“White” is not a synonym for “elite”

They’re called “segregation academies,” private schools set up to siphon off state education money to support discriminatory policies. If you live in an area with many black students, somebody will create a school with enrollment that excludes the kinds of people you don’t like, often to make sure only white students get in, or students with particular religious beliefs, and then it’s a double-win: they get to take in state money through voucher programs, and they get to charge their ignorant, bigoted parents excessive fees. It’s an “elite” school, after all. Pay up!

ProPublica examined the effects of these voucher programs on a set of private academies in North Carolina. These schools have a specific purpose, and it’s exactly the purpose that has inflamed the electorate in recent years: isolationism, racism, and ignorance.

Back when segregation academies opened, some white leaders proudly declared their goal of preserving segregation. Others shrouded their racist motivations. Some white parents complained about federal government overreach and what they deemed social agendas and indoctrination in public schools. Even as violent backlash against integration erupted across the region, many white parents framed their decisions as quests for quality education, morality and Christian education, newspaper coverage and school advertisements from the time show.

They’re sucking up a tremendous amount of state education funds. You know that if a local creepy throwback of an academy in a region is getting millions of dollars, that money is coming out of a pool of cash earmarked for general education…and that means the public schools, which are free to the public, get less. And it’s a scam.

Opportunity Scholarships don’t always live up to their name for Black children. Private schools don’t have to admit all comers. Nor do they have to provide busing or free meals. Due to income disparities, Black parents also are less likely to be able to afford the difference between a voucher that pays at most $7,468 a year and an annual tuition bill that can top $10,000 or even $20,000.

So your choices are to send your child to a public school that doesn’t charge tuition, or accept a $5000 voucher to send them to a private school that demands that you pay them an additional $10,000. The private school isn’t necessarily better, but it does provide the helpful service of preventing your child from rubbing elbows with brown children, and may offer the bonus of teaching them more Sunday School-style Jesus.

This is how the Republicans aim to destroy education. They’re going to offer more and more “alternatives” that don’t improve anything, but do pander to the biases of their voters, and that have the advantage of also wrecking public schools. Even if they are building good schools (they probably aren’t), they’re making sure that the non-Republican electorate has fewer opportunities, is less qualified for higher education and upscale work, and are effectively poisoning the minds of the citizenry.

They’ve got at least four more years of running rampant and wrecking institutions. Perhaps some of you figure you can weather a few years and rebuild to come roaring back with progressive values, but you know who can’t handle four more years of ruined education? Kids. Childhood is short, the educational curriculum has year-by-year goals and standards, and if you tear out that foundation, there’s nothing to build on later.

I still recall my 3rd grade year, when I had a couple of weeks of school lost to acute appendicitis, and I came back to discover that I’d missed out on some basic stuff that my peers had already mostly mastered (was it fractions? I recall being bewildered by numerators and denominators for a while). I had to struggle to catch up, and it wasn’t fun — but I was motivated by being already academically inclined, so I had to do the work. Imagine if I missed a year, or two years, though. I probably would have just given up.

An even better example of institutional failure: in general, our current public school system does a poor job of educating students in math, and that has a ripple effect on our colleges. In Europe, most universities offer a complete degree program in three years; here in the USA, it’s usually four years. A lot of that difference is because so many students are ready for calculus when they enroll; some high school programs barely teach algebra. Seriously. I advise so many students who want to get a science degree, and their first year is spent teaching them remedial algebra so that they can do basic stoichiometry in their first chemistry class, or understand elementary concepts in biochemistry for their first biology class.

And Republicans think it more important that no brown people pollute their high school dance, that they don’t get exposed to evilution, or that their history classes don’t mention slavery, or that they learn the highest moral value is to attend church on Sunday? Those are omissions from their education that we will pay for at the college level and beyond.