Speaker 1: We're heading to Kentucky not to find out the colonel's
Speaker 1: original recipe, but to discuss an amendment proposal to their
Speaker 1: constitution that could be a waste of time, money, and
Speaker 1: a violation that the establishment clause. Scott Dicky has the story.
Speaker 2: Scott Amendment Too in Kentucky proposes a change to the
Speaker 2: state constitution that would allow public funds to support private,
Speaker 2: mostly religious schools through a voucher system, where that vword
Speaker 2: coming up again. Critics argue this could severely damage public
Speaker 2: education by diverting significant funds up to one point one
Speaker 2: to nine billion annually away from public schools, especially harming
Speaker 2: rural areas dependent on state funding. The amendment is seen
Speaker 2: as a way to bypass existing constitutional barriers that prevent
Speaker 2: public money from financing private religious education. Opponents, including Governor
Speaker 2: Andy Basheer Warren, that the amendment is misleading and could
Speaker 2: lead to worse educational outcomes for most students. This story
Speaker 2: is from The Friendly Atheist by Himant Meta on eight
Speaker 2: twenty eight, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Scott, and since you introduced the story to us,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you how might the introduction of
Speaker 1: a voucher system as proposed in amendment to affect the
Speaker 1: equitable distribution of educational resources across different socio and economic
Speaker 1: and rural community.
Speaker 2: It'll fuck it up. Next question, now, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: Answer right, so, yeah, answer.
Speaker 2: It's going to It allows them to divert the money
Speaker 2: to where they want it to go. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: public money, and it's taking it away from and like
Speaker 2: I said in the intro, it's the rural districts that
Speaker 2: have lower population, they have lower land value, and so
Speaker 2: their tax base is a little bit lower, and so
Speaker 2: they can't afford to put up as much of a
Speaker 2: fight against ignorance as they can in the cities. But
Speaker 2: what this is doing is it's going to be it's
Speaker 2: going to take money away from those struggling districts and
Speaker 2: it's going to redirect it into private schools. And you know,
Speaker 2: it seems like we cover these voucher stories very often
Speaker 2: on the nonprofits. It's really one of our regular kind
Speaker 2: of stories. And I'm not saying that because I think
Speaker 2: that we should stop doing it. I'm saying that because
Speaker 2: we need to keep bringing this up. We need to
Speaker 2: keep mentioning this, we need to keep bringing it, putting
Speaker 2: it on the front page there, and it's getting so
Speaker 2: that it's hard for me to say, you know, I
Speaker 2: try to at least approach it at a slightly different
Speaker 2: angle each time to kind of expand our knowledge of
Speaker 2: what's going on here. So what I did this time
Speaker 2: is I looked. I found four facts. Four facts that
Speaker 2: I got from the National Education Association about the school
Speaker 2: voucher programs. Fact number one, there's no link between vouchers
Speaker 2: and gains and student achievement. Okay, I'll say that again.
Speaker 2: There's no link between vouchers and gains and student achievement,
Speaker 2: or at least none, none that they've discovered. There's no
Speaker 2: conclusive evidence that vouchers improved achievement of students who attend prime,
Speaker 2: even those students who use those that money to attend
Speaker 2: private schools. And so not only is it harming the
Speaker 2: public school students, but it's not helping the students that
Speaker 2: are using that money. Nor is there any validity to
Speaker 2: the claims that it creates a competitive marketplace to encourage
Speaker 2: those struggling public schools to step up and and do better. Okay,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't. It doesn't raise scores, it doesn't improve
Speaker 2: the education system. Second fact, vouchers undermined accountability for public funds.
Speaker 2: Private schools are different than public schools in a few ways,
Speaker 2: but one of those ways has to do with accountability.
Speaker 2: Being private institutions, they're not required to be as transparent
Speaker 2: and accountable as a public school might. And so if
Speaker 2: you divert money to these private schools, you know, they
Speaker 2: have fewer restrictions on who they teach, what they teach,
Speaker 2: how they teach, how they measure student achievement, if at all,
Speaker 2: how they manage their finances, and what they're required to
Speaker 2: disclose to parents in the public. So it clouds accountability.
Speaker 2: Third fact, vouchers do not reduce public education costs. Okay,
Speaker 2: actually they increase costs by requiring taxpayers to fund two
Speaker 2: separate school systems. They have to fund the public school
Speaker 2: system and now they have to supplement the private school
Speaker 2: system as well. And so you know that's going to
Speaker 2: lead to things like more strain on the teachers that
Speaker 2: they have. It's going to be lead to larger classrooms,
Speaker 2: it's going to be less money for resources, textbooks, school nurses, counselors,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's just there will
Speaker 2: just be generally less money available for all students. And
Speaker 2: the final fact number four here, vouchers actually don't give
Speaker 2: parents real educational choice. Private schools don't. There's no requirements
Speaker 2: for private schools to accept students like there are for
Speaker 2: public schools, so they can discriminate. They can discriminate based
Speaker 2: off of a variety of things, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ability,
Speaker 2: behavioral history, prior academic achievements, standardized test scores, even based
Speaker 2: off of interviews with the students, and income, and so, uh,
Speaker 2: it kind of gives us these private schools arbitrary ability
Speaker 2: to push out the students that they don't want and
Speaker 2: to keep the students that they do want. And so it's, uh,
Speaker 2: it's very frustrating and and all of the all of
Speaker 2: the talking points that are put out there in favor
Speaker 2: about your programs are actually the opposite is true for
Speaker 2: all of those and so it's it's really not a
Speaker 2: not a good situation for anybody.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I mentioned in my little intro blurb
Speaker 1: about a possible violation of the establic law, Cindy, I
Speaker 1: think that you kind of alluded to that and some
Speaker 1: of the thoughts that you jotted down can you kind
Speaker 1: of go into further depth about that specificity and some
Speaker 1: other implications that you might see that this particular amendment
Speaker 1: might have going down the road.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, it's it's totally against the US Constitution.
Speaker 3: Constitution in principle. It also lowers education for rural areas,
Speaker 3: as we discussed in the previous segment, which impacts Republicans more. Actually,
Speaker 3: although it's probably the point you know, as we discussed,
Speaker 3: it will cripple the state budget with devastating effects on
Speaker 3: the long term. The less people and therefore parents also
Speaker 3: future parents are uneducated, the easier it gets to pass
Speaker 3: laws like this. As Scott said, the arguments used in
Speaker 3: favor of those laws, they are just nonsense. So it's
Speaker 3: a it's a vicious circle, and it weaponizes people's ignorance
Speaker 3: against themselves. It's pretty cunning, but it's diabolical. And remember
Speaker 3: Kentucky is ranked thirty fourth in education in the US.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's that. Yeah, this is a textbook example
Speaker 3: of how to increase politician's power so that they can
Speaker 3: rule instead of represent uh. And it's another very small
Speaker 3: step to turn the US into a Christian telement system.
Speaker 3: She is yeah, yeah, And There's also something something else
Speaker 3: is you know when when when you talk about money
Speaker 3: in in education, like, uh, there's been discussions about giving
Speaker 3: free food for children in school and all this stuff,
Speaker 3: there's always from the right coming the area that who's
Speaker 3: going to pay this, Well, look look how much money
Speaker 3: is wasted? You know when when when talking about these,
Speaker 3: people often come to, yeah, look at how the how
Speaker 3: much the military in the US takes money. But I
Speaker 3: think that's not the worst.
Speaker 4: The worst waste.
Speaker 3: Of money, in my opinion in the US is that
Speaker 3: these voucher systems that are put in place, and also
Speaker 3: the amount of money that goes into settlements because of
Speaker 3: police brutality in the States. Some states spend up to
Speaker 3: a billion every year in settlements for police malfunction every year,
Speaker 3: and the money, the amount of money that represents is
Speaker 3: just buffling. And so the fact that people won't spend
Speaker 3: like ten to fifteen millions to give to children and
Speaker 3: instead they will put money into this and vote for
Speaker 3: this and vote for people who advocate for this, it's
Speaker 3: just crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, to quote Scott's leader in Scott's State, any person
Speaker 1: that has an issue with feeding giving kids breakfast and
Speaker 1: lunch at school is just weird. I agree, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of talk more about this whole language
Speaker 1: concerning the voucher system and also like using like obscure
Speaker 1: language specifically around school choice. And Scott, you did an
Speaker 1: excellent job about how basically school choice is not really
Speaker 1: school choice and what they really think it is when
Speaker 1: people first hear that is not going to be as
Speaker 1: as the children say a flex.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, Scott, I want to talk to you and especially
Speaker 1: want to ask you how might the language used in
Speaker 1: amendment to such as school choice obscure the potential consequences
Speaker 1: of a proposal?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that is that's for you know, for
Speaker 2: the people that are putting that language in, that is
Speaker 2: a feature, not a bug. It that is that it
Speaker 2: obscures the true intent behind there. And so the language
Speaker 2: is everything, right. The language is what gets past in Congress.
Speaker 2: The language is what the governor signs or no, this
Speaker 2: was a constitutional amendment, right, So so the language is
Speaker 2: what we're we're reading on the ballot as we decide
Speaker 2: if we want to pass it or not or that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And so, uh, I mean, really that's
Speaker 2: just the the cheap makeup that's slathered on the pig, right.
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's you can do that all day.
Speaker 2: It's still a pig though. And so it really whether
Speaker 2: it's twofold one, it high. It hides what's happening from
Speaker 2: the people that are concerned about it, and it also
Speaker 2: the people that are in support of this kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 2: it gives them an opportunity to convince themselves that they're
Speaker 2: on the on the right side. Right. I think it
Speaker 2: was Mark Twain who said something about it's much easier
Speaker 2: to fool somebody than to convince yourself that you've been
Speaker 2: fooled or something like that. And so anything that they
Speaker 2: can do to uh support that without having to, you know,
Speaker 2: without having to to show me the money, right, without
Speaker 2: having to to you know, have the evidence back up
Speaker 2: your claims, you need to cover it up. And so
Speaker 2: I think it has that twofold effected. It hides with
Speaker 2: the true intentions from the people, from the watchdogs, and
Speaker 2: it gives the zelots, you know, some gasoline in there
Speaker 2: in their tank so that they can you know, fight
Speaker 2: it and live and live and fight the next day
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: That gaslighting and implication that she talked about previously.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, but Jonathan, I want you to instead of talk
Speaker 1: about gaslighting, can you talk about the ethical implication that
Speaker 1: putting this amendment on the Constitution in Kentucky can have,
Speaker 1: and maybe some of the other consequences that can actually
Speaker 1: be in the future with this particular amendment if it
Speaker 1: actually passes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one of the things is the way when I
Speaker 4: read it, the way it was worded that bothered me.
Speaker 4: And this was the Washington and the Washington Post. Also
Speaker 4: taxpayers and more than half the country now funding creationism, homophobia,
Speaker 4: anti transgender misinformation, and Sunday School nonsense masquerading as actual
Speaker 4: history and science, and Kentucky may soon join their ranks.
Speaker 4: If you put this in the constitution of your state,
Speaker 4: the only thing that supersedes that in that state is
Speaker 4: the federal Constitution. So that federal Constitution is next to
Speaker 4: impossible to change. I mean, seventy five percent of the states,
Speaker 4: after two thirds of both houses of Congress have passed it,
Speaker 4: seventy five percent of the states have to also pass it.
Speaker 4: So it's a high bar to change the constitution, and
Speaker 4: rightfully so, but it's not so high a bar in
Speaker 4: the states. And if they can put it into the constitution,
Speaker 4: it will take a long time to change it if
Speaker 4: it's going to be changed, And this is going to
Speaker 4: have long term implications for schools, and it's going to
Speaker 4: really really be a massive like it's like you said,
Speaker 4: a massive finance shift to religious schools, because over ninety
Speaker 4: percent of the people who take these kinds of vulture
Speaker 4: programs are religious schools. So it is a direct violation
Speaker 4: of the federal constitution. But who's going to bring that suit?
Speaker 4: It has to be they have to have standing to
Speaker 4: do that. So I'm wondering now, as the children start
Speaker 4: to grow up homeschooled and taught nothing about the work
Speaker 4: and the work and play, they will be totally unprepared
Speaker 4: to exist in the society with other people, especially other
Speaker 4: people who don't happen to share their views or values
Speaker 4: or from different parts of the country. How are they
Speaker 4: going to work with those people if they have to
Speaker 4: spend their entire time catching up trying to figure out
Speaker 4: what they're doing and how they're doing. There is no
Speaker 4: substanue for standardized education. Everybody starts with the same information
Speaker 4: at the same level as practicable according to their own
Speaker 4: skills and their own intellect, of course, but that intellect
Speaker 4: doesn't get developed by teaching them sixteenth century English, you know,
Speaker 4: it just doesn't help. So it's not going to be something.
Speaker 4: This will have a snowball effect before it can get changed.
Speaker 4: It will have a snowball effect in really damaging an
Speaker 4: entire generation of students. Because also one other point is
Speaker 4: that if students are discriminated against but the private schools
Speaker 4: and thrown out for any one of those reasons we stated,
Speaker 4: they're going back to the public schools. Now, if they're
Speaker 4: children with special needs, that burden is on a chronically
Speaker 4: even more underfunded teachers and system to take care of
Speaker 4: their needs. And where are they going to fall They'll
Speaker 4: fall out of the system, and then what's their life
Speaker 4: expectancy or their success expectancy in regular in the regular society.
Speaker 4: So I am really kind of furious at the way
Speaker 4: they worded this. This is like, do this favor for
Speaker 4: your children. Of course, ten percent of your kids. The
Speaker 4: other ninety percent we're thrown under the bus while we
Speaker 4: do this. But don't look at that. Look at these
Speaker 4: ten percent that we're going to help by sending them
Speaker 4: to a religious school. You're not helping them either. Religious
Speaker 4: schools are notoriously bad at getting people ready to deal
Speaker 4: with reality. So that's where we stand, you know, and
Speaker 4: I'm really kind of upset about this whole situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the righteous indignation, I think that can be shared
Speaker 1: with all the panel right now when you're actually looking
Speaker 1: at this, And just as a pushback to you, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: as far as like, you know, implementing sixteenth century English,
Speaker 1: I think that some of our English counterparts on the
Speaker 1: nonprofits would actually disagree with you. Hey, Phoebe girl, Richard.
Speaker 4: Still speaking in Richard and Phoebe, you're still speaking in it.
Speaker 4: And on top of that, they're lawyers, both friends. You
Speaker 4: know that rich rich studies that stuff, but he doesn't
Speaker 4: study it just in English. He studies, you know, he
Speaker 4: studies it in translations from other languages as well.
Speaker 1: And we got to also give a shout out to
Speaker 1: doctor Richard Firth as well, who's a professor of these
Speaker 1: particular things.
Speaker 2: But of course everybody's favorite Blindlimey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. Shout out to the UK crew
Speaker 1: with the ACA. We appreciate you. Just don't give us
Speaker 1: any bangers a mash. But I wanted to, but I
Speaker 1: want I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about, like, you know, the biases that
Speaker 1: could also happen when you are looking at how they're
Speaker 1: implementing this particular amendment, and also the ramifications that it
Speaker 1: could cause to other students who happened to not fit
Speaker 1: into the same pool. And I think that you know, Scott,
Speaker 1: you wanted to expand a little bit on the potential
Speaker 1: of racism in implementing this particular constitutional midment. Can you
Speaker 1: speak on that a bit more?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I'll try to be brief. But in
Speaker 2: my research behind getting prepared for this story, I came
Speaker 2: across this wonderful article. It was on Americanprogress dot org
Speaker 2: and you can find it. You can find this article
Speaker 2: by googling the racist origins of private school vouchers. And
Speaker 2: it was a fascinating article. It was heavily footnoted and sourced. Basically,
Speaker 2: it occupied the bulk of a day for me just
Speaker 2: following all these little rabbit trails and all these little
Speaker 2: bits of information. I wanted to read the last paragraph.
Speaker 2: I'll cut it down to just the last sentence. It says,
Speaker 2: no matter how well intentioned, widespread voucher programs risk exacerbating
Speaker 2: segregation in schools and leaving the most vulnerable students and
Speaker 2: the public schools they attend behind. And so we talked
Speaker 2: a little bit about how schools can discriminate. Basically, private
Speaker 2: schools can discriminate to a certain extent, and you know,
Speaker 2: and along racial lines is just one one way that
Speaker 2: that goes. And you know, that's something that often gets overlooked.
Speaker 2: I think when we talk about these kind of things,
Speaker 2: like many of the cherished institutions of the United States,
Speaker 2: these voucher, these push for school vouchers, have their origins
Speaker 2: in racial discrimination. And so it's you know, it tastes
Speaker 2: bad no matter where you taste it, right.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, as as as Biggie two Duck would say,
Speaker 1: and I think, Scott, I don't know if you've got bigger,
Speaker 1: he's right here, you go. Well, like, you know, if
Speaker 1: that this smells like a racism, talks like a racism,
Speaker 1: it probably is a racist just say. But I think,
Speaker 1: and I'll just be brief with this because Cindy, I
Speaker 1: want to give you the last word, per se. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think that we should and I know
Speaker 1: that we have covered this topic before. When we are
Speaker 1: talking about specifically how the crystal fascists or the Christian
Speaker 1: nationalists utilize some of their talking points in historical senses
Speaker 1: that came from a racist path. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we had such a push from the
Speaker 1: right to get rid of abortion is because of two
Speaker 1: educational entities, Bob Jones University and Liberature University, who wanted
Speaker 1: to actually do what you mentioned, have a choice of
Speaker 1: who they happened to have as students in their institutions,
Speaker 1: and they did not want to accept black students. Now,
Speaker 1: because of this, the university, the actual United States, the
Speaker 1: fits basically said, hey, listen, if you don't accept, you know,
Speaker 1: students who happen to not be white, then you can
Speaker 1: lose your funding, uh for you know, for being a school,
Speaker 1: for being a university. So you know, they had to
Speaker 1: basically hold their nose into letting students happen to be
Speaker 1: in who happen to be black and other and other
Speaker 1: ethnicities and backgrounds and things of that nature. And so
Speaker 1: they decided to just pivot what they're going to rally
Speaker 1: against in order to get their base together. And and
Speaker 1: I think it's and I don't and I don't find
Speaker 1: it ironic at all, that it's the same group of people,
Speaker 1: the same people who have this political ideology that are
Speaker 1: also pushing for school choice and also being able to
Speaker 1: divert tax dollar money into other religious schools that can
Speaker 1: discriminate on sexual orientation, gender identification. Hell, if they want
Speaker 1: to go back and say that we don't necessarily want
Speaker 1: you know, black students, or let's just say they don't
Speaker 1: want like Muslim students, or if they don't want you know,
Speaker 1: students who happen to have immigrated to this country, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, you know, they want to have that particular
Speaker 1: choice to do that as well. So yes, we can
Speaker 1: see historically and also through empirical data that these vouchers
Speaker 1: are going to be bigoted, in discriminatory in their inception
Speaker 1: and also in their practice. But I might want to
Speaker 1: give the last question to you, you know, as the
Speaker 1: resident Belgiamite on this panel, Cindy.
Speaker 2: Do you spread that on toast too?
Speaker 1: That up there with Vegiamite.
Speaker 2: I don't know, let's go with that. I like it,
Speaker 2: Let's go let's stick with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's just.
Speaker 1: Stick with well, you know, I would like to say
Speaker 1: I like Belgium waffles. But you know, let's just let's
Speaker 1: just actually bring this back to something more serious. But
Speaker 1: you know, how can communities and educators effectively advocate for
Speaker 1: protection of public school funding and oppose measures that could
Speaker 1: undermine public education.
Speaker 3: So I have the impression that every time I come
Speaker 3: to the nonprofits, I say the exact same thing. States
Speaker 3: have nothing to do with education, parents have nothing to
Speaker 3: do with education. It should be led on the federal level.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things I wanted to say. The
Speaker 3: second thing is, so there was another shooting in school today,
Speaker 3: and every time that happens, every time I talk about guns,
Speaker 3: I remember this conservative judge I don't remember his name,
Speaker 3: but he said basically that the greatest heist that the
Speaker 3: Right committee was to pretend and made accepted the idea
Speaker 3: that the Second Amendment was about individual right to own guns.
Speaker 3: And I always have this idea in my mind because
Speaker 3: when I speak about all these education problems the US faces,
Speaker 3: I think that the second biggest heights that the right
Speaker 3: has managed to push on is to make believe that
Speaker 3: this is a cultural war, when instead it's a class war.
Speaker 3: They're trying to keep classes separate, like rich people, rich
Speaker 3: white people, against poor, uneducated, and every kind of people.
Speaker 3: And the fact that they disguise it into a culture
Speaker 3: war makes it less evident to fight. And so you
Speaker 3: ask me how it can be fought, it's by identifying
Speaker 3: the problem in the first place. It's a class war,
Speaker 3: it's not a cultural war.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we're really good at creating class here
Speaker 1: in the United States. You know, we we created a
Speaker 1: whole system based.
Speaker 2: It's pretty damn good at war too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are. We're good at war cultures. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even against our So yes we are. Yes, we are
Speaker 1: maybe lost.
Speaker 4: In education, but boy, can we win in a fight.
Speaker 1: Yeh, my goodness. Yeah, that's why we just seem to
Speaker 1: be so hyper focused on war.
Speaker 2: You just described every school yard bully that ever existed.
Speaker 1: This is true, This is true.
Speaker 2: We're not.
Speaker 1: Right, and I don't necessarily have the time to, you know,
Speaker 1: get on the on a Shase lounge and talk about
Speaker 1: my entire k through twelve.
Speaker 2: With the bully.
Speaker 1: But but in essence, Amendment TO is a clever disguise
Speaker 1: for a massive funding shift from public schools to religious institution,
Speaker 1: all under the guise of choice. This is less about
Speaker 1: improving education and more about fundling funds to private entities,
Speaker 1: many of which are perfectly content without a government handout.
Speaker 1: Kentucky has a choice on Amendment to either to keep
Speaker 1: public education funded and ensure that taxpayer money benefits all students,
Speaker 1: not just those attending private schools that might not even
Speaker 1: need it or support it. The choice is yours.