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public education
Sanders Report Details Plot by Right-Wing Billionaires to 'Sabotage' Public Education
"Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education."
Jun 25, 2024
Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report Tuesday detailing how right-wing billionaires are bankrolling coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that siphon critical funding away from already-underresourced public schools.
The report notes that last year, the American Federation for Children (AFC)—an organization funded by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—"ousted state lawmakers in Iowa and Arkansas who resisted proposals to subsidize private education in states and passed expansive private school vouchers."
Aided by millions of dollars in funding from DeVos and her husband, "AFC's political affiliates and allies spent $9 million to win 277 out of 368 races to remove at least 40 incumbent lawmakers," the report adds.
The DeVos family is hardly alone in using its wealth to undercut U.S. public education. The Bradley Foundation, which has been knee-deep in efforts to privatize education in Wisconsin and across the country, spent $7.5 million in 2022 "to fund 34 state affiliates of the State Policy Network to push conservative policy agendas, including privatizing education, and $8.3 million to building a youth movement to 'win the American Culture War.'"
"The Koch-sponsored group, American Encore, has funneled substantial amounts into state governor races and ballot initiatives around the country, including more than $1.4 million to elect Arizona's former governor Doug Ducey in 2014 (who led the efforts to create the nation's first universal private school voucher)," the report adds.
"For too long, there's been a coordinated effort to sabotage our public schools and privatize our education system. Unacceptable."
The analysis also names billionaires Jess Yass of Susquehanna International Group, Richard Uihlein of Uline, and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, all of whom have recently donated to the School Freedom Fund—a PAC that supports voucher programs and shuttering the U.S. Education Department.
School voucher programs
disproportionately benefit wealthy families, analyses have shown, while undercutting the goal of serving all students within a community.
"Over the past decade, there has been a coordinated effort on the part of right-wing billionaires to undermine, dismantle, and sabotage our nation's public schools and to privatize our education system," Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said in a statement. " That is absolutely unacceptable."
"We can no longer tolerate billionaires and multinational corporations receiving massive tax breaks and subsidies while children in America are forced to go to understaffed, underresourced, and underfunded public schools," Sanders continued. "On this 70th anniversary year of Brown v. Board of Education, let us recommit to creating an education system that works for all of our people, not just the wealthy few."
The new report, authored by the Senate HELP Committee's majority staff, comes days after Sanders presided over a hearing at which a pair of public school teachers decried the low educator pay and lack of resources plaguing schools across the U.S. and threatening the foundations of the country's public education system.
The committee's report shows that while most states have chronically underfunded their public schools, spending on voucher programs that subsidize private schools with taxpayer dollars has surged across the country. Between 2008 and 2019, according to a recent analysis cited in the report, Florida ramped up spending on voucher programs by 313% while "decreasing per-pupil funding of public schooling by 12%."
"The expansion of private school voucher programs forces very real tradeoffs. Money spent on private school vouchers could instead be used to hire teachers, raise wages, hire school counselors, and invest in high-quality academics for students," reads the new report, which estimates that "Arizona could hire 15,730 more public K-12 teachers with the money it is instead spending on private school vouchers."
The report calls on Congress to help reverse the trend of billionaire-backed school privatization by investing more in public education—including early childhood education and community schools—and by passing Sanders' legislation to set the pay floor for U.S. public school teachers at $60,000 a year.
The report also recommends passage of the
College for All Act, a Sanders-led bill that would make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students from households making less than $250,000 a year.
"As the richest country in history, the United States should have the best education system in the world," Sanders' report reads. "Our public education system is not perfect—it is underfunded and racially and socioeconomically segregated. Our educators are not respected or paid nearly what they deserve."
"Massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations are being prioritized over opportunities to progressively raise revenue to support social services and public education," the report continues. "Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education. This requires adequate and equitable funding and addressing structural challenges in our public schools."
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Sanders Warns 'Absurd' Low Pay of Teachers Fueling Public Education Crisis
"We cannot continue to run our public education system on the backs of saints and martyrs," an elementary school teacher testified to a Senate committee.
Jun 20, 2024
A pair of public school teachers warned a key Senate committee on Thursday that low educator pay in the United States is fueling staff shortages across the country and damaging the country's education system, which is also under sustained attack from right-wing lawmakers who want to slash federal investments in schools and abolish the Department of Education.
"The number one reason teachers leave the profession is the pay," John Arthur, an elementary school teacher in Holladay, Utah, told members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee during a hearing convened by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
"The number one reason parents don't want their children to become teachers is the pay," Arthur added. "So the number one solution to addressing the issues we face must be increasing teacher salaries."
"The situation has become so absurd that four—one, two, three, four—hedge fund managers on Wall Street made more money last year than every kindergarten teacher in America." —Sen. Bernie Sanders
In written testimony submitted to the Senate panel, Arthur argued that low teacher pay, chronic lack of resources, and extreme stress exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic are at the core of staffing crises that are impacting an overwhelming majority of U.S. school districts, posing a threat to the entire public education system.
"We cannot sustain a healthy, effective public school system when so few parents want their kids to join me and my friends in the classroom," Arthur's testimony reads. "We cannot continue to run our public education system on the backs of saints and martyrs. We must raise wages to the level at which we can successfully recruit and retain the talent we need to effectively educate all children, regardless of zip code."
A teacher at Philadelphia's third-largest elementary school, Gemayel Keyes, echoed Arthur, noting during Thursday's hearing that low pay and substantial student loan debt have forced him to work a part-time job and denied him "the American dream of homeownership."
"We must invest in our teachers but also in our paraprofessionals," said Keyes. "If we continue to underinvest in the pay and working conditions and don't match the responsibilities and job expectations, the paraprofessionals shortage will rise, the same way the pipeline of teachers has declined. I must also acknowledge and fully recognize that my job as a teacher would be impossible to do without my paraprofessional staff."
Watch the full hearing:
According to the latest data, the average starting teacher salary in the U.S. is $44,530, and nearly 80% of the nation's school districts pay a starting salary below $50,000. Teachers have a starting salary below $40,000 per year in around 30% of U.S. school districts.
The national average teacher salary is $69,544, and significant recent pay increases in some states have not been enough to keep up with inflation.
Just 15% of K-12 public school teachers are extremely or very satisfied with their pay, according to a Pew survey released earlier this year, and 68% say their job is "overwhelming."
"Student absenteeism is at an all-time high and teacher shortages are at crisis levels in most states," William Kirwan, vice chair of Maryland’s Accountability and Implementation Board, told the Senate panel. "Our students do not perform well on international assessments. Alarm bells should be ringing across the country."
Sanders, the lead sponsor of legislation that would set the minimum annual salary for U.S. public school teachers at $60,000, said during his opening remarks at Thursday's hearing that "for decades, public school teachers have been overworked, underpaid, understaffed, and, maybe most importantly, underappreciated."
The senator added that while there are "many reasons" why U.S. public school teachers are leaving their jobs each year at double the rate of peer nations, "one of the primary reasons is the extremely low pay teachers receive."
"Incredibly, the average public school teacher in America is making nearly $100 a week less than she or he did 28 years ago after adjusting for inflation," said Sanders. "Meanwhile, because of lack of resources and tight school budgets, about 80% of public school teachers are forced to spend their own money on classroom supplies without being reimbursed."
"The situation has become so absurd that four—one, two, three, four—hedge fund managers on Wall Street made more money last year than every kindergarten teacher in America," Sanders continued. "Public school teachers should not be forced to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. They should not be forced to be on food stamps."
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This School Year, Let’s Recommit to Standing Up for Public Schools
We need unions that can make the case for the public good that public education provides, unions that are unabashedly of and for the educators.
Sep 06, 2023
Where does the spirit of Red for Ed, the teacher-led labor movement that began in 2018, stand today?
Red for Ed began that February when educators and staff at schools across West Virginia went on strike to demand better pay. Their direct action inspired strikes in other states, especially those with majority Republican legislatures (hence the name “Red for Ed”). Educators in Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma went on illegal wildcat strikes to fight against the poverty wages and chronically underfunded schools that were resulting in both intolerable working conditions and learning conditions.
Since then, the movement has seen ebbs and flows. But that’s the nature of organizing. There is no straight line of progress, but instead waves that slowly and determinedly wash against the shores—little by little changing the landscape.
For those of us who will be in the classroom this coming year, we need the public to see what we see.
Of course, there have been other big waves too, such as the solidarity strike in Los Angeles in March of this year that saw members from United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) show up for support staff. The result was major wage gains for support staff, like bus drivers, teaching aides, special education assistants, and other workers who contribute to functioning schools. The strike also influenced a significant contract settlement for UTLA members as well.
Still, inflation, limited housing options, and political attacks against educators striving to just do their jobs have driven educators to leave the profession.
For those of us who will be in the classroom this coming year, we need the public to see what we see. Throughout my state of New Hampshire, public educators are confronting a new school year without enough guidance counselors, with support staff getting crushed by the cost of living, and with money that could be used to help our students being used to fund voucher programs. It’s the same scenario playing out all across the country.
The question now, it seems to me, is what do we do about all of this?
For one, we can’t stand idly by. We can’t believe that officials above us will save us. We must see opportunities to build something new, to create resilient communities, to strengthen relationships between educators.
We cannot close our classroom doors and expect the problems of the world to go away. We have seen too many times before that there is no stopping the downward slide of gloom unless we meet it with the kind of positive energy force that we bring to classrooms—we need a collective energy that exceeds the force of the push for privatization.
This energizing force can only come from one place and from one direction: from the grassroots.
It was the animating force of Red for Ed, it is the power of organized labor, it is the simple idea that everyday folks can come together to address the issues that they see everyday—issues that other folks don’t seem to acknowledge.
Each time teachers and support staff stand together to bring issues of working people to light, we bring meaning to the idea of a union as a collective working toward a common goal and sharing the same collective fate.
Unions, at their best, are built around a love for our fellow colleagues and our fellow workers. It is expressed when the voices of the seldom heard echo in the halls: the halls of schools, of board rooms, and ultimately, in the halls of power.
Voucher schemes in states like my own are evidence of the need to build stronger unions. We need unions that can make the case for the public good that public education provides, unions that are unabashedly of and for the educators who go the extra mile each day for kids, communities, and the common good.
We cannot ignore the ugliness of the status quo, with fear driving people apart, books being banned, and teachers training for active shooter drills. Each one of our students are too precious to turn our attention away from the work that we must do together to bring about change.
This school year, let’s recommit to the labor of love that is standing up for public schools, our students, and the communities we serve by building stronger and more inclusive unions. The movement for public schools isn’t dead. It’s just getting started.
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