Salon wrote about a

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will have to testify in a class action lawsuit over her handling of the Education Department’s student debt loan forgiveness program.

Judge William Alsup said “exceptional circumstances” warrant issuing DeVos a subpoena, a move that goes against both Devos’ and the Biden administration’s requests to excuse her from providing testimony.

The lawsuit, which has been brought on behalf of about 160,000 borrowers, alleges that the plaintiffs were defrauded by for-profit colleges and then neglected by the federal government.

The controversy dates back to 2018, when the Department of Education unexpectedly stopped making decisions on “student-loan borrower-defense applications,” in which students could petition the department to have their debt federally relieved if they believed their colleges had misled them….

Theresa Sweet, a leading plaintiff in the suit, toldForbes in March: “Nearly 200,000 defrauded students are still waiting for justice, due in no small part to the malicious efforts of Betsy DeVos and the for-profit education lackeys with which she surrounded herself as Secretary of Education. She utterly failed in her duty to protect students from harm and to hold scam schools accountable.”

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, just finished reading a book that he calls “a scholarly masterpiece.” The book-William Frantz Public School: A Story of Race, Resistance, Resilience and Recovery in New Orleans– is a history of the William Frantz Public School, which opened as an all-white public school in New Orleans in 1938. It is also a history of New Orleans that portrays the centrality of unvarnished, vicious racism in the city and state’s politics.

You may not know the name of the William Frantz Public School, but you may be familiar with the famous Norman Rockwell portrayal of six-year-old Ruby Bridges entering the school, guarded by federal agents. She was the first black student to enter a white school. It was 1960. A little more than three decades later, there was not a single white student in the school. African Americans were a majority in the schools and in the city. Most lived in grinding poverty.

The authors —Connie L. Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator —have written a vivid account of the ugly racism that brought out white protestors who harassed little Ruby Bridges and any white families who didn’t withdraw their children from the school. Egging them on were the state’s White Citizens Councils and its elected officials.

One need not be a partisan of “Critical Race Theory” to be appalled by the raw racism that inflamed New Orleans and other cities and blighted the lives of millions of our fellow citizens of African descent. This is not an opinion or a belief. It is well-documented and factual.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education explains in an article at Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet in the Washington Post, that choice zealots have redoubled their drive to divert public money away from public schools and hand it over to unregulated private schools, religious schools, homeschooling, virtual schools, and entrepreneurs.

The privatization lobbyists claim that the pandemic inspired the drive for school choice because parents are angry that stubborn unions and school boards refused to open the schools.

Burris demonstrates that this assertion is false. The choice bills have moved fastest in states where most schools were open, and moved not all in states where there were lengthy school closures.

Bottom line: school choice bills have been most successful in states with a strong Republican majorities in the legislature and rightwing money to finance the bills.

Burris writes:

Legislatures in 35 states have proposed bills to enact or expand voucher programs or charter schools. A few have passed; others have failed. Still others are sitting on governors’ desks or are stalled in the state’s House or Senate. Several are obvious attempts to please right-wing donors with no chance of moving out of committee. So far, eight states have enacted one or more bills.


A flurry of proposed school privatization legislation appearing on state dockets has been the pattern for several years. What is different this year is their success, albeit limited. In prior years, few, if any, reached the finish line. So what is different about 2021?

Paul Petersen, a longtime cheerleader for market-based school reforms, who is a government professor at Harvard University and editor of the pro-school choice journal Education Next, blamed unions and school boards.
“After aggressive unions and bewildered school boards shut down schools for a year, the choice bandwagon has begun to roll,” he opined in the Wall Street Journal. Jeanne Allen of the nonprofit Center for Education Reform, who has never been shy in her hostility toward unions and traditional public schools, echoes the same claim.


But if their agenda-driven theory were true, we would expect to see the greatest successes in passing legislation in those states with the fewest schools open for in-person instruction. Yet no legislation has come up in California, Hawaii or Maryland — states with the smallest proportion of open schools.


Instead, it appears that the opposite is true — red states with a high rate of open schools are where bills have been passed. Here are a few examples that explain what is really happening behind the scenes.


Arkansas


The state recently enacted the “Philanthropic Investment in Arkansas Kids Program,” probably the most deceptive name for a voucher program yet. It gives a 100 percent tax credit to individuals or businesses who contribute to a fund redistributed to eligible families for private school tuition.


Calling it a “philanthropic investment” is a farce — the donor gets every penny back. Ironically, the bill enacts what the right-wing despises — a redistribution of wealth. Money is moved out of the taxpayer-funded state treasury to pay tuition to private schools for low-income families.




School closures in Arkansas are hardly the reason the bill passed.


According to Burbio.com, which has created an in-person school index by state, the state’s in-person school index since at least February is 96.8 percent out of a possible 100 percent. Arkansas, like many Southern states, broadly reopened schools last fall.

There is no evidence that families pushed for this tax credit except for one: the Walton family, which has spent millions of dollars to support alternatives to public schools.


When an earlier voucher bill, HB 1371, failed on the House floor, Arkansas lobbyist Laurie Lee posted the names of legislators who opposed the bill, blaming school superintendents and teachers, along with legislators who voted “no” for its demise.


Lee is the founder and owner of Trace Strategies, a lobbying firm, and the chairperson of the nonprofit Reform Alliance Inc., which according to its latest 990 IRS form (2018), paid Trace Strategies $250,000. The year prior (2017), the Reform Alliance paid the lobbying firm $180,000. The tax documents should list this payment as a related party transaction; they do not.


Who funds the Reform Alliance? The taxpayers of Arkansas, for one. In addition, the Reform Alliance runs the state’s other voucher program, the State Succeeds Scholarship Program, as a pass-through, no doubt receiving a fee. The other source of funding for the Alliance is the Walton Family Foundation. During those two tax years, for which 990s are available (2017 and 2018), the Walton Family Foundation donated $1,664,280 to the nonprofit.




And then there is the nonprofit Arkansans for Education Reform. Jim Walton serves on its board. In 2016, the Walton Family Foundation gave that organization $325,769 in addition to a personal donation from Jim Walton himself, tax documents show. That year, Trace Strategies, Lee’s lobbying firm, was paid $205,756 from that nonprofit. In 2017, the Walton Family Foundation gave an additional $350,000 to the same nonprofit with tax-exempt status, whose mission is clearly to lobby for “reform.”


After the House voucher bill failed, the state Senate quickly introduced SB 680 and passed it with lightning speed. It was on the governor’s desk in 10 days.


An additional factor in the bill’s success is the 2020 election. Arkansas Republicans gained seats in 2020, now holding 78 of the 100 legislative seats. Given that the destruction of public schools — which they call “government schools” — is now a priority for the Republican Party, it is remarkable that the first bill failed.


Wyoming


The state legislature enacted a charter school law in 1995. More than 25 years later, it has only five charter schools in the entire state. Districts authorize charter schools; therefore, they are located in communities that want them.


But that policy of community control of charters is anathema to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the school privatization movement. It prevents statewide for-profit online charter schools and inhibits the growth of charter chains. Therefore, this spring, the state legislature passed a law giving the State Loan and Investment Board the authority to authorize charter schools.




Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, who did not sign the bill, characterized it as “a political document.” He noted: “The law allows charter schools to potentially be exempt from teaching standards requirements and oversight from the State Board of Education. This bill seemingly makes it easier for charters to be established outside the state’s rigorous educational parameters.” He also wondered if the bill would stand up to constitutional scrutiny.


Apparently none of these issues bothered the Wyoming legislature. So who was behind this bill that has no teaching standards requirements and oversight? Not parents unhappy that schools are closed. According to Burbio.com, 100 percent of Wyoming schools are open for full-time instruction five days a week. The speaker of the House and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools wanted more charters in the state. The alliance bragged about how it lobbied for its passage after a “high-quality” charter chain was not able to open.


Gordon hopes the legislature will fix the bill, but that is highly unlikely.



West Virginia


Until 2019, West Virginia was one of a few states in which taxpayers supported only public schools. That year, a charter schools bill passed that allowed district authorization of a few charters. It was, of course, the camel’s nose under the tent.
This year, the legislature passed House Bill 2012, which opens the door to virtual charter schools, expands the number of charter schools and allows a statewide organization to authorize charter schools, removing exclusive authority from districts.




But privatization did not stop with the expansion of charter schools. House Bill 2013 established a neo-voucher Education Savings Account (ESA) program — the most expansive and arguably irresponsible program in the nation.


ESA programs give parents public funds for not attending public schools by putting funds on a debit card, which parents can use for expenses related to home-schooling materials, laptops, tutoring, horseback riding lessons, therapy and private school tuition. ESAs in other states such as Arizona have resulted in lax oversight and fraudulent spending.
The bill is also an invitation for publicly funded discrimination. The West Virginia bill prohibits discrimination based only on race or disability. Discrimination based on religion is allowed. And voucher schools are free to ban gay and transgender students, as well as students with behavioral or academic challenges. The law explicitly states that private schools do not have to alter their enrollment criteria to receive the public money.


Funds can go to home-schoolers. Tutors do not need to have credentials to be paid; the only criteria is that they not be a member of the immediate family. Parents, then, could swap “tutoring” duties with each other to collect the $4,500 payment per child.


This unrestricted voucher program — praised by the Indiana-based Ed Choice organization as the most extensive in the nation — will, opponents say, result in a depletion of resources to the state’s already underfunded public schools.




“You’re going to potentially remove enough funds from a local education agency to seriously cripple their ability to provide a thorough and efficient education, as described by the [state] constitution,” said Del. Ed Evans, a Democrat who opposed the bill.


Like the two states above, the massive move toward privatization had nothing to do with anger regarding public school closures. After the Christmas holiday surge, West Virginia had a Burbio rating of over 78 percent, higher than most states. Its rating is now 100 percent.


So why did these bills pass? Jay O’Neal, a teacher and public school advocate, has watched the legislature unsuccessfully push school privatization for years. O’Neal said the biggest change was the 2020 election. West Virginia’s legislature went from a Republican majority to a Republican supermajority.


Covid-19 was also a factor, but not in the way portrayed by Petersen and Allen. Previously, parent and teacher groups were able to converge on the West Virginia Capitol building to visit with legislators and stage protests. This year that could not happen.


“The capitol was completely closed off except for people with appointments on ‘official’ business, so there would have been no way to protest,” O’Neal said. “And with the supermajority, it felt hopeless. It would mean flipping 20-30 votes, and that seemed pretty much impossible.”


Not all voices were silent, however. All of the following had a lobbying presence in West Virginia: former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s Excellence in Education Action; Stride (the new name of the online for-profit K12 Inc.); the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools; EdChoice, Inc.; Americans for Prosperity, a libertarian conservative advocacy group long funded by Charles Koch and his late brother, David Koch; and ACCEL, the for-profit charter chain led by Ron Packard, the founder and former head of K12 Inc.


Kentucky


The shutdown of the West Virginia Capitol building due to covid-19 was also a factor in Kentucky, where an ESA bill, to be financed through tax credits, was shoehorned into a public school choice bill after voucher language in a previous bill had died.




According to public school advocate Gay Alderman: “Very few people wanted this legislation, and if you pressed them, you would find they were confused about the harm it causes. But because of pandemic rules, the thousands of us who were opposed were shut out at every turn and unable to be seen or heard.”


As in West Virginia, charter and voucher lobbyists were there. In Kentucky, Stride (formerly K12) spent $3,250 per month lobbying for charter schools, according to a state document. The for-profit chain National Heritage Academies spent $1,000 per month lobbying for charter school expansion, a state document shows.
Americans for Prosperity has spent $56,921 in Kentucky so far this year on four issues, including school choice, according to state documents. Florida’s Excellence in Education in Action has already spent $3,552 lobbying for school choice legislation. And Edchoice Kentucky, Inc. (a local branch of the national organization), has spent $13,438 so far this year lobbying on “any issues relating to tax credits, education, education funding.”


There is no doubt that some parents were upset when their school was closed for in-person instruction. But blaming unions and school boards obscures the real reasons for the success of those bills that made it through, veiling the long-term goal of the school privatization movement.
The movement’s agenda is clear in the minimal accountability and few protections for students included in these bills. As Charles Siler, a former lobbyist for the privatization cause, said, the long-term goal is “to undo public education — not only the institution but also the public funding of schools.”

Our friends in Texas, Pastors for Texas Children, report that a legislative proposal for vouchers was beaten again! They work closely with parent groups across the state.

PASTORS FOR TEXAS CHILDREN

VOUCHER REMOVED FROM BILL!

This week is evidence of what happens when you rally your voices in support of our children. If you remember, we started off the week letting you know that SB 1716 was coming before the House Public Education Committee without a public hearing. The bill was a special education voucher program that had no companion in the House, meaning the Public Education Committee had not heard testimony on this subject this session.

You raised your voice against the committee’s plans not to follow due process, and they heard you. They changed their plans and held a public hearing on Tuesday. 

Representative Gary Vandeaver proposed an amendment to the bill that changes the dispersement of special education funding. Under his amendment, the money is channeled through the publicly overseen regional Education Service Centers—not given in direct payments to families with no accountability. Thus, the voucher was stripped from the bill. In addition, the decision on where and how to spend the money will be made in conjunction with the child’s Admission, Review and Dismissal (ARD) committee. This amendment was amenable to Pastors for Texas Children, because it gives local control and oversight to the use of these public funds. We changed our testimony to be in support of the bill with the amendment. The committee then passed the bill.

We heard from several offices that they had received many calls on behalf of Pastors for Texas Children. Thank you for your phone calls, emails and to those of you who submitted electronically written testimony against SB 1716. It protected our most vulnerable children from losing precious resources. 

We have just over a week left of this legislative session, and more issues like these will arise! Stay vigilant with us. Together, we can ensure that our Texas school children are provided with the education God intends for them to receive.

Pastors for Texas Children remains committed to defending our public schools from privatization efforts through vouchers and even through charter schools. We are called to protect God’s common good, found in our traditional public school system, and enhanced by programs and services found in community schools.

In late April, I posted an article by Minnesota blogger and public school advocate Rob Levine about a sneaky effort by elites in the state to rewrite the state constitutional clause on education to protect and encourage segregated charter schools.

This new post digs deeper into the machinations and motivations behind the demand to revise the state constitution.

The campaign is led by the president of the local Federal Reserve Bank but named “the Page Amendment” for a popular local judge.

Blogger Steve Timmer explains that the money and muscle for “the Page Amendment” comes from the president of the local Federal Reserve Bank and the Minneapolis Foundation.

“Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari and former Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice Alan Page penned an op-ed in the Star Tribune that ran in the paper edition on May 4, 2021. They made a case for the “Page Amendment” to amend, well gut, really, what’s known as the Education Clause of the Minnesota Constitution, Article XIII, Section 1. It provides:

“UNIFORM SYSTEM OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thoroughand efficient system of public schools throughout the state. [emphasis added]”

“They complain that the provision is old and needs to be replaced. Of course, the Education Clause is about the same age as most of the rest of the Minnesota Constitution, including the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. But they want to replace it with this:”

“EQUAL RIGHT TO QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION. All children have a fundamental right to a quality public education that fully prepares them with the skills necessary for participation in the economy, our democracy, and society, as measured against uniform [emphasis added] achievement standards set forth by the state. It is a paramount duty of the state to ensure quality public schools that fulfill this fundamental right.”

So this change in the state constitution’s language is intended to relieve the state of its obligation to provide “a general and uniform” system of schools, thus allowing the untrammeled growth of charter schools, including the highly segregated charters for which Minneapolis is known.

Minneapolis prides itself on its charter schools, despite the fact that they are highly segregated by race and ethnicity. They enjoy the support of the city’s elite, who defend segregation as “culturally responsive.” Years ago, a reporter from Bloomberg News toured the city’s charters and said that it felt like the Brown decision overturning segregation had never happened.

One of those segregated (“culturally responsive”) charter schools, created for Somali children, is closing down after years of turmoil.

Eric Rasmussen of station KSTP in Minneapolis said the dysfunction was a decade in the making.

Once lauded for providing an education to children in a historically underserved Somali immigrant community in Minneapolis, one of the oldest charter schools in Minnesota and the nation is now expected to shut down next month.

After plans to abruptly close Cedar Riverside Community School were announced last month, 5 INVESTIGATES reviewed hundreds of pages of reports and complaints revealing its collapse was nearly a decade in the making.

Charter schools have long enjoyed the patronage of influential civic leaders in Minneapolis. Currently there is a movement led by charter advocates to rewrite the state constitution’s education clause,

Jeff Bryant reports here on the inspiring example of a so-called “failing school” in North Carolina that not only succeeded in blocking a state takeover, but then heightened community collaboration to turn the school into a community school.

North Carolina passed a state takeover plan based on Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. The state listed several schools that were targets for takeover and charterization. Community outrage slowed the state’s plan, and only one school was taken over.

This is the success story of one that got away from the clutches of the state and the privatizers.

Bryant writes:

As soon as Anna Grant’s busy workday at Forest View Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina, ended, she would head toward the next school where she was needed. “I would get off work and immediately drive to meetings, press events, whatever we had organized [for the school],” she recalls. 

Her second school of concern was Lakewood Elementary, where Grant now works. In 2017, Lakewood was a flashpoint of grassroots protest due to a threat by the state to take over the school.

“Roughly 200 protesters, parents and neighborhood residents” rallied at Lakewood Elementary to keep the school out of the state’s new Innovative School District (ISD), reported NC Policy Watch, a media project of the North Carolina Justice Center. The ISD was created by the state legislature to take over low-performing schools and transfer governance from the local school board to charter school management companies. Lakewood, along with Glenn Elementary in Durham and three other schools in the state, was on the shortlist of schools at risk of being transferred into the ISD.

“It’s a takeover,” NC Policy Watch quoted Bryan Proffitt, then-president of the Durham Association of Educators. “I don’t intend to allow a terrible legislative idea to ruin our neighborhood school,” Durham school board member Matt Sears told a reporter for the Herald-Sun.

Durham school system doesn’t fall into the traditional media narrative of schools as places with heroic individuals but rather as institutions with systems and problem-solving processes.

Grant now calls the protests “a community effort” that united teachers with parents, community activists, and the Durham school board in an effort to stave off a transfer of school governance from the community to a private organization. The activists formed the group Defend Durham Schools to share research and talking points on state takeovers and started a Facebook page to recruit more community support.

“Our zoned school was Lakewood,” recalls Durham parent and current school board member Jovonia Lewis, “and when the state threatened to take over the school using the ISD, I joined a committee that was raising the alarm.”

The resistance was successful, as state officials dropped the Durham schools from their list of takeover targets and eventually took over only one school in Robeson County. But today Lakewood remains a much-talked-about school not for resisting the state takeover but for what happened after.

Keep reading to learn how parents and the community saved their school

and improved it.