Is the push to reopen schools really a plot to dismantle them? Floridians want to know.

“Have You Heard” is a fantastic podcast which focuses on current education “reform” trends and the unintended consequences of the current shift towards privatization and a market-based education system. The podcast is hosted by journalist and public education advocate, Jennifer Berkshire, and education historian, Jack Schneider. It is always worth a listen. If you become a patreon subscriber of the podcast, for as little a $2/month, you are rewarded with an extended segment they call “In The Weeds.” Following the most recent episode (Episode 93), entitled “Making the Grade,” was an “In the Weeds” segment called “Is the push to reopen schools really a plot to dismantle them?”

Some will read the title and dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.  That is exactly what we used to hear if we equated “ed reform” with privatization five or so years ago, when the education reformers were still hiding their desire to privatize public education. In Florida, they now make few attempts to conceal their mission.  We hope you will read this summary, subscribe at Patreon, listen to the entire “In the Weeds” segment, and draw your own conclusions. Will the Covid pandemic be used fundamentally alter public education in Florida?

The “Weeds” segment begins by asking WHY Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos (who has a long history of saying, on the record, that the federal government shouldn’t ever tell schools what to do) is pushing so hard for public schools to open in the midst of a raging pandemic? In the midst of the debate surrounding the reopening of public schools, President Trump tweeted “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL” followed a few days later with:

Secretary DeVos followed up by suggesting that if schools aren’t open 5 days a week, then they would give the money directly to the parents. For parents in areas particularly hard hit by Covid, who are particularly nervous about sending their children back to school, it was like throwing gasoline on a fire. No other country has forced the reopening of their schools while the virus raged out of control… What is going on here?

Jack Schneider has some ideas:

“I think DeVos is playing a game in which “heads she wins and tails you lose,” where, if she can force schools to open, there are only a couple of ways this can go, and it’s always bad for schools. In one scenario, the schools don’t reopen and she has issued this threat and then can use the bully pulpit, if not any constitutional authority, to berate the schools and, at least, begin to try to strip them of their Title I funds which, though they account for a small fraction of the school budget in all schools, would still be devastating financially for the schools, particularly given the hits to state budgets that we’re seeing across the U.S.  In (the other) scenario, in which the schools open and stay open, we’ve got parents who are going to be terrified to send their kids there and, if the schools stay open through a return and a resurgence of the pandemic, then those parents will be looking for alternatives to traditional public schools that are in-person and will suddenly be open to the kinds of “choices” that DeVos has been pushing for her whole career. So, either this will be a further opportunity to destabilize schools rhetorically, and continue to present the public education system as a “failed” system, or it will be an opportunity to present alternatives to public education in a new light to parents who will be feeling desperate and out of sorts. I think it’s a very savvy, calculated move and, you know I learned from you to take Betsy DeVos really seriously… to not make jokes about the fact that she doesn’t know much about the public school system because, in fact, she doesn’t really care. She doesn’t care what the facts on the ground are because she thinks that the whole system is bunk and should be blown up. What she wants is a system that is entirely privatized, in which parents are exercising free choice, in a free market, doing whatever they want to advance their own private aims. She know lots about that and so, once more, I think we need to take her really seriously.

Berkshire added:

“Right away, you heard people say “she can’t yank funding…” but she’s signaling to her allies at the state level… you know, she’s got allies in state after state and this is telling them, “hey guys, pass a law at the state level, ALEC can copy it and tell your folks that if schools don’t reopen or they have to close again then they’re gonna lose their money” and, at the same time, you’re the one that’s setting the definition out there that “if a school is closed, it’s not delivering to taxpayers or parents,” and she said that again, and again, and I feel like people sort of missed that part of it because they’re so focused on her blunt statement about schools reopening. So, her solution is to give the money to the parents and I think you’re absolutely right, Jack, that the moment creates an opportunity. People are going to be considering alternatives that they NEVER would have considered in the past…  hire a tutor… form a pod with other parents… what if that experience turns out to be, maybe not as great as (there experience in public school) but good enough. Multiply this by an infinite number of people… this is going to be devastating for public schools.”

Schneider points out how DeVos and her allies continually refer to “a new normal.” Rather than referring to the crisis as something that needs to be weathered, they’re talking about it as a transformative event. Schneider insists:

“This is not the new normal, this is the definition of abnormal, but if people accept it as the new normal and, let’s say that ALEC ( the American Legislative Exchange Council) creates some model legislation that then gets passed at the state level… that, let’s say, creates education debit cards for parents who don’t send their kids to school during the pandemic and that gives them their per-pupil allotment on that debit card to be spent in any manner they like (this is something that’s been done in Arizona), then what do parents do in year two? If that experience turns out to be ok and let’s imagine that the schools have been financially ravaged, they lay off a bunch of teachers, half the population doesn’t return to the school, maybe parents decide “I’m gonna keep this debit card and use it again.” Pretty soon that does become “the new normal” and you have legitimized a set of policies that previously would have been unthinkable in most states.

In most states this might be unthinkable… but not in Florida.

Florida has heard DeVos’ call and is ready to take action.

On the same day President Trump tweeted “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL,” Commissioner of Education, Richard Corcoran issued 2020-EO-06, an Emergency Order promising full funding and calendar flexibility only to schools who offer a 5 day per week face to face option for all students.

While the FLDOE claims the EO merely gives districts the flexibilities they were asking for, those flexibilities are only offered to districts “assuring” the face to face option. Districts across the state responded by scrambling to revise their reopening plans, in many cases adding back the face to face option in the hopes that their plan will be approved by the FLDOE and they will qualify for the funding stability.

Keep in mind, the Commissioner Corcoran is a strong proponent of “school choice” and privatization, pushing as both a legislator and as the commissioner for the expansion of charter schools and private school voucher programs. Shortly after he was appointed as commissioner, he was reported saying his goal was to move 2/3rd of Florida’s 2.7 million public school students into private options, envisioning a system where most students attended charter and private schools.

After calling for the campus closures of Florida’s public schools in response to the pandemic in March, at the April 1st State Board of Education meeting, Commissioner Corcoran praised Florida Virtual School (FLVS) for re-allocating $4.3 million of its reserve funding to purchase the servers necessary to expand its capacity be capable of serving the entire Florida student population (2.72 million). He suggested that, should the closures remain necessary, FLVS could serve the entire state’s virtual needs.

At the end of May, the FLDOE announced, as part of its reopening advice, that it would be investing $5 million of the state’s 10% share of the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) funding into FLVS, reimbursing the costs of the initial expansion to 2.7 million and further increasing capacity to serve 4 million total students. Additional CARES funding ($250,000) was invested in training up to 10,000 teachers to be prepared for instruction using school districts’ FLVS franchises. The stated goal was for FLVS to “continue to provide its 6-hour Virtual Teacher Training (VTT) course for every public school teacher in Florida until all public school teachers are trained.” The irony that Florida is investing in the training of every public school teacher to be capable of teaching every public school student virtually, at the same time that the State is threatening districts’ funding if they fail to provide all students with 5 days a week, in-person instruction during a raging pandemic, can not be overstated.

Shortly after his inauguration, Governor Ron DeSantis redefined public education saying “if it’s public dollars, it’s public education,” an idea celebrated by DeVos.

Though DeSantis initially appeared to be softening on the idea of requiring all schools to open while the pandemic rages, on July 22nd, he addressed the state with a prepared speech, urging people to not be “paralyzed be fear” and urging schools to provide all students with the option for face-to-face instruction. He claimed that children had “born the harshest burden” from the public health measures and suggested “the risk to students from in-person learning is low, the cost of keeping schools closed are enormous.” “The important thing is,” he said, “that our parents have a meaningful choice when it comes to in-person education.” You can read the text of his speech here. By labeling schools that fail to open as being “harmful to children,” DeSantis appears to have already mastered DeVos’ game of “heads I win and tails you lose,”

Corcoran and DeSantis aren’t the only one’s likely to respond to DeVos’ signaling. Senate Education Committee Chair, Manny Diaz Jr. has already expressed his eagerness to accelerate the advancement of the Education Savings Accounts that DeVos is promoting. (Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, are equivalent to the debit card type of voucher that Schneider described). In a podcast interview with voucher advocate, Step Up For Student’s Doug Tuthill, Diaz admitted that, in his opinion, “our intention has always been to move in that direction (towards ESAs)” and “some times it takes a crisis, unfortunately, to really accelerate things and I think that… I think we’re gonna see that here, Doug, I really do.”

Will the Covid pandemic be used to fundamentally alter public education in Florida? Will model legislation creating ESAs pass next session? Florida appears primed to answer Betsy’s call and use the pandemic to disrupt, defund and further privatize our public schools. Floridians should take these threats seriously and remain vigilant. We fear, like Ms. Bershire suggested, “this is going to be devastating for public schools.”