An evil plot is afoot to pressure the states to adopt “school choice schemes”, according to onetime Rutland Northeast Superintendent Dr. William J. Mathis. He is currently a Shumlin appointee to the Vermont State Board of Education. Metro art
Montpelier — An evil plot is afoot to pressure the states to adopt “school choice schemes”, according to onetime Rutland Northeast Superintendent Dr. William J. Mathis. He is currently a Shumlin appointee to the Vermont State Board of Education and Managing Director of the grandly-named “National Education Policy Center” at the University of Colorado.
According to Mathis’s article “School Choice: What the Research Shows”, the centerpiece of the plot is the Obama administration’s pressure on states to create charter schools. Vermont is one of 13 states that do not authorize public charter schools, thanks to the surprisingly determined opposition of Gov. Howard Dean and, naturally, the Vermont-NEA teachers’ union. The idea is not popular with the public school establishment either, since allowing parents to choose charter schools for their children threatens an exodus from poorly-performing traditional schools that their management may find it hard to explain when asking taxpayers for more money.
It’s not just the Obama administration, either. Mathis states that “Vested interest think tanks, heavily supported by the deep-pockets of the Gates, Broad, and Friedman foundations” are also “major pushers” (as if parental choice is some kind of narcotic.)
One has to wonder how think tanks can become “vested interests”, when none of them can receive any financial benefit from increased parental choice. The real vested interests in education are people whose livelihood depends on the government continuing to deliver students and money, for instance, Rutland Northeast Superintendents.
In any case, Mathis has well earned the dubious accolade of being Vermont’s most persistent and extravagant opponent of giving parents more educational choices for their children. His opposition flows from a deeply-held ideology derived from the well-known socialist of the 1920s, John Dewey: “the purpose of education is a democratic society.”
For Mathis, that translates into a government-operated monopoly school system, managed by far-seeing and certified experts, into whose unionized schools parents are required to consign their children, and for which taxpayers are required to pay whatever is deemed necessary.
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