental empowerment and transparency bill. I mean, can you imagine that in today's environment I have to state, "That parents are the ultimate decision makers of their children?" But this is where we're at and this is what we have to do. That transparency is required and that means curriculum, books, contractors, consultants, anything that a student is subject to. We are going to set boundaries to protect children from woke indoctrination and gender identity and sexual activity. So it'll mimic a little bit of what you seen coming out of Florida. We changed a little bit of the language. We have K-third, but we're probably looking to move sixth at least, I think probably. So we'll expand that just a little bit it.
Full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
State Budget: Gov. Kim Reynolds signs public school funding increase into law, (KCCI, February 7, 2023)
How Iowa’s Governor Will Pay for $918 Million Education Savings Account Plan,(Robin Opsahl, Iowa Capital Dispatch, January 20 2023)
State Legislatures Take Up Tax Reform and Relief in 2022 (Jared Walczak, Tax Foundation, March 29, 2022)
Iowa Enacts Sweeping Tax Reform (Jared Walczak, Tax Foundation, March 14, 2022)
How does school choice affect public schools’ funding and resources? (edchoice.org
The FISCAL EFFECTS of School Choice Programs on Public School Districts (Benjamin Scafidi, edchoice.org, March 2012)
What Leads to Successful School Choice Programs? (Corey A. DeAngelis, CATO Institute, 2018)
A WIN-WIN SOLUTION: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice (Greg Forster, Friedman Foundation For Educational Choice, May 2016)
Iowa Condition of the State Address 2023 ( Reynolds)
Education, legislative officials react to Students First Act (Southeast Iowa Union, January 26, 2023)
Matt Degner tweet: As stated earlier the proposal costs $341 million dollars. There are 1.6 million tax returns filed in Iowa. Quick math shows that all of us will pay at least $200 on our Iowa tax returns to fund 33,000 students in private school and at most 10,000 more that may choose to do so. Is this the most important thing for your state government to be working on? For example, why not make pre-school free for everyone instead?