The first fallacy of ‘school choice’ | Mary Sheehy Moe
The battle for equality isn't won or lost in any election. It's won or lost every day in battles over the infrastructure that ensures equality of opportunity and treatment.
Until recently, Montana always protected the most important piece of that infrastructure: Truly public education. But for over a decade, paid "school choice" advocates have been trotting out a carpet-bagged script to woo legislators into weakening that protection.
Gird your loins, Montanans. They'll be back in force in 2025.
"We have no quarrel with public schools," they always coo beguilingly, before airing a laundry list of criticisms that suggests "quarrel" doesn't have enough r's to capture their revulsion. The list usually begins with the complaint that public schools are too "one-size-fits-all." Let's examine that argument.
Public education is a public good. That's why we're taxed for it. And that's why public education begins with public agreement on what kids need to learn to achieve that public good. Our constitution requires Montana's Board of Publication Education, in public meetings allowing public participation, to set the minimum requirements that will lead to that achievement.
What are Montana's basic requirements? The three Rs, for starters. Then increasingly complex versions of the three Rs through middle and high school. Also a broad array of social studies, sciences, the arts, and career-technical offerings. Indian Education for All. Health and physical education. And now, financial literacy and civics.
The state requires a minimum of 20 credits for a high school diploma. Most Montana school districts require more. Locally elected school boards, in public meetings allowing public input, can add to the state's requirements, but they can't subtract from them. Those uniform 20 credits are the "one size" expected to fit all Montana's public schoolchildren.
There's a fundamental sense to one-size-fits-all. Colleges need the assurance that, whether high school graduates are from Ekalaka or Eureka, they're college-ready. Employers need to know they're career-ready. And all of us expect our public schools to prepare children for citizenship.
There's also a fundamental "dollars-and-cents" to it. Private, "boutique" schools masquerading as public ones come at a price. The duplicated facilities costs alone are mind-boggling. And we've yet to adequately fund the system we have.
Then there's the taxation-without-representation problem you probably learned about in your one-size-fits all American history class. You want our tax dollars? Tell us what you're doing with them ... and respond to our input. The 2023 legislation establishing Montana's first "choice" schools demands public money, but restricts public input. Put up and shut up, taxpayers.
"Choice" schools need greater flexibility than constitutional processes allow, the carpet-baggers explain (in a non sequitur you probably recognize from your one-size-fits-all argumentation unit in high school English).
What does "greater flexibility" really mean? It means hiring "teachers" who have no credentials. It means teaching history as a fairy tale. It means not having to take that GPA-ruining P.E. or speech course the commoners in that tired old "one-size-fits-all-school" must take.
And what's the "heightened accountability" these boutique schools offer as a reasonable trade for taxation without representation? After five years, if standardized test scores are unacceptable, they'll be shut down. Five years? Who will repair the harm to all those third-graders who now don't have the skills for upper-level learning? Or all those high-school graduates who aren't prepared for college or a job or life itself?
It doesn't make sense. Or cents. Right now, underfunded school districts throughout the state have laid off scores of qualified teachers, crowded the classrooms of those who remain and left them to beg online for books. Yet we have set aside untold sums for boutiques?
When did Montana get so bougie?
Mary Sheehy Moe is a retired educator and former state senator, school board trustee, and city commissioner from Great Falls. Now living in Missoula, she writes a weekly column for Lee Montana.
