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Mother Jones: The Incredible But True Story of ECOT, Ohio’s Virtual Disaster

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2020 //
7

This is the incredible but true story of the improbable rise and precipitate collapse of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), which sucked nearly $1 billion out of public schools in Ohio over nearly 20 years. It was written by James Pogue and published by Mother Jones in 2018.

Read this article in full.

Pogue describes ECOT’s founder William Lager as a “washed-up lobbbyisr” with big dreams, scribbling on napkins in a Waffle House in Columbus, Ohio. He succeeded in creating a virtual charter school that soon became the largest charter school in Ohio. He created related businesses to supply the goods and services for his growing business. He gave generous sums to politicians. Governor John Kasich loved ECOT. He was a commencement speaker.

So was Jeb Bush, who saw ECOT as the future of American education. He was a commencement speaker too. The state auditor gave ECOT an award for the quality of its audits.

However, as ECOT’s enrollment grew, so did its problems. Its attrition rate was staggering. Only 40% of its students graduated. Parents complained to state officials that their kids weren’t learning anything. But state officials, most of whom received donations from Lager, didn’t listen.

Classes began in September 2000, and by the end of the school year ECOT had 3,000 students and had become the state’s largest charter, bigger than many of Ohio’s public school districts, according to Lager. “We were given five months from the day that our charter was approved to the first day of school,” he wrote. “I’m pretty sure I couldn’t plan a wedding in that period of time (and given my track record with marriages, probably shouldn’t!).”

It soon became obvious there were problems. Jim Petro, then the state auditor, issued a brutal assessment of the school’s first year, finding that “ECOT did not have any written policies or procedures for enrolling students,” that it exhibited an “inability to provide computers to students at the beginning of the school year,” and that in two months there were “106 instances in which the reported student was either less than 5 years old or greater than 21 years old, contrary to legislated age requirements.” It also found that the school received almost $1 million in the month of September 2000 as payment for the students it claimed to be educating, although that month “only 7 students logged-in to one of the available computer-based instruction systems.” In other words, during the first month of operations, only about 1 of every 300 ECOT students managed to access Lager’s revolutionary new online education program.

Astonishingly, and despite the auditor’s conclusion that the school was paid an additional $1 million the following month for students it couldn’t account for, ECOT was allowed to carry on…

By 2006, ECOT was growing into a behemoth, and Lager was growing rich. His private companies eventually billed ECOT for at least $153 million, most of it taxpayer dollars. These companies were largely insulated from state oversight. In 2002, a law put forth by Republican legislators had given oversight authority of certain charter schools to chartering agencies, like Lucas County ESC, which were left largely responsible for monitoring the schools that paid them. Charter management companies like Altair weren’t—and still aren’t—required to report what percentage of the state funds they received was paid out in individual salaries. But two early state audits show that at least in the first two years of ECOT’s operation, more than $1 million in fees paid to Altair went to Lager personally.

He began to pour that money into politics, donating $1.9 million over the course of 18 years, mostly to Republican candidates. Some high-level ECOT or Altair employees also frequently donated to pro-charter candidates, according to one former ECOT administrator and state records. “I was bothered by it, to a degree, but I stayed out of the politics and just did my job,” he said. “That was what I was getting paid for, and I didn’t care about getting involved with Mr. Lager or any of that other stuff.”

In one instance reported by the Akron Beacon Journal in 2006, Lager gave $10,000 over a four-day period to the gubernatorial campaign of the former auditor, Jim Petro, who had since been elected as the state’s attorney general. Four ECOT or Altair employees, along with their spouses, each donated $5,000 to Petro during the same four-day span—totaling at least $50,000 from ECOT and Altair staff during a primary campaign. One couple that contributed $24,500 had never donated to a state or federal campaign until that year. Petro lost but remained the attorney general. And soon, despite his lacerating assessment of ECOT’s first year, he gave the commencement address at the school’s 2006 graduation ceremony…

Across the country, many state legislatures were increasingly permissive of charter schools, and their enrollments were skyrocketing. From 2006 to 2016, they would nearly triple their enrollments nationwide, from 1.2 million students to 3.1 million. In Ohio, the system had grown from almost nothing to 70,000 students in just 10 years, and the charter lobby was becoming one of the most influential in the state. “There were a lot of powerful lobbies in Columbus,” Stephen Dyer, who was elected to the Ohio House in 2006, told me. “You had coal, you had general energy companies, you had nursing homes. I never saw any sector get everything they wanted except charters.”

Amid the national wave that overturned the GOP majority in 2006, Ted Strickland, a Democrat who wanted to get a handle on charters, was elected as Ohio’s first Democratic governor in 25 years. But a sudden flood of almost $900,000 in campaign cash from a group headed by Betsy DeVos, who long before becoming Trump’s education secretary was active in pushing the most radical approaches to school deregulation, helped to keep Ohio’s House of Representatives in Republican hands. Over the four years of Strickland’s tenure, charter industry allies in the Legislature blocked many of the governor’s attempts. “I don’t think all political contributions are efforts to do something nefarious,” Strickland told me. “But in this case, I think it was so obvious that these schools were so bad and were failing and had such lax oversight. I cannot give the Republican Legislature the benefit of the doubt and say that they did not know.”

“When you have a situation where public moneys are used to enrich individuals,” he added, “who then in turn support the politicians that support the policies that enrich them—it may not be illegal, but I think that fits the definition of corruption…”

In June 2010, Jeb Bush flew to Columbus to give the commencement speech at ECOT’s graduation. It was just one among several efforts to boost Lager’s business. The next year, Bush would push for increased funds for e-schooling in Ohio—never mind that ECOT’s test scores were some of the worst in the state, worse than those in all but 14 of 609 Ohio school districts. And in the months following his commencement address, Bush would convene a Digital Learning Council with support from major tech companies including Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The council—which Lager sat on—contributed to laws in Florida, Utah, and Wisconsin that helped steer public money to online education companies. Nationwide, online charters would soon educate an estimated 200,000 students a year, even as one study of their performance compared the educational shortfalls they produced to a student losing “72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in math” out of a normal school year. “The US education system currently operates as an eight-track tape in an iPod world,” Bush said, after Gov. John Kasich signed a 2011 bill encouraging e-learning in the state. “Ohio is on a path to transform education for the 21st century…”

“You will have had no other speaker more committed to the ECOT idea than Governor Kasich,” Lager told the crowd as he introduced the governor in 2011. “With his help, we see nothing but clear sailing.”

ECOT was a huge financial success but an educational failure. Students were counted as enrolled if they logged in for only one minute in a day.

Students, in fact, weren’t required to participate in online classroom learning at all, according to another ECOT official’s testimony regarding the 2015-16 school year. (Educational requirements could be satisfied through field trips or homework.)…

Only in recent months [2018] have Ohio politicians begun to distance themselves from the school. Last August, the state Republican Party returned $38,000 in donations from Lager and another $38,000 from his lieutenant at Altair, Melissa Vasil. Yost put Lager on warning in January by publicly suggesting that the ECOT founder, who over the years has purchased a $3.7 million home in Key West, Florida, along with a lakeside retreat and properties around Columbus, could be expected to personally repay some of the tens of millions of dollars ECOT owes the state. A few days later, a framed photo of Yost was reportedly removed without explanation from the lobby at ECOT’s headquarters.

“I don’t think there’s any conscionable reason why Lager should make the profits that he makes off of educating kids in public schools,” a former ECOT administrator told me. He defended his accomplishments at ECOT and said that for many children he worked with, online schooling really was the best option—safer for kids who had been bullied or threatened by gangs, and more flexible for students whose families might be transient.

But those successes came at the cost of more than $1 billion in public funding, much of it diverted from better performing Ohio schools, and at least 15 percent of that money—about $150 million—was paid to Lager’s private companies, subject to almost zero oversight or transparency. In 2017, Columbus’ public schools posted a four-year graduation rate of 74 percent. ECOT’s was 40 percent. Nevertheless, that year Columbus schools sacrificed $11 million in funding—about 3 percent of their total state allocation—to ECOT.

In January 2018, ECOT collapsed, owing the state $80 million.

Betsy DeVos is still promoting virtual charters like ECOT, where students learn nothing.

Now, in the midst of the pandemic, virtual charters are promoting their inferior product to gullible parents.

Categories Failure, Ohio, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Massachusetts: The Challenges of Reopening Schools

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2020 //
50

The Boston Globe reports on the questions that public officials are trying to resolve in Massachusetts:

State and city school officials haven’t made a firm commitment yet as to when Massachusetts public schools might reopen for a number of good reasons. Before they can welcome a million students back to their classrooms, administrators must resolve a seemingly endless series of hard questions.

How do you load elementary school children onto a bus while keeping them 6 feet apart?

How do you protect the estimated 20 percent of teachers who are 55 or older from getting seriously ill?

How do you serve lunch?

And that’s before you even get to the money problem: Running a school is about to get a lot more expensive, just as the crashing economy may force state and local governments to cut school budgets…

In in recent testimony before a legislative committee, state Education Commissioner Jeffrey C. Riley described potential recommendations that could make school look markedly different than before the pandemic, including the extensive reliance on social distancing, expanded mental health services, and the possible need for students and staff to wear masks.

In addition, Riley said schools may need to develop plans for “potential extended school closings.” He held out the possibility that schedules will need to be modified, and that at least some classes may continue to be taught remotely.

“The plan will include guidance on physical and virtual learning environments and many other topics,” Riley said in a statement.

Riley declined to provide an outline for when schools might resume in-person classes, saying only that officials were beginning to map out a plan to reopen schools “when conditions are right…”

Boston school Superintendent Brenda Cassellius struck a similarly cautious tone on providing a timeline for reopening the city’s 125 schools. There are just too many unknowns — including the possibility of a fall surge in COVID-19 cases — to provide even a tentative reopening date.

“It just depends on if we get through these phases [of reopening the state] successfully,” she said. “At this point we are still sheltering, and until we hit all the indicators, that will be our reality.”

New guidance from the federal government suggests school could be a lot less fun when it finally does reopen. Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call for a three-step approach that includes reduced student movement within schools, canceled field trips and extracurricular activities, and meals that are served in classrooms. Staff should wear masks. Students and teachers should undergo daily temperature and symptom checks if possible, and high-risk staff should be allowed to work remotely.

Ultimately, the number of restrictions and safety measures is likely to vary from district to district, depending on the prevalence of the virus. But schools in Massachusetts, which has the fourth most cases in the country, are likely to be among the most disrupted.

“You could have school in Montana where school is functioning pretty normally, but there may be rolling closures in New York and Boston,” said John Bailey, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“Hopefully these disruptions only impact this coming academic year,” he added, noting that vaccine development often takes at least 18 months. “If that is really the timeline, it means all these disruptions not just for this coming academic school year, but the following one, too.”

The problems start the moment a student climbs aboard the bus.

Cassellius estimated that, under current physical distancing guidelines, a school bus that typically holds around 65 students might be reduced to around 13 passengers. For Boston, which already has the second highest per-pupil transportation costs in the country, expanding bus service would be astonishingly expensive.

And that’s just the beginning. Are those students given a health check before boarding and, if so, who would do it? What if they arrive without a mask? How often must the buses be cleaned? And that’s to say nothing of the health and safety of the drivers.

“Half of our bus drivers are older than 60,” said Cassellius, who’s a member of the working group. “You can only imagine the contingencies we are building in terms of our fleet, in terms of our scheduling.”

It gets no easier once students arrive at school.

Just consider hand washing, which by some estimates could take nearly as long as some classes.

“I’ve seen some scenarios where they may recommend kids wash their hands every hour,” said Billerica Public Schools Superintendent Tim Piwowar, who’s part of the working group. For a class of 12 students, he said, each taking about 30 seconds to wash their hands, the loss in learning time could be staggering. “That’s six minutes of every hour. That’s a little over half an hour every day — of just hand washing.”

And what about the availability of on-site health care?

Jenny Gormley, president of the Massachusetts School Nurse Organization, said schools are running low on personal protective gear after donating their supplies to hospitals and emergency responders. She added that many schools do not currently have a full-time nurse on staff. Meanwhile, in Boston, Cassellius said that roughly a third of all school nurses are older than 60.

The CDC’s guidelines call for each school to create an “isolation room” to separate anyone who presents with COVID-like symptoms — further instructing school officials to wait 24 hours before disinfecting it after use. That’s going to be a major concern in urban districts such as Lynn, which are already over capacity.

“In a school of 500, at least two kids come to you every day with a fever,” said Gormley. “The CDC is saying it should not be used for 24 hours and disinfected — so does that mean we’ll need two of them?”

Under current social distancing requirements, some classes may have to shrink to a third of their former size. So will students attend school in morning and afternoon shifts? Will they alternate days? Weeks? Even so, how do you keep first-graders from touching one another? And what will cleaning costs look like?

School leaders say remote learning is likely to continue to play some role when schools resume in-person classes. For instance, students could alternate days at home with days in school. But if teachers are expected to hold physical classes each day, who will staff online learning? Will classes have both in-person and online learners? Will districts have to hire more teachers? Will they enlist more subs? Will it fall to existing faculty…?

“We will need a New Deal level of funding from the federal government,” said Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

One of the first tasks when students return to school will be to figure out their academic levels after the most disrupted school year in decades. Some students will have lost more ground than others, requiring educators to come up with individualized plans to catch students up.

In addition to potential educational backsliding, many students will be returning to school with fresh trauma, be it a parent out of work, a death in the family, or months locked away with abusive relatives.

Cassellius said trauma in schools is typically confined to, say, the death of an individual student or teacher, which often affects the entire school community.

“What you have now is every single child, every single family, and every single adult within the community being impacted by this pandemic,” she said. “It’s unbelievable the amount of trauma that we’re going to have.”

What’s more, the virus threatens to exacerbate longstanding social inequalities in a school system already marked by vast gaps in student opportunity and achievement. For example, more than 20 percent of Boston public school students have likely not logged on to one of the district’s main online platforms this month; many of those students were the most disadvantaged, including many English language learners.

“Whatever gaps existed before are going to be even wider, because this crisis has exacerbated the disparities for children in their learning circumstances outside of school,” said Paul Reville,a former state education secretary. “Some children have virtually 24/7 stimulation enrichment, others have virtually nothing.”

Similarly, Jal Mehta, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, said the crisis offers an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how we educate students going forward. For example, since teachers’ in-person time with students will likely be limited, perhaps schools should concentrate on a few subjects in greater depth, while pruning away breadth in others, sort of like a college major.

“You’ve got to treat the contact time as gold,” said Mehta. “You want to think about what can we do in person that we couldn’t do at home, and vice versa.”

Others suggested holding tutorial sessions for low income students over the summer and other vacations — not unlike affluent families who send their kids to math camp. Still others called on schools to develop individual learning plans for all students, creating a more customized approach.

All of this, of course, will take money — lots of it.

“That’s going to be really where the shoe pinches,” said Reville, who warned against regarding a return to the status quo as a victory.

“That would be a gigantic wasted opportunity.”

Categories Health, Massachusetts

Washington Post: Joe Scarborough Did Not Murder His Staffer

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2020 //
39

Trump has repeatedly tweeted that MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough murdered a young woman in his Florida office when he was a member of Congress. Scarborough used to be a Republican, but has become an outspoken critic of Trump.

Amber Phillips wrote in the Washington Post:

This is a conspiracy theory that normally would not make it into this newsletter, were it not for President Trump alleging over and over again in recent days that there’s an affair-and-murder mystery behind the decades-old death of a former staffer of then-Republican congressman Joe Scarborough.

There is no affair-and-murder mystery. Scarborough is now a well-known MSNBC host who prominently criticizes Trump. And coronavirus deaths in America are about to hit 100,000. Those are the factors to keep in mind as I explain to you what Trump is talking about.

Lori Klausutis was a 28-year-old staffer for Scarborough in his Florida office when she was found dead in the office in 2001. The medical examiner said she fainted from a heart condition and hit her head. Scarborough was not in Florida at the time, had already announced his retirement months earlier, and retired later that year. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker called this claim “vicious” and said they wish they had a bigger Pinocchio scale on which to grade it.

At first, some people on the left, such as Michael Moore, actually used this to attack Scarborough, writes Florida journalist Craig Pittman. But in recent years, the allegation has found renewed life on the right. Most prominently through Trump.

Seemingly unprompted — there have been no developments in this case — Trump has been pushing this conspiracy theory over the past couple of days, including over the Memorial Day weekend and again Tuesday.

Klausutis’s widower never remarried and rarely speaks about his wife’s death. But he recently wrote a letter to Twitter’s chief executive asking him to take down Trump’s tweets. “I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” Timothy J. Klausutis wrote. “My wife deserves better.”

The president’s tweets haven’t been taken down, and Trump continues the attacks.

“Trump’s tweets offer a reminder of the remarkable nature of the Trump era,” Pittman writes, “that a sitting president can traffic in incendiary and false allegations while the political world around him remains largely silent, accustomed to Trump’s modern-day definition of presidential behavior.”

On Tuesday, reporters asked White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany why the president keeps bringing this up. She deflected, choosing instead to list Scarborough’s many critiques of the president’s coronavirus response. “It’s Joe Scarborough that has to answer these questions,” she said.

Categories Lies, Trump

NYCLU Wins a Victory for Black and Latinx Parents in East Ramapo, New York

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2020 //
6

The NYCLU just won a civil rights case in East Ramapo, New York, where all school board elections were at-large, guaranteeing that every member of the school board was elected by the tightly organized Orthodox Jewish community, whose children do not attend the public schools.

EAST RAMAPO – A federal court today ruled that the East Ramapo Central School District’s at-large method for school board elections denies Black and Latinx residents an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates under the federal Voting Rights Act. Judge Cathy Seibel of the Southern District of New York ordered the implementation of a ward system and enjoined the district from holding further elections until this system is in place.

The New York Civil Liberties Union and Latham & Watkins LLP brought the lawsuit against the district in November 2017 on behalf of the Spring Valley NAACP and seven Black and Latinx voters. At-large voting in East Ramapo, in which the entire district votes for all nine seats on the board, has enabled the district’s white majority to control the outcome of elections for every seat on the board for well over a decade. The white majority in East Ramapo lives in highly segregated neighborhoods and votes as a political bloc favoring the interests of private schools, which are almost exclusively white. Communities of color, on the other hand, tend to vote cohesively for candidates advocating for the interests of children attending East Ramapo’s public schools, whose student bodies are predominantly black and Latinx. East Ramapo’s minority voters, however, have not seen their candidates of choice win a contested seat since 2007. Plaintiffs have asked the court to institute a ward system for elections, in which voters will choose their representatives based on geographical districts at least some of which will contain a majority of black and Latinx residents.

“Today’s ruling at long last offers Black and Latinx residents of East Ramapo a fair shot at electing school board members who truly represent their interests,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “As this case showed, and the school board leadership was forced to admit at trial, the white private school community has hijacked the board and rigged its elections for years, while East Ramapo’s students of color have paid the price. Judge Seibel’s decision offers the district a path to represent the interests of the entire community fairly.”

“Our goal in this case was first and foremost to ensure the entire community of East Ramapo, not just a small group, received the full protection provided by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” added Claudia Salomon, partner with Latham & Watkins LLP. “The ruling opens the door towards the establishment of a voting system that reflects the voices of all citizens of East Ramapo.”

More than 99 percent of East Ramapo Central School District’s 27,000 private school students are white, while 96 percent of the nearly 8,500 public school students are children of color. During the last decade, the East Ramapo Central School Board has cut more than 500 positions from the public schools, including 200 teachers, as well as all social workers, deans, and elementary school assistant principals. According to a December 2018 State Education Department Report, most of those positions have not been restored.

The Board’s cuts have led to a precipitous decline in school quality. In 2019, only 28 percent of students in grades 3-8 were proficient in English and only 24 percent are proficient in math, compared to 45 percent and 47 percent respectively of students statewide. Once regarded as a great school district, East Ramapo has consistently showed the lowest graduation rates and highest dropout rates in Rockland County in recent years, and underperformed against statewide schools. East Ramapo’s reputation is so damaged that in 2017, the adjacent Ramapo Central School District changed its name to the Suffern Central School District, distancing itself from its troubled neighbor.

“Judge Seibel’s decision represents a significant improvement for East Ramapo’s students and their families,” said Willie Trotman, President of the Spring Valley NAACP. “Although a majority of board members will still be elected by the district’s white voters, there will finally be an opportunity for people of color to elect candidates who will represent the needs of our communities of color for the first time in over a decade.”

Judge Seibel closed her opinion with a powerful statement that reflected the NAACP’s case: “This ruling may or may not change the way the schools in the District are run. But the purpose of Section 2 is not to produce any particular policy outcome. Rather, it is to ensure that every voter has equal access to the electoral process. For too long, black and Latino voters in the District have been frustrated in that most fundamental and precious endeavor. They, like their white neighbors, are entitled to have their voices heard.”

Attorneys on the case included Perry Grossman and Arthur Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Claudia Salomon, Andrew Clubok, Corey Calabrese and Russell Mangas of Latham & Watkins LLPP.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Education Reform, New York, Race, Racism

My Zoom Talk to the Rutgers Conference on Education and Social Justice

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2020 //
7

A few days ago, I had a Zoom meeting with educators at Rutgers University, where I was invited to talk about education and social justice. Of course we talked about the pandemic and what happens next. But the theme of the day was equity.

I hope you enjoy it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Poverty, Privatization, Racism, Testing

An Open Letter to Joe Biden

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2020 //
12

More than 200 advocates of public education endorsed this open letter to Joe Biden, which was published on Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” at the Washington Post.

They call on presumptive Democratic nominee Biden to reject the stale and failed policies of the past 20 years.

Their letter (our letter, since I signed it) begins with this preamble and then offers a list of specific proposals that together represent a fresh vision for American education:

Dear Vice President Biden:


As the Democratic Party presumptive nominee, you have the power to fight for the public schools and colleges and universities that our students deserve. We are concerned educators, public education advocates, union members, parents, and students, writing to request that you demonstrate your commitment to that agenda.


Over the past decade, politicians on both sides of the aisle have made devastating cuts to public education, while privatizing public schools, scapegoating educators, and providing massive tax breaks to corporations and the rich.

These attacks have resulted in a national teacher shortage and reduced educational opportunities for many of our students — especially students of color, those from low-income households, LGBTQ students, and students with disabilities.


The public health and economic emergencies resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have only made public education more vulnerable. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of public education itself is at stake.

Read the list of sensible, research-based, intelligent policy proposals, which would inspire students and teachers and improve education for all students.

Please open and read.

Tweet with the hashtag #EducationIsAPublicGood and @JoeBiden

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Congressional Democrats Rebuke DeVos. She Ignores Them.

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2020 //
6

Democratic Congressional leaders wrote a stern letter to Betsy DeVos, rebuking her for turning coronavirus relief funds into cash for vouchers. They are acting in the belief that Congress decides how money is to be spent and defines who should receive federal funding.

Betsy DeVos really doesn’t care what Congressional leaders say or do. She considers herself superior to Congress because she is a billionaire. She buys senators and members of Congress. She thinks of them as the household help. They appropriate the money and she decides how to spend it. How dare they try to tell HER what to do!

Read the letter here.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires

G.F. Brandenburg: MAGA is a Fascist Movement

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2020 //
60

G.F. Brandenburg cites Jared Yates Sexton’s “American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the a World But Failed Its People.”

I am not sure what part of the essay is Sexton and what part is Brandenburg. It almost doesn’t matter because the point is well made, that MAGA is a fascist movement. Trump’s many references to his genetic superiority, to “good blood,” “good bloodline” are unsubtle references to a fascistic philosophy of white supremacy. Sexton is a writer who has drawn the ire of the MAGA crowd. Sexton learned that if you correctly name Trump’s racist, anti-Semitic tweets, you can expect to be called a dirty Jew (he is a southern Baptist).

Considering Trump believes in inherent superiority and has shown himself as an unrepentant white supremacist you need to understand that fascism can exist without uniforms, torch-lit rallies, military insignia, and overt displays of fascism.

It is a philosophy, a worldview.
When we’re talking about walls against immigrants, we’re talking about protecting against “the rising tide of color against white supremacy.”

We’re talking about protecting white people, who are inherently “superior” from stock that would hurt their blood and culture.

When we’re talking about “Make America Great Again,” we’re talking about reaffirming white supremacy in our laws and culture.

We’re talking about white supremacy in action and in practice as the right and true nature of the world and in defeating attacks against it.

Trump’s politics shares a direct “bloodline” with the politics of Lindbergh and white supremacist authoritarians. It even uses the same phrases, the same stances, the same philosophy of how the world works and that some are inherently better than others.

That…is fascism.

These things are glaringly obvious when you know the history. You can hear what Trump is saying, what he’s hinting toward with remarks about Ford and bloodlines and “good people.”

It is a worldview that is inherently prejudiced and inherently white supremacist.

The problem is that American history is scrubbed clean of its fascistic and white supremacist elements in its common teaching.

This is on purpose and it is meant to propel the myth of American Exceptionalism and hide our generations’ of crimes.

And when American history is scrubbed clean of its crimes and stains, what happens is that the myth grows into a political and secular religion.

That’s what Trumpism is. A concentrated and dedicated fight to protect white supremacy and the altered reality that aids it.

Make no mistake, fascism is not relegated to an aberration in the 20th century in Europe.

Fascism is part of the human condition and can happen anywhere, including America, which has a rich and frightening fascist history.

Unfortunately, we’re seeing that now.
You have to learn this history, the real history of America, to understand where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we’re going.

There’s nothing innocuous about Trump, Trumpism, or this fascistic rhetoric. It’s a call to our past and unfortunately our future.

Categories Education Reform

My Interview on KFTK in St.Louis: Standardized Testing Must Go

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2020 //
12

I was recently interviewed by Dr. Randy Tobler on KFTK, a FOX news radio station in St. Louis. As I waited to go live, I heard an ad for Rush Limbaugh, whose show aired later that day. This was my second interview with Randy. His father was a public school teacher and principal. He served on his local school board. He and I hit it off.

Here is the interview.

Categories Education Reform, Standardized Testing

The Libertarian Plan to Privatize the Post Office

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2020 //
96

The CATO Institute believes everything should be privatized. It is funded by far-right billionaires who don’t want to pay taxes. In this post, Chris Edwards argues the libertarian view that the United States Postal Service should be privatized. In private hands, there would be fewer post offices and fewer employees and fewer mail deliveries. The union would be broken. Some towns and communities would have no post office. A libertarian dream.

One huge lesson from the experience of the pandemic is that we need a functioning government with coherent leadership. The libertarians have wanted to destroy the government for decades. Now they retreat to their yachts and gated compounds to watch the spectacle of what they have wrought, without a shred of remorse.

Categories Privatization, Union
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