Nebraska Targets DEI, Promotes School Choice

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen recently laid out his goals for education in the state this coming year, which include ditching woke ideology, bringing reality to bear on transgender lies, and expanding school choice.

School choice, which is also a priority of the Trump administration, allows students to apply their public school money allotment to charter schools, private schools, or even sometimes homeschool. Pillen has set a goal for students seeking free tuition inclusive of room and board at in-state schools to score 33 or above on the ACT. The average composite ACT score for Nebraska in 2024 was 19.1 out of 36, so Pillen evidently hopes to raise that average with the incentive of increased student aid.

Naturally, the Nebraska State Education Association is very unhappy at the prospect of expanded school choice, according to KMTV3 News Now. When public schools actually face competition, they always lose, because their standards are lower, their teachers are often less competent, and their focus is more on propaganda than education. Taxpayer funding alone gives public schools an affordability advantage. If a teachers' association opposes an educational measure, that is usually yet another proof that the measure is a good one.

Pillen proposed $7 million for school choice programs and also to exorcise diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology from Nebraska colleges, per KMTV3. Pillen is opting Nebraska into a federal scholarship tax credit that permits families to deduct tuition costs for private school from taxable income. This will be a "gamechanger," he promised.

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Nebraska voters reportedly rejected one school choice program in 2024, but Pillen is feeling confident about this new effort, it seems.

He is also determined to de-wokify higher education in state schools. “We are Nebraska, not a woke ivory tower on the coast, how destructive would it be if our great university of Nebraska followed the same path that so called elite coastal schools have, embracing pronoun cultural, DEI discrimination,” he challenged. He also hopes to see more discipline in elementary and secondary schools.

KMTV3 added:

The governor made another proposal during his speech: high school students who score 33 or higher on the ACT would receive free tuition and room and board to in-state schools. He did not explain how he plans to pay for that program.

Perhaps he plans to save money from axed DEI programs. No doubt millions of dollars have gone down the drain in woke DEI initiatives.

The Nebraska State Education Association is panicked at the prospect of some of their funding going to private schools as students will be able to opt out of public school and apply their allotment elsewhere. This panic has nothing to do with wanting to help students, but rather with wanting to retain students for funding purposes regardless of how terrible the public school education is.

Hopefully Nebraska can help students raise their test scores and receive a better quality education despite the machinations of the woke teachers' association and the public school bureaucracy.

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