#RedForEd

A few folks asked me if I had anything to say about the #RedForEd movement. Yeah. I have a lot to say, and the entire take can be boiled down to three words: it's about time.

I've spent a lot of time going around the country advocating for people to stand up and fight for their schools, for the kids who go to them, and for the teachers who teach in them. I've rallied friends and strangers around the idea that all of us have to be willing not just to speak up on behalf of our schools and teachers, but to do so loudly. I've asked people to hold those difficult conversations that point to what is clearly happening: the systematic destruction of our public education system.

Photo by Gina Maravilla

That educators (and it IS educators, not just teachers) have finally had enough should come as no surprise. It's the inevitable result of trying to run a growing state like Arizona on an austerity budget that year-after-year took away the state's ability to make the necessary investments in education. Arizona is home to seven million people, and the money coming into the state's general fund is a mere $9.8 billion. That's not enough to fund basic programs and services. On top of that Arizona gives away $15 billion (and counting) annually in corporate tax breaks and rebates. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee — which analyzes the effects of budgets and budget proposals in the AZ — has pointed out for many years that these breaks haven't worked.

And we wonder why we have a teacher shortage, or why a teacher and 49,999 of her best friends decided to leave school and visit the capitol today.

They had no choice. I'm glad they're doing it. This is their time, and this is their fight. Don't believe anyone who tells you that this is all about politics. It's not. It's about wanting something good and right and deserving for our kids, and the people closest to them standing up and fighting for them.

I stand with them.

All decent people should.

#RedForED bitches.

And a note for the purists: Not for nothing, but the next time someone comes up to me and tells me I'm wearing the wrong color red, or my shirt doesn't have the proper graphic I am kindly going to tell them to suck it. This has happened to me twice over the last week. It debases the actual purpose of what's happening and takes a galactically stupid argument from trite to trivial in a nanosecond. I've made a career out of fighting for kids and teachers, and up until a few weeks ago no one noticed or cared what color I was wearing. Shit, I was #RedForEd before it was cool.

It was almost better when the Arizona legislature just flat out lied to us

This is the abandoned School of Pripyat in Chernobyl in Chornobyl, Ukraine. If the republican majority in the Arizona legislature
has its way, your local school will look like this in just a few years

They don’t even try to hide it anymore.

This was the week when the legislature finally dropped all pretense of wanting a strong public education system for Arizona’s kids. Both houses voted to expand private school vouchers to . . . well . . . everyone. The practical side effect of this — at least in the fertile minds in the republican majority at the legislature — is that by offering scholarships to everyone, we can pretty much strip the public from our public schools somewhere down the road. Should Governor Doug Ducey sign the bill — and the chances that The Deuce will let this opportunity slip are about the same as an ice cube surviving for more than a 45 seconds on an Arizona dashboard in July — more dollars will be siphoned from Arizona’s already woefully underfunded public education system because . . . FREEDOM!

Lovely.

Of course, they don’t call them vouchers. They call them empowerment scholarships, but a rose by any other name . . . amirite?

And have I mentioned that there is NO accountability attached to these scholarships? That’s right, we’ll toss public dollars into private schools and no one will have to prove kids are learning, and not one of those students will ever have to take a ridiculous state-mandated test because, in the trifling minds of Arizona legislators, private is a synonym for successful (And if you really want to get sick, watch the video of Sen. Debbie Lesko, R-Koch Brothers, as she explains why this is a good idea sans any evidence. The Arizona senate isn’t exactly a beacon for intellectual heavyweights, but Lesko, R-ALEC, is the dimmest of all the bulbs in that musty old room. Sweet Jeebus on a SmartBoard).

Why Arizona taxpayers —especially public school teachers and parents — are not howling at this is an absolute mystery.

Vouchers are a disaster, and that’s not hyperbole. There’s a right good battle going on in Oklahoma right now over these same type of scholarships. Vouchers have already proven themselves to be a disaster in Louisiana, where, after just a few years of the free market getting a chance to tee up school kids for profit, student achievement has gone more dixie than a king cake a week after Mardi Gras.

Vouchers are the way republicans, like those who control the Arizona legislature, like to cover themselves in compassion. After all, they tell us, these scholarships will put poor families and children on the same footing as families and kids with great wealth. This is really funny coming from a group that worships at the altar of the free market. Why? Because when you open the market to, say, private schooling to everyone, the cost of that schooling will go up.

Here’s how it works: Say you own a private school. You can enroll 100 kids (so long as none of those children are special needs or require lessons in how to speak English). Right now, based on the interested parents you attract, you can charge $7,000 for a seat in your school. Suddenly, someone — like . . . I don't know . . . the Arizona legislature? — opens the door for pretty much everyone to go to your school. You still only have 100 seats, but the value of those spaces has increased dramatically, so much so that you can now charge $15,000 per seat. Pretty sweet deal for you, eh? The empowerment scholarships cover less than a third of that cost. So who is going to fill those seats? Pretty much the same group of people who fill them now. So screw YOU poor kids and families.

All things considered, last week was a lousy one for education in Arizona.