Change the Paradigm

It's time for new thinking about education

The Idaho State Constitution says in Article IX that:

The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.

https://sos.idaho.gov/elect/stcon/article_IX.html

Advocates of the status quo suggest that this means the current system cannot be significantly reformed, and that ideas such as universal school choice, money following the student, and Education Savings Accounts are unconstitutional. They claim that taxpayer money cannot be used for purposes that are outside the government system.

This is nonsense, of course. True school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis demolished that misconception in a single tweet:

Corey A. DeAngelis @DeAngelisCorey

"Public" dollars that can be used at private institutions: • Pell Grants • GI Bill • Pre-K • Head Start • Food stamps • WIC • Medicaid • Medicare • Section 8 • Social Security

Nevertheless, Idaho’s public education establishment is deeply opposed to any taxpayer dollars going to institutions outside of their own control. In a clip from Monday’s Senate Education Committee hearing that has since gone viral, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield flatly rejected allowing families to take tax dollars to private institutions:

Click here to read my essay for the Idaho Freedom Foundation about Monday’s revelations.

Notice how Critchfield uses the same language as the left when it comes to protecting the public education monopoly. In the morning session with the House committee she conflated the Education Savings Accounts being proposed by conservative legislators with vouchers, which is another method of allowing the money to follow the student rather than the system. Luke Mayville and his fellow socialists at Reclaim Idaho like the word vouchers, as do the Democrats in the legislature. So why does a Republican elected official use the same terminology? Because they are united in their goal of maintaining the public education monopoly.

If I give them the benefit of the doubt, I believe they simply can’t envision public education operating differently than it has for the past few generations. A system has developed that benefits many people and organizations - teacher unions, bureaucrats, textbook manufacturers, activist organizations - but not necessarily students and families. Bureaucrats like Critchfield are worried that changing the system would mean a loss of control (though they would likely use words such as oversight or accountability).

We have to change this mindset. We have to imagine new possibilities. There is no reason that we must remain wedded to a 19th-century Prussian education system that is run by far-left activists who are deliberately indoctrinating our children to make them foot soldiers of the Marxist revolution.

That might sound like hyperbole, but longtime readers have seen the receipts. It gets worse though. Anna K. Miller of the IFF’s Center for American Education collaborated with Professor Scott Yenor of Boise State University to expose how Idaho’s state government is pushing a video, created by Trojan condoms and sponsored by Planned Parenthood, that promotes sex to middle school students. When I posted the story to the IFF Twitter account it got slapped with a sensitive content warning.

Consider that: this story was too sensitive for social media, but just fine for 8th graders in our public school system.

This is the system that status quo advocates like Debbie Critchfield are so desperate to defend. This is the system that we are told is sacrosanct. This is the system that demands more and more money with less and less accountability.

Change the paradigm. Break the public education monopoly. Allow money to follow students, not systems, and we will see a moral revolution in this country.