MS: Pushing for Privatization

Douglas Carswell at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy is excited about all the great privatization pushing that’s been going on in the state lately.

MCPP is one more right wing thinky tank connected to and funded by all the usual folks; extra points for having taken on Carswell, a leader of the Brexit movement, as their president and CEO.

This guy

Mississippi is a state that really aligns certain right wing priorities-- get rid of taxes, get rid of public schools, and just generally get rid of government, all of which is, I’m sure, fully disconnected from the state’s past as a place where a lot of white folks really don’t want to be told that they have to provide certain public services for those not-white folks. With all that in mind, they would really like to move to universal taxpayer funded vouchers and, really, a pure voucher system where no schools are funded at all and parents get a couple of bucks to go out and do who knows what for their children.

Carswell sent out his weekly update, declaring that “school choice is our top focus” and “remains our north star.”

The House Education Freedom Committee heard some folks talk about choice, including Mississippi Center for Justice Director of Education Equity Dr. Kim Wiley, who described how Arizona’s voucher system has become a budget-eating monster.

But Carswell wants to underline an appearance from Erika Donalds, Florida’s big-time money-making school choice advocate, who apparently appeared on this occasion wearing her Moms for Liberty hat. Donalds certainly earned that hat, who knew and worked with that crew even before they started the M4L shtick. It’s just that you don’t see her waving the M4L hat around very often. They also heard from Patrick Wolf, Arkansas’s go-to guy for shoveling privatization baloney (sometimes he even writes up some “research”). Lindsey Burke, the education chief at the Heritage Foundation (where she authored the education parts of Project 2025) and now Deputy Assistant Secretary-- she has also stopped by.

Caswell explains how choice would work, and provides some specific answers. Particularly notable is his explanation of how choice wouldn’t lead to overcrowding:

Under our proposal, schools would get to set capacity limits and decline additional students if full. Schools could also reject students with significant disciplinary issues, maintaining safe and focused learning environments.

This is remarkably frank; school choice would be the school’s choice. “We’re just too full,” they could say. Or “We think your child would be detrimental to our school’s learning environment.” Which seems fine, because exclusionary education has never been a problem in Mississippi in the past, right? Not that I should pick on Mississippi-- virtually every taxpayer-funded voucher program includes provisions that allow private schools to exclude whatever students they want to exclude. School choice is school’s choice. That right of the school to discriminate is, in practice, given far more weight than any supposed “parent power.” But Caswell is a bit unusual in laying it out so plainly.

Caswell also argues that all the other states that surround them are doing it, which is quite the argument to make in the Deep South, with its collective history of educational inadequacy.

Caswell offers other weak sauce as well. Folks say that choice programs defund public schools, “but that’s misleading.” “Misleading” is a great word for when you want to say “Well, they’re not wrong, but I’d rather get you to look at something else.” Caswell offers the free market argument-- if public schools don’t want to get defunded, they should beat the competition. Of course, they’re not competing on a level field-- they can’t, for instance, reject students for whatever trips their fancy. Caswell also throws in his version of “fund students, not systems” which is an education version of “I want insurance to fund my broken leg, not my doctor” as if the system is not the “how” of serving the student.

This is particularly odd coming from Mississippi, where the public school system has produced the “Mississippi miracle“ which conservatives are holding up as proof of the awesomeness of phonics and Science of Reading, and while there may be a mountain of baloney behind that “triumph,” it is being touted as an achievement by the system.

Caswell asserts that school choice works. It’s pretty to think so, but that’s not what the evidence says. But for an outfit that would like to do away from any instruments that require taxpayers to support education for other peoples’ children, a voucher system that pays parents to give up their right to a free guaranteed education is just the thing.

There are education reformsters who pursue choice because they believe in the magical marketplace or the benefits to students, or at least talk the talk. MCPP is not one of those. They barely discuss the educational aspects of their policy plans, which are coming on the heels of their successful drive to eliminate income tax in the state. They keep talking about “access to the educational opportunities that their kids deserve,” but of course those opportunities will only be available to certain select children.

It’s worth noting that Mississippi was always a big state for segregation academies, and some private schools that are essentially segregation academies are still thriving in the state. I bet those private schools will be more than happy to get big fat taxpayer subsidies under a universal voucher plan. Like a little mini-brexit with a state payoff.\