Wyoming Supreme Court Overturns Abortion Bans

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2026 //
1

The Wyoming Supreme Court overturned two laws that were intended to ban abortions. One of the overruled laws prohibited abortion. The other prohibited the abortion pill, which is used at home for DIY abortions. The court held that the two laws violated the state constitution’s guarantee that a woman has the right to make her own health care choices.

The Governor was outraged and said he will ask the legislature to amend the state constitution to prohibit all means of abortion. He would then have to hold a referendum to get public consent.

Mead Grover of the AP reported:

The Wyoming Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down the state’s near-total abortion ban and a first-of-its-kind prohibition on abortion pills, saying that the laws violated the state constitution.

In 2023, the year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Wyoming passed an abortion ban that included narrow exceptions for incest, sexual assault and cases where the mother’s health is at risk. Later that year, it became the first state in the country to explicitly outlaw abortion pills, setting fines and prison time for anyone found prescribing the drugs for an abortion.

But abortion remained legal in the red state because the bans were blocked in court as legal challenges played out. In the case decided Tuesday, Wyoming’s Supreme Court weighed whether the two 2023 laws violated a woman’s right to make her own health care choices as guaranteed in the state constitution.

The state argued that the laws did not violate that right because abortion is not health care. Even if it were, the state argued, the procedure could not be considered a woman’s own decision because it ended the life of the fetus.

The Wyoming Supreme Court disagreed.
“Although a woman’s decision to have an abortion ends the fetal life, the decision is, nevertheless, one she makes concerning her own health care,” Wyoming Chief Justice Lynne Boomgaarden wrote in the court’s ruling.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R), who signed both of the contested abortion laws, derided the court’s decision. He pressed Wyoming’s Republican-led legislature to pass a constitutional amendment on abortion as soon as possible.

If the legislature passed such an amendment, it would then go before voters during the 2026 election.

“This ruling is profoundly unfortunate and sadly only serves to prolong the ultimate and proper resolution of this issue,” Gordon said in a statement. “This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself.”

The state’s attorney who argued before the Wyoming Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case decided Tuesday was brought by Wyoming’s lone abortion clinic, a nonprofit in the state that helps fund abortion services and a group of women who live there.

Categories Gender, Health, Wyoming

January 6: The Worst Day in U.S. History

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2026 //
18

Like many of you, I sat glued to the television on January 6, 2021, and watched the terrible events unfold. I had seen Trump’s tweet a few weeks earlier, urging his followers to show up on January 6 and promising that it would be “wild.”

They did show up. Thousands of them. Some dressed in military gear, some in bizarre costumes, some armed. All eager to “stop the steal.” As Trump promised, it was indeed wild.

Trump had gone through 60 court cases, appealing the vote in different states. Every court ruled against him. Trump-appointed judges ruled against him. There was no evidence of fraud. The US Supreme Court ruled against his claims–twice. His closest advisors told him he lost. But he listened only to those who told him the election was rigged, like Rudy Giuliani, the My Pillow Guy, Sidney Powell, etc.

When his supporters showed up on January 6, he gave a passionate speech, telling them that the election had been stolen. He urged them to march to the Capitol, where the ceremonial counting of the electoral vote was taking place, and said he would march with them.

He didn’t march with them, though he wanted to. He returned to the White Hiuse, where he sat back and watched his loyal fans attack the U.S. Capitol, smash its windows, break through its doors, assault Capitol police, and ransack the seat of our government.

It was the worst day in our history because never before had an American president rallied his passionate fans and called on them to attack the seat of our government. Never before had a mob of American citizens tried to overturn a free and fair election by violence.

Trump demonstrated that he is a sore loser. He was beaten by Joe Biden fair and square. He refused to accept that he lost. He continues to claim that he won.

He is either delusional or the world’s biggest crybaby and liar.

I will never forget that day of infamy. Yes, it was wise than Pearl Harbor. It was worse than 9/11. On those days, we were attacked by foreign powers and terrorists. On January 6, our democracy was attacked by Americans.

I recommend that you read Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent article in The Atlantic. The link is a gift article.

This is what Glenn Kessler wrote:

Trump rallying a crowd before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol: “You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen.”

A version of this article was posted in October behind a paywall as part of the “On Trump’s Bullshit” series. I am making it available to all subscribers on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In October, Donald Trump posted on social media what appeared to be a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi: “The Biden FBI placed 274 agents into the crowd on January 6…What a SCAM – DO SOMETHING!”

When Bondi launches her investigation, she’ll soon discover an uncomfortable fact: Joe Biden wasn’t president on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump was — and he sought to block Biden from taking office. (And it was his government that deployed agents after the riot began.)

The post is emblematic of Trump’s most astonishing piece of bullshit — his effort to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that he orchestrated and encouraged. 

Trump knew he faced criminal liability for his role in obstructing the peaceful passage of power after his 2020 defeat, so it’s quite possible he ran for president mainly to derail the investigation. As a tactic, it was successful. Through repeated legal challenges, he managed to delay the trial until after the November election. When he won, the Justice Department was required to drop the case because of an existing policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

Then, as soon as he became president, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the riot, while commuting the sentences of fourteen members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two far-right groups.

Trump now routinely refers to the “January 6 hoax,” attempting to erase the event altogether.

Even more amazing, Trump has managed to convince many of his supporters that a riot that resulted in $2.7 billion in property damage, security expenses, and other related costs, according to the Government Accountability Office, was a “beautiful day” and “a day of love.” The rioters assaulted 140 law enforcement officers, while 123 people were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to law enforcement.

The reality is that Trump incited the brutal assault on the Capitol, starting with his lie that he won the 2020 election. His refusal to accept the election results, despite his convincing losses in key battleground states, set the stage for a day of outrage by his supporters.

The final report of Special Counsel Jack Smith documented how Trump tried to browbeat Republican state officials in battleground states to alter the results or nullify them. Thankfully, people such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger —who Trump demanded to “find 11,780 votes” — or Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey — who bluntly told Trump he lost because he had underperformed with educated females — refused to yield to his pressure.

So did Vice President Mike Pence. Trump wanted Pence, who had the ceremonial role of presiding over the Electoral College count, to overturn the election by rejecting votes for Biden from six battleground states. Pence knew he didn’t have the authority to do so, despite the theories offered by what he called Trump’s “gaggle of crackpot lawyers.”

But the most damning evidence of Trump’s misconduct are his own actions on January 6, after the crowd he urged to march on the Capitol turned into a mob. 

As the scale of the attack became clear, Trump was reluctant to try to calm the situation, even as his staff pleaded with him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol. Trump’s tweets were so inadequate, in the view of staff members, that many resolved to resign. Even his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. found the tweets to be inappropriate. Nearly three hours passed before Trump finally told the rioters to “go home.”

The House select committee report on the Jan. 6 attack shows that Trump learned only 15 minutes after he concluded his remarks on the National Mall at 1:10 p.m. that the Capitol was under attack. Less than half an hour later, the Metropolitan Police Department officially declared a riot. Minutes later, rioters broke into the Capitol and swarmed the building.

Yet it was not until 2:24 that Trump issued his first written tweet — and it made things worse.

Trump wrote: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

According to the House committee’s report: “Evidence shows that the 2:24 p.m. tweet immediately precipitated further violence at the Capitol. Immediately after this tweet, the crowds both inside and outside of the Capitol building violently surged forward. Outside the building, within 10 minutes thousands of rioters overran the line on the west side of the Capitol that was being held by the Metropolitan Police Force’s Civil Disturbance Unit, the first time in the history of the DC Metro Police that such a security line had ever been broken.”

One minute after the tweet, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location at the Capitol. According to Smith’s report, when an advisor at the White House rushed to the dining room to inform Trump, the president replied, “So what?”

Contemporaneous White House reactions were damning.

Deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger told the House committee that the 2:24 p.m. tweet convinced him to resign that day. “I read it and was quite disturbed by it,” he told the committee. “I was disturbed and worried to see that the President was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty. So the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation. … It looked like fuel being poured on the fire.”

White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in his deposition with the committee, said: “My reaction to it is that’s a terrible tweet, and I disagreed with the sentiment. And I thought it was wrong.”

The committee report says that Trump’s daughter Ivanka rushed to the Oval Office dining room, where Trump was watching coverage of the riot on Fox News. “Although no one could convince President Trump to call for the violent rioters to leave the Capitol, Ivanka persuaded President Trump that a tweet could be issued to discourage violence against the police,” the report said.

At 2:39, Trump issued this tweet: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

The tweet did not condemn the violence or tell rioters to leave the Capitol. As Trump well knew, the crowd was not peaceful at the time.

Even so, the committee’s report said that Trump had resisted using the word “peaceful.” It quotes Sarah Matthews, who was the deputy White House press secretary, about a conversation she had with Ivanka after Matthews expressed concern the tweet did not go far enough. “In a hushed tone [she] shared with me that the President did not want to include any sort of mention of peace in that tweet and that it took some convincing on their part, those who were in the room,” Matthews told the committee.

Trump rejected staff requests to urge people who entered the Capitol illegally to leave immediately. Instead, at 3:13 p.m., when he issued a third tweet, he still did not tell people to go home. “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful,” he said. “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

The violence continued.

Finally, at 4:17 p.m., almost three hours after the attack began, Trump posted a video that encouraged people to leave the Capitol — while repeating many of his lies about a stolen election. By then it was clear Trump had failed to derail Biden’s election.

“Down at the Capitol, the video began streaming onto rioters’ phones, and by all accounts including video footage taken by other rioters, they listened to President Trump’s command,” the report said. “ ‘Donald Trump has asked everybody to go home,’ one rioter shouted as he ‘deliver[ed] the President’s message.’ ‘That’s our order,’ another rioter responded. Others watching the video responded: ‘He says, go home.’ ”

Just after 6 pm, Trump offered one more tweet that appeared to justify the violence on one of the darkest days in American history: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

It was a sickening, celebratory tweet on a horrific day — convincing even more White House officials to quit — and no amount of Trump bullshit can erase his conduct from the annals of history.

·

Categories Accountability, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, History, Lies, Trump

Harvard President Blames Faculty Activism for Repression of Free Speech

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2026 //
10

Harvard University’s President Alan Garber said in a recent discussion that faculty activism in their classes chilled students’ free speech and created a repressive climate on campus.

An article in The Harvard Crimson reported on President Garber’s comments.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus.

In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching.

“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” he said.

The remarks mark Garber’s most explicit public acknowledgement that faculty practices have contributed to a breakdown in open discourse on campus — and that he is committed to backtracking toward neutrality in the classroom…

Though Garber has carved some exceptions to the policy — notably when he, in his personal capacity, condemned a Palestine Solidarity Committee post marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack — he has increasingly emphasized restraint, particularly in the classroom.

“I’m pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom,” he said….

In his responses, Garber echoed the sentiment of a Faculty of Arts and Sciences reportreleased last January, which affirmed professors’ right to “extramural speech” but warned that instructors must proactively encourage disagreement in the classroom to avoid alienating students…

Instead of relying primarily on punishment, Garber touted changes to University orientations — including the addition of a module on discussing controversial topics — alongside the expansive reports produced by Harvard’s twin task forces on combating bias toward Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates.

“It’s about learning how to listen and how to speak in an empathetic way,” he said.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of Speech

Peter Greene: Ohio Slams Schools with an Unfunded Mandate

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2026 //
1

Peter Greene has the great advantage of classroom experience when he evaluates shiny new ideas. The latest in Ohio is an unfounded mandate concocted by Andrew Brenner, the chairman of the Ohio House Education and Career Readiness Committee in the state legislature. Brenner previously called public schools “socialist” and is a strong supporter of privatization. In this post, Peter shows the underside of the latest “reform.”

He writes:

The Ohio legislature is considering a bill that will require schools to provide students with free “high-dosage tutoring” that will be subject to Department of Education and Workforce auditing along with a new professional development program for math teachers. The legislators have not included funding for any of this. Not a cent. It is the very definition of an unfunded mandate.

As reported by Laura Hancock at Cleveland.com:

“Our educational system must be responsive to the needs of our students,” bill sponsor Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Delaware County Republican, said earlier this year during bill testimony. “In this last year alone, we have significantly increased the amount of funding each student receives for their education, provided resources for tutoring services, and made high quality instructional materials available while identifying methods of instruction that most benefit students. If we are unable to say that our students who need the most help are in fact receiving that assistance from their school, then we are putting the interests of adults ahead of the needs of children.”

Lordy, it’s like a word salad made out of some of the most popular baloney talking points. “Putting the interests of adults ahead of the needs of children.” You know, like teachers with their need to be paid for extra hours of work. Mind you, putting the needs of adult politicians to look like they’re bravely Doing Something about education ahead of actually supporting that education– that kind of adults-first posturing is perfectly okay.

Brenner was a realtor and insurance salesman before he ascended to the legislature in 2019. He has a Masters in Ed in Leadership from far-right Christian nationalist Liberty University. In 2020, he warned that the state was going to become Nazi Germany over the Covid rules.

The bill at least exempts schools from providing these services for IEP students.

But it assumes that high-dosage tutoring is a real thing, without noting that it is hard and expensive to scale up.

This is the story of education a million times– some legislator gets a bright idea and declares “Let’s require schools to fix this” while waving vaguely in the direction of schools. And while this bright idea may require more resources and human-hours, that lawmaker will be confident that this whole new program can be implemented for free. Rick Hess has often said that you can force folks to do something, but you can’t force them to do it well. That is doubly true when you make zero effort to provide them with the resources needed to implement the program.

Doesn’t matter. Lawmakers will sign the bill (already through the Senate and headed through the House) and congratulate themselves on solving an education problem. For those who, like many Ohio legislators, would like to gut public education, the school’s failure to do a great job implementing the unfunded mandate is just more fodder for the “We gave them money and they didn’t perform magical pedagogical feats” argument used to discredit and dismantle public schools.

Would more no-cost tutoring be great? Sure, though I’d rather it were employed in a more useful cause than raising Big Standardized Test scores. And if you are undertaking a program that essentially increases the number of teacher hours in a day while simultaneously lowering the student-teacher ratio–well, if you are at all serious about it, you come armed with a big pile of money.

The Ohio legislature is not serious about this, but it will be a serious problem for schools.

But hey– they’re probably pre-occupied with the question of whether or not the state will be allowed to buy the obscenely wealthy owners of the Browns a new stadium with $600 million of taxpayer money. Gotta focus on important stuff that deals with the real interests of adults.

Categories Education Reform

Parker Molloy Read Jack Smith’s Testimony So You Wouldn’t Have To

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2026 //
4

Thank you, Parker Molloy! She reviews Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s testimony behind closed doors. The House Republicans were determined to pin Smith as a political partisan, but Smith made crystal clear that he would prosecute anyone without regard to party labels.

Molloy writes on her Substack blog, “The Present Age”:

House Republicans released the 255-page transcript of Jack Smith’s closed-door deposition on New Year’s Eve. You know, the day when absolutely nobody is paying attention to the news. The day when political operatives dump things they don’t want people to see.

Funny how that works.

Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee on December 17th, spending an entire day answering questions about his investigations into Donald Trump. Republicans had been demanding this testimony for months, framing it as part of their “weaponization” investigation.

They got what they asked for. And then they released it when America was busy watching the ball drop.

I spent the holiday reading through the whole thing. Here’s what they didn’t want you to see.

Smith says Trump is guilty

In Smith’s opening statement, he declared that his office had developed “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump committed crimes in both the January 6th case and the classified documents case.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” (p. 17)

When asked if he would prosecute a former president on the same facts today, Smith said he absolutely would:

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” (p. 17)

When asked if he would prosecute a former president on the same facts today, Smith said he absolutely would:

“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.” (p. 18)

And when asked point-blank if he’d ever prosecuted someone he didn’t believe was guilty, Smith’s answer was simple:

“Never.” (p. 83)

Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump on August 1, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Trump’s tweet “endangered the life of his own vice president”

Smith described what happened on January 6th in stark terms. When asked whether Trump was responsible for the violence at the Capitol, Smith testified:

Categories Accountability, Justice, Lies, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson Speaks Out on the Lawlessness of Trump’s Strike on Venezuela

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
16

Heather Cox Richardson recorded a commentary on Substack about the very dangerous moment we are in.

If Trump can strike wherever he wants whenever he wants, the U.S. and the world is in deep trouble.

Which country is next? Cuba? Columbia? Greenland?

Trump is attacking the international rules-based, law-based order.

Categories International, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson on Venezuela Invasion

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
21

Heather Cox Richardson reviews the events of the weekend. One update: the Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, initially gave a defiant speech declaring that Maduro was still the President of Venezuela. But she later remarked that the best response to the new situation was to be “cooperative,” implying that she has had conversations with Rubio and has agreed to hold Venezuela together by remaining in office. Her statement late Sunday included this: “We extend an invitation to the U.S. government to work together on a cooperation agenda, oriented toward shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence.”

Trump and Marco Rubio may have learned a lesson from our disastrous invasion of Iraq, where U.S. forces removed everyone–civilian and military– associated with Saddam Hussein, who built a powerful resistance. Apparently they intend to “run” Venezuela by using the current regime to do their bidding.

Most frightening fact about this event is that Trump and his close associates believe they can take military action anywhere in the world without consulting Congress, as the Constitution requires. They treat Congress and the Constitution as useless appendages, not worthy of even a nod. So long as the Republicans who control Congress accept Trump’s disdain, they may as well go home and stop pretending that they matter.

Trump said after Maduro’s removal that he’s still determined to take Greenland away from Denmark, because we need it for our “national security.” Rubio issued a warning to Cuba, implying that it was in our sights. Trump is now reveling in the successful capture of Maduro and Venezuela. Who’s next?

Richardson wrote:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the administration’s message about its strikes on Venezuela to the Sunday talk shows this morning. It did not go well.

Asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week under what legal authority the U.S. is going to run Venezuela, as President Donald J. Trump vowed to do, Rubio served up a lot of words but ultimately fell back on the idea that the U.S. has economic leverage over Venezuela because it can seize sanctioned oil tankers. Seizing ships will give the U.S. power to force the Venezuelan government to do as the U.S. wants, Rubio suggested. This is a very different message than Trump delivered yesterday when he claimed that the people standing behind him on the stage—including Rubio—would be running Venezuela.

When Stephanopoulos asked Rubio if he was, indeed, running Venezuela, Rubio again suggested that the U.S. was only pressuring the Venezuelan government by seizing sanctioned oil tankers, and said he was involved in those policies. When Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press also asked if Rubio was running Venezuela, Rubio seemed frustrated that “People [are] fixating on that. Here’s the bottom line on it is we expect to see changes in Venezuela.” Historian Kevin Kruse commented: “Yeah, people are fixating on a Cabinet Secretary being given a sovereign country to run because the president waged war without congressional approval and kidnapped the old leader. Weird that they’d get hung up on that.”

When Stephanopoulos asked why the administration thought it didn’t need congressional authorization for the strikes, Rubio said they didn’t need congressional approval because the U.S. did not invade or occupy another country. The attack, he said, was simply a law enforcement operation to arrest Maduro. Rubio said something similar yesterday, but Trump immediately undercut that argument by saying the U.S. intended to take over Venezuela’s oil fields and run the country.

Indeed, if the strikes were a law enforcement operation, officials will need to explain how officers managed to kill so many civilians, as well as members of security forces. Mariana Martinez of the New York Times reported today that the number of those killed in the operation has risen to 80.

Rubio highlighted again that the Trump administration wants to control the Western Hemisphere, and he went on to threaten Cuba. Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles articulated the extraordinary smallness of the Trump administration’s vision when he wrote: “We must also marvel at the titanic idiocy of our new ‘Donroe Doctrine’ for it turns America from a global power into a regional one by choice. I still can’t really believe they are going through with this for it is so batsh*t f-ing crazy, and does so much lasting harm to our interests.”

Shortly after Trump told reporters yesterday that Venezuela’s former vice president, now president, Delcy Rodríguez is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Rodríguez demanded Maduro’s return and said Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire, whatever its nature.” Indeed, U.S. extraction of Maduro and threats to “run” Venezuela are more likely to boost the Maduro government than weaken it.

In a phone call today with Michael Scherer of The Atlantic, Trump threatened Rodríguez, saying that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Tonight on Air Force One, Trump told reporters that the U.S., not Rodríguez, is in charge of Venezuela.

Trump also told Scherer that he does indeed intend to continue to assert U.S. control in the Western Hemisphere, telling Scherer that “we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.” Greenland is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), meaning it is already part of U.S. national defense.

Although he ran for office on the idea of getting the U.S. out of the business of foreign intervention, Trump embraced the idea of regime change in Venezuela, telling Scherer: “You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.” He continued: “Rebuilding is not a bad thing in Venezuela’s case. The country’s gone to hell. It’s a failed country. It’s a totally failed country. It’s a country that’s a disaster in every way.”

At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris noted that military intervention in Venezuela is even more unpopular with the American people “than Trump’s tariffs and health care cuts.” In September, only 16% of Americans wanted a “U.S. invasion of Venezuela,” with 62% against it. A December poll showed that 60% of likely voters opposed “sending American troops into Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power.” Only 33% approved. Even support for strikes against the small boats in the Caribbean could not get majority support: 53% opposed them while only 42% approved.

“By the time American forces touched Venezuelan soil early Saturday morning,” Morris writes, “Trump had already lost the public.”

But officials in the administration no longer appear to care what the American people want, instead simply gathering power into their own hands for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, trusting that Republican politicians will go along and the American people will not object enough to force the issue. The refusal of the Department of Justice to obey the clear direction of the Epstein Files Transparency Act seems to have been a test of Congress’s resolve, and so far, it is a gamble the administration appears to be winning.

Morris notes that a December CBS poll showed that 75% of Americans, including 58% of Republicans, correctly believed a president must get approval from Congress before taking military action against Venezuela. The president did not get that approval. By law, the president must inform the Gang of Eight before engaging in military strikes, but if an emergency situation prevents that notification, then the president must inform the Gang of Eight within 48 hours. The Gang of Eight is made up of the top leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress, as well as the top leaders from both parties on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) who as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee is a member of the Gang of Eight, told CBS’s Margaret Brennan this morning that neither he nor House minority leader and fellow Gang of Eight member Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) had been briefed on the strikes. Himes said: “I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been in regular contact with the administration. I’ve had zero outreach, and no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach whatsoever. So apparently we’re now in a world where the legal obligation to keep the Congress informed only applies to your party, which is really something.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—also a member of the Gang of Eight—told reporters that he hadn’t been briefed either and that the administration had deliberately misled Congress in three classified briefings before the strikes. In those briefings, officials assured lawmakers that the administration was not planning to take military action in Venezuela and was not pursuing regime change. “They’ve kept everyone in the total dark,” he said.

Nonetheless, Himes told Brennan that he thought Trump’s Venezuelan adventure would not go well: “We’re in the euphoria period of…acknowledging across the board that Maduro was a bad guy and that our military is absolutely incredible. This is exactly the euphoria we felt in 2002 when our military took down the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2003, when our military took out Saddam Hussein, and in 2011, when we helped remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya. These were very, very bad people, by the way, much, much worse than Maduro and Venezuela, which was never a significant national security threat to the United States. But we’re in that euphoria phase. And what we learned the day after the euphoria phase is that it’s an awful lot easier to break a country than it is to actually do what the president promised to do, which is to run it…. [L]et’s let my Republican colleagues enjoy their day of euphoria, but they’re going to wake up tomorrow morning knowing what? My God, there is no plan here any more than there was in Afghanistan, Iraq, or in Libya.”

Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) was more direct: “The U.S. attack on Venezuela is illegal,” he posted. “Congress never authorized this use of military force. I will vote to stop it. This is insane. Health care costs and food prices are surging. Trump’s response is we’re going to run another country. Batsh*t crazy.”

—

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ethics, Justice, Trump

Connecticut: The Happy Return of Play-Based Learning!

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
1

Elizabeth Huebeck of Education Week reported on an exciting development: the return of play-based learning in Connecticut.

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind more than twenty years ago, play has been pushed out of the curriculum in the early years, replaced by test-based, standardized accountability.

But Mansfield Elementary School in northeastern Connecticut provides a demonstration of the power of play. The children are motivated, engaged in play, and learning.

Huebeck wrote:

When the doors to Mansfield Elementary School in northeastern Connecticut officially opened to students in the 2023-24 school year, Principal Kate McCoy had a lot to be excited about.

She looked forward to building a new school community for the estimated 550 students coming together from three former area schools that had closed due to aging infrastructures and declining enrollment. And she appreciated how the building’s features—abundant natural light, a patio for outdoor learning, a dedicated LEGO room, and the neighboring Mansfield Hollow State Park, whose 250-plus acres allow for easy access to class hikes and other outdoor activities—would support her primary goal as an elementary school leader: to create a culture of joy for students.

The timing was right. 

In 2023, Connecticut passed legislation mandating a return to a teaching approach for young learners that has eroded across the country in the wake of more rigorous academic expectations: guided play.

“I believe elementary schools need to be places where we build joy, and play is how we can get there,” said McCoy. “Pushing play was part of our dialogue from the get-go.”

McCoy’s message, and the state’s newly implemented legislation, are a part of the growing pushback to the “academization” of kindergarten. Over the past couple decades, educators in the early grades have increasingly introduced literacy and math standards with an eye toward preparing students for the grades, and standardized tests, ahead. Explorative, imaginative play that once dominated early-elementary classrooms has been de-emphasized, teachers say. 

But while rigorous academic standards in the early grades may be here to stay, how schools best support students in reaching these standards isn’t set in stone.

“The academic rigor of kindergarten has changed, but that does not mean that play should be removed,” McCoy said. “When children find joy at school, they are more willing to take risks, persevere, and engage in challenging learning.”

Connecticut educators pushed for legislation that reintegrates play in early grades

Members of the Connecticut Education Association pushed hard for the 2023 legislation that reinstated play in early-elementary classrooms. To bolster its argument, the association surveyed the state’s K-3 teachers and found that the teachers reported dramatic declines in play, coinciding with a rise in direct instruction and test preparation. The survey also noted a significant increase in behavioral problems and more anxiety in the early grades in recent years.

Joslyn DeLancey, who taught elementary school in Connecticut public schools for 15 years before joining the state teachers’ union as vice president in 2021, witnessed firsthand such changes sweep through kindergarten programs. The school day went from a half day to a full day. Teachers were told by school leaders to remove from their classrooms blocks, dress-up materials, and other sources of imaginative play. 

“Then they really started pushing these forced scripted curriculums and teaching to the test and really just took all of the play out of the classroom,” she said.

That’s starting to change. The Constitution State’s law, which went into effect July 2024, requires public elementary schools to provide play-based learning for kindergarten and preschool students and permits teachers in grades 1-5 to incorporate play-based learning. 

DeLancey continues to support the law’s implementation, offering professional development workshops for elementary school educators on play-based learning.

The Mansfield school system has emerged as a key partner in the association’s efforts to educate teachers on how to incorporate guided play into the curricula. In the summer of 2024, the district, which serves just under 1,000 students, collaborated with the union to host two days of professional learning on developmentally appropriate guided play aligned to academic standards.

That professional learning continues. “Through ongoing professional development, coaching, and collaboration, play-based learning continues to deepen across our school,” McCoy said.

Teachers at Manchester Elementary report that, in the brief time that they’ve been encouraged to deliberately weave guided play into academic lessons, they’re seeing how it benefits their young students—namely, igniting their innate curiosity and reducing feelings of academic pressure.

Using imaginative, playful lessons to make learning stick

For veteran teachers at Mansfield Elementary like Erika LaBella, the changes couldn’t come soon enough.

“What I’m teaching kindergartners now is what I was teaching 1st graders many moons ago,” LaBella said. “We were slowly watching ourselves move away from play. Then Kate brought this [new instruction] back to us and said, ‘We can incorporate play into our academics,’ and that’s what we’ve all been able to do—find a way to have the kids be joyful throughout the whole day, instead of just having one little isolated time to go play.”

That joyfulness can extend even to the more mundane lessons, like learning new vocabulary, which historically has involved word lists and rote memorization. Courtney Ramsdell, a kindergarten teacher at Mansfield Elementary, has found a better way to get new vocabulary to stick for her young students.

She starts with a focus wall that relates to a specific lesson. In the fall, for instance, Ramsdell’s focus wall centered on a pumpkin patch that doubled as an interactive learning board. The soil for the pumpkin patch required nutrients—a vocabulary word whose meaning made sense to students in the context of growing pumpkins. These nutrients made the soil fertile, another vocabulary word. The students labeled the different parts of the pumpkin patch with their newly acquired vocabulary and added to it throughout the fall. 

“It continued to grow so far above and beyond what the actual curriculum required,” Ramsdell said.

In Kate Harbec’s 2nd grade class at Mansfield Elementary, students in December learned both math principles and vocabulary while building gingerbread people. She first introduced to students the concept of polygons, then, quadrilaterals. She then tested students’ knowledge by spreading out dozens of polygons made out of felt and having students form gingerbread people using only the quadrilateral-shaped pieces.

“They had to think about what the attributes of a quadrilateral were. And by the end of 15 minutes, every kid could tell you that a quadrilateral had four sides,” Harbec said. “It was just a fun, engaging way for them to apply it right away.”

Learning through play takes the pressure away

In most school settings, students learn from a young age that there is a right and a wrong answer. This knowledge can quickly become a source of stress or anxiety. 

Students might become fixated with getting the right answer and the best grades. Getting the answer wrong often enough can lead students to lose confidence, become convinced that they’re not good at school, and even stop trying altogether. On the contrary, teaching concepts via playful exploration encourages academic inquiry and stamina, Harbec said.

In science, her 2nd graders are learning about matter and properties by building toys. 

“Because it’s playful, when things fall apart, they’re like, ‘OK, I can fix it,’” Harbec said. “It’s a natural way to work on growth mindset and learning, because they don’t feel like they’re right or wrong. It’s all about the process along the way.”

Fixating on getting the “right” answer can derail the learning progress for even very young students. So too can hyperawareness of one’s rank within a classroom. Harbec uses games to circumvent this issue as her students strengthen their math skills.

“One group might be playing with cards or dice with higher numbers to make it more challenging for them. The kids are all just thinking they’re playing this game. And if you come into the room, you think everybody is doing exactly the same thing, but you actually have groups of kids working at their best level,” Harbec said. “It’s a natural way to differentiate.”

Early reports show strong performance at Mansfield Elementary

Mansfield Elementary teachers consistently report high student engagement, collaboration, oral language, and confidence, said McCoy, the school’s principal.

In 2023-24, the school’s first full year, Connecticut’s School Performance Index (SPI) showed that Mansfield Elementary students, outperformed state averages in English/language arts by 10.5 percentage points—74.4% compared with 63.9%. The following year, the school’s SPI score in ELA rose to 77.5%, the highest in both the district and the state. 

Thirty-two percent of the school’s students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and 10% identify as English learners. 

Meanwhile, in 2023-24, the school’s math SPI score was 74.4%, compared with the district’s overall score of 72.2% and the state’s average score of 60.2%. In 2024-25, the school again outperformed all other schools in the state, with a math SPI score of 75.5%.

Based on state assessment results, Mansfield Elementary has been recognized as a School of Distinction for the past two years. 

“This reinforces that centering joy and play does not mean lowering expectations,” McCoy said. “It means creating the conditions where students can do the hard work of learning.”

Categories Education Reform

Why Do So Many Believe in Frauds and Hoaxes?

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
8

Last Friday, Mary and I took our oldest grandson, who is now 32, to The Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan. The Morgan is a small but breath-taking collection of books and manuscripts that belonged to the personal collection of J.P. Morgan. The building is breathtaking, as are the books, which include an original Gutenberg Bible.

We began by seeing an exhibition of illustrated Bibles and other religious books that were over 1,000 years old. I kept thinking of the Hebrew scribes and Christian monks who spent years writing and illustrating these gorgeous volumes. Every letter, every line was perfect. How did they do it?

Then we visited the main library, a magnificent room with three layers of leather-bound books.

Mr. J.P. Morgan’s Library
Another view of this magnificent room

The room included a jewel-encrusted Bible, made in France and Austria in the 9th century

Mr. Morgan’s jewel-encrusted Bible

All of this splendor reminded me of the poverty in the streets outside his library and home, but I doubt that he thought much about the people outside.

In an exhibition case, there were several unusual printed documents. One was about a woman named Mary Toth or Toths, an English woman who pulled off an elaborate hoax in 1726, when she was 23 years old. She told doctors that she had given birth to bunnies. The illustration showed her, a few doctors, and many bunnies. The story spread rapidly, and many people believed that she had in fact given birth to bunnies. She was eventually discredited, briefly jailed, and eventually the charges against her were dismissed.

I said to my grandson, if that happened today, it would spread like wildfire on the internet and many people would swear it was true. My grandson said, “Some people will believe anything because they are ignorant.”

The stranger standing next to us interjected, “Some things never change.”

On the same day that we visited The Morgan Library, our frequent commenter Bob Shepherd left the following observation about why people are so gullible:

Three of the most powerful and important experiments ever performed were Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiment, Solomon Asche’s line length determination experiment, and Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment. I won’t go into the details of these here. You can look them up in a quick Google search if you are fuzzy on their details. What these experiments, which have been repeatedly replicated, show conclusively is that about two thirds of people are so driven by desire to be accepted by the group that they will conform to and actively participate in the most egregious behavior toward others in order to be themselves accepted by a perceived “authority.” Next time you are in a public place–at a game, in a restaurant, in a club–look around you. Two thirds of the people you see are potential collaborators–people capable of extreme evil, which, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is TYPICALLY characterized by mediocrity. 

Years ago, when I was a baby editor, I went to work for McDougal, Littell. Ms. Littell–the co-founder’s wife–was the editor of their literature program at the time, and she had chosen for the 12th-grade book an essay by the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper about what an “evil genius” Hitler was. Well, I risked my job by objecting to this piece because Hitler was not a genius. He was a common thug and a psychopath, and people are sheep, easily led, easily bullied into submission and acquiescence. Or consider John Gotti–the psychopathic criminal Mafia thug. The press created an image of the brilliant “Dapper Don,” who could constantly evade punishment. But after he was finally imprisoned, tapes of wire taps on Gotti were released, and these showed that he was the lowest sort of ignorant thug, incapable of clear reasoning or speech, driven by the basest motivations, and unable to say anything without accompanying it with a string of curses that stood in for the words lacking in his fourth-grade vocabulary. 

People want to belong. They want to get along. They want Daddy to tell everyone what to do. And they will idolize absolute monsters if they get that from them.

Bob is a polymath—an author, editor, guitarist, teacher, and humorist–who seems to have read deeply in every field.

Oh, we stopped in the gift shop, and I bought a couple of delightful books. One was titled Rejected Books: The Most Unpublishable Books of All Time.

Some of those unpublishable books:

Famous People in Owl Masks
Unalphabetized Dictionary
Terrible Drawings of Horses

And I loved this cover and title.

People who write books should be fearless.

Categories Billionaires, Hoax, Ignorance, Inequality, Libraries, Lies

Jeff Bryant: The Death of Public Schools in Florida?

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
1

Jeff Bryant, a veteran education journalist, dissects he plan to destroy public schools. Governor Ron DeSantis and the Legislature has unleashed the for-profit vultures to pick the bonds and funds of the state’s public schools. Not because the charges are better schools, but because the rightwingers have close ties to members of the legislature. Want to open a charter school? Want the state to pay all your expenses? Come on down to the Sunshine State!

This article was produced by Our Schools. Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Bluesky@jeffbinnc.

The letters started coming in October 2025. In the first wave, according to the Florida Policy Institute (FPI), “at least 22 school districts in Florida” got letters alerting them that charter school operators, including a for-profit charter school management company based in Miami, intended to use a state law recently enacted to open new charter schools on the campuses of existing public schools beginning August 2027.

In Broward County, a South Florida district that includes Fort Lauderdale, the Mater Academy charter school chain, operated by for-profit charter management company Academica, claimed space in 27 public schools. Mater Academy claimed space in nearly 30 schools in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa Bay, “along with more than a dozen [schools] in Pinellas [County] and six in Pasco [County],” Tampa Bay Times reported. In Sarasota County, Mater claimed space in three public school campuses.

At least two more charter chains—New York-based Success Academy and New Jersey-based KIPP NJ—have joined in the campaign.

“So far, 480 schools in 22 counties have received 690 ‘letters of intent’ from charter school organizations expressing their intent to occupy space in public school buildings,” FPI’s Norin Dollard told Our Schools in late November. When schools receive letters from multiple charter organizations, it’s first come, first served, she explained, and the timeline for schools to respond is incredibly short—just 20 days.

Once the charter occupies part of the public school, Dollard explained, it operates rent free, and the public school district becomes responsible for much of the charter’s costs, including those for services charters don’t customarily provide, such as bus transportation and food service, as well as costs for school support services like janitorial, security, library, nursing, and counseling. Even any construction costs the charters might incur have to be covered by the public school.

This new law will force some public schools to convert to charter schools, said Damaris Allen, “and that’s intentional.” Allen is the executive director of Families for Strong Public Schools, a public schools advocacy organization that is rallying opposition to the law.

The letters have caught the attention of national news outlets, including the Washington Post, which reported, “The Florida law is an expansion of a state program called ‘Schools of Hope,’ which was set up to allow certain charters to operate in areas with low-performing local public schools. The new law allows ‘Schools of Hope’ operators to take over space at any public school that’s under capacity, regardless of whether it is high- or low-performing.”

“The expansion of the Schools of Hope idea has been on a slippery slope,” Dollard explained, “much like school vouchers have been in the state.” Originally, in 2017, schools identified for Schools of Hope transition from public governance to charter management were very narrowly defined as persistently underperforming schools. That changed in 2019 when the legislature altered the definition of low-performing to target more schools and added schools in so-called opportunity zones—government-designated areas selected for economic development—as open territory for charters. Now, the new law allows charter schools to take over “underused, vacant, or surplus” space in traditional public schools and operate free of charge.

As the reach of the Schools of Hope idea morphed, so did its rationale. According to a 2025 op-ed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the program was originally conceived as an “initiative that incentivizes high-quality charter operators to open schools for students trapped in failing ones.” The aim now, according to Bush, is to solve the “problem” of underutilized space in existing public schools.

With school enrollments in steep decline in nearly every district in the state, fear of a potential mass charter school industry takeover of public school spaces—along with the costs local districts will incur—looms over district leaders across the state and strikes them as a clear existential threat.

Other consequences of colocating more charters in public schools have not been well-thought-out, according to Allen. For instance, on the issue of school safety, public schools have undertaken a number of measures to protect against school shootings, such as converting buildings to single-point entry. Charter schools don’t have to do that. So what happens when a charter operation moves into a building and doesn’t comply with the single-point entry? Also, the state legislature created new rulesfor public school libraries in 2022. Charters don’t have to follow those rules. How is that going to work in a colocation?

Allen fears the daunting challenges of charter colocations will cause some school boards and communities to sell school buildings or convert them to district-operated charters rather than give in to charter schools run by outside, for-profit companies.

And while proponents of Florida’s Schools of Hope program see it as a way to expand education options for students and families, critics point to evidence that Florida charter schools, which one expert called “a shitstorm,” need stricter oversight rather than a free rein. And, regardless of the outcomes, they warn that the idea is sure to get promoted as an “education innovation” that other Republican-dominated states will likely adopt.

A warning sign, not a model

When Nancy Lawther, a retired college professor of French, got involved in public schools advocacy, she became very skeptical about the oft-told narrative about the need for more education options because “too many poor children are trapped in failing public schools.” After all, in Dade County, Miami, where she lives, the public system has an A rating by the state despite having a challenging student population that is overwhelmingly Hispanic, with many living in households earning less than the state’s median income.

Her skepticism only increased when she first heard about expanding the Schools of Hope program to more schools, especially when she saw the results from the first schools taken over.

The original “Schools of Hope” weren’t individual schools; it was a whole district. In 2017, the Jefferson County school board voted in favor of participating in a pilot project for the new Schools of Hope initiative. The board’s approval to join the pilot meant that the district was required to turn over the management of their schools to a “high-performing” charter management company, which, in this case, happened to be Somerset Academy, another charter chain managed by the for-profit Academica management company.

But the results of the pilot would be a warning sign about the abilities of charter management firms to improve the education outcomes of public schools. As a 2025 op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel recounted, “[T]axpayers saw higher costs, stagnant results, and constant staff churn. By 2022, the takeover collapsed. Local leaders called it ‘an absolute disaster.’ The state had to step in with a $5 million bailout just to get the district running again.”

A 2024 account of the pilot in the Tallahassee Democrat reported, “[F]rom 2017 to 2022,… [Jefferson County] remained troubled by students’ lagging academic performance and mounting disciplinary issues, like fighting that in one case led to the arrest of 15 students. … [And] the school district was still getting a D grade” from the state.

Nevertheless, after Florida lawmakers expanded the Schools of Hope program in 2019, which has cost more than $300 million as of 2025, “There are only about a dozen Schools of Hope in Florida. In 2024, eight of them got C or D grades,” pointed out the Bradenton Times.”

‘All about market share’

Given its track record of failure, Lawther suspects that expanding Schools of Hope has nothing to do with improving education outcomes or making better use of publicly funded school buildings.

Indeed, Sarasota County, one of the districts targeted for charter colocations, has been an A-rated system since the state created the grading system in 2004, according to the district website.

Also, in districts where there are enrollment slides, there are few signs that demand for charters will soak up excess building capacity. According to a 2025 analysis of Sarasota County by Suncoast Searchlight, “The number of charter schools has grown in recent years, but the share of students at charters has not shifted much.” And building utilization rates of the different sectors are nearly identical—82 percent for public schools and 84 percent for charters, WUSF stated. “Some of the lowest-performing charters are barely a third full.”

Mater Academy, the charter operator using the Schools of Hope law to claim space in Sarasota public schools, does not currently operate a school in the district.

“This is all about market share,” Lawther said. “It’s about getting an advantage over charter operators that are not Schools of Hope providers, and independent charters that can’t compete in a market geared to the large chains,” like those operated by Academica.

Further, while enrollments in Florida charter schools continued to grow, it has shown signs of slowing down—from 3.7 percent in 2024 to 2.6 percent in 2025—and the number of charter schools decreased, from 739 in 2023-2024 to 732 in 2024-2025.

Also, the charter industry in the state faces many more privately-operated competitors. “Expansions of voucher programs are creating a more competitive market for charter schools,” Lawther noted, “and private schools, microschools, and homeschooling are growing forms of school choice.”

Indeed, charter schools no longer appear to be the fastest-growing form of school choice in the state.

After the Republican-led Florida legislature passed a bill in 2023 that did away with income requirements for families to receive state-sponsored school vouchers, the share of state funding diverted from the public system—which, technically, includes charters—to private schools and homeschooling doubled from 12 percent in 2021 to 24 percent in 2025, WUSF reported. In the school year 2023-2024, the number of vouchers, often called “scholarships,” given out to help families pay for private school tuition and homeschooling increased by approximately 142,000 students, according to Next Steps, a school choice advocacy group.

Florida has also experienced a 46 percent increase in homeschooling over the past five years, WEAR statedin 2025. And the state has freed up 50,000 new community facilities to serve as microschools, according to the Center for American Progress.

It would seem that in this increasingly competitive education landscape, the Florida charter school industry could use a new competitive angle like the one offered by Schools of Hope. “Officially, charter school advocates say Schools of Hope is an amazing opportunity to expand parent choice,” Dollard said, “but unofficially, this is an incredibly lucrative business opportunity.”

An industry in decline?

The charter school industry’s desire for new business strategies that enable charter operators to seize public school classrooms—or even whole buildings—is not confined to Florida.

In Indiana, for years, public school districts have been required to notify the state, within 10 days, when one of their buildings becomes vacant and to make the building available to lease to a charter school for $1 per year or sell the building to a charter operator outright for $1.

In Ohio’s 2025 approved budget, a new provision allows the state to force school districts to close some public school buildings and sell those properties to charter or private schools “at below market value,” Ideastream Public Media reported.

Arkansas is also likely to adopt a Schools of Hope-like measure, Allen speculated, because its state secretary of education Jacob Oliva served in Florida. Oliva was Florida’s state education chancellor during the failed Schools of Hope pilot in Jefferson County.

One market condition that’s likely behind these increasingly aggressive charter school industry is land grab, as revealed in a 2025 analysis by the National Center for Charter School Accountability (NCCSA). According to the report, charter school closings have been accelerating nationwide, while the pace of new charter openings has slowed significantly during the same time.

“[T]he 2023-24 school year saw just 12 more open charter schools than during the previous year,” the report found. This is “a dramatic departure” from the heydays of industry growth when “[t]he number of charter schools increased by 421” between 2010 and 2011.

Charter school enrollment growth has also stalled, according to the report, increasing by 0.1 percentage point—from 7.5 percent to 7.6 percent of total charter enrollment—between 2020 and 2023.

In the most recent school years, based on official data from 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, NCCSA found, “Most states experienced declines or stagnation [in charter school market share], and preliminary indicators suggest that, once the 2024 data is finalized, the trend will likely worsen.”

North Carolina offers a clarifying example of the significant headwinds that the charter school industry now faces.

In the Tar Heel state, charter schools have enjoyed widespread support among state lawmakers and private investors. The state legislature has made dramatic changes to state laws regarding charters, including loosening regulations and fast-tracking approval of new schools. And a 2024 analysis by the Charlotte Observer found “at least $279 million in private equity investments in North Carolina charter schools since 2013.”

Despite this support, the number of charter schools in North Carolina declined in 2024-2025, from 211 to 208 in 2023-2024, according to an industry spokesperson. And many of the newest charter schools to open in the state have not fared well. “State data show that only about 26 percent of new charter schools in the past five years met or exceeded their enrollment projections,” NC Newsline reported, “and more than half of those that missed the mark are now closed or never opened.”

The report’s findings revealed that although charters tend to locate in low-income neighborhoods, they serve far fewer children from low-income families, fewer children who are English learners, and fewer children with disabilities, resulting in leaving traditional public schools with elevated needs and higher costs.

Critics of the Schools of Hope law noted that these industry shifts, as well as a historical tendency for education policies enacted in Florida to get picked up in other Republican-dominated states, will spur other states to adopt similar policies, regardless of any evidence that they might harm public schools.

“More generally,” Baker added, “Florida charter schools are a shitstorm, both underserving higher need populations and underperforming with those they do serve.”

‘A shitstorm’

Among the critics of Florida’s Schools of Hope legislation is Bruce Baker, a professor and chair of the department of teaching and learning at the University of Miami and an expert on charter schools and public school finances.

“I’m, of course, deeply concerned with granting preferential access to any charter operator, at the expense of a fiscally strapped school district,” Baker wrote in an email. “I’m more concerned when it may present a slippery slope regarding control over land and buildings that should—by the [state] constitution, which supersedes this regulatory change—be solely under the authority of the local boards of education elected by the taxpayers who financed those facilities and continue to maintain them. It becomes even more problematic if this eventually creates an avenue to transfer ownership. That would be a particularly egregious violation of local board authority and private taking of public assets. We aren’t there yet, but it’s a concern.”

Baker’s assessment of charter schools in the Sunshine State is evident in his 2025 report, which looks at the impacts of the industry on school funding adequacy, equity, and student academic outcomes across the state, and, more specifically, in the Miami-Dade district.

Also, charters, despite having an advantage of educating less challenging and less costly student populations, underperform public schools on state assessments while “serving otherwise similar student populations.” This finding holds statewide and in Miami-Dade.

The report concludes that Florida charters are “compromising equity, eroding efficiency, and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves.”

Given these findings, the report recommends that state lawmakers “[i]mpose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program.” It also calls for “new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators,” stronger vetting of new charter operators, and stricter enforcement of regulations about charter school student outcomes.

Schools of nope

Several district school superintendents across Florida have urged their communities to oppose the state’s Schools of Hope charter school expansion in public school buildings. When the state’s current education commissioner defended the Schools of Hope law in his address at a 2025 conference for school board members and district leaders and suggested it could be used to shut down whole districts, the audience roundly booed him.

Grassroots groups such as Families for Strong Public Schools have held events to educate the public about the negative impacts of charter colocations. A coalition that includes the United Teachers of Dade, NAACP Miami-Dade Branch, the Miami-Dade County Council of PTA/PTSA, and others has formed to protest charter colocations. And a senator in the state legislature has introduced a bill to repeal the Schools of Hope expansion.

Much of the opposition has rallied under the banner of “Schools of Nope” and is organizing call-ins and an email campaign targeting state legislators.

Opposition organizers like Damaris Allen see this as a do-or-die moment in the state. “Either we win this fight, or it’s the death of public schools in Florida,” she said.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization, School Choice
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