At least in part, contemporary education is defined by apathy. All of us may want quality schools staffed with gold standard teachers, but the sad reality is that most of us just don’t put up the fight. We can’t. Often, we’re told we shouldn’t. 

Publicly speaking, America is mostly complacent about its education system, a complacency designed by politicians who use it strategically to convince us that education is a fight best left up to themselves and, if they’re lucky, to teachers. The same complacency surrounds HR 610, a new Congressional bill working to destabilize public education.

Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard about it. Along with a slew of other new bills being introduced into the 115^th Congress, this one masquerades as the “right thing to do” while actively working against public education’s best interests.

In brief, it establishes the Trump-DeVos promised voucher program to start defunding public education. It repeals the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is the largest source of federal funding that states receive for education. Under the new bill, states will receive federal dollars as grants if they agree to establish a voucher program. (Education is a state funding responsibility.)

This may all seem distant if you don’t have children, or if they’ve already graduated high school, but HR 610 affects every avenue of American life by attacking its very foundation—education.

The bill stems a panic over ineffective schools. Every week, we hear reports of “failing,” “sinking” schools that seem to plague the US, when in truth American education writ large isn’t in a bad way. These reports essentialize the honest struggles of particular districts and paint them as characterizations of public education in general. They’re often substantiated by citing international test scores, on which the US performs unremarkably. Or so we’re told.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is one of these tests. “In 2015 over half a million students, representing 28 million 15-year-olds in 72 countries and economies, took the internationally agreed two-hour test. Students were assessed in science, mathematics, reading, collaborative problem solving and financial literacy.”

Internationally, the average reading score was 493 with an estimated 0.5 points of standard error.

Singapore, the leader, scored 535 with 1.6 points of standard error.

The US, placing 24th, scored 497 with 3.4 points of standard error.

Here’s where the scores aren’t fully read. Including standard error, the US statistically scored between 493.6 and 500.4, which means that instead of playing second banana to the UK, Portugal, Belgium, France, and Denmark (as critics often argue it does), the US is quite equitable with all of these countries’ scores.

This is because the standard error attached to these scores defines a range of potential scores. These potential scores fall inside the same range as the US’s 493.6-500.4. In truth, the US is closer to being ranked #15, where the Netherlands is ranked presently, because our ranges overlap theirs.

This also applies to science scores, where the US scores 496 with 3.2 points of standard error, leaving the range of scores 492.8-499.2. This range places the US on par with Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, and Poland.

But we seldom hear this argument. Instead, we hear about supposed mediocre scores, substantiating the claim that America’s schools are failing by lagging behind other countries. This isn’t always the case. In fact, I’d argue that the academic achievement and prospects of America’s top 25 percent of students are equitable with those in competing countries such as the UK, France, and even Sweden.

That being said, we can’t ignore the work that still needs to be done—desperately in many school districts—to help improve America’s scores, even one day to make them equitable with Singapore’s. And I’m in no way undercutting this work by suggesting that things just aren’t as bad as they seem. But the distance to that goal is immensely focused given an informed look at the statistics.

All of this to say that most of the fear substantiating the bill is misguided—or at least misdirected. In light of these statistics, vouchers seem like a token of wealthy politics, uninformed at best detrimental at worst. But what are they in the first place? Essentially, vouchers are “coupons, backed by state dollars, that parents can use to send their kids to the school of their choice, even private, religiously affiliated schools,” reports NPR.

Their effectiveness is still being debated, the first signal that it’s too early to raise them to the ranks of national policy. The sample of students enrolled in voucher-funded schools is only a small subsection of the roughly 50.4 million total students in US public schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. These numbers warn that any conclusions drawn about voucher-funded programs shouldn’t be essentialized and extended across the country’s education system.

According to the Center on Education Policy, “Achievement gains for voucher students are similar to those of their public school peers,” which seems like good news for DeVos’ supporters. But this conclusion doesn’t mean voucher-funded programs are more effective than public schools. In fact, according to the prestigious education scholar Diane Ravitch, in Milwaukee, “voucher schools have never outperformed the public schools on state tests.” Her blog post “Vouchers Don’t Work: Evidence from Milwaukee” presents a researched argument of one state’s struggle with this program. Her writing is a nice counterpoint to DeVos’s comedic yet sad lack of knowledge about US education, illuminated at her Senate hearing.

This ineptness underlies her wish to grant all families “school choice,” a fuzzy concept, at best. Through this program, families would have the “freedom,” Republicans like to remind, to send their kids to the best schools imaginable. No longer would they be stuck in “failing,” “overcrowded” schools. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want that? But this argument assumes a privilege unheard of in the politics of contemporary education. HR 610 may achieve its goal of granting greater “school choice,” but only at the risk of forcing families to move—if they can afford it—to better neighborhoods with presumably stronger schools inside them. Last time I checked, HR 610 isn’t handing out funds to purchase a new home and to pay the higher property taxes associated with such move. What about students who simply live too far from a high-quality school? There’s no bus program that can feasibly accommodate a two-hour commute. Ultimately, the “get up and go” mentality underpinning this entire bill is unsustainable, even with Republican vouchers.

At its core, the bill is an exercise in privilege. It makes the mistake of advancing vouchers as the solution to education inequality and under-achieving schools when in truth, the problem is much more complex. It involves the synergy of social class, district boundaries, and segregated funding practices, among others. We need to talk about poverty, America, not school choice.

Consider the Buffalo City School District’s 32,165 students, 79 percent of whom are classified as economically disadvantaged on NYSED’s 2015 report card. That same year, economically disadvantaged students didn’t make adequate yearly progress marks, high school graduation being one criteria used to measure this. Of the 2,517 students part of a four-year cohort, 57 percent graduated. Of the 1,493 economically disadvantaged students measured as a separate cohort, 54 percent graduated.

Systemic poverty plus funding practices ritualize a mentality that schools are failing. In truth, a host of factors affecting impoverished families and students are at play. Advancing vouchers to patch the problems of inequality is ineffective long-term, so our goal should be to help all students succeed in well-funded public schools. In many ways, this nation’s public school system is a cornerstone of its democracy. We need to renew the fight for high-quality public schools in all of our neighborhoods, a fight that starts by addressing systemic poverty, in our city, in the nation.

Instead, the bill slashes and repeals. Notably, it repeals the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), whose goal has always been “to improve educational equity for students from lower-income families by providing federal funds to school districts serving poor students,” according to Education Post. Because ESEA “is the single largest source of federal spending on elementary and secondary education,” the government uses these funds to hold schools accountable for ensuring that they provide all students quality education. In turn, this demonstrates to the government that its funds are being well spent. Because of its importance, ESEA has often been reauthorized, by No Child Left Behind in 2002 and as Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015.

It works to ensure that students of all socioeconomic statuses are represented in the fight for access to quality education. Lest we forget, our country is still fighting for access to this education. If they’re worth their rhetoric, DeVos and other Republicans should begin their education debate by universalizing access and by understanding the complexities surrounding it: it’s not as simple as stating that everyone has the right to a free, public education. Then we can start talking about choice. Then, their freedom narratives will no longer be hollow.

Specifically, President Obama’s reauthorization sets accountability standards for reading, math, and graduation rates. “These goals have to be set for all students, and for low-income students, students from major racial/ethnic groups, students with disabilities and English learners, respectively,” reports the Education Trust. It also sets district-wide accountability standards so that “If schools fail to improve within a district-determined number of years, the district has to require additional action.” Finally, it promotes the “Continued targeting of federal funding to the highest poverty schools and districts” appealing to standards of social justice that all schools deserve. Access to quality education begins with ESSA’s insistence on social justice for all students, most of whom, in America, attend public schools.

Critically, the act supports students with disabilities by requiring “the same academic content and achievement standards for all students” with exceptions in achievement standards for students with the most “significant cognitive disabilities.” It defines these alternate achievement standards, ensuring that all students have the opportunity to work toward graduating high school.

ESSA mandates all assessments be constructed using principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). These principles are a “scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice,” according to the Council of Chief State School Officers. They ensure “flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged.” Its principles define the best researched practices for educating all students in the twenty-first century. These principles are the future of education; they need to be defended.

HR 610 also repeals sections 210 and 220 of title 7 Code of Federal Regulations Food and Nutrition Service. Together, these mandate “most schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat and trans fat in meals; and meet the nutrition needs of school children within their calorie requirements.” These standards are a cornerstone of reforming school lunch practices. They’ve raised awareness of the obesity epidemic. They’ve also helped students live healthier by forcing schools to offer quality meals. Slashing the standards sends many messages about quality school lunches, the most unfortunate being “you get what you get.”

In the Buffalo City School District alone, NYSED reports that 77 percent of students are eligible for free school lunches. I’m assuming free school lunches should also mean quality school lunches, prepared and served to students for whom this could be their only guaranteed food each day. We forget just how much of a student’s day is spent inside school; we can’t forget that for many, school lunches are food guaranteed.

All of a sudden, the choices lauded by the “Choices in Education Act” deflate. For thousands of families across the US, “school choice” only reaffirms the same inequality they’ve always fought against. So when we debate school choice, we must acknowledge the fine line that separates actual choice from the fictionalized one HR 610 propounds.

For wealthy Americans, school choice already exists. For the continually marginalized, it’s a fiction, only reified by floundering efforts like this bill. Quite honestly, it’s a slap in the face.

The bill is sponsored by Congressman Steve King (R-IA), already infamous for HR 997, the English Language Act. This is better known as nativism and xenophobia justified in the name an America of “successfully assimilated multitudes through English,” as King defines. Introduced on February 9, 2017, it has yet to pass the House.

To King, “Almost without exception, every nation state, including the Vatican, has at least one official language – except the United States.” All of a sudden, formality seems more important than the fact that most Americans are either too lazy to learn another language or have been systemically denied the quality education needed to do so. H.R. 997 “declares that all citizens should be able to read and understand generally the English language text of U.S. laws.” One wonders many things about that statement.

So King is no amateur when it comes to concocting what’s “best” for the American people. The rhetoric of false choice represented in HR 610 is no exception. But what is it trying to do broadly?

The bill enters the tired debate surrounding just how much reach the federal government should have in education. Critics often fault Common Core as an overreach and the fact that education is a state responsibility only complicates this. But HR 610 also defines a new tradition—one extending so far that it starts to dissolve itself with the help of another recent bill, H.R. 899 whose one sentence goal is “To terminate the Department of Education.”

This may make education an even stronger states’ rights priority, but every sector of public American life deserves a national governing body to defend it. DeVos’ royal floundering with charter schools in Michigan also represents this necessity. In the Detroit Free Press, Stephen Henderson characterizes the “nation’s largest urban network of charter schools,” those in Detroit. He identifies the repeated failures of DeVos’ mission to promote them, which include “abysmal test scores” at Detroit Community Schools and equally unimpressive renditions at Woodward Academy and Hope Academy. School choice, to echo Henderson, “was created by an ideological lobby that has zealously championed free-market education reform for decades, with little regard for the outcome.” And it may be coming to a state near you.

In our Trump-centric times, it’s no surprise most haven’t heard about HR 610. But just how far this bill may go to destabilize the mission of public education should supplant this. I’d urge you to call Brian Higgins and Chris Collins along with Kristen Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer. We need their attention. They need our energy. Buffalo demands better. And so does America.

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George Goga is a writer and teacher from Buffalo, New York. Currently, he’s writing a book about what the American life well-lived is supposed to look like.