Chicken Little and ‘school choice’

As a proud alumnus of Iowa public schools (Des Moines Hoover, class of 1972), I’ve watched in increasing despair as Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Republican Legislature have proceeded to eviscerate public education in Iowa.

Their playbook is both cynical and all too familiar.

It begins by starving schools of resources. According to Common Good Iowa, state support per student in public schools fell to 2% beginning in fiscal year 2012, a drop from 3.1% the previous decade.

Local school boards are forced either to raise taxes (always unpopular) or scrimp and cut in order to balance budgets – or some combination. Programs are jettisoned, with art and music typically the first to go. Teachers, already underpaid, receive little or no salary increases, leading to decline in morale and, for many, an exodus.

Then, having cut funding, the governor and the legislature circle back several years later and perform their Chicken Little dance. “Oh look, public schools are failing our students,” they cry. “We can’t possibly expect parents to send their children to these miserable schools!”

The only solution, they contend, is offering taxpayer-funded vouchers so parents can exercise “school choice” and enroll their children in private, including religious, schools. These schools, unlike public schools, can be selective; moreover, they have little or no accountability.

The consequences are predictable. With Iowa taxpayers footing the bill – $315 million in 2025-26 – private and religious schools siphon off some of the best students, while public schools, with diminished funding and forced to accommodate a larger percentage of special needs students, spiral further into decline.

And with lower-income Iowans unable to afford private education even with vouchers, the system inevitably widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

For Reynolds and the Legislature, this is all according to plan, not only in Iowa but across the nation. Betsy De Vos, Donald Trump’s secretary of education in his first term, for example, dedicated her entire adult life to the destruction of public education, and the voucher scheme was written into the “Big Ugly Bill” passed by Congress earlier this summer.

What makes the attack on public education in Iowa all the more confounding is that Iowa once boasted one of the best school systems in the country.

But there’s more at stake than declining schools. Public education is one of the crown jewels of the American experiment.

Known at the time as “common schools,” public education emerged early in the 19th century in part because the founders recognized that an educated citizenry was crucial to the survival of democracy. Common schools also enjoyed support from religious leaders, including evangelicals, who believed that education would allow the children of those less affluent to toe the ladder of upward mobility.

Many of the early leaders of public school systems, including Kentucky, Ohio and Alaska (then a territory), were Protestant clergy.

In an increasingly diverse society, public schools were the one place where children of different ethnic backgrounds, religious persuasions and even socioeconomic backgrounds could learn from one another – their differences, their similarities – in the classroom or on the playground and get along with each other.

That sounds to me like a recipe for democracy.

I won’t pretend that public education has always lived up to those lofty ideals, but we cannot afford to shrug off those aspirations. Those who care about the future of democracy must work to ensure the survival of public education.

Randall Balmer is the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College. He is the author of 18 books, and his most recent book is “America’s Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State.”