Transparency

For six years of my forty years as a teacher, I taught in public schools--two by way of a teaching fellowship at the university, and four at public high schools, one in rural Wisconsin and another in suburban Phoenix. I graduated from a public high school, but also a private, Christian grade school.

 

Otherwise, all the rest of those years I taught college kids who'd enrolled in the private, Christian college who sent me my check at the end of the month. Our kids went to private, Christian schools for their entire lives, and three of our five grandchildren attend the same schools their mother did years ago. 

What we've contributed, money-wise, to private, Christian education would astound those who don't share commitments the two of us have held. I can say that safely because I'm quite sure it would astound me.

I am an advocate of the justice argument, the idea that choosing private, Christian education should not prohibit citizens of these United States from getting a fair share of the national educational dollar. I've always supported economic help for those who choose to send their kids to private, Christian education, and would also support it if the parents were Islamic or Jewish or Native American.

Yesterday, in its Sunday editorial, the Des Moines Register, the state's most read newspaper editorialized on Gov. Kim Reynolds' advocacy of state funded private education by loudly proclaiming that the governor and her government needed to exercise her own promised transparency on questions related to state-funded private education. The Register is right.

First, the Register insists she needs to be transparent about "How many Iowans applied for vouchers, how many were approved, and what resident school districts do they come from?" People deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

Second, the Register says people need to know "How many approved applicants have actually been accepted into private education?" Private education is "private" because it does not, by law, have to accept and enroll all applicants. Public education does. It would be helpful for taxpayers to know when children are turned down for enrollment--and where and why. 

Third, the Register says that Iowa needs to know "how many students receiving vouchers are enrolling in a private school for the first time, and how many are just replacing personal tuition payments with taxpayer-funded vouchers?"

I can't help but think the Register is right. Governor Reynold's haste to pass her private education laws into service was seen, by some, as rushed. But her government's silence about the easily discernable facts the Register insists need airing is, well, stinky.

Iowa, like many state legislatures, is dominated by super-majority Republicans, who have more on their minds than justice. What makes me shivver is the whole package of Republican principles these days, the stock-in-trade of MAGA Republicans: book-banning, for example, and over-zealous management of curriculum, not to mention teacher name-calling. Some of those who trumpet private, Christian education these days do so because they are convinced, as MAGA Republicans tell them every day, that teachers are despicably WOKE or communists or fascists who hate America. Have a look at the ex-President's last speech--any of them.

The degree to which Gov. Reynolds trucks with the MAGA crowd is the degree to which I lose trust in her and her government. The Register scores some points with yesterday's editorial. Over this Fourth of July weekend, it serves us well to remember that adage from the freedom scrapbook: "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."