House Bill 2, the Education Freedom Act, passed the House Education Committee this morning on a 13-11 vote and is now on the calendar for a vote by the full House. See the committee vote. Numerous committee members expressed opposition to the bill.
Chairman Roberson introduced a committee substitute amendment that limits the bill’s charter school expansion provision to allow charters to locate, without local school board approval, in any school district with a D- or F-rated school, rather than in any district statewide. The amendment also deletes the provision changing the definition of net enrollment in the funding formula that removed pre-k. We are told that other provisions of the bill remain the same. The new version of the bill was not available online until an hour after the vote was taken, and we are in the process of checking the 458-page committee substitute line-by-line.
The House will convene at 10 a.m. tomorrow, when we are told HB 2 will likely come up for a full House vote. Please call all House members who represent a portion of your school district right way. Urge others in your community to call, as well.
Ask representatives to:
VOTE NO on HB 2 (broad school choice/vouchers)
VOTE NO on SB 2002 (public school choice)
VOTE YES on SB 2001 (teacher pay raise) and 2003 (retired teachers bill)
Find contact information for all legislators who represent your school district
Capitol Switchboard: 601.359.3770
House Speaker White: 601.359.3300
Among numerous contradictions and questionable arguments made by the bill’s proponents, these stand out:
- The goal of this bill is “making certain our babies are getting educated.” (Chairman Roberson) If this were the case, wouldn’t the bill’s proponents want to make sure that children in all schools were being taught grade-level material? The truth is that parents don’t know what skills are required to be considered proficient in a given subject in a certain grade. They assume that, if their children are making good grades, they are learning what they need to know. In many private schools, that simply isn’t the case. The material being taught often is a grade level or two behind what is being taught in public schools. Parents – and taxpayers – deserve to know the quality of instruction provided in any state-funded school.
- Private schools are more accountable than public schools. This is among the most offensive – and ridiculous – statements one could make about this bill. The claim is that, because private school parents “can walk away” from private schools, private schools are more accountable. Of course, public school parents can walk away from their schools, too. But public school parents know whether or not their children are being taught grade-level material. And they know how well it’s being taught and how well it’s being mastered by students. The taxpayers footing the bill also know how well our public schools are doing. None of that information is available on private schools – to parents or taxpayers – because private schools refuse to administer state assessments that would provide the information parents need to be sure their children are getting the best education possible. It’s why every single one of the Top 10 States for School Choice is going backward in student achievement.
- Parents whose children don’t attend public schools are getting nothing for their education tax dollars. In Mississippi, where we have thriving public schools, we have thriving communities. And where we have struggling public schools, we have struggling communities. There is no exception to those statements. Public schools drive economic development and yield higher average incomes, improved property values, lower crime rates, and a better quality of life for every single resident of the community, regardless of whether they have children in public schools. It is alarming that we have elected officials who do not understand the value of public education to a community. It’s why Mississippi’s remarkable academic progress has been so important to our state – progress that is threatened by this dangerous and short-sighted bill.
- HB 2 contains academic accountability for private schools. HB 2 doesn’t even require that all voucher students within one private school take the same assessment – and it doesn’t require that the assessment results of individual private voucher schools be made public. In fact, the bill allows parents to choose the test they want their child to take. Nationally normed assessments are normed only on the students who take that assessment – for most, that is less than 2% of the population, none of which are public school students who are held to more rigorous state standards. Many parents don’t understand that when a nationally-normed test says their child scored in the top 5%, that’s only the top 5% of the relatively small number of students taking that specific test – which could well be some of the lowest achieving students in the country.
- HB 2 creates competition that will help all schools. For any “competition” to be valid, all players must operate under the same set of rules, which is far from the case with this school choice proposal. HB 2 creates two separate and horribly unequal state-funded systems of education, one that admits every child within the district and is held to high academic standards and rigorous accountability, and the other with none of those. The only commonality? State funding.
- Florida, a big school choice state, is “doing better than anybody else.” Florida has seen an enormous academic decline since becoming the wild, wild west of school choice. Over the last decade, Florida’s 4th grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have decreased by 9 scale points – almost a full year’s worth of proficiency.
School choice legislation, including this bill, is not written to benefit children. It is written to benefit private schools – which pick and choose the children they want to serve and reject all others. If educating children well were the primary goal of this bill, it would require that any school receiving state funding provide parents the information they need to know: an apples-to-apples look at how the quality of education in one school compares to the quality of education provided in another. Every single state-funded school should administer the same assessments – ones that measure whether or not children are being moved toward proficiency on state academic standards.
School choice lets schools pick kids – an inappropriate use of state tax dollars and a betrayal of the public trust.
Please share this information broadly. Your community deserves to know what kind of representation it is getting at the State Capitol. And please urge others to call their representatives, make their voices heard, and note the responsiveness of their lawmakers. Together, we’ve got this!
