Archives for the month of: September, 2017
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Battle Within the GOP Heats Up: Establishment Vs. Bannon

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
19

This article is a fascinating and frightening description of the battle within the GOP for control.

On one side is the establishment: McConnell and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. On the other is Steve Bannon and his merry band of anarchists.

The flash point right now is the election of a new senator in Alabama to replace Jeff Sessions.

It is Luther Strange vs. Roy Moore.

Both are running against the government in Washington, even though their fellow Republicans control the Executive and Legislative branches.

In a sign of fights to come, the two Republican candidates are now competing to demonstrate their disgust with Washington politics. Strange, who was appointed this year to take the seat of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, begins one of his most recent television ads looking at the camera and announcing that he is “mad at Washington politicians.”

Moore describes his campaign as an effort to hurt McConnell, drain the swamp and bring more radical policies to the Senate, including a possible effort to impeach sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices for affirming the constitutionality of same-sex marriages.

Although Trump has endorsed Strange, Bannon is backing Moore — and using the conservative website he runs, Breitbart News, to hammer the incumbent as a “swamp monster.”

Allies of McConnell have been blanketing the Alabama airwaves to shrink Moore’s polling lead. After spending nearly $4 million on ads before the first primary vote in August, the Senate Leadership Fund plans to blitz the state with another $4 million before the Sept. 26 runoff. So far this year, the super PAC has raised more than $11 million, including a $1 million infusion from hedge fund manager Paul Singer last month, federal filings show.

This appears to be the first round in an internecine battle over control of the GOP.

On one side is the Trump team; on the other are the Bannon zealots, funded by the Mercer billionaires. Bannon and friends apparently aim to destroy the United States in their quest for total liberation from any government at all.

A pitched battle for control of the Swamp.

Roy Moore is an extremist who is far to the right of any other extremist in the nation, and he is leading in the polls.

From Wikipedia:

Roy Stewart Moore (born February 11, 1947) is an American lawyer, politician, and former judge. Moore is running for the United States Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions upon Sessions’s confirmation as Attorney General of the United States.

Moore was elected to the position of Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2001, but removed from his position in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments commissioned by him from the Alabama Judicial Building, despite orders to do so by a federal court. Moore sought the Republican nomination for the governorship of Alabama in 2006, but lost to incumbent Bob Riley in the June primary by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. He sought the Republican nomination for the office again in 2010,[1] but placed fourth in the Republican primary.

Moore was again elected Chief Justice in 2013, but was suspended in May 2016, for directing probate judges to continue to enforce the state’s ban on same-sex marriage despite the fact that it had been overturned. Following an unsuccessful appeal, Moore resigned in April 2017, and announced that he would be running for the United States Senate seat which was vacated by Jeff Sessions, upon his confirmation as Attorney General of the United States.[2][3]

In the years preceding his first election to the state Supreme Court, Moore successfully resisted attempts to have a display of the Ten Commandments removed from the courtroom. The controversy around Moore generated national attention. Moore’s supporters regard his stand as a defense of “judicial rights” and the Constitution of Alabama. Moore contended that federal judges who ruled against his actions consider “obedience of a court order superior to all other concerns, even the suppression of belief in the sovereignty of God.”[4]

Categories Alabama, Education Reform

Largest Broadcast Network Forces Local Stations to Show Pro-Trump News Show

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
9

The Sinclair Broadcasting Group recently became the largest radio network in the nation. It is aggressively pro-Trump and requires its local stations to run certain programs.

Sinclair is poised to become the nation’s largest owner of TV stations and, with its recent hire of former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn, viewers can expect to see more of the chain’s political programming. Epshteyn is Sinclair’s “chief political analyst.”

Listeners to WJAR in Providence were shocked to learn that their local news station had become a conservative news outlet.

Julian Sinclair Smith launched the broadcasting company in 1971 in Baltimore. His son, David Smith, took the reins in the 1990s, expanding its reach to 81 markets across the country.

While Sinclair once broadcast to relatively few homes, it is now poised to reach 72 percent of American households if its acquisition of Tribune Media Company is approved. The $3.9 billion purchase would add 42 stations to its holdings.

It could expand Sinclair’s reach to 87.3 million homes, of the 119.6 million American households that the Neilsen foundation estimates have televisions.

Smith and Sinclair pull no punches about their political leanings. The company’s controversies date to the era of George W. Bush, when, among other things, the broadcaster sent a team to Iraq to report “good news” about the war; aired “Stolen Honor,” a documentary critical of John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam war activism, weeks before the 2004 election; and refused to air a “Nightline” program that listed the name of every American soldier killed in Iraq.

Sinclair is to radio news what FOX is to television news.

Categories Education Reform

Arizona: The Widespread Fiscal Mismanagement of Charters

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
0

These reports document the widespread financial mismanagement of charter schools in Arizona, compiled by Curt Cardine. These reports are also archived on the Grand Canyon Institute website.

The reports can be read here, here, and here.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization

Arizona: New Study Finds that Three-Quarters of Charters Are Financially Mismanaged

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
12

Curt Cardine, retired educator, has studied the charter schools of Arizona and discovered that most are financially unsound.

Next year, Arizonans will vote on whether to fund religious and other private schools with taxpayer dollars. How much waste are the taxpayers of Arizona willing to tolerate at the same time?

Cardine writes:

The economic theory behind school choice and vouchers relies on the ‘free’ marketplace and the consumers of educational services to cull winners and losers. Children represent ‘backpacks full of cash’ that follow the child to the school of their parents’ choice.

The data gleaned from 20-plus years of financial reports on charter schools paint a different story. In reality, Arizona families lack sufficient information to make an informed choice about what school their children attend. As Ronald Reagan might have put it, we have trusted without verifying the financial and academic results of that trust.

Since 1994, 424 charter schools have shuttered their doors, a failure rate of 43 percent. Thirty-four percent of all charters that fail do not meet the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools Financial Performance Recommendation. Another 90 charter groups that failed did not meet the Cash Flow Standard. My concerns led to three years of intensive research. This effort was undertaken to statistically verify first-hand observations as a charter and district leader. Special attention was paid to the 2013 through 2016 audits, annual financial reviews and IRS 990s (used by the IRS for nonprofits).

The research findings are documented in a series of three policy reports from the Grand Canyon Institute, a nonpartisan public policy think tank.

The reports are ‘Following the Money,’ ‘Red Flags’ and ‘Teachers in the Charter Marketplace.’

Following the Money presents financial data on charter school management salaries. Charter administrative costs on average are twice district management costs. One case showed two administrators earning a total that exceeded $500,000 for managing one small school with less than 300 students. The top earners are often husband and wife teams, relatives or business associates of the charter holder, collectively making more than $200,000 to oversee a few hundred children.

Charters are not required to conduct a competitive bid process like public district schools. This allows many charter holders to earn compensation by doing business with their own for-profit companies. In one case, a charter holder paid his own ‘for profit’ company $12 million in one year for learning-management software. The cost should have been less than 10 percent of that amount, based on what the Mesa Unified School District spends for a similar type of software.

In 2013-14, related-party business practices were worth a half a billion dollars, representing 48 percent of charter school transactions for contracts, leases and rents. As a comparison, public school districts are not allowed to do business with companies owned by the superintendent or school board.

Also, widespread irregularities abound in the financial information that some charter schools provided to different governmental agencies.

The next post contains the background reports. They are also archived here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization

Mississippi: Don’t Let ALEC Destroy Democratic Control of Jackson Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
13

The government of Mississippi cares more about the corporate-controlled ALEC than it does about local control of its public schools. ALEC likes state takeovers. ALEC doesn’t like local control. ALEC loves privatization.

Parents and educators will not let this happen without resistance. Write letters to the governor and legislators.

The Network for Public Education will alert its members in Mississippi to fight for the public schools of Jackson. If you live in Mississippi, speak up for democratic control of the schools.

Say NO to ALEC!

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In a closed session, hiding from public scrutiny, the Board of Education decided Thursday that the state of Mississippi would take over Jackson Public Schools. This move eliminates the local school board, and cuts out community voice and input in our local schools. We will not be silenced.

They wanted to quietly send this plan to the Governor to be signed, and keep us out of the process.

Governor Bryant needs to hear that the Jackson community and all Mississipians stand with JPS. Email Governor Bryant now. Tell him this takeover is wrong.

At every turn, the Commission on School Accreditation and the Board of Education shut out community voices.

  • More than 3,300 members of this community signed a petition opposing this takeover; they refused to accept it.
  • Hundreds of people showed up to the meetings to show our disapproval; we were kept out of the room and forced into an overflow room where the decision makers could not see or hear from us.
  • JPS produced a report showing the progress that has been made and the plans for improvements; Commission and Board members never reviewed these materials, and didn’t even take them into their closed session to inform their debate. They decided the fate of our schools and our kids without even looking at all of the evidence.

We are working alongside Jackson parents, educators, leaders, students, and legal counsel to identify every avenue for stopping this takeover.

Thousands of you signed the petition, attended the rally and press conferences, shared on social media to keep your friends up to date, and came to the Commission and Board meetings. Thank you for supporting our students and JPS. Now take the next step. Email Governor Bryant to tell him not to accept this takeover.

Thank you,
Pam Shaw, #OurJPS

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Mississippi

Lisa Haver: Who Elected These Billionaires to Impose Their Half-Baked Views on Our Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
23

Lisa Haver is a retired teacher in the Philadelphia public schools and co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.

In this article, she asks who gave the billionaires the right to reorganize our public schools, when none has any knowledge or experience in education.

None of them has a clue about how to teach r how to run a school. Yet people are lining up to get their money.

Who will hold them accountable when their ideas fail, as Bill Gates Common Core failed?

She is thinking now of Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. She is thinking of Laurene Powell Jobs. They know nothing about education.

“Over the past 20 years, education policy has increasingly been enacted not to satisfy the needs of the students and their families, but the wants of the wealthy and powerful who are converting public education from a civic enterprise to a marketplace for edu-vendors: the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has paid to expand charters and lobby for the use of Common Core standards in all 50 states; real estate and insurance mogul Eli Broad now leads a group of corporate funders pushing a plan to move half of all K-12 students in Los Angeles into charter schools; the Walton family has initiated a new $1 billion campaign to promote charters nationwide; Trump financier Carl Icahn has established a chain of charters in New York City.

“No one elected these billionaires, and they are accountable to no one. We can’t call our members of Congress to object to their policies. While Americans continue to condemn the power of the very rich to influence elections, we must also fight to stop them from having more influence over the future of our young people than the constituents of democratically elected school boards.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Common Core, Education Reform, Privatization

Texas Pastors to Kentucky Pastors: Join Us in the Fight Against Racism and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
55

Those of us who believe in the importance and necessity of a much improved public education system are fortunate to have the support of pastors who understand the importance of separation of church and state. They also understand that the state will in time put its heavy hand on the affairs of the church if the church becomes dependent on the state. And they know too that a church that needs public subsidy lacks the support of its own congregants.

The leader in this grassroots fight against privatization of public schools is Pastors for Texas Children. It has helped Oklahomans organize Pastors for Oklahoma Kids. It is now working with faith-based groups in Arizona and Arkansas to ward off the attack against public schools. The leader of Pastors for Texas Children, Charles Foster Johnson, will speak at the convention of the Network for Public Education in Oakland from October 14-15. Please come to hear about the important work that is happening at the community level.

In this post, Reverend George Mason explained at a meeting in Simmons, Kentucky, why pastors must join together to protect the rights of African-American children. Rev. Mason is senior pastor of the Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.

Racism is not the root of all problems of public education in America, but the problem of racism is rooted in public education in America. It should be the mission of the church of Jesus Christ to call it out and root it out.

Public education is under assault in this country. And whom do you think suffers most when it does?

Racism has always prevented black Americans and other people of color from fully grasping the promise of prosperity our country says is dangling just within reach of every child who studies and works hard. Black American children have never had equal access to quality education, and yet they have been blamed for not achieving anyway.

The heroic efforts of people who founded schools like Simmons are to be lauded. The example of successful black Americans who had to work twice as hard as people like me to get where they are today is remarkable. But neither is any excuse for our complacency. Cherry-picking African Americans to praise so we have moral license to condemn many others who haven’t, because of unjust and unequal educational systems we continue to defend, is a sin against God.

You know the history. From slavery to Jim Crow segregation, white Americans have been afraid to be exposed as frauds in our assertion that we have God-given intellectual superiority. We have clung to a lie about ourselves; and it is idolatry, not theology. We have to repent of the contrived notion of whiteness as rightness that has become operational policy in our approach to public school education. It’s not enough for us to feel sorry for our history; it’s necessary for us to atone for it.

Pastors for Texas Children was formed in 2011 as a mission and advocacy organization to ensure that every child of God in Texas have access to a quality public education. We match churches with local schools, creating mentoring and tutoring relationships with students, and providing needed material support to compensate for our state’s failure to fulfill its constitutional duty to fully fund these schools. We advocate for just laws and adequate budgets.

Currently in Texas, and nationwide, we have a privatizing movement underway that wants to peel off taxpayer dollars to private schools through voucher programs. As always, these educational entrepreneurs see themselves as messianic figures, saving disadvantaged students from educrats and bureaucrats who only want to keep their jobs at the expense of the kids. But that argument is bogus.
Voucher programs take our tax dollars and give them to private schools without public accountability. Charter schools do a similar runaround. Vouchers are a ruse designed once again to privilege the privileged and underprivilege the underprivileged.
The people who cry for accountability all the time only want accountability when other people are in charge. And they employ all sorts of negative narratives to support their claims public schools can’t succeed. It’s either corruption of administrators or mismanagement of funds or the breakdown of the black family that makes education impossible. All these arguments are marshalled to undermine public education in favor of moving money and people toward charter schools and private schools.
The performance data, however, don’t back up the claims of failing public schools and thriving charter schools; nor do state experiments in voucher programs justify the upending of a public education system, which was created to strengthen democracy and reinforce our country’s high ideals of patriotism and citizenship. Something else is going on, and we all know what it is. It’s what it’s always been.
After Brown vs. Board of Education, whites fled the public schools for the homogeneity of private schools. When public schools were forcibly integrated, every form of creativity was called upon to maintain white advantage. Black kids and white kids now went to school together, but black teachers—who were invaluable role models in segregated schools—were let go all over the country. Schools were never ordered by the courts to integrate black teachers. Think of it.

Then consider the code language we use in educational reform. Local control, school-based decision making, and here’s the big one—choice. Sounds good in principle, but so did the lofty notion of states’ rights that was used to justify slavery and segregation. The outcome has hardly been different, because when the people in charge locally only answer to people like them, they choose in their own favor time and again, and nothing changes to equalize opportunity.

In Dallas, 95% of our school district is non-white. 90% of students are on partial or full food subsidy. White flight is rooted in white fright. Yet the one thing proven to improve performance in public schools is real racial and economic integration. Know why? Because children haven’t yet learned how not to love their neighbor. They work together and play together and want each other to succeed. It’s their parents and paid-for politicians who don’t know how to do this.

Cornel West was right when he said that “justice is what love looks like in public.” And public education is a fertile field for justice work. It’s one way white Christians can move from private sorrow over our racist history to public repentance. It’s a beautiful way for us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Faith and learning, churches and schools, preachers and teachers: all these are organically related. All of us are called to love God and love our neighbor. This is the perfect intersection to keep the Great Commandment.

Charlie Johnson leads Pastors for Texas Children. It was Suzii Paynter’s brainchild to start with, when she worked for another organization back in our state. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Fellowship Southwest are working hard to support this work.

Pastors and churches are busy cheering on kids, encouraging teachers and principals and superintendents. We also try to convince politicians of the error of their ways, and when they persist in their perdition, we work to elect new ones who will make good on the promise to all our kids.

You ought to have a chapter in your state too. We can help you. Talk to Suzii or me afterward, or email Charlie.

Here’s the thing: 400 years is long enough, dear Lord! The children of Angela must ever be before our eyes and in our hearts, because they are God’s children and our sisters and brothers. All children’s lives matter only if black children’s lives matter. And one way we can prove we believe that is to make sure the public in the public education system means all the public.

Pray for us, and join us.

Categories Kentucky, Racism, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Newark: State Control Lifted, Newark Schools Return to Local Control

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
8

After more than twenty years of state control, the Newark Public Schools will be restored to local control.

A Newark school board, elected by the public, will have the power to hire and fire its own superintendent.

Chris Cerf, who previously was state superintendent in New Jersey, will be the Newark superintendent until his contract expires in 2018.

This article, from the twentieth year of state control, has some interesting before and after statistics. Enrollment is down, test scores and graduation rates are up, the district enrollment is more Hispanic than it was in 1995. There has been quite a lot of turnover in leadership of the district. Some things are certainly better, by the numbers.

I will wait to hear more from our friends in New Jersey about the changes. Was it Chris Christie? Chris Cerf? Cami Anderson? Mark Zuckerberg? Money? Charter schools? All of the above? None of the above?

Congratulations to the people of Newark on regaining control of your community public schools.

Categories Education Reform

Robert Jay Lifton: Why Trump is the Most Dangerous Man in the World

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2017 //
38

Robert Jay Lifton is an eminent psychohistorian. In this post, he talks with Bill Moyers about Trump, the Goldwater rule, the “duty to warn,” and what makes Trump so dangerous. Twenty-seven mental health professionals have written a book about Trump.

“The foreword is by one of America’s leading psychohistorians, Robert Jay Lifton. He is renowned for his studies of people under stress — for books such as Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967), Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans — Neither Victims nor Executioners (1973), and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986). The Nazi Doctors was the first in-depth study of how medical professionals rationalized their participation in the Holocaust, from the early stages of the Hitler’s euthanasia project to extermination camps.

“The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump will be published Oct. 3 by St. Martin’s Press.”

“Moyers: Some of the descriptions used to describe Trump — narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, delusional disorder, malignant narcissist — even some have suggested early forms of dementia — are difficult for lay people to grasp. Some experts say that it’s not one thing that’s wrong with him — there are a lot of things wrong with him and together they add up to what one of your colleagues calls “a scary witches brew, a toxic stew.”

“Lifton: I think that’s very accurate. I agree that there’s an all-enveloping destructiveness in his character and in his psychological tendencies. But I’ve focused on what professionally I call solipsistic reality. Solipsistic reality means that the only reality he’s capable of embracing has to do with his own self and the perception by and protection of his own self. And for a president to be so bound in this isolated solipsistic reality could not be more dangerous for the country and for the world. In that sense, he does what psychotics do. Psychotics engage in, or frequently engage in a view of reality based only on the self. He’s not psychotic, but I think ultimately this solipsistic reality will be the source of his removal from the presidency…

“Moyers: There’s a chapter in the book entitled, “He’s Got the World in His Hands and His Finger on the Trigger.” Do you ever imagine him sitting alone in his office, deciding on a potentially catastrophic course of action for the nation? Say, with five minutes to decide whether or not to unleash thermonuclear weapons?

“Lifton: I do. And like many, I’m deeply frightened by that possibility. It’s said very often that, OK, there are people around him who can contain him and restrain him. I’m not so sure they always can or would. In any case, it’s not unlikely that he could seek to create some kind of crisis, if he found himself in a very bad light in relation to public opinion and close to removal from office. So yes, I share that fear and I think it’s a real danger. I think we have to constantly keep it in mind, be ready to anticipate it and take whatever action we can against it. The American president has particular power. This makes Trump the most dangerous man in the world. He’s equally dangerous because of his finger on the nuclear trigger and because of his mind ensconced in solipsistic reality. The two are a dreadful combination.”

Categories Education Reform

Harvard Psychiatrist: Forget the “Goldwater Rule”; Trump is a “Malignant Narcissist” and a Dangerous Man

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2017 //
91

This morning, Trump retweeted a fabricated video of himself hitting a golf ball, which flies through the air and hits Hillary Clinton in the back, knocking her to the floor as she boards an airplane. This is simply appalling. He is boasting of his domination of her, boasting of his violent impulses, projecting his wish to harm her physically. His supporters think it is funny. They would think it was funny if he literally punched Clinton in the face. This man is not normal. Perhaps other men have fantasies about striking women. Perhaps they actually strike women. But they are not the President of the United States. This man is utterly lacking in impulse control or dignity. He’s got no class.

Since the 1964 campaign, most mental health professionals have avoided making judgments about the mental capacity of politicians. This pronciple–not diagnosing someone you have not personally evaluated–is known as the “Goldwater Rule,” because so many professionals offered long distance diagnoses of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. Goldwater lost in a landslide to Lyndon B. Johnson.

Dr. Lance Dodes says that the Goldwater Rule is a violation of free speech and is obsolete. If, in fact, a psychiatrist had actually examined Donald Trump, he or she would not be permitted to speak because of ironclad rules about doctor-patient confidentiality.

There are two ways to judge a person’s mental health, he says: words and deeds.

In his opinion, Trump is a sociopath, a liar, and a malignant narcissist.

“Trump’s case of narcissism is particularly severe because he also is out of touch with reality whenever he becomes upset. When he says, “I had the largest crowd at an inauguration in history,” it does not matter that you can tell him that it is not true, he still insists on it. Well, that is very troublesome because what it means is that he needs to believe it. He is able to give up reality in exchange for his wished-for belief. Sometimes we call that a delusion. We have not used that word much with Donald Trump because that does get confused with people who think that they are Napoleon. But Trump has a fluid sense of reality, which is a sign of a very sick individual.

“Sociopathy itself is a sign of a very sick individual, someone with a lying, cheating and emotional disorder. The intersection of those two occurs in sociopathy. It is not just bad behavior that people have to lie and cheat the way he does, it is an incapacity to treat other people as full human beings. That is why his focus is on humiliating others to aggrandize himself, as he did in the Republican primaries when he was debating and calling people names. The same thing applies to Hispanic immigrants and separating the children from their parents. That is a very, very serious mental and emotional problem. Normal people have normal empathy. It is part of being a human being. Lying and cheating and humiliating others and grinding them into dust in order to triumph is not just bad behavior. It is a serious mental illness.”

When you recall how he belittled other candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, Dr. Dodes’ conclusion rings true.

An interesting interview. Worth reading in full.

Categories Education Reform
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