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public education
Finding Each Other and the Stakes of Public Education
If a return to an imagined “normal” is actually only a mirror of the present horrors, just at a different scale, what does that mean for how we struggle for–or through—schools?
Aug 20, 2025
“If they close the school, how will we find each other?”
This question was posed by a New York City high school student in 2010, as their school was being “phased out”—one of many caught up in the sweeps of school closings that characterized the violent austerity measures of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration. The pedagogy of the question compels us to consider what is lost when a school is closed or phased out, and what public infrastructures, like education, have to do with “finding one another.”
The question becomes ever more urgent in our current context of the Trump administration’s austerity measures and the broader dismantling of public education. Far from perfect, for many, public schools have been quotidian diaries of state divestment, policing, and criminalization. Yet they have also—unromantically and consistently—been places of survivance: where everyday people have cared for and found each other and sometimes, come together for common cause. In recent months we have also seen the power of schools as sites of resistance, where the abolitionist principle of “we keep us safe” has countered fascist violence, criminalization, and disposability with fierce solidarities, community defense, and the praxis of sanctuary.
A recent New York Times article, however, highlights the right’s growing critique of praxes such as these—which it has labeled broadly as “empathy.” According to the critique, empathy encourages a sort of lawlessness, where the recognition of shared humanity becomes the driving force for action—instead of rigid and narrow conceptions of legality and rights. In other words, according to its critics, it is empathy that emboldened educational workers to unite and refuse the entry of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to public school buildings. It is empathy that inspired Jaime C., a Los Angeles Metro Bus driver who refused to let ICE agents onto his bus, noting, “Part of our job is to make sure everyone is safe… I’m not going to open my doors, regardless if there’s retaliation or not. I’m going to do what is right...” According to the critics of empathy, these brave, bold, and solidaristic actions—which for many of us have provided moments of inspiration during the dark year that has been 2025—are marked by confusion rather than clear thinking, due to lack of an understanding of the need for “order.”
The fight against austerity, to meet our material needs, and redistribute wealth in the Belly of the Beast, must be rooted in an ever expanded understanding of what it means to find each other.
In her book, The Capital Order, Clara Mattei reminds us that the fascist order accelerated through the Trump administration’s austerity measures is an entirely old one, that needs to be understood as essential to capitalism. As many have noted, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025, otherwise known as the One Big Beautiful Bill [OBBB], accounts for the largest one-time upward redistribution of wealth. It also needs to be understood as a weapon that is meant to protect capitalism by targeting public infrastructures and by making us even more reliant on the market. As the remaining vestiges of the welfare state that guarantee some form of social provision for the reproduction of daily life and also present the possibility of finding each other are hollowed out—we become even further alienated and separated from one another: consumer-citizens entrenched in self-interest and perpetual competition against one another.
What austerity also makes clear, Mattei argues, is the entrenched relationship between liberalism, fascism, and imperialism. In the case of education, this alignment confirms, on one hand, what Black and Indigenous organizers have been saying for some time: that public schools are a site of confinement, violence, control, and harm—making clear, for example, that it is not about transitioning from school to prison, but rather, historical and contemporary nexus between the two. It also affirms what students and educational workers in solidarity with Palestinian liberation—exposing how schools run not only on exclusion and disposession “at home” but also on extraction and genocide globally—have likewise clarified about the limits of liberalism, demonstrating that democratic rights and institutional safety only exist for those who dare not question the terms of the capital order.
If a return to an imagined “normal” is then, actually only a mirror of the present horrors, just at a different scale, what does that mean for how we struggle for–or through—schools?
The question becomes ever more urgent with the passage of the OBBB which, alongside other measures enacted by the Trump administration, seeks to restructure education as we know it. One key piece of the “how” of the restructuring is the establishment of a national voucher program. While conservative efforts to publicly fund religious schools have been consistently blocked by the courts, the voucher program provides a work-around through what we might understand as a federal not-for-profit-industrial complex. The new federal program provides a 100% tax credit (a $1:$1 return) to anyone who contributes to a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO). The nongovernmental entity of the SGO can then redistribute funds that can be used to pay for religious, private, home, or segregated schools—allowing, as former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos envisioned, funding to directly follow students instead of school systems or buildings. Any family earning up to 300% the area median income would be eligible to apply for funds.
Two provisions—a state opt-in requirement and a cap of $1,700 annual tax credit per individual—establish some guardrails for the immediate growth of vouchers. However, with the establishment of an infrastructure for the voucher program alongside the gutting of the Department of Education (McMahon v. New York) and the Trump administration’s Russian roulette of withholding (and then releasing) billions of dollars for public education, it is not hard to imagine how—with a push for increased devolution to states—that the program might soon grow (the cap for federal payouts for 2026 is $10 billion, with 5% increases annually). Moreover, the combined impact of the OBBB’s violent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid cuts disproportionately impact families who rely on public schools as well as critical infrastructure for special needs students and food safety and mental and physical health services for students more generally—while the bill also exponentially expands federal dollars for surveillance, detention, deportation, and ICE. These provisions, along with the OBBB’s broader shrinkage of public benefits—or Health and Human Services’ reinterpretation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA, which, among other aspects, bans undocumented families from accessing Head Start programs)—are not meant to “save money.” In 2024, for example, public education only accounted for 3.9% of federal outlays.
In the context of such assaults, the question is not if we fight to defend the public, but it is urgent to keep at the forefront what kind of public we are fighting for. The austerity measures enacted during the Great Recession provide some lessons. For instance, in New York City, some public schools sought to mitigate budget cuts by increasing individual and private foundation donations. Not only did this strategy (often enacted through the expansion of school choice programs and policies) intensify inequity and segregation, but it also ceded ground to the market, fortifying a sense of consumer citizenship and a version of the public that is not antagonistic to the capital order, or the relations it seeks to police. What Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore call “creative aggression” is helpful in thinking about what might be done differently. As they note, creative aggression clarifies that the violence of austerity need not always lead us to the trap of affirming the violence we are used to. Instead, its accompanying contradictions can help clarify opportunities to “[use] whatever weapons are available—which sometimes can be things like constitutional provisions, using lawfare to fight—to support that creative aggression reworking social reality to make abolition geography.”
If a return to “normal” is only an affirmation of violence, then key to fighting for the public in the context of austerity and fascism is the reworking of social reality to make abolition geography. The fight against austerity, to meet our material needs, and redistribute wealth in the Belly of the Beast, must be rooted in an ever expanded understanding of what it means to find each other. As Robin D.G. Kelley reminds us, we cannot have socialism without anticolonialism; finding each other must be rooted in internationalism.
It is this clarity, coupled with creative aggression, that informed for example, the National Education Association’s (NEA) 7,000 Member Representative Assembly recent vote. In a stand of solidarity with Palestinian liberation and the advancement of worker, civil, and human rights, the NEA decided to cut ties—including contracts—with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Likewise, the Profession Staff Congress’ (PSC, CUNY) vote earlier this year to divest from Israeli companies and government bonds and (as part of a joint campaign with the MORE Caucus of the United Federation of Teachers) recommend that their pension system—Teachers Retirement System (TRS)—also divest $100 million from the same. Such organizing mobilizes the public as a space to widen the terrain, and terms, of struggle and is not only powerful, but also considered dangerous to the capital order: Both votes were challenged and eventually overturned.
Examples such as these are a reminder that in the struggle for public education—the schools and institutions we have—while not an end, does present a critical site through which to enact creative aggression and practice collective governance that builds capacity for protracted struggle, while rooting spaces where we can find each other to expand our political horizons and grow fierce, loving, and dangerous solidarities toward collective liberation.
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Democrats Rebuked for Backing GOP War on Public Schools, Trump Voucher Expansion
"Don't let the far right's demonization of public education fool you," said one commentator. "People support their local public schools."
Aug 06, 2025
Evidence is mounting across the United States that school vouchers are harming public schools—and numerous studies have shown they largely do not benefit students academically as proponents have long claimed—leaving education advocates to wonder why the issue of so-called "school choice" is a fault line within the Democratic Party.
The Trump administration's recent cave on K-12 public education funding, more than $6 billion of which President Donald Trump was pressured to release after temporarily freezing it, showed that "public schools are a winning issue, everywhere," wrote commentator David Pepper at his Substack blog, Pepperspectives last week.
Yet when Education Week asked the governors of all 50 states and Washington, D.C. whether they would opt in to the nation's first federal school voucher program that was passed last month as part of Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, only one Democratic governor—Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico—clearly stated she would not take part in the $26 billion program, which allows taxpayers to claim a 100% tax credit for up to $1,700 in donations to scholarships to private schools, and allow lower-income families to receive scholarship funds.
Lujan Grisham expressed concerns about the lack of accountability measures for private schools that would be funded with tax dollars, a loss of funding and enrollment for public schools, and the possibility of private schools discriminating against children with special needs.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also expressed doubt that his state would participate, saying "it doesn't seem fair" to support a program that "is taking away money from people who can't afford to go to a private school, who would like to go to a public school."
But several other Democratic governors didn't respond to Education Week's query, and others who have been supportive of school vouchers in the past, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, said they were "reviewing" the program, which does not go into effect until 2027.
"Governor Polis is still reviewing the details of this legislation, but is excited by the possibility of unlocking new federal tax credits for donations to help low-income kids achieve," said Polis' office.
The survey of governors was taken as two reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post detailed the damage school vouchers have already done to public school districts.
As the Times reported Wednesday, a decline in the number of babies being born in the U.S. and the rise of the "school choice" movement, particularly in Republican-controlled states, have led public schools in cities including Orlando, Florida; Newark, New Jersey; and Memphis, Tennessee to confront their emerging enrollment crisis by hiring consultants to help combat right-wing claims that children will suffer if they attend public schools.
Although Florida is one of a few states that has a growing instead of shrinking population of children, its public school systems are facing "significant declines," reported the Times, with more than 400,000 children in the state using the Florida school voucher system, called the universal education savings account—the largest voucher program in the United States.
In Orange County, where Orlando is located, the school-age population has grown by 5% since 2020—but the school district is expecting a 25% decline in kindergarten enrollment this year—and a potential loss of $28 million in federal funding, since schools are funded according to the number of students they enroll.
In Arizona, the Post reported, nearly 89,000 students receive vouchers the state government calls Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, while 62,000 receive taxpayer-supported scholarships for private schools through another voucher program and more than 232,000 students attend charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run.
The state's embrace of the "school choice" movement left just 75% of Arizona children attending public schools in 2021, according to the Post, and school districts are responding by closing schools. Roosevelt Elementary School District in the Phoenix area will operate just 13 schools this year—a third less than last school year.
"You're taking the same size pie and cutting it into more pieces," Rick Brammer, a consultant who analyzes school enrollment, told the Post. "As we've created and funded alternatives, we've just emptied out school after school from the districts."
Instead of adopting an anti-voucher, vehemently pro-public school stance as a signature issue, the Democratic Party is split on the issue, with a number of Democratic governors backing charter schools and vouchers and some veterans of the Obama administration, including former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, backing a group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), which has advocated for states to embrace the federal voucher program in Trump's domestic policy agenda.
As the Times reported Monday, DFER's chief executive, former Democratic Providence, Rhode Island Mayor Jorge Elorza, traveled to a Democratic Governors Association in Madison, Wisconsin this past weekend with the goal of convincing governors who are still "reviewing" the federal voucher program, as many told Education Week, to opt in.
"This is literally free money that is broadly supported by the majority of voters who have steadily drifted away from the party," Elorza told the Times, referring to Black and Latino voters, who some polls have shown believe public schools are failing children. "It just makes sense."
Other Democratic strategists who have previously been involved with DFER have shifted their focus to growing charter school networks in southern states.
Former Georgia state lawmaker Alisha Thomas Searcy, who co-founded the Center for Strong Public Schools Action, which is pushing the charter school effort, told Chalkbeat Tennessee on Monday that the group will not embrace vouchers.
"I want to be clear about what sets us apart," Searcy told the outlet. "It's our commitment to public education. It is foundational for us, and it's nonnegotiable. We're committed to remaining focused on strengthening public schools, not creating pathways that take away from them."
Public education advocates have warned charter schools, like vouchers, drain funding from public schools with less oversight, and research has shown mixed results in terms of academic improvements.
Many Democratic lawmakers, said Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-90), "have an education plan, it’s fully funding public education so every child has a well-resourced classroom, providing wraparound services so families have needed resources, smaller class size, and teacher autonomy."
Jennifer Berkshire, host of the education-focused podcast "Have You Heard," noted that popular Democratic politicians including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper have been vehement critics of school vouchers and defenders of robust funding for public education.
"And yet there is intense pressure to get Democrats to embrace vouchers in order to 'stay relevant,'" said Berkshire last week.
Vouchers were resoundingly defeated in a number of states last November—including those that votes for Trump.
A ballot initiative in Kentucky that would have sent public money to private schools was defeated by a 30-point margin, and in Nebraska, nearly every county voted to repeal an existing voucher program. Colorado voters, despite their Democratic governor's support for school vouchers, voted against adding a "right to school choice" to the state constitution.
Considering the broad public disapproval of school privatization, Pepper offered advice to Democrats last week.
"Don't let the far right's demonization of public education fool you," he wrote. "People support their local public schools. Whether it's an attack from Washington, an attack from your statehouse, some new privatization scheme, a billionaire-backed referendum or a candidate who is all-in on attacking public schools—oppose them fiercely and call them out bluntly. Go on offense for public schools, and against efforts to attack public schools."
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SCOTUS’ Next Move: Taxpayer-Funded Religious Schools?
A landmark case could force taxpayers to fund religious charter schools.
Apr 02, 2025
On April 30, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that could fundamentally reshape public education: Oklahoma’s controversial approval of the nation’s first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School. The case forces a critical question to the forefront—should taxpayers be compelled to finance religious schools while having no authority to regulate them?
The court’s decision could continue a pattern of rulings that have chipped away at the traditional separation between church and state, transforming the landscape of public education and public funding. If the justices side with St. Isidore, the ruling could mark a turning point in American schooling—one that may erode public accountability, alter funding priorities, and blur the constitutional boundaries that have long defined the relationship between religion and government.
This case builds on a series of decisions from the Roberts Court that have steadily eroded the wall between church and state. In Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, the court allowed public funds to be used for secular purposes by religious institutions. Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue expanded this principle, ruling that states cannot exclude religious schools from publicly funded programs. And in Carson v. Makin, the court went further, mandating that state voucher programs include religious schools, arguing that exclusion constitutes discrimination against religion.
As the justices deliberate, they would do well to consider not just the legal arguments, but also the practical and moral consequences of their decision.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in Carson, stated, “[i]n particular, we have repeatedly held that a State violates the Free Exercise Clause when it excludes religious observers from otherwise available public benefits.” On its face, this reasoning frames the issue as one of fairness—ensuring religious entities are not treated unequally. But the deeper implications of this logic are far more radical.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in her dissent, this interpretation fundamentally redefines the Free Exercise Clause, equating a government’s refusal to fund religious institutions with unconstitutional religious discrimination. Justice Stephen Breyer took this concern a step further, pointing to the court’s own precedent to highlight the dangerous trajectory of its rulings:
We have previously found, as the majority points out, that “a neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizations through the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause.” We have thus concluded that a State may, consistent with the Establishment Clause, provide funding to religious schools through a general public funding program if the “government aid… reach[es] religious institutions only by way of the deliberate choices of… individual [aid] recipients.”
Breyer then underscored the significance of this distinction:
But the key word is “may.” We have never previously held what the court holds today, namely, that a State must (not may) use state funds to pay for religious education as part of a tuition program designed to ensure the provision of free statewide public school education.
Finally, he distilled the implications into a warning: “What happens once ‘may’ becomes ‘must’?”
That shift—from allowance to obligation—could force states not only to permit religious education in publicly funded programs, but to actively finance it, eroding any semblance of neutrality between public and religious schooling. This transformation threatens to unravel the Establishment Clause’s core protection: that government does not privilege or compel religious exercise.
Now, the Oklahoma case brings Breyer’s warning into sharp focus. The petitioners are asking the court to declare that charter schools are not state actors—meaning they would be free from public accountability and regulations, including those related to discrimination or special education. At the same time, they argue that public funds must be made available to religious charters. The implications of such a ruling could reverberate across the country, reshaping education in profound and troubling ways.
The May-to-Must Transformation and Its Far-Reaching Consequences
If the Court sides with St. Isidore, the ripple effects could be seismic, triggering a wave of religious charter school applications and fundamentally altering the landscape of public education. Here’s how:
- A Surge in Religious Charter Schools
Religious institutions, particularly those struggling to sustain traditional parochial schools, would have a financial lifeline. Charter subsidies, which often surpass voucher amounts, would incentivize religious organizations to enter the charter school market. For years, leaders in some religious communities have sought public funding to buoy their schools, and a decision in favor of St. Isidore could provide the legal green light. The result? A proliferation of religious charters, funded by taxpayers but largely free from public oversight.
- Erosion of Protections for Students with Disabilities
The implications for students with disabilities are especially concerning. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s implementing regulations, a student with disabilities who is “placed in or referred to a private school or facility by a public agency…[h]as all of the rights of a child with a disability who is served by a public agency.” Yet, a ruling in favor of St. Isidore risks undermining these guarantees by creating a loophole for private religious charters to skirt IDEA’s requirements.
This concern is not just theoretical. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the hybrid nature of charter schools already complicates questions of accountability and state action, particularly when it comes to safeguarding student rights. Allowing religious charters to operate free from IDEA’s obligations would further erode the fragile legal protections students with disabilities rely on—protections that are already too often disregarded in practice.
- Undermining Public Health and Safety Policies
The pandemic underscored the challenges of balancing public health mandates with constitutional protections for religious freedom. In 2020, a federal judge in Kentucky struck down the state’s attempt to close religious schools during a Covid-19 spike, even as public and secular private schools complied. Extending public funding to religious charters could further erode the state’s ability to enforce neutral regulations, from health measures to curriculum standards. Such decisions privilege religious institutions over secular ones, creating a patchwork of inconsistent rules that could undermine public safety and equity.
Toward Transparency and Accountability
Can these challenges be mitigated? Some experts argue for stricter regulations to preserve the public nature of charter schools. Bruce Baker, a professor of education finance, suggests limiting charter authorization to government agencies and requiring boards and employees to be public officials. Such reforms could ensure that charters remain accountable to taxpayers and subject to the same constitutional constraints as public schools.
Other scholars, like Preston Green and Suzanne Eckes, propose requiring religious charters to forgo certain exemptions if they wish to receive public funding. Specifically, they recommend restructuring charter school boards as government-created and controlled entities to ensure they are unequivocally recognized as state actors subject to constitutional obligations. For example, this would require religious charters to comply fully with anti-discrimination laws and other public mandates, maintaining the balance between religious freedom and public accountability.
The Larger Threat to Public Education
Even with these potential safeguards, the broader implications are sobering. If the court rules in favor of religious charters, states will face difficult choices: increase taxes to fund an expanding universe of religious and secular schools, divert money away from public schools, or create new bureaucracies to regulate religious institutions. Taxpayers could find themselves funding schools tied to a bewildering array of faiths, from mainstream denominations to fringe sects.
As the justices deliberate, they would do well to consider not just the legal arguments, but also the practical and moral consequences of their decision. What happens to a society when its public institutions are splintered along religious lines? And what happens to the students and families who depend on those institutions for equity, opportunity, and inclusion?
The answers to these questions will shape the future of American education—and the values we choose to uphold.
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