This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Welcome to Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk,
educated educators talking education classes in session,
Johnny Lupinacci, how you doing, my friend?
Yeah, doing great.
Love these midweek drops.
They're always packed with so much great content because they're
when we get to have our awesome interviews, right?
With educated educators talking education.
Tim, I'm so excited about this one.
Absolutely since forever ago, my favorite segment of Busted Pencils,
right?
I love this segment.
I said, yeah, we're talking about, yeah,
what would Matt Damon's mom say?
We're bringing it back in the podcast.
We've had her on the live show and she has been awesome.
Johnny, though, too, you know, vouchers and Arizona 360 million
dollars unspent that is just sitting there that has been
diverted.
This is the way I look at this.
This money should have gone to public schools.
And instead now it's literally sitting in bank accounts to be
used in ways that were never intended for public funds.
And I think about this and it was like, man, you know, who
would be an awesome person to ask this question?
Dr. Nancy Carlson page.
Wait, what you want to know what my mom would say?
All right.
Well, just ask her Nancy Carlson page, Matt Damon's mom,
new report out of Arizona school voucher recipients accumulating
360 million dollars in unspent funds.
Nancy, I was wondering if you had a chance.
You know, we've talked about vouchers, but this realization that
in Arizona, it sounds to me like parents are literally taking
their voucher money and just hoarding it.
Well, it's, they could, it's possible that they can, the reason
being in Arizona, there's, there's a state law against funding
directly to religious schools.
So the way they're getting around that is giving $7,000 per child
annually to parents, calling it a, a empowerment scholarship
account. Okay.
And then parents get that amount of money and they can spend it
and for tutors or for homeschooling or for private schools or
for religious schools because the Supreme Court slowly, but
significant 2020 has been allowing public tax dollars for public
education to go to not only private schools, but religious schools.
I look at this one, you know, I think about this and Johnny,
we talked a little bit about this last week when we interviewed
Josh Cowan from Michigan State, you know, with his book The
Private Tears, the money though here that there's 360 million
dollars truly just sitting in unspent funds.
So this is money that was allocated to the choice or the
voucher program that isn't being used and thinking about that
and saying, you know what, whether I think all three of us
would say we don't support vouchers, but I'm really positive
I didn't support this as creating a funding system for a bunch
of other people to save money to send up for private schools.
Yeah, I mean, it's true.
You know, Tim, the thing is you can invent people are inventive
one, especially when they need money and there could be a
multitude of ways that parents figure out as some of the things
I've read, money's been spent for this designated money's been
spent on a lot of things other than education, but people are
going to figure out how to get the best benefits for their
lives from this allocation.
But we do, I think we should talk also, I mean, I don't want
to blame them.
I think they have their own, you know, their own purposes, but
I think we have to look at the deeper issue of what our
vouchers and why and should we support them?
And they've been, you know, a one goal of the privatization
movement from the time it began, you know, 25 years ago, but
it's escalated incredibly in the last few years.
I'm sure you guys know that and largely because of the
Supreme Court cases that now allow public money to go into
religious schools, but this is a really, really serious
thing. I'd like to talk about like, what does it mean to
take public tax dollars and give it to private schools or
religious schools in a country that has rested for hundreds
of years on a principle of the right of equal education
for every child in the country.
And what does it mean for that?
Yeah, I think that's a great question, Nancy, right?
So, you know, what does it mean?
What what's happening here when that money goes, you know,
to private schools or private religious schools?
Time, a child in Arizona or anywhere.
Now there are 29 states plus DC that have some what they call
universal school choice, which is essentially a voucher plan
or, yeah, a voucher plan.
But every time a child elects that and receives that 7,000,
that comes directly out of the budget for public schools.
So something we have to really face as a society really is
what does this movement towards vouchers that is definitely
gaining strength mean for quality equal opportunity for
public education for every child because in private schools
and in religious schools, there are not the same kinds of
anti-discrimination standards or protections for diversity
or kids of difference schools can do what they want.
Basically, there's no regulation.
So what does it mean for democracy that this is happening?
I think about that the democracy and you kind of put on this
too, Nancy.
Okay, so here specifically in this case, 360 million dollars
in unspent funds, you know, we've had Beth Lewis, the founder
of SOS Arizona on the show many times.
And she's been really pointing out that, you know, the reality
is is that though the public schools in Arizona have been
underfunded and defunded for years and now to say that
there is 360 million dollars of public monies that are now
being set up and held in, I guess, private individual families
that this is another way to truly defund public schools.
Well, many people understood, I think in the beginning of
the ed reform movement, when teachers were getting bashed
public education was getting criticized, unions were being
criticized, and that was a corollary to a handholder to the
voucher movement because vouchers, it was a way discouraging
people from quality public education was part of a plan to
move towards encouraging them to choose private schools and
voucher, voucher plans.
So this is part of a bigger picture for private privatizing
public education and a very different goal, which is, you
know, to really eliminate the this thing, Horace Mann
envisioned of the great equalizer.
We haven't achieved it.
That is absolutely true.
There's so many flaws with our public education system, but
it doesn't mean we abandoned it.
I mean, this does mean we weaken public education.
The more voucher schools are funded, the weaker public
education is.
And the other goal, I think, for many of the parents who are
in the direction of private religious schools is not wanting
what they call liberal ideology penetrating schools.
They can ban books.
They can teach creationism.
They can do whatever they want because there isn't a bigger
picture for us that is, I don't like standards in education,
but I do like the fact that there's a certain, you know,
there are some guidelines about what we teach young people.
There's that we said standards, maybe is the wrong word
because I know where we would be coming from and like the
standards movement.
But, but, but there are expectations in the public schools
of democracy, of inclusion, of diversity, of all of those
things.
And you're saying what I, you know, when you take a voucher
from the public schools and then use it to privately educate
your child, they're, you can send it to a school that, you know,
and this is absolutely true where they are hardcore teaching.
And we heard this from Josh last week, creationism, dinosaurs,
people together, you know, the young earth 6000 years, and you'd
say, well, in a public school, though, you, you can't do that
because that's ideology.
That's not scientific consensus.
That's exactly right.
And it seems to me that, that that discussion needs to happen
on a broader scale.
And it's just so discouraging in the country right now.
There are so many examples of, of sort of dark money
influence in a lot of our public, a lot of our systems that are
going unnoticed by most citizens really.
And I, it's just worrisome because these things happen.
You see now, it's the same as science of reading a lot of these
movements are happening all the way across the country and a
majority of states.
And yet I don't think most citizens understand the, the
implications of, of these, of these things, how they're
influencing young people's education, their minds, their
ability to be a participating citizen in democracy as they
grow up.
And they're getting, they're, they're getting shortchanged in
terms of being able to think in a wider way, critically,
about a really complex world we're in.
Yeah, absolutely, and Nancy, you know, Tim and I, we got the
wonderful opportunity to have a great conversation last week
with Josh Cowan, author of privateers, and you know,
one of the things he was sharing with us is all this research
that he was gathering from education researchers who were
showing that, you know, that the voucher stuff hasn't helped
education in any direction, it hasn't, it hasn't done
necessarily what, you know, it was presented as doing.
So by all logical measures of under like reading the
measurements of, you know, like, like, what are the indicators?
Is this a good plan?
Is this a good way to, like you said, achieve equality
or, or even increase achievement in academic ways?
On all accounts, it's been a massive failure.
And so I think you bring up a really important point is this
is related to democracy.
How do we make decisions that are in the best interests of
the strength and sustainability of the kinds of communities
we want to have, right?
We want to have, you know, safe welcoming places for whoever
you are, right?
So we're committed to diversity.
We're committed to equity in, and our schools ought to be
one of those places where it's like a no brainer.
We invest in young people becoming strong contributors to
our local economies, our democracy, all of those things.
Well, vouchers and every measure have hurt that.
So we're in this political moment where we really need to
be able to commit to facts to understand that, like you
brought up science of reading, that's even kind of a
marketing slogan that's misleading.
It's not actually scientific research on reading.
It's just called science of reading.
And like vouchers aren't researched as helping schools or
helping raise, you know, the education levels of our
communities or strengthening our local economies.
In fact, they've been researched in ways that show us
they've hurt all of those things.
So by all logical standards, we should be moving away
from this, but it's become sort of a clarion call.
For a particular movement, right, of right wing radicals.
Yeah, really continue to privatize, right?
And in a way subsidize a private education industry.
Yeah, there isn't at your right.
I agree with every 100% of everything you're saying.
There isn't any evidence that that about your schools or
private schools or charter schools are improving the
quality of education at all.
There's inconsistent scores, but there's nothing stable
showing that there's improvements from from those.
And anyway, like I said, these things got pushed.
Charters and vouchers originally with a message that it would
be improved quality education for kids to make those choices.
But that was all built on tearing down public education and
teachers to make people think that it was all crap.
And it wasn't from the beginning.
But at the same time, the threat to democracy is very real
for us to think about, because when I think about quality
education from the time kids go into it, kindergarten,
first grade, second grade, they are experiencing being a
member of a community where there is shared decision making
with consideration for how decisions are affecting every
single person in that community.
And they're, you know, they're hearing stories.
They're reading books about differences and they're talking
about even if there aren't differences in the class.
They're learning about differences and respecting them.
These kinds of standards that we do have in public education
are essential for a surviving and healthy democracy.
You could have, you could have a school where kids are put
in time out or locked in a room or worse.
And they could be getting funding from the state of Arizona
or any other states.
I was thinking about this, though, too.
As you point this out in one of the best ways that we get
movement on this is we say this all the time and busted pencils.
My neighbor who really does value their local public schools,
but then here's about vouchers, here's about choice.
I was wondering, you know, I'm thinking my neighbors out here on
the sidewalk and say, Hey neighbor, come over here.
I got Nancy Carlson page.
Ask her your question about vouchers and why vouchers
are bad for public schools.
I was wondering, Nancy, if you can just tell my neighbor why
vouchers are bad for public schools and our community?
Well, neighbor, you've been sold a story to use Emily
Hanford's title because it's not a true story.
You're, you're being told that making a choice to go to
one of these other schools is going to improve your child's
education. It's just not true.
There are, you can't guarantee it and there are many, many
aspects of public education that guarantee all kinds of equality
and quality education and respect for differences and learning
about being a participant in a democratic community.
These things are guaranteed in our public schools.
And they're not necessarily guaranteed in any school that
isn't public.
Yeah, and I do have to, if you're in, if you're public school,
if you're listening out there and your public school isn't
doing those things because we said it here, not every school
is, is functioning with perfection, but we're all working
and striving towards these goals.
But if we, if you, your public school isn't doing those things,
then the effort is that they ought to be and let's get all
hands on deck and voices behind supporting that.
Like those schools have an obligation and, and ought to be
funded towards providing a safe, equitable quality
education for all the students in our community.
And where they're not able to do that, we got to work together
to get there.
Well, that is so important.
And part of what you're saying, Johnny, is that parents,
this is our goal is that parents are really connected to their
schools and their school communities and that they assert
what their needs are and their desires for the community
through a healthy democratic process with the school.
But that is not guaranteed either when you have a private
or a religious school.
It's, it's this kind of dialogue that's community based
and includes parents and kids and teachers is something
also that happens in public education.
Nancy, this is awesome.
This is a great conversation certainly helps with that.
Hey, if you've been sold the story here are some things to,
to consider rethinking the danger of that story.
Nancy, thank you so much.
Before, before we cut out with you though, last time we,
we had you on, we were talking about, you know, what time
it might be in the turn for the democratic election.
We got a huge election coming up.
How are you feeling regarding the energy and the excitement
or not?
Where are you kind of at with Kamala Harris and Tim Walsh?
Well, I'm, I'm completely behind Kamala Harris and Tim Walsh
I, I'm scared.
I, I don't like reading those polls.
I try not to read them and I have to keep telling myself
they're wrong most of the time because things are just so tight.
It makes me feel nervous about a possible Trump win.
I mean, I can't even imagine living in that country.
But I think what they're saying and is absolutely fantastic.
I think Tim Walsh was the smartest choice she ever could have made.
He's just every man and you can't think if I can't think of
anything to criticize that guy.
You know, he was a solid, he was a solid pro student and pro
differences person way before God popular.
You know, he stood behind a young gay student way before
anybody was talking about gender differences and sexual orientation
differences.
He's a person of integrity.
He's a wonderful and she's, she's been wonderful.
You know, I just, I want to see differences in foreign policy.
I'll be honest, I think we need to be stronger and more determined
and stop funding wars around the world.
But aside, and, but I think anybody who gets into national office
in this country is, is really trapped by a whole lot of history
and funding influence.
So it makes it difficult to, to take care of some of these international
issues, although I think we need to.
But I heard commoners policies, they're, they're, make me, they're
a breath of fresh air after what we've been through.
Dr. Nancy Carlson page.
The time goes so quick.
Thank you so much for busting pencils with us.
Talking to you guys.
It's great.
And you know what?
If you have a question for Matt Damon's mom, 608 557 8577,
drop that in our mail bag.
And the next time we have Dr. Nancy Carlson page on, we'll read
your question and we'll hear what Nancy, what's some, what
of our listeners have to ask you a question?
What a great opportunity.
I'd love it.
Bring it on.
Thanks.
Please stop bothering me and just ask my mom already.
Johnny, I love talking to Matt Damon's mom, Dr. Nancy Carlson
page.
What?
I mean, her wisdom always comes through so profoundly.
I love the way she talked to my neighbor.
Well, absolutely, you know, especially it's a topic we talk about all
the time here on busted pencils and it's on almost, you know, all
the political banter is going around the country and every state, you
know, vouchers, not vouchers.
What's the problem with them?
And that was a really just down to earth hammer home, keep it simple,
you know, explanation of a not so complicated thing vouchers.
They're not helping public schools.
In fact, they're, they're really destructive to democracy.
So that clear.
Hey, if you've got a question or there's something you want to add,
give us a call at 608 557 8577.
Leave us a message or ask a question and Tim, so much great stuff, right?
Last week on classes and session, great conversation with the author of
private tears, Josh Cohen, who is talking about, you know, the evidence,
the research about how this voucher thing is such a bad, bad call and bad
move. If your goal is to have strong education system.
And hey, here at busted pencils, that's our goal, educated educators,
talking education to strengthen public education because public education
is the bedrock of democracy.
Watch for three drops a week, folks, wherever you get your podcasts,
you know, download, listen, and we love being with you.
Thanks for busting pencils with us.
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