Nebraska Department of Education Takes for the Bait

Education is important to Nebraskans. In fact, it’s so important that we have a government regulatory body whose sole purpose is to nurture “Nebraska students in public, private, and nonpublic school systems.”

Why, then, is the Nebraska Department of Education openly supporting only one type of education (public) when we have many thousands of Nebraska students enrolled in homeschools and private schools. Will there be just one week in the year when NDE celebrates other school choice options?
Oh, wait! School Choice Week is this week! This could be the one week in the year when NDE shows that it actually does support the “other” students it’s tasked with caring for. But wait. NElovesPS declared a holiday during this one week (what a coincidence!), and it appears NDE took the bait.

Is it possible that one of our bulwark government institutions has been swayed by donations from a Nebraskan who hates private schools? The following quote might give us some insight. The piece is called “Warren Buffett is Right: It’s Time to Ban Private Schools,” and it was published in Huffington Post UK in 2012:

“What if I said to you that the solution to the problems in our education system would be to ‘make private schools illegal and assign every child to a [state] school by random lottery’?”

Warren Buffett funds the Sherwood Foundation with shares of Berkshire Hathaway, and then the Sherwood Foundation distributes this money to organizations such as the Nebraska Department of Education.

The Sherwood Foundation also funds NElovesPS, Nebraska Council of School Administrators (NCSA), Stand for Schools, and many other anti-choice groups. You might say that all of these groups are just octopus tentacles that are powered by the same wealthy brain. These organizations spend their Sherwood money trying to undermine and squash some of the educational options that the Nebraska Department of Education is responsible for upholding. And yet, we see NDE regularly using their propaganda in its own communications.

Private schools in Nebraska are among the most heavily regulated private schools in the country, and the NDE is responsible for their oversight. Even while NDE is working with these schools (which, by the way, are successfully educating some of our state’s most disadvantaged students), the NDE is actively promoting groups that are openly lying about other school choice options and trying to make sure low-income students don’t have access to them (opposing LB295, for example). What’s going on here? Does the Nebraska Department of Education work for Nebraskans? Or does it work for a collectivist billionaire? Does the department truly believe that all Nebraska kids are equally valuable? If so, maybe it could stop treating the nonpublic students as if they were second-class citizens.

We did find one single tweet in which NDE acknowledged homeschool students by announcing an art class, but we haven't seen anything at all about private school students. It’s not that we don’t understand NDE’s difficult position. It would be impossibly difficult to be fair and just. The nonpublic students, parents, and educators don’t make a fuss or demand attention, but the Sherwood crowd might throw a fit if NDE actually showed support for all of the students it’s tasked with caring for. All doesn’t mean all, does it.