Rebecca Klein, education editor of Huffington Post, writes here about parents who must struggle to persuade school districts to let their children with disabilities remain with their peers—or move to another district that will include them.
“Just a few decades ago, students with disabilities faced high rates of institutionalization and were rarely included in typical classroom settings. In 1975, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act ― originally called the Education for All Handicapped Children’s Act ― enshrined into law these students’ right to an appropriate public education.
“Part of IDEA’s framework requires parents to advocate hard to get what they see as their children’s needs met. Often, school districts have different ideas about what would best serve a child. Decades later, this is still the case.
“Sometimes teachers lack the best training for dealing with a student’s specific disability. Other times, administrators have low expectations for what these students can achieve.
“While IDEA says students with disabilities should learn in the least restrictive environment ― meaning with non-disabled peers ― parents still often find themselves fighting hard, expensive battles for their child to be included.”
A rare peek into the evolution of Hillary Clinton’s education platform is afforded through an overlooked Wikileaks-published document. Entitled “Policy Book— FINAL,” the PDF file was attached to a 2014 email sent to John Podesta, Clinton’s future campaign chair. The education portion of the document runs 66 pages, mostly concentrated on K-12 policy, and captures specific input from billionaire donors looking to overhaul and privatize public education.
Today, Donald Trump seeks a rapid expansion of charter schools and private school vouchers, while his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, touts “school choice” and market competition for public school at every stop. But in private, Hillary Clinton’s donors, dubbed “experts,” also sought rapid charter expansion and market-based options to replace public schools.
One of the most connected “thought leaders” discussed is Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and the head of the Emerson Collective, a prominent education reform advocacy group. Powell Jobs who has been close with the Clintons since the late ’90s, also sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. She set up billionaire “roundtables” with Clinton’s campaign advisors through 2015 while donating millions to Priorities USA, Clinton’s main PAC.
Powell Jobs and Bruce Reed of the Broad Foundation also set their sights on remaking the teaching profession and teacher education. The briefing book, written in 2014, shows Reed boasting about the great accomplishments of the New Orleans charter district, “accomplishments” that have since been exposed as a fraud.
Jacobs writes:
Tying campaign donations to a singular issue like expanding charter schools might in days past been seen as a prohibited quid-pro-quo. But in this cycle, Podesta, O’Leary and Tanden all busily raised campaign money from the same billionaire education reformers with whom they were also talking policy specifics.
But they did more than talk. On June 20, 2015, O’Leary sent Podesta an email revealing the campaign adopted two of Powell Jobs’ suggestions, including “infusing best ideas from charter schools into our traditional public schools.” When Clinton announced this policy in a speech to teachers, however, it was the one line that drew boos.
Clinton needed big money to run. But she also solicited and got the support of the two big teachers’ unions, the NEA and the AFT. Torn between her super-wealthy donors and the leaders of the unions, Clinton eventually fell silent on education issues, to avoid alienating either side.
A personal footnote: Carol Burris and I met twice with Hillary’s top education policy advisor, Ann O’Leary. We tried to persuade her that Hillary should not support charter schools, but we sensed it was futile. She did eventually assure us that Hillary would take a strong stand against for-profit charters, a small victory.
It is no surprise that the faux Democrats in DFER, the Broad Foundation, and Powell Jobs were pushing her to endorse privatization. Perhaps it was a small victory that Clinton realized this was a non-starter with the millions of teachers whose support she needed.
I am certainly not surprised that the big donors wanted to buy her support for privatization. I am not surprised that she wanted their money. We could have fought that out after the election. Even if she followed in Obama’s footsteps on education, she would not have sold out civil rights, the environment, our national parks, our foreign policy, the Supreme Court, and every other function of the federal government.
Having read the briefing book, as much as I disagree with the reformers, I would still pick Clinton over Trump, with enthusiasm. And fight the battles later, without fearing to lose the essential values of our society and our democracy, as well as world peace, which now hang in the balance.
Conservatives have long had a beef with higher education. William Buckley first warned that the universities were rife with Marxists and leftists in his book “God and Man at Yale.” Since then, it has been open warfare on universities, which are the generators of ideas and discoveries in science, technology, history, literature, and other frontiers of knowledge.
The battle is briefly described in this article in The Atlantic by Jason Blakeley, who sees the battle as part of the long history of anti-intellectualism and preference for the practical over the theoretical.
What is undeniable, wherever you start the story, is that the Republican tax bills target universities and their students.
Instead of increasing access to higher education, which benefits students and society, the Republican tax plans will narrow access and narrow opportunity. The unprecedented tax on university endowments will reduce funds available for scholarships to the nation’s top universities and colleges.
He writes:
The Republican-controlled Congress is now poised to pass one of the most dramatic changes to the tax code in more than a generation—one with significant benefits for the wealthiest sector of society. Yet an aspect of this legislation receiving little attention is how it marks the culmination of a decades-long renouncement of higher education by portions of the American conservative movement.
The GOP and the American right consistently position themselves against the universities. This is a commonplace of the culture war. But why? America’s universities regularly rank among the most prestigious worldwide, making undeniable contributions to medicine, science, technology, economy, the arts, athletics, and the humanities. America’s universities also attract some of the world’s brightest minds, spurring innovation and dominating globally by countless measures. Conservatives might be proud of the universities as particularly stunning examples of American pluck and ingenuity. Instead, the tax bill appears to be symptomatic of the GOP’s growing disillusionment with higher education. This is, at least, how a number of college presidents and leaders have interpreted it.
For one, the legislation would for the first time ever require universities to pay taxes on their endowment income. Universities have traditionally received tax exemptions on those assets in part because they are viewed as contributing to the public good. In addition, the House bill includes provisions to end graduate-student tax breaks, leading professors and graduate students at top universities to worry that studying for a Ph.D. will become unaffordable for all but the wealthy. (The Senate bill doesn’t include the latter provision; the two pieces of legislation head to conference committee shortly.) With tax analysts identifying corporations as the Republican plan’s biggest winners, a politics of factionalism seems implicit in the bill: Private corporations deserve even greater assets, while America’s universities merit higher levels of taxation.
The Center for Responsible Lending issued this press release about the first stage in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The House Education and the Workforce Committee is chaired by Rep. Virginia Foxx, a far-right extremist from North Carolina.
PROSPER Act Shortchanges Students, Undermines Higher Ed Safeguards
Bill to dismantle higher education opportunity passes committee after late night vote and without bipartisan support
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, shortly after midnight, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce passed the PROSPER Act, a bill to eliminate important programs and safeguards that make higher education accessible and affordable for low-income students. The bill was approved without bipartisan support after a daylong debate and markup procedure where Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and other sponsors of the legislation summarily denied nearly all 40 amendments submitted by her Democratic colleagues.
The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) has called on members of the committee and Members of Congress to reject this bill which would: rollback borrower defense and gainful employment rules; eliminate state authority to regulate student loan servicers; use taxpayer dollars to prioritize for-profit colleges over public and non-profit colleges and universities; cut funding for minority-serving institutions, like historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs); and dismantle all student loan forgiveness programs.
CRL counsel Ashley Harrington released the following statement in response to last night’s vote:
“This bill does only one thing—it widens the wealth divide by ensuring that the gap between those who can afford to attend college and those who can’t becomes more difficult to bridge than ever. It increases the ability of predatory for-profit college institutions to access taxpayer dollars and dismisses the call of students who want assistance with the crushing burden of student loan debt.
“In 2008, we saw firsthand what happens when we support industry and businesses at the public’s expense. The student loan debt crisis is on track to decimate our economy and our communities in much the same way the mortgage crisis did. Should this bill become law as written, it will only accelerate that process.
“There are numerous ways to address higher education costs and access—we can create a system that’s more fair and equitable, including increasing our investment in college and career readiness, opening more pathways to loan forgiveness, and working to stem the exponentially rising cost of college. Unfortunately, this bill does nothing to address these concerns. Instead, the PROSPER Act is a war on students and pushes higher education further out of reach for many Americans than ever before.”
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For more information, or to arrange an interview with a CRL spokesperson on this issue, please contact ricardo.quinto@responsiblelending.org.
Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect sums up the Alabama election: Democracy held.
DECEMBER 13, 2017
Kuttner on TAP
The election of Doug Jones portends several hopeful things. First, it shows that under the right circumstances, 30 percent of white Alabamians will vote for a Democrat, even a pro-choice Democrat; and that black anger can be turned into black voter mobilization. We may have a biracial progressive coalition yet.
Second, it deepens the schisms in the Trump-era Republican Party. The defeat of Roy Moore made a fool of Steve Bannon, and forced Trump into one of his bizarre dances with the truth: He was against Moore before he was for him. Most obviously, the win gives Democrats one more crucial Senate seat.
But let’s not kid ourselves. This victory was a one-off, and everything had to break right for Jones. It took a GOP candidate not only as fringe as Moore, but one who is also an accused child molester; combined with Alabama’s other Republican senator, Richard Shelby, denouncing Moore almost on election eve and refusing to support him; and Mitch McConnell signaling that he’d refuse to seat Moore. And with all of that, Jones won by just 1.5 points—barely more than the margin of theft.
Even so, coming in the wake of the Democrats’ stunning blue wave on Election Day, this win continues the momentum, and the narrative of Democrats on the march and Republicans in disarray. As Trump becomes increasingly unhinged by a resurgence of sexual complaints against himself, combined with Special Counsel Robert Mueller closing in on Trump’s own obstruction of justice, it’s not a great time to be a Republican.
Most importantly, in a state that is one of the worst offenders when it comes to voter suppression, with a long history of denying voting rights to blacks, democracy held. Given all the threats of the Trump era, that is the best news of all. ~
It’s common to hear people say that the quality of students’ education shouldn’t depend on their ZIP code. But the Republican House and Senate tax bills would make ZIP codes matter more than ever. They would create an incentive to hoard opportunity by raising funds that remain close to home.
Why does our education system have so much at stake? A vast majority of funding for public schools, about 90 percent, comes from the money raised by state and local governments. Currently, taxpayers can deduct their state and local taxes, and that deduction makes them more likely to support higher spending on programs funded by those taxes, including public schools.
With its bills, Congress would significantly cut the deduction of state and local taxes, slicing into that incentive. This is why education advocates are fighting to keep the deductions, and why those who believe state and local governments are too big want to get rid of them.
After a consideration of eliminating all state and local deductions, current proposals have been marketed as a political compromise: Both bills take away taxpayers’ ability to deduct income taxes but allow a property tax deduction of up to $10,000 per year. The problem is that states depend more heavily on income taxes, and local governments on property taxes, so the compromise favors raising funds at the local level. Structuring it this way will only add to inequality in the school system.
As an economist who has studied education funding and policy, to me the historical record is clear: State-level school spending is critical. Economic segregation across school districts means some areas need an infusion of resources to have a chance at serving their students well, and states are the primary source of that infusion. Research shows that when states send more resources to their neediest districts, achievement levels in those districts rise.
But states are already in a tough spot: The most recent data show they are still recovering from the recession, with over half of them spending less on K-12 now, in inflation-adjusted terms, than they did in 2008.
It’s worth noting that more is at stake for states than just education funding. Federal spending cuts are sure to come to pay for this tax bill. There will most likely be calls for cuts in programs that provide food, health care and income assistance to poor families. Just as people will look to the states to fill these new holes in the safety net, it will be harder than ever for states to raise the funds to do so.
Despite efforts to suppress the vote, black voters turned out in greater numbers than they did for Obama.
NBA Star Charles Barkley campaigned for Jones. After the win, he was asked if he had a Message for Trump. He said, no, he had a message for the Democratic Party. “Stop taking the votes of black people and poor people for granted.”
Julian Vasquez Heilig spoke at the Journey for Justice National Town Hall in D.C. on December 12. He addressed his remarks to the charter supporters who dismissed claims that charters exacerbate segregation. Specifically, he spoke in response to an article in New York magazine by Jonathan Chait, who said that charters don’t cause segregation, they help its victims. Heilig contends that charters exacerbate segregation, as choice always does, and that they draw resources away from the districts that enroll most students.
Heilig has been an active member of the NAACP and chair of its education committee in California.
This is his speech:
Members of the civil rights community have expressed that charters are more segregated, are underperforming, and lack appropriate transparency and accountability to the public.
As a result, in 2016, the Movement for Black Lives, the NAACP and Journey For Justice all called for a charter moratorium.
A national conversation about charters is especially important for the African American community because a report by the NAACP’s Task Force on Quality Education found that one in eight African American students in the United States now attends a charter school.
Even though the popularity of charter schools has plummeted in the public discourse and in many quarters of the civil rights community, the rise in the number of charters has been particularly rapid during the past ten years. Many states have lifted caps on the number of charter schools contained within the original state legislation, owing in part to millions of dollars in financial incentives created by government grant programs and funding that has poured in from foundations funded by billionaires such as Broad, Walton, Gates, Arnold and others
Considering the rapid growth of charter schools, it’s important for the public conversations about school choice to distinguish fact from rhetoric and sloganeering.
Are charters more segregated that neighborhood public schools?
The AP recently reported that about 1 in 7 charters schools are 99% students of color.
In addition to media reports, the predominance of peer reviewed research examining national and local data on the segregation of students in charter schools over the past ten years has demonstrated that school choice is exacerbating existing patterns of segregation.
The research has actually shown this for about two decades. For example, using three national data sets, one research study found that charter schools are “more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.”
Research conducted by Vanderbilt University and Mathematica argued that charters are not “creating greater segregation,” but a careful reading of the data reveals that in the majority of states examined, white and African American students were more likely to choose even more homogenous charter schools.
Why are charters more segregated? The argument is often made by charter proponents that their schools sit in segregated neighborhoods. However, one of the big problems with school choice is that research is demonstrating that “Parents choose to leave more racially integrated district schools to attend more racially segregated charter schools.”
The peer reviewed research has shown that Whites are less likely to attend charters schools with large numbers of Black and Latinos because White families purposefully avoid charter schools that focus on test preparation and “No Excuses” discipline. Recent research has also shown that White families are more likely to attend charters that have parent voice on the board— charters predominately serving Black and Latinos are much less likely to have board members that are parents.
In sum, peer reviewed research has demonstrated that the purposeful choice of African American and white families leads to schools with more homogenous racial compositions than neighborhood public schools and “explains why there are so few racially balanced charter schools.”
So what about the argument that charters perform better? A prominent study found that choice was bad for achievement on average as, “the relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of African America students is driven by students who transfer into charter schools that are more racially isolated than the schools they have left.”
Even CREDOs most recent study of urban students shows that in 93% of measurements of reading and math in large cities across the United States, charters actually still have a negative impact on Black students. In the cases where charter perform better, the difference is typically minuscule, like the amount of difference between two football teams that are 1-10 and 0-11. In somes cases where charters perform better overall, such as Philadelphia, the overall positive performance of charter can be attributed to White and Asian students success, rather than spectacular academic success for Black and Latino students.
Furthermore, it is very clear that after more than 25 years of trying, charters have failed to dramatically change the inequality status quo in our nation. However, where they are succeeding is setting democratically-accountable districts like Los Angeles on a collision course with bankruptcy.
Our society has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building, financing and funding charters schools at great expense to taxpayers— considering the evidence to this point, the underwhelming results, and in many cases reprehensible, should be considered a national disappointment.
On December 1, the Board of Education of the Chicago Public Schools announced its plan to shutter Harper, Hope, Robeson, and Team Englewood High Schools. All of these high schools are located in the predominantly African American Englewood neighborhood. With their planned closing there will be no neighborhood open enrollment public high schools left in this community of 30,000 people.
Schools are the cornerstones of neighborhoods, the place where a community comes together and relationships are built. Once a neighborhood school is closed it is like giving the community a black eye. The message is clear – this part of the city is not deserving of a public school and its children can be educated elsewhere.
You will hear about a beautiful, new high school planned for Englewood. While this sounds good, it does nothing for the current students of these Englewood high schools. NONE of the current high school students at Harper, Hope, Robeson, and Team Englewood will be allowed to attend. The school will start with a freshman class in 2019 and build a new class each year.
In the meantime, current students are set adrift and told to search out another school in an adjoining neighborhood. This brings up both academic questions and serious safety issues for these youth. In essence, Englewood students will be shipped to other schools, and the end of their high school careers sacrificed for a “fresh start” for the new school.
There is only one word for pushing African American children outside of their community in order to make room for a future student population – apartheid.
If CPS sincerely cares for the children of Englewood the current high schools would stay open until the new one was built and there would be a plan for integrating their students into the new school. To ‘start clean’ with only freshmen is to deny the value and humanity of the current youth in this neighborhood.
The narrative around the school closings is that the schools are under-enrolled and that they are not meeting the needs of the students. Janice Jackson, chief education officer of Chicago Public Schools said, “When I look at Englewood, at the experience some kids are getting, I can’t make the case they’re getting a good high school experience.” On this, she is right. The high schools in Englewood have been starved of the resources needed for high quality school programming for years. They have been intentionally run into the ground so that their closings would be inevitable.
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has been fighting for fair funding of schools for many years. The union’s underlying analysis is that the Chicago Public Schools purposefully defunded schools, claimed them as failures, and then proceeded to close them. The city is in fact “broke on purpose” so that these neighborhoods can be taken over and gentrified. What are the values of our society when children’s lives are sacrificed to the real estate ‘gods of gentrification’?
There will be readers who ask, why would a city government plan the demise of the high schools in an entire section of town? The answer is clear – real estate. Englewood sits in prime territory just south of Chicago’s Loop and with ready access to expressways and transportation. This is a real estate grab.
Diane Ravitch's blog 