The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page splinters even further from reality:
…In one of the most absurd legal decisions in modern times, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the voucher program violated the “uniformity clause” of the state constitution guaranteeing a high-quality system of public schools. Because the performance of the voucher kids was superior to those in public schools, the court ruled that education was not uniform — or in this case not uniformly miserable. As they used to say in the Soviet Union, everyone gets to share their poverty equally.
(I found this through Protein Wisdom, where the above passage is quoted approvingly).
Whenever a conservative says something unbelievable has occurred, it’s a good idea to do some fact-checking before you say “holy shit!” About a minute of googling turned up the Florida Supreme Court decision in question (pdf file). The Florida Constitution mandates that a uniform system of public schools be provided by the government. Until that passage in the Florida Constitution is amended, the legislature doesn’t have any authority to take money from public schools and give it to private schools, especially when those private schools are free of the constitutionally-required uniform regulations public schools are subject to.
People can disagree with the Court’s decision. But no honest person can agree with The Wall Street Journal‘s claim that the Florida Court’s ruled that educational outcomes must be “uniformly miserable.” Not a word of the Court’s decision referred to different outcomes; the Journal op-ed writer made up that ridiculous claim.
The trouble is, a lie travels around the world twice before the truth even gets its pants on. (Who did I swipe that from?) The right-wing attack on the judiciary doesn’t need to be truthful to be effective.
Crossposted on Creative Destruction. Comments on “Alas” are moderated, so if you’re having trouble getting your post to appear here, use the Creative Destruction link instead.
Pingback: feminist blogs
Pingback: FeministBlogosphere
It appears to me that the Florida Supreme Court got it right. I think the State of Florida’s Constitution requires the state to provide a uniformly high quality public school system within it’s borders. It seems clear to me that any school system that the State of Florida funds must be public, not private. And I agree with the court that taking money earmarked for education and giving it to private schools is a violation of Florida’s constitution.
Now there are a couple of big topics regarding the public schools when you talk to conservatives. One is the quality of the schools, and the other is the curriculum.
Quality in and of itself is an issue of whether the kids are learning to read, write, do math, etc. up to standard; in this case, the standard is the state’s evaluation testing that goes on at various grade levels. Failures here are generally laid at the feet of the teachers and the teachers’ unions, which make it damn hard to fire a teacher. My take on that is that you can be a great teacher, but if a kid comes to school with no mind to be educated because his or her parents don’t impress on the child that they need to pay attention in school and do well, then there’s little that the teacher can do. After working with kids and their parents for the last 13 years, I lay most of this kind of educational failure at the feet of the parents. Kids rise up to meet expectations. If parents won’t set standards and don’t have the courage to use discipline to get their kids to meet them, then the schools can’t do much.
Now, I say most, but not all. There are some bad teachers in the public school systems, and in fact it is very hard to fire them. My kids, who got good to excellent grades in school, had a few bad teachers. They were all well known to the parents in the district. You’d think that when an administration assigned 30 kids to a teacher’s class, and 25 of the parents call up and demand their kid be moved to another teacher’s class before classes even start, they’d start investigating whether or not there was a problem and start doing something about it. In this particular case, the administration finally got a clue when every incumbent got beat in a school board election by challengers who ran on the issue of the quality of the school.
Schools often need money. But one thing that I think the schools need desperately is a way to measure a teacher’s performance while normalizing out the preparedness of the kids to accept that performance.
The other issue that many conservatives have with the schools is the subject matter. It may be sex education that spends little time on abstinence. It may be books in the schools that show homosexual behavior as normal and acceptable. It may be the lack of recognition of the role of religion in American life. That’s trickier. What’s objectionable and/or considered extreme and what isn’t varies by community. The approach by school districts to what would be considered controversial subjects also varies, especially regarding the amount of parental notification and involvement obtained by the administration.
The lack of recognition of the role of religion in American life by the schools is very interesting to me. I am old enough to remember standing up in front of my public school 6th grade class and quite legally leading the class in reading the 23rd Psalm before classes started. That’s gone by the wayside, and I agree that the State has no business teaching kids any particular religion. But it seems to many that there is a concerted effort to free the schools from any mention of religion whatsoever. During Martin Luther King day, how often do you hear the man referred to as “Dr. Martin Luther King”? How often do you hear him referred to as “Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King”? He valued his status as a Baptist minister a lot more than he did his academic title; his writings are full of religious content, but you rarely read those words in the schoolbooks or hear them quoted. How often, when studying the words and works of those who formed this country, do the kids see their manifold references to God, and their opinions that a free people must obey God’s law if they hoped to live under man’s law successfully? You may think they were wrong, but it is part of history. Why is it not taught?
There was quite a furor when the Florida Supreme Court made it’s ruling. Many Freepers (posters on the website Free Republic) thought it was one more nail in the coffin of public education, but I think it simply recognizes the state’s proper role in education and the proper role of their parents.
I think the WSJ’s hyperbolic description derives from the fact that the scholarships in question were available only to students attending public schools that are failing. This fact alone makes it obvious that the State of Florida is not providing a “uniform” system of public schools — some are failing, a lot of others are not. And the outcome of the Florida Supreme Court’s decision is that kids in failing public schools have less of an opportunity to get into a better school. Thus, the WSJ’s short-hand summary: Kids may be getting a poor education, but at least it’s in a public school that is theoretically “uniform.”
Anyway, do you really buy the Florida Supreme Court’s analysis? It seems totally unconvincing to me. The FLorida Constitution merely says: “Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.” But notice what that constitution does NOT say: “The State shall NOT allow scholarship funds to be used at any schools outside the free public schools.” The provision simply doesn’t ban Florida from doing anything whatsoever. Because Florida does, in fact, make provision for free public schools, that’s all that it has to do. That should have been the end of the case.
In fact, the only violation here should have been that Florida (like so many other places) wasn’t really creating public schools that were “uniform.” The fact that it gave scholarships to poor and deprived students simply has nothing to do with the constitutional provision one way or the other.
Terry Pratchett. “A lie can travel around the world before the truth has got its boots on.” The Truth
Huh. That’s odd – I’ve never read that book. The only Pratchett I’ve read is the book he co-wrote with Gaiman, Good Omens.
Actually, it is attributed to Mark Twain, although does not appear in any of his written works. I don’t know what the first source to attribute it to Twain was.
It certainly does not come from Pratchett!
Also, apparently lies have been improving their speed more than the truth (or the truth has been having a hard time with its boots), as the traditional form of the saying is that a lie can travel half way round the world before the truth can get its boots on.
It’s commonly attributed to Twain, but the first recorded use appears to actually have been by evangelist Charles Spurgeon in a sermon in 1855.
However, Spurgeon himself refers to the statement as “an old proverb”. It is likely that it was first coined by some local wit of no literary reputation and spread through the gossipsphere of the day without attribution, and later got credited to Twain, since it was the sort of thing he would have said.
Well Charles, perhaps you should get with the time, and start considering that the quality of sneakers available these days. Verily, the sneakers even have SPRINGS in them. Hah.