As the Louisiana education train rumbles on, disturbing the ideological
prejudices of the political left and disrupting traditional power bases, in
their desperation opponents sometimes don their tinfoil hats and claim black
helicopter sightings through their faith that somehow some kind of untoward
influence is manifesting as a result of the world becoming something they didn’t
make. Recognize that such claims simultaneously demonstrate maximal fatuousness
as well as stunning moral myopia that leads to selective and unsubstantiated outrage.
For example, recently a group called StudentsFirst hailed
Louisiana’s education policies as the most pro-student in the country. The
group ranks highest policies that establish education choice provision and
decentralized solutions for it.
Naturally, this sent the sentinels of the one-size-fits-all, government
monopoly model of education provision into fits, and one complaint attempted to
be used to discredit the laurels was that the group donated money to candidates
running for the state’s Board
of Elementary and Secondary Education. Hence, the constipated
argument goes, the group goads candidates into supporting their position,
and then rewards those elected by lauding them.
Leaving aside the striking ignorance of the argument in this specific
instance – BESE makes policy in these areas only through implementation while it’s
the Legislature that actual does the heavy lifting and sets all of the
parameters BESE must follow, and neither of StudentsFirst’s state or national organizations gave to any legislative
candidates – note that political science research (mainly done in the area of
Congressional behavior) demonstrates that seldom are representatives influenced
by money not just as the sole, but even as a peripheral, reason for voting the
way they do. Rather, the true relationship of money to officials is that it
flows to those officials sympathetic to a group’s view, so it makes obvious sense
that a politicians who favor expanded choice in schooling would get backing
from a group that believes the same.
A related argument is built on the age-old observation that policy-makers
may receive donations from potential contractors of the state, and this then
influences their decisions on which contractors to award. The newer
twist on this in the area of education policy is that with the erosion of
the government-monopoly model, potential contractors through donations are “paying
off” policy-makers in order to pry open the system, with the insinuation that
it is not really concern with good education policy that drives support of
system openness, but greed for campaign bucks to keep the power-hungry in
office.
Naturally enough, this conspiratorial mindset completely ignores the
fact that procedures and evaluative measures are in place to make sure that objective
performance standards are met. Let’s say in fact that such a grand conspiracy
exists full of licentious individuals. Regardless of these evil-doers’ moral
worth, if their policies get the job done, it’s good policy; personal motives
are irrelevant. That’s the beauty of the system of representative democracy in
America, separated power and chock full of checks and balances – it can take even
the least public-spirited, most selfish individual motives and still maximize
the chances that, if there’s any good policy in this equation, it will come out
while sinister policy gets vetoed.
And the fact that this policy of greater openness in provision by
definition further minimizes bad policy outcomes. The simple behavioral fact of
human beings is if they are forced to justify that their performance exceeds
others and/or objective standards to receive rewards, all have every incentive to perform maximally. Contrast
this with the closed system advocated by those who allege conspiracies resulting
from a more open system, where its very nature that insulates its members from
accountability and responsibility for consequences make it much easier for
these very conspiracies to flourish and thus to create poor policy outcomes.
And also illuminates for us the incredible hypocrisy voiced by these
established interests now threatened by change. They had created for themselves
a cocoon in which special interests such as unions, those who saw schools as primarily
employment agencies, as forces of ideological change, and as refuges from the
pressures of private sector achievement, could create a regime that emphasized maximum
transfer of taxpayer wealth for minimal work and talent contribution, putting
this imperative ahead of children’s right to a quality education. Incredibly,
they criticize the new environment which, by its nature, permits it openness to
force more accountability and combats exactly the actual malaise that they have
supported. If ever people needed to look into a mirror to see the problem, it
is these disingenuous folks.
Like BESE member Lottie Beebe, who insinuated at its last meeting that because
some other members received campaign contributions from contractors this was
influencing their decisions in some undefined way. In her
campaign, she accepted $2,500 from the Louisiana Association of Educators,
$150 from the Iberia Principals Association, and picked up LAE in-kind
donations worth another $1,500. In fact, of the money she raised both methods,
this $4,150 represented about 80 percent of all the resources she took in (excepting
$1,500 of her own). If there’s any single member of BESE who, by the numbers,
appears to be bought and totally paid for, in her case by the educational
establishment (being a public school careerist, whose career flourished in the
closed system, this thereby making her a card-carrying member of this
establishment), it’s Beebe.
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