Heather Cox Richardson: Elon Musk and the Revival of Fascism

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2026 //
2

Heather Cox Richardson sums up the sickening feeling that many of us have about the Trump-Musk alliance and their efforts to torpedo the November midterm elections. Musk has corrupted our politics with the vast amounts of money he spends to elect far-right politicians. Most of his wealth comes from government contracts, and he wants to maintain his friends in office. You have to wonder how a man who celebrated the killing of US AID, leading to the deaths of at least 700,000 people, can sleep at night. Did he enter the U.S. legally?

She writes:

On Sunday, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternativ für Deutschland, or AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in a legislative election in the small state of Saxony-Anhalt, formerly part of Soviet-dominated East Germany. The AfD is anti-immigrant and pro-Russia and has won the support of both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk.

When Musk posted “Well done!” in German to the co-founder of AfD, Alice Weidel, another AfD leader responded with thanks, posting: “If we take on responsibility here, I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation. Germany would then once again be a place worth investing in. Best regards from Saxony-Anhalt!”

Jon Henley of the Guardian noted that right-wing leaders across Europe celebrated the outcome, including ousted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who called the election results “a huge night for Germany and Europe,” adding: “Buckle up. This is just the beginning.”

Musk was the largest donor to any political committee in the 2024 U.S. elections, putting around $290 million into the 2024 election to help elect President Donald J. Trump and Republicans. On August 28, Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty, and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Musk was planning to meet with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he considered investing at least $100 million to elect Republicans in the midterm elections.

Since that meeting, Musk has plowed money into the Texas Senate race to support Texas attorney general Ken Paxton against Democratic nominee James Talarico. According to Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times, Musk’s investments—many through political action committees—target Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as House races in at least California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Musk’s open attempt to buy elections for the Republicans should be bigger news, not only because of the political power his money has given to one man, but also because of what his behavior says about the MAGA administration’s ideology and its goals.

After supporting Trump in 2024, Musk appeared to become the head of the Department of Government Efficiency—the administration was coy about who actually held that title—where he worked to slash government spending. On February 3, he posted on his social media: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone [sic] to some great parties. Did that instead.” Musk called USAID—the United States Agency for International Development—“a criminal organization” and “a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America.”

In July 2026, Ari Daniel, David Augustine, Kazeem Olawale Nasiru, and Lameck Nyagudi of NPR reported on a study by Boston University infectious disease modeler Brooke Nichols that estimated more than 700,000 people had died from the sudden stop in USAID funding, including more than half a million children in developing countries.

And yet, for all his talk about slashing government expenditures, Musk’s DOGE did not appear to save much. Emilio Perez Ibarguen of Politico reported in August, when DOGE officially ended, that a report by the Government Accountability Office found that the savings it claimed were in large part exaggerated or couldn’t be corroborated.

Meanwhile, government contracts continued to flow to Musk’s businesses. As Desmond Butler, Trisha Thadani, Emmanuel Martinez, Aaron Gregg, Luis Melgar, Jonathan O’Connell, and Dan Keating reported in the Washington Post in February 2025, Musk himself has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer dollars in history, taking in at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the course of more than 20 years. Once he was in power in Trump 2.0, government investigations into those businesses ended.

The very public nature of Musk’s antics has helped to wake the public up to the fact that our current system is skewed toward billionaires. In July, economist Paul Krugman noted a growing backlash against those billionaires. A poll by UMass Amherst found that 58% of Americans think billionaires are a threat to democracy, and 45% of them say the U.S. is an oligarchy, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” As Krugman noted, only 28% of those polled disagreed.

Krugman pointed out that wealth has been concentrating at the top of the U.S. economy for decades, so the growing wave against that concentration of wealth appears to be driven by those like Musk and Trump himself, who has flaunted his use of taxpayer money for his own interests while dismissing the pain of regular Americans.

This flow of taxpayer dollars to favored businesses rather than to programs that serve the needs of the people seems to be a feature rather than a bug in the Trump administration and reflects its rejection of democracy in favor of the right-wing axis of authoritarianism.

Last night, Tarini Parti, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal published a deep investigation into the machinations of Corey Lewandowski when his colleague Kristi Noem was secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. They report that Lewandowski, who was Trump’s campaign manager for part of 2016, appeared to offer aid to foreign countries navigating U.S. bureaucracy in the department for a fee, selling government services for his own gain.

The journalists also report that Lewandowski may have been involved in awarding government contracts improperly, an accusation covered in a November 14, 2025, article by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security an additional $75 billion to spend during Trump’s term on deportations, detention facilities, and technology, providing deep pockets for corruption.

While the administration appears to have sidelined Noem and Lewandowski since Noem resigned under pressure in March, the journalists say Lewandowski “has told people close to him he expects the president would pardon him in the event of a criminal case.”

Lewandowski responded on social media that the story was “just another example of the kind of anonymous-source, politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and again. We’ve lived through the Russia collusion hoax the fake Birthday card and countless other sensational allegations that ultimately failed to withstand scrutiny. I’m tremendously proud of my work as a volunteer in advancing this administration’s agenda and remain confident that the facts and not anonymous accusations will ultimately speak for themselves.”

But, of course, every official investigation into the 2016 election, including the one conducted by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee and unanimously adopted, agreed that Russia did work to get Trump elected in 2016. And while Trump claims he did not create the birthday card to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently bearing Trump’s signature on a drawing of a nude girl that was produced by the Epstein estate, the story was convincing enough that it helped to push Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act and the first case he brought against the Wall Street Journal for publishing the story was dismissed. A second case is pending.

There is, in fact, increasing pushback against the world Musk and Trump are trying to put into place instead of liberal democracy. In the U.S., the growing opposition to data centers, which seems to represent anger at the very wealthy tech bros who want to call the shots, is perhaps a sign of the direction the wind in the U.S. is blowing.

Whether that popular pressure can withstand the extraordinary amounts of money Musk and other right-wing billionaires are pouring into the midterms is unclear. Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that Musk is funding an advertising campaign encouraging people in swing states to check their voting registration status at a different website than the one run by the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent agency of the U.S. government.

Instead, Musk’s campaign urges people to go to “votesafe . org,” which collects their full name, home address, date of birth, email address, cell phone number, IP address and location (which identifies city and zip code), every link clicked, every page looked at, and voter registration status, among other information.

Legum reports that the privacy policy of the website “allows [Musk’s super PAC] America PAC to ‘share’ or ‘sell’ personal information ‘with our business partners,’” including “whether you are registered to vote” and “how you submit your vote… where permitted by law.” America PAC can also sell “inferences” it makes about a user, including “psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude.”

A new documentary about Musk by filmmaker Alex Gibney argues, as Steven Zeitchik of the Hollywood Reporter put it, that Musk is “a dangerous huckster [who] is stealthily aggregating power to exploit us, primarily by centralizing and controlling massive amounts of data.” The documentary, called Musk, notes that, under Musk, DOGE had access to federal IT systems and, as Zeitchik recalls, a whistleblower warned that members of DOGE accessed and shared sensitive data from the Social Security Administration.

Zeitchik reports on the onscreen comments of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as “the godfather of AI,” who said: “It’s fairly clear to me that Trump is hell-bent on corrupting the midterm elections,” he says onscreen. “If you wanted to corrupt those midterm elections and you wanted to use AI, all you needed to do was get detailed information on U.S. citizens. And what DOGE did looked like just what you would do.”

In Europe, in the wake of the rise of the AfD, German defense minister Boris Pistorius said today that Germany will send missiles to Ukraine to help it fight off a winter incursion from Russia.

—

Notes:

https://apnews.com/article/germany-afd-saxony-anhalt-election-e9c2b1bb69a9dab1778b80866ffa4c4f

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlin-says-vance-should-not-interfere-german-politics-2025-02-14/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-afd-won-saxony-anhalt-election-alarm-for-centrist-politics/

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-afd-courts-conservative-support-after-historic-german-state-election-2026-09-07/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/07/first-thing-elon-musk-german-far-right-afd-election-win-russia

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/07/afd-thanks-elon-musk-german-state-elections-2026-win

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/02/elon-musk-spending-key-races-midterms-01063146

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/28/mike-johnson-plans-meeting-elon-musk-midterms-01054083

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2026/07/30/musk-reportedly-spending-up-to-120-million-helping-gop-in-midterms-after-saying-he-got-a-little-too-involved-in-politics/

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/sep/01/how-misconceptions-and-woeful-pr-allowed-musk-to-shred-usaid-so-easily

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/17/g-s1-133651/usaid-elon-musk-rubio-deaths

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/06/doge-savings-overstated-watchdog-report-01027797

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musks-regulatory-issues-begun-melt-away-trumps-second-term-rcna202848

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/13/business/musk-trillionaire-government-tesla-spacex

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/elon-musk-business-government-contracts-funding/

Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/corey-lewandowski-influence-dhs-43d3fe03?mod=hp_lista_pos1

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Musk, Elon, Trump

A Young Man Wanted to Be an American. He Was Killed by the Racism of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Their MAGA Followers.

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2026 //
4

“The photograph of his leg, posted on Instagram, documents his sense of shame at having to wear the device, at being branded somehow a criminal. His short life had followed the same arc as hundreds of millions of Americans, immigrants or descendants of immigrants, who came here seeking hope, opportunity and a chance for dignity. He wanted to grow and prosper and be free of tyranny — in this case, the tyranny of crime and instability.”

Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post wrote about the death of Pierre Damas Bel.

Kennicott says we all share responsibility for his death. I disagree. Pierre’s death belongs to Stephen Miller, who wants to expel as many dark-skinned immigrants as possible. His death belongs to Donald Trump, who knew that racism and hatred was a good political issue for him, who told Republicans in the Senate not to pass a bipartisan immigration bill in 2024 because he wanted to run in the issue. His death belongs to the Republican elected officials who bowed to Trump’s wishes and have failed to rein in the heartlessness of ICE. His death belongs to all those who turn a blind eye to the reign of brutality and violence imposed on anyone who is swept up in the un-American crusade against immigrants, especially those who are black and brown.

Kennicott wrote:

The most haunting photo of the past week shows not a whole human, just part of one. Sometime in the past few weeks, a 20-year-old college kid named Pierre Damas Bel took a photograph of the lower part of one of his legs. He’s wearing black pants and gleaming, thick-soled, black-and-white brogues, the toe so polished it reflects the light. Around his ankle is a heavy plastic GPS tracking device, with a red, LED status light glaring like a demonic eye

Bel was one of about 350,000 Haitian immigrants who lost temporary protected status after a Supreme Court ruling in June. He fled Haiti, a country racked by gang violence and crime, in 2024, and he apparently despaired at the thought of having to return. On Monday morning, he stepped in front of a tractor-trailer on Interstate 70 in Springfield, Ohio, and now he is dead. His family believes he died by suicide, but that doesn’t seem quite the right word. He was desperate and depressed, but that misery was forced on him. No matter how he died, his life was taken from him.

Bel, who is seen in an earlier image in a blue tuxedo jacket beaming as he receives his high school diploma, entered the country legally to rejoin his family and request asylum. He graduated from high school, matriculated at university, joined the ROTC program, and he had a pending asylum hearing. But just after 8 a.m. Monday, he called his father and said, “I’m not feeling okay.” Less than an hour later he was dead.

The photograph of his leg, posted on Instagram, documents his sense of shame at having to wear the device, at being branded somehow a criminal. His short life had followed the same arc as hundreds of millions of Americans, immigrants or descendants of immigrants, who came here seeking hope, opportunity and a chance for dignity. He wanted to grow and prosper and be free of tyranny — in this case, the tyranny of crime and instability.

“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote on Instagram in late July. “Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”

Likely, the GPS device made his leg feel foreign to him, just as this young asylum seeker, perhaps an aspiring American, had suddenly been branded foreign to the country he hoped to serve. The weight of the device made it impossible for him to play soccer, a sport he loved; according to his father, it also made him an object of ridicule to his classmates, who mimicked on an interpersonal level what has become the basic tool of this country’s domestic politics and foreign policy: bullying.

No administration in my lifetime has used imagery and narrative more effectively than the Trump administration. A White House webpage called “Aliens” uses “X-Files” music and text to suggest that we have been secretly invaded, and that President Donald Trump alone can repel the enemy living among us.

“Millions arrived under the cover of darkness and embedded themselves directly into our society,” reads the scrolling text, with a spooky electronic, sci-fi soundtrack suggesting the invaders are extraterrestrials. “They’ve shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes as our children, and lived seemingly normal human existences,” the site also says. “With one exception — they do not belong here.”

From emphasizing the supposed criminality of immigrants, the administration moves on to stressing their normality. The very things that are, for so many Americans, definitive markers of being American — living peacefully, shopping, learning — become markers of suspicion. And so we are invited to look at ourselves as Bel looked at his leg, the normal as abnormal. Even people who abhor this cruelty face what is essentially an existential question: If I am American, and America does this, what am I? To remain within this ugliness is insufferable; to flee would only make it worse.

“I do not know how long it will still physically be possible to breathe this European air,” wrote critic Walter Benjamin in 1938, as the Nazi’s made life unlivable for Jews. He killed himself in 1940, in a small border town in Spain, where he was denied entry after fleeing France. That, too, was an act of desperation.

The loss of temporary protected status for Haitians means that the U.S. will have to find tens of thousands of new health care workers to staff an already overburdened system. A recent study by the Yale Budget Lab found that even if immigration returned to normal after the Trump administration, by the 2030s there will be thousands fewer new businesses than would be expected, and the economy will be smaller than it could be, with effects lasting as far as 2075.

And thus, another metaphor travels through the body, upward and outward, from the death of a young man on a highway in Ohio to include all of us. Bel was desperate, and his death is a kind of murder, but what the U.S. is doing to itself is simply suicide.

Categories Bigotry, Citizenship, Extremism, Immigration, Trump

Jamelle Bouie: Pierre Damas Bel Should Still Be Alive

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2026 //
2

Jamelle Bouie, the brilliant columnist at the New York Times, described how Trump’s anti-immigrant policy drove a promising young man to his death. Pierre Damas Bel wanted to be a doctor. He took his own life. in other eras, Pierre was the kind of young man who would be welcomed. But not in Trump’s America.

Bouie wrote:

Pierre Damas Bel wanted to be a doctor.

He came to the United States in 2024 to reunite with his parents, who had fled Haiti three years earlier fearing for their lives. Living in Springfield, Ohio, he had temporary protected status and a pending asylum case. Bel took quickly to life in the United States. He was a member of the Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. He played soccer. He graduated from high school with honors and recently started as a freshman at Wright State University, just a half-hour drive from his home.

Not too long after Pierre Damas Bel arrived in the United States, Ohio’s junior senator, JD Vance — then running to be vice president of the United States — accused the Haitian community in Springfield of stealing and eating the pets of their neighbors. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” he said on X. These “reports” were false but, as Vance would explain later, they were useful: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

After Vance created his story, Donald Trump amplified the charge to a prime-time audience of 67 million people during his debate with Kamala Harris. “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.”

The conservative media apparatus then went to work. Fox News broadcast the smear far and wide. Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, a professional provocateur and propagandist known for his gleeful race baiting, offered a “$5,000 cash bounty” to anyone who had evidence that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield. He later posted a video purporting to show just that. It was a lie; the people in the video were eating chicken.

Building on the frenzy, Trump spun a new tale. “Twenty thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended on a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life,” he said at a rally in Tucson, Ariz. “Residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the town’s geese. They’re taking the geese. You know where the geese are, in the park. And even walking off with their pets.”

Trump had long disparaged Haiti as a country that is “filthy, dirty” and “disgusting.” He has said that Haitians “probably have AIDS” and that Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.” If elected president again, he promised, he would start his mass deportations in Springfield.

In July, the Trump administration revoked the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of Haitians, including Pierre Damas Bel. Bel was ordered, like many others, to a local ICE office to receive an ankle monitor, which is one way the agency tracks immigrants it seeks to remove from the country.

Ankle monitors are heavy and uncomfortable. They constrict movement and wearing one can be painful. They’re also easy to see — a visible stigma and a mark that, in the eyes of the government, you are a suspect person.

Bel felt that stigma. Hobbled by the monitor, he could not play soccer as he used to. His peers mocked him. When his R.O.T.C. instructor handed students their uniforms, he did not receive one. His father, Pierre Ronal Bel, believes it was because of the device. On Instagram, Bel shared a picture of the ankle monitor. “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote. “Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”

On Monday morning, Pierre Damas Bel called his father. “I’m not feeling OK,” he said. His father told him to come home so they could talk.

That afternoon, Vice President Vance was in Michigan to campaign for Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate running for Senate. During his speech, Vance accused Abdul El-Sayed, Rogers’s Democratic opponent, of dividing the country. “If you look at his politics, it is all about saying, ‘This group of people is good, this ethnicity is bad, and I’m going to fight to give from the bad group of people to the good group of people.’ I think that’s a despicable way to think about your fellow Americans.”

Vance is right: This is a despicable way to think about your fellow Americans. But then the vice president has a narrow view of what it means to be an American. For him, it is defined by blood, soil and heritage. It does not apply, for example, to the Haitians of Springfield. They can be smeared and libeled and hounded and hunted. They can be treated as less than human. They can live under a miasma of hate brought on by him, his boss and their enablers.

Sometime before 8:45 a.m., but after the call to his father, Pierre parked his car on the shoulder of the Interstate in Springfield. Hours later, police officers arrived at Pierre Ronal Bel’s home to tell him that his son “threw himself under a truck.” He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Pierre Damas Bel was just 20 years old.

Categories Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump, Vance, J.D.

OpenAI is Being Sued for Failing to Warn Officials about School Shooter

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2026 //
4

An 18-year-old young woman asked ChatGPT about violence. The bot gave her information instead of questioning and discouraging her violent urges. Months later, she killed her mother and stepbrother, then went to the local school and killed students and a teacher. The families of the victims are suing OpenAI for helping the shooter and failing to warn officials to stop her.

Futurism reports.

OpenAI is facing 30 new lawsuits from victims of the devastating school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, who accuse the company of providing “substantial assistance and encouragement” to the shooter and failing to alert police about her alarming ChatGPT interactions during the run-up to the mass killing.

The AI company’s legal peril is growing: it’s now fighting more than 50 lawsuits alleging that extensive use of its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, wrought psychological harm, physical injury, or even death on users or those around them.

The new lawsuits weee brought against OpenAI by teachers and students who survived the Tumbler Ridge Massacre in February, in which eight adults and children were killed and 27 more were wounded in a rural Canadian mining town. The shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, fatally shot her mother and younger stepbrother at their home before attacking the school with a modified rifle and long gun, where she murdered five students — all aged between 12 and 13 — and a teacher.

OpenAI flagged her account. Months before the shooting, they debated whether to alert local officials. They decided not to do so, but deactivated her account. She quickly got a new account using a different name.

The lawsuits accuse OpenAI of negligence and “aiding and abetting a mass shooting,” alleging that ChatGPT stoked Van Rootselaar’s violent fantasies. The shooter’s chat logs have not yet been made public.

OpenAI is also being sued by victims of other mass shootings, where the chat logs showed their interest in killing others.

This is a helpful turn of events. AI providers should have key words that raise red flags and invite human oversight and intervention. ChatGPT could be programmed to alert human review and to discourage violence. It should be programmed with values: respect for others; kindness; the joy of giving and helping; and love of life.

Categories Extremism, Failure, Guns in Schools, Technology

Gary Rubinstein: Eva Moskowitz Sues NYSED for Inadvertently Exposing that They Have Been Gaming the U.S. News Rankings for Years

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2026 //
8

Eva Moskowitz, founder of Success Academy charter chain, has been everywhere recently, promoting her brand. She has written op-Ed’s for major newspapers, she was interviewed by Margaret Hoover on PBS’ “Firing Line,” she is expanding from New York City to Florida. And just the other day, she published an article in The Washington Post saying that she is suing the New York State Education Department for failing to release the AP scores of her charter schools, which caused her schools’ ranking to plummet in the U.S. News‘ ranking of high schools.

Gary Rubinstein looked at her complaint and dissected it. Gary teaches advanced mathematics at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Stuyvesant is a highly selective school that accepts only the students who pass a rigorous test. Gary is a crack researcher and examiner of claims, who has repeatedly taken apart the Success Academy marketing brand.

Gary wrote:

No matter where you go in New York City, you are forced to ponder the Success Academy charter network. On bus stops, in your mailbox, even as a commercial during a YouTube video, the school seems to be everywhere. A Success Academy looking student was even saved by Superman in the recent 2025 Superman movie.

Waiting For Superman? He finally came!

Starting in 2006 with about 170 students, it has grown to encompass about 60 schools and about 22,000 students. They are known for having very strict discipline and very high test scores.

Over the years I have examined pretty much every aspect of this school. I’ve done post after post about how it should be a red flag that they only graduate about 150 seniors a year despite having over 2000 kindergarteners and about 800 ninth graders across several schools. I’ve interviewed former students who say that, yes, the school stops everything and does test prep for several months before the state tests. I’ve interviewed parents who have been pressured to transfer their kids out of Success Academy. And if you do a search on reddit you will find page after page of stories that will break your heart.

But Success Academy does seem to have excellent test scores, at least the 3-8 Math and ELA state test scores. Though there are a lot of students who are pushed out of the school, the 3-8 test scores are even good considering that. But for these 3-8 scores to be more than a mirage, they need to translate into good high school scores, and here is where things get a bit complicated.

One metric that Success Academy has been able to boast about in recent years has been their position on the US News & World Report High School rankings. Last year, for example, they were rated the 11th best High School in New York State along with the big guns like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Townsend Harris, and Brooklyn Tech. Having a rating like that makes for a nice item to show to donors at fundraisers and can help them start new franchises in Florida, for example.

But the US News & World Report High School rankings have always been flawed. Here’s how they work: Three of the main categories are ‘college readiness’, state assessment proficiency, and graduation rate. The ‘college readiness’ score has been worth 30% and it is calculated by averaging the percent of seniors who took an AP test and the percent of seniors who got a 3 or higher on at least one of those AP exams. So if there is a school where every senior takes a bunch of APs and as long as everyone passes at least one of those APs, that school can get a full 30 points for that metric. So if there is a school where all the students get 5s on multiple APs, it gets the same score as the school where students get a 3 on exactly one AP. So this one is pretty easy to game because all you have to do is force your students to take a bunch of APs and since getting a 3 isn’t so hard as it is like getting a 60% or less on some of them, you can get the full 30 points if you make that the goal for the school. The same is true for the state assessment proficiency where as long as your students pass, even if they barely pass, they get the same rating as a school where the students get near perfect scores on the test.

It is possible to game the math component of the state assessment proficiency metric by not making your students take the Geometry and Algebra II Regents. Most NYC students take Algebra I in 8th or 9th grade and at a high performing school, they generally take those other two Regents the next two years. But those other ones aren’t needed for graduation so if a school doesn’t want those scores to affect their US News & World Report ratings, they might not have their students take math Regents beyond Algebra I. Success Academy is one of those schools whose math component of the US News ranking is based on just Algebra I. They seem to be the only supposedly high performing school whose students do not take the Geometry and the Algebra II Regents so their math score that US News uses is based on one easy test rather than three tests in which the other two are much more difficult.

In 2025 Success Academy was ranked 11th in New York State (out of about 1200 schools). But the latest ranking came out and Success Academy dropped to 196th. This prompted Success Academy to sue the New York State Education Department for what they felt was an unfair change in the reporting of the data to US News & World Report. I will try to explain why the 196th ranking this year is actually a more fair ranking than the 11th from the previous year and how this lawsuit could backfire on Success Academy.

So the big change from last year to this year is that New York State did not report the AP score data to US News & World report. So what US News did was increase the weight of the other categories to compensate for that. In theory, at least, it shouldn’t affect the rankings by so much. A school with good AP scores will also likely have good state assessment proficiency and a good graduation rate. Those things generally go up and down together.

But there was a strange thing in the new rankings. Most of the top 25 schools by the new ranking were not high performing on last year’s rankings. So 25 schools shot to the top and most of the other schools that used to be at the top of the list ended up moving down around 25 spots or sometimes a little more. This happened because though NY State did not report the AP scores, they did report for IB schools those scores and those IB schools got to use the college readiness metric which meant that they got the advantage of inflating their scores while the AP schools didn’t. Of the top 200 schools, 42 of them were IB schools in the new ranking, including about 25 of the top 30 schools. It would have been more fair for NY State to also not give the IB scores since it did make top performing AP schools lose around 25 spots on average.

But Success Academy did not just drop 25 spots. It dropped the most spots of any school in the state that I was able to find. Dropping 185 spots in a ranking revealed why Success Academy never really deserved to be in spot number 11 the previous year.

When the AP scores got eliminated from the calculation, the other scores got increased in weight including the ‘graduation rate’ statistic. Now of the top 20 schools from last year, they all had nearly a 100% graduation rate so changing the weight of that category didn’t change their ranking by much (other than the 25 spot move from the IB issue). But there was one school, Success Academy, that only had a 73% graduation rate. They have this because only 73% of their students graduate in 4 years. But what happens to the other 27%? Many of those are forced to repeat 11th grade. At the school last year there were about 180 11th graders but only 120 12th graders. So this 73% affected their overall score and brought them down so many places.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. See, when they don’t promote the 11th graders this accomplishes two things with the old US News formula from last year. Yes, it lowered their graduation rate but that was only a small component last year. More importantly, by not promoting those 11th graders, this served to increase their old AP college readiness score since those 11th graders who were left back did not have to try to pass any APs. So that policy to leave back so many 11th graders brought down their graduation rate but brought up their college readiness rate and overall since graduation rate wasn’t a big part of the grade, they were able to become 11th ranked with the inflated college readiness grade.

The big question I have is: Is that the reason that they leave back so many 11th graders? It would seem really unusual to get left back when you’ve been surviving at this school from kindergarten to 11th grade only to get left back just before becoming a senior. No other school that was high rated last year in US News had such a drop in enrollment from 11th grade to 12th grade, generally they had about the same number of 12th graders as they did 11th graders. I would not put it past Success Academy if they were altering the course of those left back students’ lives just so they would not hurt the US News & World Report ranking.

But it came back to bite Success Academy in the butt as the AP score was eliminated from the ranking and the graduation rate’s weight was increased. And now they are suing. As they are the only school to drop by 185 places, they will not have any other schools joining them. I don’t know why NY State chose not to report the AP data. They have had some recent conflict with the college board selling student information, and I think they won a giant settlement from them. Maybe that affected their decision. I don’t think the state was aware that it would affect the relative rankings and, in general, it didn’t. They probably should have anticipated the IB bump that gave the top 20 spots to IB schools but it will be really hard to prove in court that this choice was deliberate. Success Academy could just as well sue US News & World Report since they could have come up with some other creative way to weigh the remaining categories so that the top 20 spots wouldn’t have been dominated by those schools.

In the op-ed that Eva Moskowitz wrote in The Washington Post, she says “Parents deserve to know how well high schools are preparing their students for college-level work. That’s why U.S. News & World Report is a great tool. For years, it has publicized students’ performance on Advanced Placement exams as part of its widely followed national high school rankings.” She also wrote: “We’ve done so [sued NYSED] to vindicate not only our right to make our results known, but also the rights of parents and policymakers to have accurate, objective data about our state’s schools. Parents can’t demand excellence if government prevents them from seeing it.” So here’s my challenge to Eva Moskowitz and if not to her, then to the New York State Education Department: Let’s see the granular data of the AP scores from Success Academy. Moskowitz writes that “students at Success Academy, the network of public charter schools I lead, perform extraordinarily well on those tests. We value each AP exam as an independent benchmark and require our students to sit for at least 18 of them to graduate.” That is quite a large number of APs. She says that most of them pass 3 exams, but that means they failed 15. I would really like to see all the scores, all the 1s and 2s on the different exams that students are forced to take for no other purpose than to increase the college readiness score that ended up not being calculated anyway.

A post on Yahoo! news misrepresents this story (with information likely from Success Academy themselves) as: “Because NYSED declined to authorize the College Board to release 2026 AP scores, U.S. News calculated the advanced course metrics using only International Baccalaureate (IB) data. Because Success Academy offers AP courses rather than IB programs, the network received zero credit for 40% of the ranking’s weighted criteria, causing its statewide ranking to crater from 11th to 196th.” But no, that is not at all what happened. Just like all the AP schools, the other rankings were weighted to make the top score still 100% — Success Academy is the only school to drop this much even though AP scores were dropped from about 1000 schools. I would love to see their lawyer try to misrepresent the facts this way in court.

If anyone should be filing a law suit, it should be any Success Academy 11th grader who was mysteriously left back just when they were about to enter their senior year. If they could prove that they were discriminated against for the purpose of juicing the US News ranking, that seems like a good class action suit.

Categories Education Industry, Ethics, Harlem Success Academy, New York, New York City, Standardized Testing

Texas: Something is Fishy about a School District Leader and His Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2026 //
3

Texas has a peculiar law: if only one school in a district is “failing,” the state can take control of the entire district. That happened to Houston. The state takeover was triggered by the “failure” of Phyllis Wheatley High School, which had a higher proportion of high-needs students than any other high school in the district.

The State Commissioner of Education, Mike Morath, who is not an educator, appointed Mike Miles as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District and fired the elected school board.

Morath previously served on the Dallas school board. Miles, a former military officer and a Broad Academy graduate, was the state-appointed superintendent in Dallas, where he drove out a large number of teachers and left with no grand accomplishments. Miles is a top-down manager who believes in standardization and compliance.

But here’s the fishy part. After failing in Dallas, Mike Miles started his own charter chain in Colorado called Third Future.

Here’s the sweet deal: if a district brings in a Third Future charter school, the state won’t take control of the district! It is the only charter school with that privilege!

Third Future started opening charter schools in Texas. The Houston Chronicle reported that it is $14 million in debt.

The Houston Chronicle has the story. It is eye-popping:

One of Texas’ most high-profile charter school networks could soon begin laying off staff amid a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall, throwing its future into question just as more and more districts have turned to it to avoid a state takeover.

The Texas branch of Third Future Schools, founded by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles, is facing a $14 million deficit, forcing it to cut many of the 700 new employees it hired this year. 

The grim budget projection follows years of multimillion dollar deficits and a dire warning by its auditor — issues that might have forced other charter schools out of business. Instead, the nonprofit has seen its footprint more than triple this year, and state officials continue to allow school districts that hire Third Future to avoid being taken over.

At a board meeting last month, its leaders said the nonprofit was experiencing the same problem as many of its traditional public school counterparts: fewer students.

“As you guys know, districts across Texas are seeing a declining enrollment,” Third Future Schools Superintendent Zach Craddock told board members. “Some of that is passed on to us.”

The Colorado-based nonprofit network is far from the state’s largest chain of charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded public schools operated by third parties. But it’s among the most scrutinized because of its ties to Miles, who was brought to Houston under a state takeover, and its unusual role. Rather than open its own campuses, school districts hire Third Future to turn around failing schools using a tool under state law that allows districts to avoid being taken over by the Texas Education Agency. 

To avoid takeover, districts have to have their plan approved by TEA, run by longtime education commissioner Mike Morath. Morath tapped Miles to lead Houston ISD in 2023, where he implemented Third Future’s rigorous learning model, which includes daily quizzes in core classes and requiring teachers to stick to provided curriculum rather than coming up with their own. The model employs high numbers of staff.

This year, Third Futures Schools Texas took over 15 campuses, bringing its total to 19 across seven school districts, including San Antonio and Waco. None of the schools are in Houston.

The Colorado-based nonprofit network is far from the state’s largest chain of charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded public schools operated by third parties. But it’s among the most scrutinized because of its ties to Miles, who was brought to Houston under a state takeover, and its unusual role. Rather than open its own campuses, school districts hire Third Future to turn around failing schools using a tool under state law that allows districts to avoid being taken over by the Texas Education Agency. 

To avoid takeover, districts have to have their plan approved by TEA, run by longtime education commissioner Mike Morath. Morath tapped Miles to lead Houston ISD in 2023, where he implemented Third Future’s rigorous learning model, which includes daily quizzes in core classes and requiring teachers to stick to provided curriculum rather than coming up with their own. The model employs high numbers of staff.

“(We) have a significant amount of right-sizing to do over the course of the next month,” one of its finance directors, Rich Billings, said.

This year, Third Futures Schools Texas took over 15 campuses, bringing its total to 19 across seven school districts, including San Antonio and Waco. None of the schools are in Houston.

To handle the growing workload, the six-year-old nonprofit hired 700 new employees this year and expected to oversee 9,600 students, Craddock told the board last month. At the time, just 7,775 were attending the 19 schools.

Since the nonprofit’s funding is based on student attendance, the gap is expected to leave a $14 million hole. Student attendance is expected to go up slightly, but the nonprofit will be forced to cut $9 million, including reducing staffing, this month, officials said. The other $5 million was expected surplus.

Billings did not outline where the cuts will be made. A spokesperson for Third Futures declined to comment for this story.

A charter school overprojecting the number of students it’s enrolling is nothing new. It’s by far the top reason why charter schools close, said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a critic of charter schools.

“It’s not that people are shutting them down because the test scores are bad,” she said. “The enrollment gets to a point where it’s unsustainable.” 

Third Future Schools Texas has struggled to break even for years, according to financial audits, and has faced controversy over its finances. Its agreement with Beaumont ISD to operate three schools ended prematurely last year amid a request for millions more than it had previously agreed to. News reports that the nonprofit was inappropriately paying its Colorado headquarters millions of dollars were investigated and dismissed by TEA in 2024. 

Miles stepped down as CEO of Third Future Schools in 2023, but was found this year to have accepted at least $190,000 in consulting fees from the nonprofit since then. Much of that was after a state law barred district administrators from profiting from outside education work.

Financial audits show that the nonprofit posted a $2.6 million deficit in 2023. In 2024, the deficit grew to $5.3 million, after a nearly $3 million “error in the payroll calculation” was discovered, auditors wrote. 

Last year, the same auditing firm wrote that the nonprofit’s deficit grew to $7.3 million, “which raises substantial doubt about the organization’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

That kind of language from an auditor would make it hard for an organization to attract lenders and suggests it could be headed toward bankruptcy, said Nathan Goldman, an accounting professor at North Carolina State University who writes a column for Forbes.

“For any organization, it’s a big deal,” he said.

Typically, TEA might move to shut down a charter school with those kinds of deficits. The agency performs financial integrity ratings for traditional charter schools that includes submitting audits. But because of Third Future’s unusual business model, it falls outside those requirements. TEA told the Chronicle that local school districts that hire the nonprofit are responsible for overseeing its finances. 

The agency does not approve those agreements, known as 1882 partnerships, but does approve the benefits, which can include a two-year delay for a state takeover. Some local school officials have said they felt they had to choose Third Future Schools because it was the only one with which TEA would agree to delay a takeover. TEA has said any outside group can be approved as long as it meets its requirements, including a track record of success.

Financial disaster is not success!

How did this sweetheart deal get approved?

Categories Education Reform, Houston, State Takeover, Texas

Revive Unions to Celebrate Labor Day!

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2026 //
0

Economic inequality is greater today than in the 1950s. A tiny number of people enjoy fabulous wealth while millions of people live paycheck to paycheck.

One reason for the escalation of inequality is the declining number of people who are represented by unions. Big business has waged war on unions for more than a century.

But here is what we have learned about unions: Unions built the middle class. Unions were successful in raising wages, securing healthcare and pensions.

Big business continually complained that unions drove up their costs. But even as they have fought unions, they have raised their own compensation as CEOs and top management to staggering levels. Some CEOs are paid more than $100 million a year. But the f ed real minimum wage has languished at $7.25 an hour.

If workers want higher wages, good healthcare and pensions, they need unions.

Margaret Poydock of the Economic Polocy Institute has compiled important information about labor unions.

They are very popular.

Most working people would like to join a union.

People in unions make more money than people doing the same job but don’t belong to a union.

On behalf of the Economic Policy Institute, Poydock has reported:

New Gallup polling finds that 71% of people in the U.S. approve of unions, continuing the highest period of favorability in over 60 years. This coincides with the greatest number of workers represented by a union in 16 years.

The Gallup polling also showed that unions are favorable across generations and party lines.

  • 77% of adults ages 18–34, 74% of adults ages 35–54, and 67% of adults ages 55 and older approve of unions. 
  • 89% of Democrats, 70% of Independents, and 52% of Republicans approve of unions. 

This is just one of many recent surveys demonstrating the broad popularity of unions:  

  • Unions are more popular than big business. People in the U.S. favor unions over big business by more than 16 percentage points—the greatest gap ever recorded.
  • 56 million U.S. workers would join a union tomorrow if they could. 43% of nonunion workers would vote to unionize their workplace if given the opportunity. 
  • Majority views union decline as bad for U.S. Most people in the U.S. say the decline in union density is bad for the country (60%) and bad for working people (62%). 

It should be no surprise that the public views unions favorably: Unions help workers win higher wages, advocate for safer and healthier workplaces, support a thriving middle class, and strengthen democracy by boosting civic participation.  

Now is the time for policymakers to pass comprehensive legislation making it easier for workers to unionize. A new EPI report shows that tripling U.S. union membership would deliver: 

  • 14.5% wage increases for the typical worker, equal to more than $7,700 per year or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. 
  • $1.2 trillion shifted into workers’ pockets every year, reversing a third of the growth in inequality since 1979.  
  • Health insurance for 6.8 million more people.  
  • Greater equality and smaller racial wage gaps. Unions raise wages for everyone and help prevent pay disparities, especially for Black and Hispanic workers.  

Read more about the benefits of rebuilding union power—and the roadmap to get there.

If you want a happier, healthier, fairer society, support the growth of unions.

Categories Ethics, Unions

Ohio: Billionaire Jeff Yass Wants to Buy the Governor’s Race for Ramaswamy

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2026 //
11

Who is Jeff Yass? He is a multi-billionaire, the richest man in Pennsylvania. He is passionate about school choice, even though he is a graduate of the New York City public schools.

When Governor Gregg Abbott was fighting to impose a voucher plan on Texas, he was stopped by a solid bloc of Republicans who were devoted to their community’s public schools, the schools everyone attended, the schools that were the biggest employer in town, the schools where everyone knew the teachers.

Jeff Yass gave Gregg Abbott $10 million to run hardline, pro-voucher candidates against the moderates. He defeated enough of them to get his voucher bill passed.

Now Jeff Yass has decided that Vivek Ramaswamy should be governor of Ohio. Ohio already has charters and vouchers, but apparently that’s not enough for billion as ire Yass.

Is Ohio for sale?

Yass says yass to VPAC

A single billionaire may now have given more money to help elect Republican Vivek Ramaswamy as Ohio’s next governor than Democrat Amy Acton has received from all her donors combined. 

Politico reported this week that Jeffrey Yass of Pennsylvania had made a “fresh ten-figure donation of cash” – in other words, at least $10 million – to V-PAC: Victors not Victims, a political action committee set up to support Ramaswamy’s run for governor in this year’s elections. The money will help fund even more attack ads against Acton that attempt to paint her as unqualified, erratic and too liberal.  

That new contribution, which a source familiar with the group confirmed to Andrew, adds to the $20 million  that Yass previously gave to V-PAC. The $30 million (at least) from Yass now exceeds the $21.8 million Acton has reported raising for her entire campaign, based on the most recent publicly available numbers. As a federal super PAC, V-PAC is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, unlike official campaign committees, which must follow state campaign finance limits.

The new check from Yass – who’s among the country’s biggest financial supporters of taxpayer-funded private school vouchers and other school choice programs – further contributes to Ramaswamy’s lopsided fundraising advantage. Ramaswamy and his allies have now spent or reserved $82.3 million on TV and digital ads this year, compared to $11.1 million in expected pro-Acton spending, according to Medium Buying, a Republican political ad tracking firm. Team Ramaswamy’s ads have been running all year, while most of the pro-Acton ads, including an $9.4 million campaign funded by the Democratic Governors Association, are set to begin after Labor Day. 

Polling suggests the attacks on Acton are working. (Acton said the same thing herself in a fundraising appeal this week.) An Aug. 13 poll from Fox News found 47% of Ohio voters had a negative view of Acton – up from 37% in June. Ramaswamy’s image was fundamentally unchanged during that time – although both polls, like others that have been publicly released, projected a very close or tied race.

Center stage

Republicans’ strategy to defeat Acton relies in part on convincing Ohio voters that she’s a liberal Democrat. But she’s taken a few conspicuous stances this year that align her in some instances more closely with Republicans.

As Andrew wrote this week, Acton has come out in support of Issue 3, the voter ID amendment, as well as Medicaid work requirements and Ohio’s ban on transgender girls and women participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Acton’s positions put her at odds with most Democrats, including repeated past statements from her running mate, former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper. 

Acton made a couple more policy announcements on Tuesday that burnish her centrist bona fides.

Appearing in Columbus to tout a new endorsement from the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the state’s second-largest police union, Acton announced her opposition to a longshot citizens’ effort to eliminate qualified immunity, the enhanced legal protections that cover police officers and other government officials.  Acton also said she would not block local police from helping federal agencies enforce immigration laws.

“We always work with the federal law enforcement, and we will do so – whatever it takes to keep Ohioans safe,” Acton said, according to cleveland.com. 

The OPBA, which represents 8,000 law enforcement officials statewide, announced other endorsements this week. They were a bipartisan variety pack, including Democrats Sherrod Brown and Jennifer Brunner for U.S. Senate and Ohio Supreme Court, respectively, and Republicans Keith Faber and Dan Hawkins for state auditor and Ohio Supreme Court.

Another state police union with nearly three times as many members, the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, previously endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy, Jon Husted and the rest of the Republican statewide slate this year. 

Categories Education Reform

Los Angeles School District Limits AI in Classrooms

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2026 //
8

As research continues to show the harmful effects of technology on student learning, parents are pushing against it. Los Angeles is the latest district to impose limits.

The district has a checkered history with technology, including massive purchases of a laptop for every student and allegations of payoffs by vendors.

AI has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s useful to obtain information, like where is a TV program streaming or who won the Presidency in 1920. But its interpretations are sometimes wrong, as is some of its information. It can write essays, after getting prompts. But when teachers assign essays, they expect students to write them, not AI.

I have corrected AI on several occasions, and the bot quickly apologized. On one occasion, I asked for NAEP scores in a particular state. The AI responded with a slant implying that NAEP “proficiency” was grade level, and those who did not reach it were below grade level. Of course, I pointed out that NAEP itself warns that “proficiency” is higher than grade level and represents “solid achievement, what most of us would call an A or B+. NAEP is not “grade level,” although many reporters think it is. The bot quickly admitted its error.

On another occasion, I asked for the bio of a friend, and AI had confused her with someone else. Again, it made a correction.

AI makes many errors. My college-age grandson told me he never uses it because it’s unreliable.

Worse, it is a shortcut to learning, like copying an answer from an encyclopedia. But it’s more dangerous because encyclopedias are usually subject to rigorous fact-checking. Students who turn in AI essays are not learning. They are cheating.

Dana Goldstein wrote in the New York Times:

The Los Angeles public school system will vastly restrict the use of artificial intelligence at all grade levels, district officials said on Wednesday at a board of education meeting.

The move came shortly after the nation’s largest school system, in New York City, announced it would ban most A.I. through 8th grade. Both developments seem to respond to an extraordinary movement, driven by parents, to push back against the incursion of technology and screens into childhood.

The board of education in the Los Angeles Unified School District previously barred cellphone use during the school day and strictly limited the hours per day students could spend on laptops.

The new A.I. restrictions, reported earlier by the Los Angeles Times, will apply for the current school year, as a board committee considers how to potentially incorporate the technology in the future, according to a district spokeswoman.

Students may still see A.I. summaries on top of Google searches, but will not be able to engage with Google’s Gemini chatbot within those searches, according to the district.

And they will not be able to use chatbot helpers that Google offers inside its Classroom software, including Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides. Google Classroom is near-universally used in American schools.

Nicholas Melvoin, a school board member who sits on the committee studying A.I., said the board had been surprised by district officials’ decision to fully pause the technology for students.

While Mr. Melvoin has led the push to restrict student screen time, he raised questions about the wisdom of a complete A.I. ban for older teenagers, arguing they would need to understand the technology to prepare for college and the workplace.

“High school is where I would have more teacher discretion, with guardrails,” he said — similar to the path New York City officials outlined on Wednesday.

He said his committee would also consider the many big questions about how educators are using the technology, for lesson planning, grading, student feedback and communication with parents.

Los Angeles teachers continue to have access to A.I.

A.I. chatbots can help students learn, acting as a research tool or tutor breaking down complex concepts.

But chatbots can present misinformation. They have also led to an epidemic of cheating, as students prompt A.I. tools to write essays for them or complete problem sets. Even A.I. apps marketed specifically to schools have few blocks to prevent plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct.

A growing body of research shows individuals who use chatbots can experience reduced critical thinking.

Common Sense Media, an advocacy group, has broadly tested A.I. chatbots and recommended their use be limited for people under 18, in part because they allow students to avoid the productive struggle of learning.

The group has also raised questions about A.I. search summaries, which may prevent students from seeking out multiple sources of information on contested subjects.

Yvette Renteria, chief program officer at Common Sense, praised the Los Angeles decision, saying it made sense to take a pause on a rapidly evolving technology. While Common Sense believes students of all ages should be given lessons in A.I. literacy to better understand how the technology works, she said that did not generally require classroom access to A.I. tools.

“At this moment, there is oftentimes more danger than opportunity,” Ms. Renteria said. She noted that students would still use A.I. outside of school on their personal devices, and argued that it remains crucial that educators talk to young people about the risks and potential rewards of A.I. use.

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles, Technology

Florida Couple Homeschooled Their Grandchildren While Confining Them to a Truck and Sexually Abusing Them

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2026 //
13

In Florida, a couple were arrested and charged for keeping their four grandchildren confined in a truck for six years and allowing them to be sexually abused during their long confinement.

The good news (sarcasm) is that they homeschooled the children by enrolling them in Khan Academy online classes.

Did the couple know they were eligible for $32,000 in voucher payments to pay for all their educational expenses from the state of Florida? Maybe they did and were collecting. Why pay for the Khan Academy classes when the state will pick up the bill?

The New York Times reported:

A grandmother and her fiancé are accused of trapping four children for six years inside a semi truck’s cab, where the children endured sexual abuse, malnutrition and neglect, prosecutors in Florida said on Tuesday.

Starting in 2019, the victims, two girls and two boys who now range in age from 11 to 15, slept on a top bunk without all fitting on the mattress, the authorities said in an arrest warrant. They urinated in a plastic cup and defecated in a grocery bag, the warrant said.

One child scarred her hand permanently when hot noodles burned her, and she was not taken to the hospital, the warrant said. One girl contracted a sexually transmitted infection, the warrant said.

“This is just straight evil, and a scourge on our society,” Mark Glass, the commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said during a news conference held on Tuesday.

The victims are the biological grandchildren of Keysha Monique Epps, 51, of Atlanta, according to Jae Williams, a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, which filed charges against the suspects.

The ordeal began when Ms. Epps and her fiancé, Tamra Marshon Stewart, 37, of Jacksonville, Fla., traveled with the children from Atlanta to Miami, James Uthmeier, the state’s attorney general, said during the news conference. Ms. Epps was a licensed semi truck driver, Mr. Williams said.

The couple served as primary caregivers for the children, and they all lived inside the truck’s cab.

The cab included two seats for a driver and a passenger, a bunk bed, a refrigerator, a microwave and a space for storage all packed into tight quarters, the authorities said in the arrest warrant.

“This was a prison, a rolling prison,” Mr. Uthmeier said.

One of the girls, who is now 12, said Mr. Stewart had touched her inappropriately every day for two years, the authorities said. She said her grandmother knew what was happening to her, and in one instance pretended to be asleep, according to the arrest warrant.

Mr. Stewart furnished the other girl, now 11, with candy and money after sexual encounters in an effort to keep her quiet, according to the arrest warrant. The victim “said it didn’t work,” the warrant said.

A 15-year-old boy confronted Mr. Stewart, calling him a pedophile and a child molester, according to the arrest warrant from the state’s attorney general office. Mr. Stewart punched the victims after the dispute, according to an arrest warrant filed by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

The children did not attend school while with Ms. Epps and Mr. Stewart and instead used Khan Academy, a website with educational videos that is not accredited, the authorities said.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Ethics, Evil, Florida, Home Schooling, Vouchers
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