Editors note: This is the third in a five-part series on School Choice Initiatives aimed for the November 2024 election ballot.

School choice may answer a catalog of ways that schools are systematically structured so as to foster racism. The monopoly of a public school system creates an inability to find a market solution to discrimination, and all the answers evolve around funding, which goes to the district and not to students.

Oregon is considered to be a high spending school system, but ranks as one of the worst five states for student to teacher ratio contributing to a low quality of education. Teacher salaries are above average, still teacher unions blame low results on underpaid teachers. The state makes the case that minorities and low-income have a harder time and depress the graduation rates, so they have overwhelmed schools with equality policies.

What did Oregon do? They passed a Corporate Access Tax (CAT), implemented equity standards, instituted confusing gender identity into all curriculum, and dropped graduation standards. In 2023 Oregon was added to the list of states identified as “dumbing down education.” For the past decade, Oregon legislation has focused on boosting education for minorities until it is approaching reverse discrimination. Equity standards focus on the lowest denominator, which translates as no standards. No standards have been shown to foster meritocracy, and meritocracy is colorblind.

Oregon's response included a costly Student Success Act, initially funded with $2 billion by the Corporate Access Tax (CAT), which should have improved Oregon’s ranking since it was passed in May 2019, in time to combat the pandemic. The biennium funding from CAT has grown to $2.8 billion for 2023-25. Fifty percent was proposed to go directly to school districts for top local priorities in specific areas, distributed through grant requests.

Twenty percent goes towards early learning, and House Bill 2025 extended the pre-school age range to include prenatal through age three services using $193.5 million to fund a $365.4 million budget. Some question whether prenatal is a qualified expenditure that actually should be supported by the Oregon Health Authority. It is close to the amount needed to initially implement school choice.

Thirty percent is dedicated to creating new programs and expanding existing programs that serve African American/Black Students, LGBTQ2SIA+ and now includes five different Student Success Plans for the underserved. It also funds the High School Success program to help students stay on track through high school and graduate on time. Putting $840 million into the underserved seems to be funding an empire of programs that miss the mark parents and voters were promised for the cost of CAT. The commitment to improving equity by increasing access and opportunities for historically marginalized students is a major deception of the education system for which school choice presents parents a way out.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Those who say school choice has racist roots are implying that parents, especially lower-income, black parents, should stay trapped in public schools that have failed their children for decades. School choice was originally brought about to support freed blacks. The federal government provided support for freed blacks through the Freedmen’s Bureau building all-black public schools, and converting black independent schools into public schools. History tells a story of how socialism removed school choice and segregated public education, which made it impossible for them to flee discrimination.

Oregon’s equity policy is aimed at the underserved, which is code for minorities, low-income families, and documented or undocumented residence. School choice breaks the arbitrary link between a child’s housing situation and the school they can attend. This means the price of home a family can afford no longer determines their child’s access to a quality education. School choice equalizes access to a quality education for all races and nationalities. Why then does Oregon leadership oppose school choice when they claim to be the guardians of the underserved?

School choice, IP 5 and IP 6, presents a way out of systemic racism by allowing students (of all colors and nationalities) who want to leave their assigned government school, to find an alternative, and still improve education for students who remain in their assigned public school.

For more information, Education Freedom for Oregon website has information about the petitions, events on gathering signatures, and print and mail petitions.


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2024-03-26 12:50:38

Last Update: 2024-03-26 23:11:25