Gratisography
Yes, 2017 was a rough year for public school supporters, with the ascension of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, the continued underfunding and undermining of local public schools, and the increased attacks on teacher professionalism and students’ civil rights.
But there’s hope for 2018. The public has grown far more skeptical toward the movement to privatize schools through vouchers and charters. States are retreating from the notion that high-stakes test can measure “education effectiveness.” Citizen-led lawsuits and voter demands are pressuring more government leaders to increase school funding, and a growing movement for education justice is spreading across the nation.
The Progressive’s Public School Shakedown Education Fellows explain what to expect and what to push for in the year ahead.
The Year of Midterm Election Potential
For education advocates, 2018 has to be the year we get revenge at the ballot box. Although 2018’s midterm election has no presidential contest, both the House and the Senate will be in play. There is great potential for leadership changes in state legislatures and gubernatorial seats—where the most critical education policies are often decided.
At the federal level, if precedent holds, Republicans will take a beating. Since the Civil War, the President’s party, with the exception of two years, has lost seats in both the House and the Senate in midterm elections. At the state level, this could also be a year of big changes. Of the ninety-nine state chambers in the U.S., eighty-seven are in play. The total number of potential contested seats is 6,066—about 82 percent of the nation’s state legislative seats, over 100 more than were contested in 2016. And thirty-six gubernatorial seats will be up for grabs—there were only 11 in 2016.
Education will be a big issue in many of these races because of the outsized impact K-12 education spending has at state and local levels (less than 10 percent of K-12 education funding comes from the federal government).
The number-one issue in education debates will likely be funding, especially where voters see school support as unfairly distributed. Already, at least seven states are embroiled in intense negotiations over funding formulas voters want to see changed because of blatant inequities. The discussions are complicated, but voters are aware that in most states, schools that teach wealthier kids often get more money than schools for low-income communities. Also, many states have been forced by lawsuits to increase school funding. Still others are about to get hit with similar demands. And voters in states where lawmakers are holding out on school funds, even after being ordered by a court to pay more, are pressuring office holders and candidates to put up or shut up.
Voters are aware that in most states, schools that teach wealthier kids often get more money than schools for low-income communities.
Another big issue will be charter schools, vouchers, and other forms of “school choice.” With DeVos making choice such a prominent issue, Democrats are planning to exploit public sentiment against schools and vouchers on the campaign trail. Indeed, some lawmakers are already dragging their feet on new legislation to expand school-choice options.
Teacher shortages and teacher pay—two inextricably connected issues—will loom large in voters’ minds too. Teacher shortages are widespread, and voters want to increase teacher pay to attract more teachers—and they are willing to pay for it. Political candidates will need to talk about how to increase teacher pay and improve their work conditions.
Jeff Bryant, Lead Fellow
The Year #MeToo Extends to K-12
Because I work in the gender and civil rights space in education, a major education story I anticipate for 2018 is #MeToo. This conversation has, quite rightly, been one of the most enduring media stories in recent memory. Increasingly, members of the low-wage workforce, the disabled community, and students are pushing for greater inclusion and visibility in the movement. There’s no sign that interest in this issue will wane any time soon.
Even before #MeToo began to trend, the Trump Administration made headlines by rescinding the Obama Administration's “Dear Colleague Letter,” which explained schools’ responsibilities to sexual assault survivors under Title IX. With new regulation addressing sex discrimination expected from the U.S. Department of Education in March, plus expected attacks on survivors’ rights in the PROSPER Act now being considered in Congress, the #MeToo movement’s relevance to education is only going to grow.
In my work at the National Women’s Law Center, I’m heavily involved with #MeTooK12. The hashtag, started by Stop Sexual Assault in Schools, is gaining traction for good reason: Sexual harassment and assault aren’t just university or workplace issues, yet the media narrative has overwhelmingly focused on those two spheres to the exclusion of K-12 students.
Recognizing both the immense emotional, social, educational, and economic harm that sexual violence inflicts on young students, the #MeTooK12 campaign is timely for all school stakeholders, from a public policy, pedagogical, and cultural perspective. Look for more stories on how sexual violence affects students, the policy fights on the horizon, and the ways educators, parents, and students can build cultures of consent and respect in their communities and beyond.
Sabrina Joy Stevens, Washington, D.C., Fellow
The Year Democrats Push an Alternative to ‘Reform’
The well-documented failures of so-called education reform during the past two decades have prompted educators, students, parents, and politicians to question the reform agenda. The effort involves incentivizing the expansion of school vouchers and charters, using high-stakes testing to rate schools and teachers, and dictating school governance through top-down, private control. But the public image of these education reformers has wilted as Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and their allies in the Republican party have emerged as the movement’s most prominent cheerleaders. Recently, Democratic candidates have begun to use their opponents past support for education reform against them. In Virginia and Massachusetts, Democratic party candidates are speaking out about the growing lack of accountability and transparency in charter schools.
2018 should be the year that Democrats who support community empowerment—and those Republicans who truly value local control—embrace community schools.
What alternative should Democrats embrace? Community-based, democratically-controlled education is a direct affront to the Trump, DeVos and the Republican agenda. The Intercultural Development Research Association, a civil rights organization, supports community-based education, describing it as a system based on “valuing families and communities and [recognizing] that they are capable of initiating and sustaining involvement in educational change.” The organization argues for “broad-based local participation in comprehensive planning and decision-making at the local level as well as at the policy level.”
The California NAACP has resolved that community schools are a key alternative to privately-control charters. And recent public conversations—like those taking place in San Francisco—are calling for alternatives to the failure of privatization, especially in communities of color where it has colonized their schools and taken away community control.
2018 should be the year that Democrats who support community empowerment—and those Republicans who truly value local control—embrace community schools as a powerful alternative to failed top-down, privatization and private-control education reforms.
Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, California Fellow
The Year People Get Wise About Threats to Public Schools
If 2017 was the year many realized that charter schools are often not in the best interest of students, 2018 will be the year they realize that charters are more about privatizing a social good. A steady drumbeat of charter opposition from parents, teachers, and students is already growing, galvanized by accumulated evidence that charter schools divide communities, target poor and minority students with inferior schools, and enable operators to accumulate private wealth from tax dollars.
With the increasing information available about charter schools and heightened attention to the subject, more communities will challenge the claims charter operators make about their schools. An increasingly skeptical media will spotlight opportunistic charter operators profiting off of tax dollars.
Also in 2018, more people will question why politicians are determining education policy rather than teachers and the communities where they teach. More will question the influence of an ideological president and his secretary of education. More will ask why state representatives, who know nothing about education, make decisions about schools based on what their donors want rather than on what schools, teachers, and students really need.
The growing awareness of the threats to public education we'll see in 2018 offers hope for a better future for our school and all of us.
Dora Taylor, Northwest Regional Fellow
The Year of Black Lives Matter at School
Last school year, educators in Seattle organized a district-wide action that culminated in some 3,000 educators wearing Black Lives Matter shirts to school and many of them teaching lessons about institutional racism. Teachers in Philadelphia and Rochester engaged in similar “Black Lives Matter at School” actions.
This year, from February 5 to 9, teachers from school districts across the country are going further, organizing the first ever national Black Lives Matter at School week. Their actions include three demands:
1) Hire more black teachers. Studies show that low-income black students experience an achievement benefit from having black teachers.
2) End zero tolerance discipline. Zero tolerance policies in schools, intended to reduce behavior problems, can actually have the opposite effect, not only failing to make schools safe but actually increasing problem behavior and dropout rates.
3) Teach Black Studies and Ethnic Studies courses. Culturally relevant teaching boosts attendance and academic performance of students at risk of dropping out. Incorporating culturally relevant pedagogy also means teachers will implement lesson plans that relate to
diverse issues and identities.
The educational themes for the week are as follows:
Monday, February 5: Restorative Justice, Empathy, and Loving Engagement
Tuesday, February 6: Diversity, Globalism, Black immigration
Wednesday, February 7: Trans-affirming, Queer-affirming, Black LGBTQ identity
Thursday, February 8: Intergenerational, Black Families, and the Impact of Mass Incarceration
Friday, February 9: Black Women, Unapologetically Black
This collective organizing of educators around the country in support of black lives signals a new phase of the struggle to disrupt anti-blackness in education. To learn more or endorse this action, visit the Facebook page for The National Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Our Schools.
Jesse Hagopian, Seattle Fellow
The Year Teachers Will Continue to Teach
In 2018, states will implement their plans to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Obama-era law that replaced No Child Left Behind as the federal education law of the land. State ESSA plans will range from “don’t change anything at all” to “let’s throw some shoes at the chandelier and see what lights up.”
Betsy DeVos has signaled that the Department of Education will offer little guidance or kibitzing, as long as states don’t get too permissively progressive. So watch how the states play that out, and see what specific policy decisions actually affect classroom teachers, for instance, whether states are allowed to reduce the harmful impacts of using results from standardized tests to evaluate teachers or hand “low performing” schools over to charter operators who can lay waste to the teaching staff.
Another story will be the continuing efforts to dismantle public education and replace it with a tiered system that provides superior education for the Deserving Few, and just good enough education for Those Peoples’ Children.
The intent is to use charters, vouchers, education savings accounts, personalized [sic] education via computer, or good old-fashioned underfunding to create a system that favors some and abandons others. One justification for this will be that the Lesser, Separate System is really just as good as the Better System (look, shiny computers and “no excuses” discipline!).
Another justification is lesser students who prove themselves “worthy” will rise to the Better System (if they can do it, anyone can—and anyone who doesn’t just didn’t earn it). This is part of a prevailing philosophy that some people deserve better health care, enough food, decent housing, a living wage, and a chance to vote. But a whole bunch of folks don’t deserve any of that, and it’s high time we took those things away from them and taught them to expect less. Education is just one more item on that list.
The story that should be covered in 2018, but won’t be: Despite all the attacks on education, systemic underfunding, and a host of unaddressed social issues, millions of teachers will show up for work and do the very best they can. This, like the sun rising in the morning, is not news—but it is important.
Peter Greene, Midwest Region Progressive Education Fellow