It's Time for the "Great Liberation"

With Nebraska School Choice Week in the spotlight, people are talking. Many of these conversations are interesting and productive, but unfortunately, racist remarks surface as well. One Facebook commenter said, “Charter schools are not public schools by the way. There is little if any over site [sic] and just because you throw in a picture of some black kids does not mean those schools are better than public education.”
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Comments like these unveil racist attitudes that help to explain why Nebraska has one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation. Such comments attempt to squash the voices of certain students and their parents and treat them as if their opinions don’t matter. Why were so many minority students at the Capitol on Thursday? The following tables help to explain.

Omaha World-Herald, Dec. 4, 2017

Clearly, Nebraska’s public schools struggle to successfully educate minority children. That’s one reason that parents of minority children have sought other options. Unlike parents in most other states, however, Nebraska parents have few, if any, alternatives to traditional public schools.

This is because the education establishment has clamped down on educational freedom. They have spread lies about public charter schools, tax-credit scholarships, private schools, vouchers, and other forms of school choice because they want to retain all of the taxpayer funding and power for themselves, even if that means some students get lost along the way. They outright reject forms of education--such as public charter schools--that have narrowed the achievement gap in other states. This is systemic racism. The Nebraska education system (district administrators, the state board of education, teachers’ union leadership, and even district board members) actually lobbies against the legalization of forms of education that are proven to help minority students.

In a 2016 address to the American Federation for Children, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) touted the fact that over 40 percent of the kids in Newark were attending charter schools. He said, “So for me, this is not an academic discussion anymore. This, to me, is families that I know, neighborhoods. I’ve seen the kind of transformation that could be made. I see how kids who have no history of college in their families suddenly had the arc of their families’ trajectory changed, as they’ve been liberated from what I call the imprisonment of institutions of failure, and now have pathways to institutions of excellence, all the way through college.”

“We all have rights to equal opportunity. We are the last generation, fighting the last big battle to make true on that -- that a child born anywhere in America, from any parents, a child no matter what their race or religion or socio-economic status should have that pathway, should have that equal opportunity, and there is nothing more fundamental to that than education. That is the great liberation.”

The Nebraska Loves Public Schools crowd isn’t interested in the great liberation. In response to dismal ACT scores in Omaha Public Schools, another Facebook poster said, “Do you think all kids in OPS are college bound?” There’s a lot packed behind this statement: low expectations, excuses, and a lack of concern for students as individuals, to start with. So let’s take it a bit farther.

It’s up to each graduate to decide what to do with his or her future, but it’s a travesty that nearly all of the students at some Nebraska high schools will have to pay for remedial college courses out of their own pockets if they’re going to move on to higher education. That is a huge stumbling block to overcome, and many families simply will not be able to afford to pay for what the public schools were tasked (and paid) to do. So do we think that all kids in OPS are college bound? Of course not. Do we think that all kids in OPS should be prepared to handle entry level college courses if that’s the course they pursue? Absolutely. Low-income, minority students at schools in other states can do it. Nebraska kids have as much potential as kids in other states. They just don’t have the freedom to choose schools that will respect their potential.

Former NYC City Council Democrat Eva Moskowitz said this week, “Currently, more than 3 million children attend public charter schools in the U.S. They serve a greater percentage of poor minority students than traditional public schools, and the empirical evidence of more than a dozen gold-standard studies indicates they are producing significant academic gains for these students.”

But the Nebraska education establishment wants to bar these opportunities from students in our great state. It’s time for our state legislators to stand up for those children whose voices were heard in the Capitol this week. It’s time to offer them the “great liberation” that children around the country are already experiencing. Reject the racism of a system that fights tooth and nail to keep their promising futures trapped in what Senator Cory Booker calls “the imprisonment of institutions of failure.”

Yes, we’re many years behind when it comes to education reform, but we can begin the journey toward equity and liberation during this legislative session by passing LB295, which would offer low-income students a way to access schools they could never have accessed before. Will Nebraska continue to shore up its education bureaucracy's tremendous power in 2018? Or will it choose to put the power over children’s futures back in the hands of their parents, where it belongs.