Episode 112: The Threat of Privatizing Project 2025 to Public Education

In this episode, Dr. Almitra Berry discusses the concerning details of Project 2025, a plan championed by the Heritage Foundation that aims to dismantle the federal Department of Education and redirect public education funding to private and religious schools through voucher programs. Dr. Berry outlines how this plan would exacerbate existing inequities in the education system and negatively impact marginalized students and communities. She urges listeners to take action by sharing this information with others and joining the fight to protect public education.

Subscribe to our Patreon channel for exclusive content! Just go to patreon.com/3EPodcast. Thanks!

Transcript

Unknown: 0:03

If you're a parent, teacher or school leader and you're sick and tired of the frustration, anger and unfair treatment of children at high risk in our public schools, then perhaps it's time for all of us to do something about it. In this podcast, Dr amitra Berry brings you tips, tools, strategies and tactics to build successful solutions while touching, moving and inspiring all of us to transform our schools so that every child thrives. Here's your host. Dr Berry,

Dr Almitra Berry: 0:41

welcome back, equity. Words, thanks for joining. For tuning in today. We're going to keep on with our assignment to evaluate the impact of project 2025 on public education and marginalized learners our assignment. So project 2025 that nefarious plan championed by the Heritage Foundation, advocates for dismantling the federal education department. They have been trying to do that. Conservatives have been trying to do that for a long, long time, but what they're trying to do is a threat to public education. And let's start with the threat to funding a public education. The big picture is that the plan would redirect public funds to private schools. Their mandate for leadership is a step by step plan. It will reduce support to public schools, and that includes public charter schools by transferring taxpayer money into private schools, commonly known as a voucher system. Right now, there are 32 states that have implemented some form of voucher program, so don't think that what they are trying to do they have not already been quietly, subtly doing across the red states right now, there are 32 states with some form of voucher program. There are 11 states that have universal voucher laws. There are others on the way, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, all working to push a universal voucher law. 13 states have Educational Savings accounts or esas check into what your state has. An ESA would take the taxpayer money and give it to you or give it to individuals to put into savings accounts. And if you are financially savvy, if you are very responsible with your money, that might be something that you could benefit from. But I want you to think not about just yourself, but about the vast majority of America's children who do not come from homes that have high financial literacy that do not come from homes that have plenty of money in the bank, and so those funds would just be an add on, and they would be responsible with them. I want you to think about the kids who during the shutdowns for covid, did not have computers at home did not have the internet at home, I want you to remember scrambling to meet the kid needs of children who did not have electricity to plug in and charge the devices that you sent home. Those are the kids I want you to think about those 31 states that have plus DC that has some form of a voucher program. Can take that money and use it for private education and talk about that in a second. In 2023 though seven states, Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah all passed new voucher programs, 12 states expanded the ones that they had. And I want you to listen to this list of states again. And I want you before I read them, I want you to get a map, an outline map, of the United States in your head. Listen, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Utah got a geographic location. Here are the others, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina got it. Now those are the new ones. New ones. So what's the impact? What's the impact on public school budgets and resources? If we direct every child's educational funding share to an ESA. It would rob the public schools of the funding that they need to operate. It would rob the public schools of the money to pay teacher salaries, instructional materials, transportation. It would force 10. 10s of 1000s of schools to shut down completely or to drastically reduce the services that they currently provide to children. I want you to think about your district and think about the district surrounding you. Think about the news that you are hearing because we're back to school. What are you hearing in your neighborhood? Because I know in my neighborhood, I know that in the city of Houston, Houston Houston Independent School District started the school year, or was going into starting the school year with over 1000 teachers, too few to staff their classrooms, with 70 plus principals having quit, walked out because of the heavy hand of the state, following a blueprint eerily similar to project 2025, in the state of Texas. And I forgot to ask you last week, did you text last week's episode to a friend, an educator, school leader, school board member, another parent? Did you if you did, then I thank you. If you didn't, would you please today? Text five friends, colleagues, educators, someone who believes in advocating for the most marginalized of children, and just say to them, you have got to listen to this. Our ancestors taught us. Our elders taught us. Each one teach one. I'm going to ask you again, each one text five. Let's make a bigger impact. All right. Sorry, I meant to do that before there is a false promise in Project 2025, of school choice. But when we look at what school choice has done many school choice programs benefit wealthy families, and school choice includes vouchers. I'm not talking I'm going to be real clear here. I am not talking about the tremendous work that's done by so many public charter schools that are taxpayer funded and really receive less money per student than the surrounding public school system, regular public school system, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the programs that take that taxpayer money and give it in the form of a voucher and say you can choose whatever school you want to go to, and you can take your money and pay it towards that 2025, $30,000 tuition. Yes, folks, for those, some of you who've not heard this, there are many a private and religious affiliated school, elementary, middle and high school, where the annual tuition can rise to as much as $30,000 a year. Now you have to ask yourself, if these people can already pay $30,000 a year in tuition, why do they need my taxpayer money? Why do they need the money that my local school system needs to educate the kids who can barely keep lights on in their house, because that's what they're talking about. Those are the families, the families that struggle. Remember I said, I want you to think about the families that during covid, those kids that didn't have a place to study, for those of you who had to open libraries or put busses out in neighborhoods that were Wi Fi centers, those kids cannot take the maybe four or$5,000 voucher that would be equivalent to their, their their annual, the annual student allocation that would go to the local public school. They can't take that four or $5,000 and make up a 1015, 20, $25,000 gap to go to a private school. The Education section of project 2025 reads as if it was designed to exacerbate the inequities and make high quality education and an opportunity available to only exclusively to the wealthy. Here's what we already know. Multiple studies have shown that when students use vouchers, particularly this kids, I'm talking about those from from disadvantaged backgrounds, that they often perform worse academically compared to their peers in public schools worse. Recent studies of voucher programs in Louisiana and Ohio pointed out that voucher students performed worse on standardized tests than non voucher students. Now I do have a few theories about that, who do you think is teaching in those schools? Who have they been teaching to? Who do they want in their schools? Because I'm just going to venture a guess, nine times out of 10, it is not people who look like me, if we think also about children who live in rural areas. Okay? Children who live in low wealth areas, children who live in housing projects, in neighborhoods that are food deserts, where services are scarce. If you take what they have planned and you execute that at the national level, it will radically, radically increase the existing inequities. You think we have teacher shortages now? Do you think we have too many teacher layoffs now, the disparities that they will create to access to quality education? I can't even wrap my head around and yet they promote this choice like they actually give a damn about children who are currently in underperforming schools, but who they're really giving choice to, or more choice to, are private schools, they're not giving that choice to students and families that you and I are concerned about, giving that money to private schools that already reject students based on things like their disciplinary history, their academic achievement, their religious affiliation. Again, the disproportionate impact is on black and brown and indigenous children, children of low wealth, LGBTQ plus children. And again, for those of you who may say or may may believe that charter schools do the same thing, no, they don't. Publicly funded, charters cannot deny acceptance or attendance to a child because of their religious affiliation, because of a behavioral or disciplinary history, or because of their academic achievement. They are public schools. That doesn't mean that you can be a disciplinary problem and commit the same behavioral offenses that you would in a regular public school, that would let would tend to end up in expulsion, you know, like, bring a weapon to school. I don't care what school you're in, you bring a weapon to school, public charter or regular public that's an expulsion. All right? Accountability, accountability. I'm going to ask you what right now, what accountability do the private schools in your city, your county, your state, have, do the kids who attend there have to take state assessments? Do those schools get a grade from the state based on student achievement? So I think back to before. This goes way back. So I'm gonna go in the way back machine. Some of you may remember this. Those of you who are younger, probably in elementary school. Now your teachers, you won't remember this, but before reading first, before No Child Left Behind. We didn't disaggregate data. We didn't look at subgroups to see which groups of children, black, culturally diverse, special education, which kids were meeting standards, which kids were performing well or not well on the state test. We didn't disaggregate data like that private schools never have and under their plan, with your tax dollars going to fund kids in there, they still won't. So when I said, I have my theories about why kids and voucher systems, kids taking their vouchers in these states already, kids coming from underperforming schools go to voucher schools and end up performing worse than their non voucher peers, maybe because accountability is not there. There's no requirement for accountability, no requirement to serve students with disabilities based on idea, no requirement to adhere to a 504 or an IEP, no requirement to make sure that students meet grade level academic standards and the ability to reject a child based on their perceived perceived sexual orientation, it's and they've already been abused. There is misuse of funds and existing voucher programs documented already in Arizona, for example, taxpayer funded vouchers have been used to buy ski passes, golf equipment, lessons on how to drive a luxury car lessons, those lessons cost more than $800 a session in Florida, taxpayer dollars were set aside for school vouchers and have paid for kayaking and for Disney tickets. And don't take my word for it that comes from first focus.org and I'm going to put a link to them down in the notes, no accountability, and then there's just the big bucket of inequity. Universal voucher system. What they propose to come from the federal government would widen the gap between our wealthy students and our low income students. Taxpayer dollars subsidizing private schools, religious schools, subsidizing the education of wealthy students at the expense of nearly the nearly 90% of children in this country who attend public schools, for those children who do not have college educated parents, children of color, children who qualify for free and reduced lunch, which they plan to get rid of as well, these are the kids who are truly disadvantaged, another impact that has been seen in existing voucher programs when we're talking about that population of children, they have lower college enrollment attainment, lower college degree attainment. So what's the cost? Consider also the loss, potential loss of specialized services for our children with disabilities. Project 2025 says that the individuals with disabilities and Education Act, idea, which provides annually about $14.2 billion in federal money for the education of school age children with disabilities should be converted to no strings. That is no accountability, no strings, block grants to individual states. So they're going to take that $14.2 billion no strings attached. Here you go, states, here's your share, here's your share, here's your share Do with it as you will. Who do you think is going to lose out now, having a child that is neurodiverse is not restricted to certain socioeconomic groups, but those people who already can pay 2025,$30,000 worth of tuition to send their neurodiverse child to a private school or a specialized school. They ain't missing services right now, it will be those that are already historically marginalized, those who lack funds to begin with, who will not get enough money in the form of a voucher to make sure that their child is taken care of. We know that children with with disabilities are already systematically excluded from voucher programs. Private Schools won't take them unless they're a private school that specializes in children with disabilities. They're not required to provide them the same level of service that's mandated under IDEA for students with disabilities in public schools. And yes, that current mandate does extend to public charter schools. Don't get it twisted. Another thing is that they want to dismantle, get rid of all those federal protections by eliminating the Department of Education. Donald Trump said he wants to shut down the Department of Ed. He has said at rallies over and over and over, it should be disbanded, to move everything back to the states where it belongs. What does that mean in terms of protecting our children, civil rights protections for our children, civil rights protections for you, our educators, our school leaders. What does that do for you, especially those of you who are in those states that have already shown a proclivity to discriminate, the ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would it would be scaled back to a point where it is ineffective. They already have stated they will reject gender ideology, and they are still harping on critical race theory, which we know is not being taught in K 12 schools. Some of the voucher programs that are funding private schools, again, because they can discriminate based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, if there is no Department of Education and Office of Civil Rights to appeal to if there is no accountability at the state, what have you got? You have a system that is creating an impact, or would create an impact on marginalized communities, that would take us back to when they say America was great, to when we know was Jim Crow, we will not go back Title One. $18 billion federal fund supporting low income students would disappear in a decade. Okay, that's the plan. Get rid of it. In 10 years, it's gone. No more free and reduced lunch, no more title one. Pull out, push in. Supports, no more teacher assistance, no more specialized, differentiated instruction based and coming from title one funding. This makes me so mad I want to cuss. What do we get when all of this happens? We get larger class sizes. We get fewer resources. We get limited extracurricular activities, especially in schools that serve children of low wealth, children of color in our communities of color and our white children in rural areas black ones as well. But our children in rural areas who do not have access to private school options in their communities, they're up the same Creek equity warriors. I am begging you. This is too important to just sit on this information. I hope you enjoy my content. I'm thrilled that you come back, that you listen, that you share, but this is just too important to have a feel good. Feel incensed. Hallelujah, Amen, sister. Moment, as you commute to work, you have got to spread the word text the link to this episode, to a friend, to your family chat, tell them you have got to listen to this. Now I've always said, Like, Share, repost on social media. But how many of us scroll through social media? It's like, oh, that's cool. And we keep on going. We don't do the same thing to a text message from a friend. And so I'm asking you to be a friend to 2345, 10 people. I people just tell them, You have got to listen to this. And if you texted someone last week, thank you. Thank you. Ask them what they thought. Don't just let it. Go, have a conversation and then join me again next week, next week, I have a guest. His name is Marcus Aurelius Higgs, and we'll be talking about parenting and caregiving for tweens. You know, those young adolescents that aren't quite teenagers yet, those that we tend to think have lost their minds? Marcus and I are going to sit down and talk about that. So send me a text. I want to hear from you. And as always, don't worry about the things you cannot change. Change the things you can no longer accept. And that's a wrap for today's episode of The 3d podcast. Now here's how you can make a real difference. First, smash that subscribe button. It's free. It's easy, just do it. Second, share the show with anyone you know who cares about education. And third, consider becoming a supporter of the show together. We're not just talking about change, we're making it happen. Make a donation today to be part of that mission and change, and I'll catch you next time you.