Jane Raybould is Irked.

Jane Raybould is irked. At least, that’s what she says in a recent campaign email sent to Nebraskans (see below).

Full of falsehoods, this email claims that there is an “ideological crusade against our education system” and a “national war on our public schools.” She says that she’s very proud of Nebraska’s public schools, and maybe that’s why she thinks all children should be forced to attend them.

Recent testing data has shown us that parents have cause to be concerned about their children’s educations. About half of 3rd through 8th graders scored proficient or above on the latest statewide standardized tests. Only half are proficient in reading? If ever there were a call for reform, this is it. And yet, here we have politicians like Jane Raybould lamenting not the fact that many children are functionally illiterate but the fact that reformers are asking good questions and making recommendations for improvements.

Raybould’s email is long on scare tactics and short on specifics. She vaguely mentions three bills in the legislature that she doesn’t like, but she doesn’t say what they are. Is she referring to LB 295 about tax-credit scholarships, which offers tax credits to individuals and businesses who donate money to scholarship funds for K-12 students who need scholarships to attend private schools? Public school funding is not touched by this program, but many students’ lives could be changed for the better. Ms. Raybould herself, who attended private Catholic school growing up, was a beneficiary of educational options. It's hard to understand why she would oppose a program that would allow low-income students to access the same options she herself enjoyed as a child.

Raybould isn’t the only person who is feeling irked. Here are a few other groups of people who are currently irked in Nebraska:

• Parents of Black and Hispanic students. Students at Success Academy public charter schools in Harlem, NY (86% of whom are Black and Hispanic) outperformed students in every other school district in the state. Public charter schools are serving Black and Hispanic students (as well as students of other races) extremely well across the country, but the Nebraska education establishment regularly bashes these schools, calling them “schemes” and worse. This backwards mentality may be one of the reasons that minority students in Nebraska are suffering academically. Nebraska has one of the largest achievement gaps in the country. Just 6% of our Black students and 9% of our Hispanic students scored “College Ready” on all four sections of the ACT this past year. The fact that politicians like Jane Raybould dismiss solutions that have proven to be successful for Black and Hispanic students is beyond irksome.
• Parents whose children are zoned for failing schools. Do we have failing public schools in Nebraska? Indeed, we do. In 2015, 87 Nebraska schools were labeled “Needs Improvement” through the state’s new accountability system AQuESTT. That’s a lot of kids attending substandard schools, especially considering their parents don’t have other options. “But wait!” Ed establishment defenders say, “Nebraska has an open enrollment policy! Parents can send their students to any public school they want.” The best school districts and schools are completely full, and parents can’t very well drive their children to other cities for school each day.
• Kids who can’t customize their educations. In many states, kids have all kinds of education options at their disposal. If they have poor health or busy athletic training schedules, they can attend online charter schools. They can use ESAs to access tutoring or special therapies. If they’d prefer to attend a parochial school or other private school, they obtain a tax-credit scholarship and start attending. An LPS high school student recently told us that she wanted to learn ASL (American Sign Language) but her school didn’t offer it. Her counselor told her maybe she could do it in college. In many places across the United States, this student could access an online class if her school didn’t offer it.
• Educators who want more employment options. In a town like Lincoln, Nebraska, if you want to be a teacher, your options for employment are very limited. Thanks to teachers unions and top-heavy district administrations, the job of teaching is not what it used to be. Teachers may not even be able to choose their own test questions, even if the district-mandated questions are confusing or inferior. In school choice states, teachers have many more employment opportunities. They can teach at traditional public schools, public charter schools, or private schools. Some teachers work part-time for online public charter schools while their children are young and then return to brick-and-mortar schools later. Some teachers actually start their own charter schools based on years of their own research and experiences. Many teachers in Nebraska love the current system, but there are plenty of teachers who would love increased and diverse employment opportunities.
• Families who move here from other states. It can be shocking to move to Nebraska from other states and find out that the educational opportunities you formerly took for granted don’t exist here. While the rest of the country reforms and adds exciting new innovations to their school systems, Nebraska is stuck in the dark ages, thanks to politicians like Jane Raybould who use boogeyman tactics like the closing of her recent email: “We need to stop these efforts to upend our school system in their tracks now, before it’s too late.” Are the 44+ school systems around the country that include public charter schools on the brink of destruction? Is our lack of education opportunity in Nebraska helping or hurting students? How many Nebraska high schools appear in the Top 1,000 schools in the latest U.S. News & World Report? (Hint: one).

Jane Raybould is concerned that expanding opportunity will upend our school system? Oh brother.