Vallas's education platform

the scary part is between the lines

Rather than just keep bashing Vallas’s record in public education, which one could do ad infinitum and it would fill volumes, I want to turn today to his current education platform as found on his website.

I and many others insist Vallas’s record has harmed districts, cities, and children; his reform efforts are anti-diverse learner, racially stratifying, and deeply disruptive, not just in the US but in other nations as well.

But what’s he saying today? We should make sure we’re dealing with the Paul Vallas of today, of right now. It’s only fair.

On his campaign website, his education platform starts off with two points that it’s hard to argue with: kids aren’t safe, and CPS money doesn’t benefit them.

Vallas is outraged that our taxpayer money is not properly funding our kids in CPS classrooms. He demands that “multi-generational disinvestment in our most vulnerable populations and communities” must stop, and it will stop with him.

Hear, hear! Bravo! Well said sir! It’s about time someone noticed systemic disinvestment in the public schools! I’m about sick to death of CPS money being wasted on privatization, corporate charter chain operations, school choice, and the offices to handle all that!

Here’s more:

It's well past time to get the central office out of the business of diverting resources that should be reaching students and teachers for curricular and co-curricular programming. Doing so necessitates that we incorporate the representative input from the systems stakeholders – school level administrators, parents, teachers, and for too long undervalued and underrepresented, the students themselves at all levels of the CPS governance system.

All I can say is preach, brother!

And then he brings up his own record, right there in front of God and everybody, on the website: Chicago, Philadelphia, NOLA, and Bridgeport, CT. Notably he does not mention Haiti and Chile, nor why his Bridgeport tenure was so short (he failed ever to qualify for the job and was given the boot), nor that short-lived, super awkward stint at Chicago State University in a Rauner-appointed job that he used mainly to boost his first mayoral foray.

Having just pointed out disinvestment, he now turns to all the things he’s going to do to fix the schools. (Remember I’ve mentioned gigantic spending? Here we go.)

Keep schools open for longer days and all year. Add in new work-study programs (I’m skipping over the language about how “a little money in the pocket can go a long way toward preventing a young person from falling prey to the clutches of street gangs flashing cash”) (and also the language about getting rid of “non-essential electives” in place of work). Identify at-risk kids and provide “cradle to classroom” interventions and supports, and offer “mentorship, tutoring, [and] extracurricular enrichment” to all.

Folks, this is going to cost a LOT of scratch.

Who’s staffing all this? Who’s providing the cradle (what?) to classroom interventions? CPS? Especially since Vallas wants to “dismantle the central administration”? Really, now, I do think Central Office is bloated and has way too many offices of things like Portfolio. So yes, in need of trimming. Probably pruning. But dismantling? This is a school system that can’t handle its special education caseloads at all, can’t even currently conform to federal law. How will dismantling help?

And now we get to the heart of the platform. “Expand quality school options.”

Systematically expand quality public school options by converting failing or under-enrolled schools to open enrollment magnet schools and by empowering the community, through their elected Local School Councils, to select better school models if their school is struggling. The communities can select neighborhood-based magnet programs such as the International Baccalaureate Program. The enrollment cap should be lifted on high performing charters and the community empowered to invite public charters to locate in empty or near empty buildings conditional that they serve neighborhood children.

Not only does he want to add charter schools, and put more into empty school buildings, but he also wants to “convert” schools that are “failing” or “underenrolled.” Is he going to “convert” these bad schools, like he did in New Orleans, into schools that no longer take in special needs students? And why is he bringing up LSCs here? Do you know, reader, that one of the first things he did as CPS CEO way back in 1995 was to curtail the power of LSCs at schools he deemed were “failing”? He wants now to empower LSCs to choose a better model of school? This is not in their job description. Does he even know what LSCs do? Where in the world will money come from for these magical transformations if the best CPS has managed to do to the present day is multigenerational disinvestment?

Does he not know that much of the money CPS has been flushing down the drain for decades—hundreds of millions—has gone to charter proliferation? Supported their financial scandals? And that this has not “fixed” things?

Woven through many paragraphs of this platform are phrases about “empowering parents” and putting money “where it belongs.” But we get to the record scratch of what this all means in the very last sentence on the page. We need to “drive more decisions and resources into the hands of those closest to our kids.” Closest to our kids? That must mean us parents. We should drive decisions and resources. Who can argue with this, really? But do you know what he’s getting at?

He’s talking about the ultimate form of empowering parents with resources: “the money follows the child”—“scholarship” programs, also called vouchers. So the money the district uses per child is supposed to go to the parents instead. To give parents power to improve their children’s lot and escape that public-school-provided multigenerational disinvestment.

But guess what. For a fix-it guy, this is maybe not the best way to spend money. Because vouchers don’t “fix” anything. In fact they do more harm than good. But don’t take it from me. Take it from a years-long research study of voucher impact by Indiana University professor Christopher Lubienski, or this multi-author piece with 77 endnotes if you really feel like devoting your life to understanding the situation, or this one by MSU prof Josh Cowen who has been studying vouchers for 20 years. (Coincidentally, today he pointed out on twitter that Arizona can’t even pay for its voucher program.) Reformers like Vallas never heed research or data, but you can.

Now. Reader. Setting aside everything I’ve just said. Which is all good to know but not the really scary part.

This “empower parents” language? This money follow the child language? This dismantle the district language? These are not really Democratic talking points. Trust me, I know Democrats have been terrible about choice and charters and the whole failed ed reform platform for decades, so I’m kind of an equal opportunity basher here. But this language, it’s not traditionally Democratic. It’s not even traditionally Republican.

It’s something new. It comes from this radical new strain on the right reflecting a deep suspicion of institutions, hostility towards teachers and administrators, reliance on sensationalism over data, advocacy of white cultural prominence, open homophobia, and a belief that only parents (well, actually only some parents) are to be trusted regarding what their children learn, know, and are exposed to. This is really language shared with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. This is language distilled, purified, and stirred up into a frenzy by “parent’s rights” groups, like Awake IL. These folks are rumor-mongering, lie-loving, racist, homophobic, antidemocratic soft fascists. I learned about them when I attended a school board campaign training seminar they sponsored. The fact that Vallas participated in this group’s events, not once, but twice, should be shocking to Chicagoans. The fact that he is using their very language on his campaign website should be enough to send us all running in the opposite direction.

Most of us know Vallas supports charters, choice, privatization, and vouchers. Many of us aren’t aware, however, of his uncomfortable closeness and synchronicity with far right groups like this one. He’s tried to distance himself from Awake IL, but Awake IL isn’t having it. They keep reminding us that Vallas went so far as to declare that Shannon Adcock herself, founder of Awake IL, should run for governor.