School Choice for the Elite: Just Like Elizabeth Warren

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Howard Fuller gets it.

He attended the November Elizabeth Warren rally held at Clark Atlanta University. The rally was billed as a recognition of the historic role of black women in protest. And a group of black women (and men) ended up protesting at the rally. They protested Warren’s recently unveiled education plan, which curtails charter schools.

Here’s what Fuller experienced (as published in The 74 Million): “Sitting in that gym, listening and absorbing all of it, was in some ways surreal. We had a section in the bleachers. There were probably about 175 people from the parent network. There was a huge electronic sign above the stage saying black women are valued, and then Elizabeth Warren’s name under it: Elizabeth Warren values black women. The whole program was set up to honor black women who had engaged in struggle over time.

All these speakers had been lavishing praise on Warren, how she was going to fight for all of us and, “We got to flip the table, create a new table.” I’m sitting there saying to myself, “You’re talking about all this struggle, yet you’re pursuing a policy that denies the self-determination of black women.” For me, the whole rally was a contradiction. That for me was surreal.”

Here in Nebraska, we’ve seen the same script play out. Privileged white women like Connie Duncan and Kathy Campbell claim to “advocate for women” while actively working to make sure only wealthy mothers have school choice. If they genuinely cared about women, they would help women with one of their biggest worries (their kids’ education). Duncan’s situation parallels Warren’s even further: both women sent their own children to private school but work to prevent low-income kids from having the same opportunities.

Back to Fuller:

Fuller accompanied Sarah Carpenter to another room where she visited with Elizabeth Warren (see the video here). “She [Carpenter] was really just pouring out her heart, right? And she said, she being Sarah, “Your children probably went to a private school.” Warren said to her, in a manner that tried to make Sarah feel uninformed and stupid, “No, my kids went to public school,” and then patted her hand.

If you look at the video, you’ll see it. I didn’t know at that moment of time she was lying about the school situation of her child, that came out later. But it was just — how can we say we value black women and treat Sarah the way that she did? It was disgusting."

Nebraska parents have dealt with this patronizing attitude for far too long. When parents ask for more options, we’re met with insulting responses like, “Nebraska already has school choice.”

But it doesn’t stop there. Instead of just trying to placate parents with insulting platitudes, the Nebraska elite goes one step further and accuses parents of being paid to advocate for choice. It must be unthinkable to our state’s comfortable elite that parents would stand up to the status quo simply because they love their children. Money must be involved, right? Just a few weeks ago, we got some comments on our blog posts that illustrate this. 

And it’s certainly not the first time. From the beginning of our grassroots parent organization, people have asked who funds us. We don’t have funding. We’re not a non-profit. We’re parents who love our children. We trust parents and believe they will make better decisions for kids than faraway administrators and politicians possibly could.

And Fuller sees the “money attacks” for what they are. Again from the 74 Million piece:

“The second thing is, there was, of course, reference to Dr. Martin Luther King and his struggles. And what’s really interesting is the way that J. Edgar Hoover attacked Martin Luther King was to accuse him of being funded by the communists. In my way of looking at the world, they’re using the same playbook, whether it’s Elizabeth Warren or [her] so-called progressive supporters, the same playbook.

We don’t talk about the issues that people are raising, like the right of self-determination, the failure of the traditional system to educate their children, the need for them to have the same powers to choose that Warren had for her own child. They don’t want to talk about that. They want to try to get you caught up in, “Well, they must be here because the Waltons paid them to be here,” or, “They’re paid provocateurs.”

It’s an old tactic. That playbook has been used over and over against people who tried to make a change in the status quo, and what’s interesting is, you could ask anybody in there, “Who pays you?” or “How did you get here?” or “Who paid for these buses?” or whatever. But I assume that people are there because they believe in whatever it is they’re talking about, not because somebody paid them.”

We have politicians like Elizabeth Warren right here in Nebraska

Nebraska state senator Lynne Walz chose to send her children to Archbishop Bergan Catholic School in Fremont. This school prides itself on “recognizing the individual learning styles and abilities of each student.” With a student-to-faculty ratio of 10:1, it’s very possible to do so. This is the kind of attention and focus that many parents would like for their children.
Surely, Lynne Walz is a conscientious parent, just like Elizabeth Warren. She trusts herself to make good decisions about her own kids, and fortunately, she has the means to carry out her plans.

When it came to tax-credit scholarships for low-income families, however, Walz stuck with the teachers’ union, which cannot abide any competition. Despite the fact that tax-credit scholarships save states money (Georgia has saved between $12 million and $85 million; Florida saves $144 million every year because of its tax-credit scholarships), Walz said, "If you really have any interest in reducing property taxes, you would agree LB670 is a step in the wrong direction," according to the Lincoln Journal Star. It’s simply not true. When the state saves money on educating students (by allowing parents to use less-expensive schools and encouraging private donations for funding tuition), we don’t need to collect as many property taxes.

Why would a private-school mom make such a silly argument? We certainly can’t speak for Walz. We wonder, however, if her endorsement from the NSEA has anything to do with it. Money talks. Apparently, it’s more persuasive than moms and dads trying to do right by their kids.

Unfortunately, we’re used to this kind of hypocrisy in Nebraska, a state where many millions of dollars are spent on PR campaigns for our monopoly public school system each year. We’ll let Fuller have the last word on hypocrisy:

“I’m used to it. It’s just another example of the hypocrisy that exists among so many so-called progressives and liberals. Elizabeth Warren, when you read what she’s talking about eliminating: She doesn’t want to have vouchers. She doesn’t want to have tax credits. Which would be the only way that most poor parents could get their kid to a private school, like she was able to do for her child. That to me, is the hypocrisy. And she knows it’s hypocritical. That’s why she lied.”