Archives for the month of: August, 2022
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Jennifer Hall Lee: Public Schools Are Essential for Democracy

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2022 //
23

Jennifer Hall Lee is a trustee of the public schools of the Pasadena Unified School District. She explains here why public schools are the foundation stone of democracy. All of us pay taxes for public schools even if we have no children; even if our children are no longer school-age; even if our children attend private or religious schools. Supporting public schools is a civic responsibility. Paying for other people’s private choices is not.

In the Superintendent’s Enrollment Committee for the Pasadena Unified School District, a group of us are reading and discussing a book entitled American Public Education and the Responsibility of its Citizens by Sarah Stitzlein.

The book is compelling because it explains why public schools are indispensable to our democracy and how we the people are part and parcel of its success.

I chose the book for the enrollment committee because we live in a time when the importance of public schools is being lost in the trends of privatizing education. Public schools have a dynamic history that seems to keep getting lost.

Why Public Schools

So why are public schools important? Here is my answer: Every child has a seat in a public school. It sounds simple but it is quite profound. No matter who the child is or from where they came, they belong here.

Public education has had its struggles in the United States to be sure. Now we fight the hyper capitalistic phenomenon of privatization (vouchers) in order to preserve the uniquely American institution of public education. At every turn, it seems there is a private company marketing to us to let us know that our child might be better off somewhere else besides a public school.

We live in a time when we are seeing ourselves as consumers rather than citizens.

It’s hard to wrap our heads around the complexity in the world today. The political theorist Benjamin Barber in 2017 suggested that we shift our thinking about the world from seeing nations and instead see our cities, where the majority of people live. It is in the cities, he said, “where we announce ourselves as citizens and participants as people with a right to write our own narratives.”

I understand his point as we are closest to the functions of government in our local communities. We are more apt to know who our city council members are and our librarians, our school board trustees, our mayors, and our county supervisors.

I would extend Barber’s idea to our public schools.

Personally, I think of myself as an Altadenan resident and a member of the PUSD.

For me, it’s easy to support and love my local school district. Simply standing in any one of our schools is a humbling experience because our schools have been through so much history — segregation, integration, and then, unfortunately, resegregation, and now privatization, low birth rates, and high housing costs.

Throughout it all, we succeed.

The PUSD is thought of as a leader throughout the state of California. Our ideas are followed by others in the state in terms of our graduate defense and our graduate profile. We have had many successes and here are just a few:

• We are competitive. In our community, we have the largest number of private schools per capita, yet we are competitive with private schools because of our teachers, principals, signature programs, curriculum, and our diverse student body. There are private school students who choose to come to our district.

• Our graduates attend Yale, Harvard, Vanderbilt, UCLA, Pasadena City College, Howard, Occidental, USC, UC Berkeley, Tulane, UC San Diego, Brown, UC Merced, and more.

• We have been entrusted with back-to-back federal magnet grants because we have shown success.

• We are successfully achieving socio-economic integration through open enrollment.

Public and Publics

When I say public school, I emphasize public.

Please open the link and read the rest of the article.

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Funding, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Pennsylvania: Cybercharters Are Costly and Academically Inferior

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2022 //
7

David Lapp, director of policy research for Research for Action in Philadelphia, recently wrote about the money wasted on Cybercharters in Pennsylvania. Apparently, the industry has a strong hold on the Pennsylvania legislature. There is no other reason that it continues to thrive.

During the worst of the pandemic, schools closed for reasons of safety and caution. Cybercharters boomed to fill the gap. But with physical schools open, the truth must be told about Cybercharters: they are a poor substitute for real schools.

Lapp writes:

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools into remote learning instruction many Pennsylvania policymakers expressed deep concerns. Many lamented the impact on mental health when students stopped receiving in-person learning and the important social skills that develops. Many were upset by the evidence of significant learning loss that accompanied the switch to virtual instruction.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly even enacted a new law allowing students to voluntarily repeat a grade to make up for lost educational opportunities.

This year policymakers should consider bringing that same energy to a similarly harmful and even more wasteful form of remote learning. One that’s been growing for more than two decades and reached a boiling point during the pandemic. I’m talking about the soaring enrollment growth and accompanying financial cost of Pennsylvania’s cyber-charter school expansion.

There’s solid research both nationally and in Pennsylvania that cyber-charter schools have an “overwhelmingly negative” impact on student learning. The learning loss students experience from virtual instruction in cyber-charter schools appears similar to the learning loss students experienced from virtual instruction during the pandemic.

For each year a student is enrolled in cyber-charter school they are also more likely to experience chronic absenteeism and less like to enroll in post-secondary education.

There’s also clear evidence that spending on cyber-charter school expansion comes at the expense of students receiving in-person learning in school districts and brick & mortar charter schools, where more effective instruction is provided. In fact school districts—which pay for cyber-charter tuition from their own school budgets—have indicated that charter tuition is now their top budget pressure.

It’s easy to understand why. Pennsylvania already had the highest cyber-charter school enrollment in the country and then enrollment grew by 22,618 additional students during the pandemic. Districts are now spending over $1 billion dollars a year on cyber-charter tuition, reflecting an increase of $335 million from before the pandemic. These surging expenses impacted the vast majority of school districts in the state.

Cyber-charter tuition likely represents the most inefficient spending in Pennsylvania school finance. For one, the cyber-charter system is redundant. Both before and since the pandemic, most school districts continue to offer their own virtual schools. Secondly, the tuition rates mandated under current PA law require districts to pay cyber-charters more than it actually costs to operate virtual schools. And finally, when students leave for cyber-charter schools, districts must of course still operate their own brick & mortar schools for remaining students, only now with fewer resources….

In Research for Action’s recent report, The Negative Fiscal Impact of Cyber Charter Enrollment Due to COVID-19, we estimated that the tuition increase in just one year of the pandemic, from the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, led to between $290 to $308 million of additional stranded costs borne by school districts. Nearly the entire amount of increases in school district total expenditures statewide in 2020-21 were accounted for by increases in school district tuition payments to charter schools, most of which were for cyber-charters specifically.

Meanwhile, this tuition spike has left cyber-charters in Pennsylvania flush with surplus resources. More than half of the additional funding cyber-charters received from districts in 2020-21 was not even used for student expenses. Rather, cyber- charters funneled over $170 million into their general fund balances that, unlike school districts, have no statutory limits.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Funding, Online Learning, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Idaho: Top Court Leaves Strict Abortion Ban to Remain in Place

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2022 //
9

Idaho should hold a referendum and let its people speak on the subject of abortion. The state has one of the strictest bans in the nation.

The Idaho Supreme Court said late Friday that the state’s strict antiabortion laws can take effect while it reviews legal challenges against the restrictions. The near-total ban on abortions is scheduled to kick in Aug. 25.


The court also lifted a stay on a separate law that allows potential relatives of a fetus to sue a provider who carries out an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. That law becomes effective immediately.


The decision was made in response to lawsuits from a Planned Parenthood chapter and a local doctor challenging laws such as Idaho’s near-total abortion trigger ban, which was designed to become enforceable shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. The petitioners had asked the judiciary to suspend enforcement of the abortion restrictions until it reached a final decision.


But Idaho’s highest court denied the requests in a split decision, saying that the petitioners had failed to show that they were likely to prevail in overturning the state’s antiabortion laws.


Idaho’s abortion restrictions have exceptions for rape, incest and when the life of the pregnant person is at risk. Abortion rights supporters had previously argued in court that the medical exceptions were written so vaguely that they were impossible to follow, the Associated Press reported.
The court also noted that the petitioners had raised “serious issues” about the “lack of clarity” regarding Idaho’s medical exceptions, particularly relating to treatment for conditions such as ectopic pregnancies — when a fetus grows outside the uterus, making the pregnancy unviable — and preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication associated with dangerously high blood pressure…

The Idaho Republican Party, which calls abortion “murder from the moment of fertilization” on its platform, didn’t immediately issue a statement in response to the ruling. Its Twitter account retweeted and liked a local reporter’s update on the court’s decision.

Categories Health, Idaho, Safety

A Warning for Folks in Indiana

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2022 //
22

My friend in Oklahoma’s baby died in utero at 7 months. They forced her to carry until her body expelled it. She ended up with peritonitis, nearly bled to death and can no longer conceive. Expect this in IN too.

Tweeted by @Fifi_Larue

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Health, Indiana, Oklahoma

Ivana’s Final Resting Place on Trump’s Golf Course

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2022 //
46

The New York Post reported that Donald Trump’s first wife Ivana, the mother of Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, is buried on the grounds of Trump’s Bedminster Golf Course in New Jersey, near the first tee. That’s where Trump hosted the LIV golf tournament sponsored by the Saudi Royal family.

Prominent golfers like Phil Mickelson were paid huge sums—in his case, $100 million—to play in the LIV tournament. Tiger Woods reportedly turned down an offer of nearly $1 billion. Golfers who play for LIV won’t be allowed to play in PGA tournaments.

The burial of Ivana is somewhat mysterious because her remains were removed from the church in a gold casket but later cremated. Why did her ex-husband choose her final resting place? Or did her children choose to place her ashes on their father’s favorite golf course?

David Farenthold of the Washington Post wrote an investigative report in 2017 about Trump’s efforts to turn his golf course into a cemetery. Trump submitted different plans to local and state authorities. One sought permission to turn a portion of the site into a cemetery for 1,000 plots. Another for 284 plots. Another sought permission for ten plots, making it a private burial site for Trump’s immediate family.

Farenthold wrote:

The two latest cemetery plans have now both been approved by local officials. But construction has not begun on either one. The question of how to proceed — or whether to proceed — is now left to Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., who have taken day-to-day control of the Trump Organization.
Both Eric Trump and a Trump Organization spokeswoman declined to comment about what they planned to do.


President Trump already has a family burial plot: His parents and his brother Fred are buried together at All Faiths Cemetery in Queens.
So it was a surprise, back in 2007, when Trump announced he wanted a mausoleum for himself in New Jersey.


“It’s never something you like to think about, but it makes sense,” Trump told the New York Post. He was 60 years old at the time. “This is such beautiful land, and Bedminster is one of the richest places in the country.”

The plan was big: 19 feet high. Stone. Obelisks. Set smack in the middle of the golf course. In Bedminster — a wealthy horse-country town 43 miles west of New York City — officials had some concerns about hosting a reality TV star’s tomb. The huge structure would seem garish, out of place. And there were ongoing worries that the spot might become an “attractive nuisance,” tempting curiosity-seekers to trespass on club grounds…


It could also be a festive wedding . . . tomb.
“We’re planning a mausoleum/chapel,” Trump said, according to a news report from the time.
That didn’t do it.


“Give me a break. Give me a break,” Holtaway, the town official, remembered thinking. “Why would anyone ever get married in a building with no windows?”


Trump withdrew the plan to be buried in New Jersey. But five years later, he was back with another one. Now, the mausoleum was out — but, instead, he had a plan to build a large cemetery with more than 1,000 graves, including one for him.

The idea, apparently, was that Trump’s golf-club members would buy the other plots, seizing the chance at eternal membership.


“It’s one thing to be buried in a typical cemetery,” said Ed Russo, a consultant who represented Trump here. “But it’s another if you’re buried alongside the fifth fairway of Trump National.”


The town was, again, skeptical. So Trump whittled it down to just 10 graves, enough for himself and his family members.


Which family members, exactly?


“Only the good Trumps,” Russo said, according to a video of the town land-use board. He did not elaborate.


The town approved.


The state approved, granting a cemetery license in late 2014.


Then Trump changed his mind.


Russo told the town that Trump might want to be buried somewhere in Florida, after all. Trump lived part time at his Mar-a-Lago Club before his election. (And, now, after the election as well.)
Then, with approval for the small cemetery in hand, Trump came back with a new plan, for a bigger cemetery. This time, the plan was for 284 graves. The cemetery would be run by a nonprofit organization, and Trump’s golf course would handle maintenance, grass-cutting and grave-digging.

This plan, on the surface, made little sense.
For one thing, it would be a very poor way to make money.


The cemetery business is bad in New Jersey, because the land is expensive, plots sell for cheap and cremation is stealing their customers.
You need volume to succeed. And the volume at Trump’s cemetery would be very low.


Trump’s cemetery — with people selected by a kind of membership committee — would handle just one to two burials per year, officials said. Cemetery plots in New Jersey cost, at most, a few thousand dollars each. The money, such as it was, would go to the nonprofit company.

But maybe the point wasn’t to make money. Could this whole thing have been a scheme to reduce the Trump Organization’s real estate taxes? After all, nonprofit cemeteries pay no taxes on their land.
That’s possible, experts said.


But, in this case, the savings would hardly be worth the trouble. That’s because Trump had already found a way to lower his taxes on that wooded, largely unused parcel. He had persuaded the township to declare it a farm, because some trees on the site are turned into mulch. Because of pro-farmer tax policies, Trump’s company pays just $16.31 per year in taxes on the parcel, which he bought for $461,000.


“It’s always been my suspicion that there’s something we don’t know” about the explanation behind the seemingly inexplicable cemetery plan, said Bedminster land-use board member Nick Strakhov. So why were they doing it?…


The land use board approved unanimously, after some inconclusive quizzing (Strakhov had to be absent and didn’t vote).


Now, the Trump Organization still needs to apply for state approval for this larger, public cemetery.
And it still needs to settle the larger question: Does President Trump still want to be buried in New Jersey? Other presidents have chosen to be buried at their presidential libraries. Trump, like any president, also has the option of Arlington National Cemetery.

That was five years ago.

Now Ivana’s remains are buried near the first tee.

Why?

Dana Milbank thinks he has found the reason. Trump doesn’t do anything without a financial motive.

In his forced (and, he hopes, temporary) retirement, defeated former president Donald Trump has come up with a new undertaking. He’s undertaking.


Technically, his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., is now acting as a “cemetery company.” (Suggested slogan: “People are dying to get into Bedminster!”) And he has already landed his first occupant: He just buried his late ex-wife, Ivana Trump, right near the first tee.

The former president has shown little interest in conventional post-presidency pursuits, such as building a presidential library; he’s not much for reading, and he’s trying to hide his presidential papers, not display them. But why would he bury himself in, of all things, the interment trade?

Simple: He has seemingly turned his late ex-wife (and his oldest kids have turned their late mother) into a tax dodge. Dartmouth professor Brooke Harrington, a specialist in tax optimization, checked the New Jersey tax code and reported that operating a cemetery at the Trump National offers “a trifecta of tax avoidance. Property, income & sales tax, all eliminated.” She tweeted that it “looks like one corpse will suffice to make at least 3 forms of tax vanish.”

Categories Education Reform

DeSantis’ Laws Threaten Research and Speech in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2022 //
14

Florida professors are feeling the chilling effect of Ron DeSantis’ gag orders and bans on teaching about race and gender. DeSantis will not stop his crusade for censorship in K-12. Higher education knows they are his targets as well. DeSantis has an authoritarian mindset and will not be satisfied until he has squelched all teaching, study, and research into racism and gender. When does the book-burning begin?

The Miami Herald reported:

Florida university professors are facing unprecedented challenges as a spate of new laws could soon crack down on research, discourse on race and gender identity and create an environment in which employees feel their political beliefs are being scrutinized at the risk of losing tenure.

The measures are backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature and are seen as just the start by some educators. Those concerns have been fueled by reports that DeSantis had drafted even more attempts to rewrite laws governing public higher education, including stripping university presidents of the ability to hire professors.

The underlying message from eight professors from four public universities across the state interviewed by the Miami Herald is this: It is not easy to be an educator in Florida. Two professors who spoke to the Herald declined to be identified out of their concern for retribution.

It isn’t just history or politics professors who are worried about the chilling effects of restrictions on academia as they head back to class later this month, it appears to ripple through many academic disciplines. Some professors even suggested that they were considering leaving Florida to teach in other states and said they knew colleagues who had similar thoughts.

“In Florida, we know that these policies have really led to increased efforts to silence and surveil academic speech,” said Emily Anderson, an assistant professor of International Relations and Intercultural Education at Florida International University. “Academic speech matters, because it’s a fundamental freedom that is really how our university system is grounded. When we have policies that threaten speech, in my view, it shadows threats to all other protected rights.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article263966316.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Florida

National Archives Issues Statement Correcting Trump Lie About Obama

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2022 //
163

Trump is obsessed with Barack Obama. He tried to reverse whatever his predecessor did. In the wake of the FBI seizure of classified documents from Trump’s residence, Trump insisted that Obama took 33 million documents and no one complained. This became a talking point on rightwing Trump talk shows.

The National Archives issued a statement refuting Trump’s lie:

The National Archives and Records Administration issued a statement Friday in an attempt to counter misstatements about former president Barack Obama’s presidential records after several days of misinformation that had been spread by former president Donald Trump and conservative commentators.

Since the FBI search of his Florida home and club this week for classified documents, Trump has asserted in social media posts that Obama “kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified” and that they were “taken to Chicago by President Obama.”

In its statement, NARA said that it obtained “exclusive legal and physical custody” of Obama’s records when he left office in 2017. It said that about 30 million pages of unclassified records were transferred to a NARA facility in the Chicago area and that they continue to be maintained “exclusively by NARA.”

Classified records from Obama are kept in a NARA facility in Washington, the statement said.
“As required by the [Presidential Records Act], former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration,” the statement said.

Categories Lies, Trump

Why Does the Far Right Love Hungary’s Victor Orban?

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2022 //
12

The Lincoln Project draws a historical parallel.

Watch it and worry.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Freedom

Florida: Jewish Leaders Oppose Abortion Restrictions as Violations of Their Religious Freedom

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2022 //
40

Jewish leaders, both in synagogues and in public life, are taking a prominent role in opposing the abortion restrictions imposed by Governor DeSantis and the Republican-dominated legislature. Soon after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, a synagogue filed a lawsuit claiming that the state’s abortion restrictions violated their religious liberties. Now, DeSantis has suspended Andrew Warren, the Hillsborough County attorney, for saying that he would not enforce the abortion laws; Warren is Jewish.

The purpose of the First Amendment—which protects freedom of religion and forbids an “establishment” of religion—is to ensure that every American may practice his or her own faith (or none at all), and that no faith may use government to impose its beliefs on others.

Unfortunately, the current Trumpist Supreme Court takes the position that freedom of religion may be wielded to enable some to impose their views on others. The abortion issue is an example of that: Catholics, evangelical Christians, and fundamentalists of other religion oppose abortion. The Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Roe V Wade imposes the religious views of these groups on others who don’t share their views.

A just resolution would be to allow every woman to make decisions with her doctor. Those who oppose abortion should not have one. Those who disagree should follow their doctors’ advice.

In Florida, Jewish groups have actively fought for their beliefs, which are violated by the Dobbs decision.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ratcheted up the fight over the state’s looming 15-week abortion ban Thursday when he suspended a Tampa-area state attorney who had vowed not to prosecute violations.

The move also vaulted yet another Jewish figure into the fight’s foreground.

Andrew Warren, the state attorney for Hillsborough County, had joined more than 90 other attorneys nationwide in pledging not to prosecute individuals who seek or provide abortions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that had guaranteed abortion rights.

“Criminalizing and prosecuting individuals who seek or provide abortion care makes a mockery of justice,” the letter said. “Prosecutors should not be part of that.”

Warren, who has said that his Jewish identity has shaped his government career, joins other Florida Jews in prominent positions in the fight to protect access to abortion: A South Florida synagogue making a religious freedom argument spearheaded the first lawsuit filed against Florida’s abortion ban, and a Jewish political activist who came to prominence by protesting against DeSantis’ pandemic rules has signed on to represent the congregation.

DeSantis is betting that his alienation of Florida’s large Jewish population and its large LGBT population will be overcome by courting evangelicals, Catholics, and rednecks.

Categories Education Reform

North Carolina: Sheriff Puts an AR-15 in Every School

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2022 //
27

The sheriff of Madison County, North Carolina, reacted to the massacre of students in Uvalde, Texas, by putting an AR15 in every one of the six schools in the district. The guns will be locked in a safe, and breaching tools will be nearby. So don’t come into one of those schools to kill little children!

Imagine the scenario. A gunman with an AR15 shoots his way into the school, as the deranged killer at the Sandy Hook school did a decade ago. He blasts through the door, kills everyone he sees. Meanwhile, the designated defender goes to the safe, breaks it open with the breaching tool, and takes out the AR15.

By that time, the killer has had enough time to mow down the children in at least two classrooms.

The problem in Uvalde wasn’t the lack of weapons. Dozens of heavily armed officers hung out in the corridor outside the classrooms for over an hour. They had guns. What they lacked was courage, brains, and leadership.

Categories Courage, Guns, Guns in Schools, North Carolina, Safety, Texas
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