The Wrong Type of Lawsuit

Public school advocates are suing to keep money in their coffers instead of paying private school tuition through education savings accounts or vouchers.

According to an article appearing in EducationWeek online,

“Private school choice is surging across the nation – but not without opposition, as many state-level programs are embroiled in court challenges.”

“Judges in several states are currently weighing or poised to weigh the legal and constitutional merits of programs – including vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships – that fund private education with public dollars.”

“Previous iterations of these lawsuits against state-level programs haven’t always been successful in their goals. Courts have offered a wide range of opinions on private school choice, endorsing some programs while striking down others. In some cases, state lawmakers have responded to the court-mandated termination of an existing program by creating a new one in its place with different parameters.”

“Still, private school choice advocates and critics alike are closely tracking the outcomes of these cases, which could have major effects on programs that collectively cost states billions of dollars each year. They could also lay the groundwork for legal debates around the federal private school choice tax credit, which will begin rolling out next year.”

Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming all have cases in front of their courts arguing that giving public money to private schools will hurt the existing public school system.

Montana is the only state where a case is arguing that special needs students are being cheated out of services within the public school system because of the transfer of money to private schools.

Only in the Wyoming case is their language that addresses poor families trapped in bad public schools. But what’s is that the Wyoming plaintiffs are arguing that poor families would be better served in the existing public school system instead of being awarded money to choose a different learning organization to be rid of having to attend a sucky school.

A Houston school attorney I worked with wondered why families stuck in bad public schools were never successful in convincing a court that those families’ kids were not receiving what most states describe as an “efficient system of public free schools.” From the viewpoint of this attorney, too many school districts failed at offering an efficient (and effective) learning system. The attorney believed that there was a civil rights argument embedded in the fact that thousands of kids – primarily black, brown, and poor – were trapped in bad schools that they couldn’t escape from.

What that school attorney and I concluded over lunch one day was that there was a good reason poor families failed in making a case in court arguing that their children’s civil rights were being violated because of schools that couldn’t improve their reading, writing, and problem-solving skills.

Poor families did not have the power, influence, or money to change the system – the public education system that is. And because poor families lacked power, influence, and money, the existing K-12 system continued to live on – even when that system itself was responsible for graduating millions of kids nationwide unable to read, write, and problem-solve.

And, in the end, many of those young learners, and their families, ended up being blamed by the public education system for failing themselves when it came to becoming smarter and stronger academically, socially, and emotionally.

It’s like a hospital blaming the patient, or an defense attorney blaming the defendant.

Who does that?

Til tomorrow. SVB