Warren and Pa. teachers union

ERIE, PA. » Two women, one black and not affluent; one white, wealthy and famous, are contrasting faces of America’s debate about equal educational opportunity in grades K through 12. Porschia Anderson, a mother with daughters in kindergarten, fourth and 10th grades here, and parents like her have an enormous stake in Pennsylvania expanding charter schools and supporting other avenues to educational choices. The aim of such measures is for parents of modest, or negligible, means to have alternatives that affluent parents take for granted. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is ardent for equality as an abstraction but is even more ardent for the support of public school teachers unions. They are tenacious in defense of their semimonopoly in primary and secondary education: Less than 6% of the nation’s pupils are in charter schools, and only 218,000 (0.39%) of the 56.6 million pupils received vouchers.

In Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, there is a wearying constant, a simmering conflict. On one side are parents seeking charter schools - public schools granted more administrative and instruction discretion than enjoyed by unionized public schools. These parents also seek tax credits for privately funded scholarships that low-income families can use to pay tuition at private schools. On the other side are teachers unions characterizing such programs as “attacks” on public education funding.

Some attacks: Nationwide per pupil public expenditure (in constant dollars) doubled between 1960 and 1980, and doubled again by 2016. Warren’s and Sen. Bernie Sanders’s jeremiads against “greed” exempt that of teachers unions.

The Commonwealth Foundation is a tireless advocate for more Pennsylvania charter schools and for tax credits for scholarships. This school year the foundation, prevailing against labor’s big battalions, expanded scholarship access to 15,000 more children. Unfortunately, Gov. Tom Wolf, who attended a prestigious and pricey prep school, The Hill School, has issued executive actions to restrict enrollments in charter schools. And to cut funding for charters. And to force charters to pay the government to perform its duty of compelling reluctant school districts to obey the law: Pandering to teachers unions, some districts refuse to provide charters with legally required per pupil funding. Charter funds are distributed by school districts that often are running the underperforming schools that make parents desperate for the alternative of charter schools.

Last year, Philadelphia, where 34,000 students recently applied for 7,500 available charter spaces, refused all three applications for new charters. A 2019 Education Next poll showed African American majorities favoring public charters and private school vouchers for low income families. Nevertheless, Warren pledges to “end federal funding for the expansion of charter schools” and “ban for-profit charter schools.” She who preens about her granular mastery of policy details must know that her pledge would have a disparate impact on low-income and minority families. Sanders, too, vows to ban for-profit charters (about 12% of charters) and to freeze funding for new charters.

Last November, Warren spoke in Atlanta with some African Americans who had interrupted her speech to protest her opposition to school choice, and who accused her of sending her children to private schools. Warren replied, as a clever lawyer would, “No, my children went to public schools.” This was technically true and (unless her son’s schooling slipped her mind) tendentious. She has tweeted “#PublicSchoolProud” and her daughter attended public schools. So did her son, until he didn’t. After fifth grade, he attended private schools in Austin and in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The following is pretty much what Porschia Anderson believes: “[T]the term ‘voucher’ has become a dirty word in many educational circles. … The fear is that partial-subsidy vouchers provide a boost so that better-off parents can opt out of a failing public school system, while other children are left behind. … [But] a taxpayer funded voucher that paid the entire cost of educating a child (not just a partial subsidy) would open a range of opportunities to all children.” Those are not, however, Porschia Anderson’s words. They are from the 2003 iteration of Elizabeth Warren. She also has celebrated the “extraordinary results” of Massachusetts charters, some of which started with the sort of federal aid she now vows to abolish.