Archives for the month of: November, 2022
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The Hero of the Club Q Massacre and the Villains Who Provoked It

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2022 //
48

Club Q is a gay bar that is known in Colorado Springs for the vivacious entertainment it provides, most notably drag shows where men dress up as women and perform. Lots of people enjoy the fun of drag shows, and they are not necessarily gay. As you no doubt have read, a man barged into Club Q, armed with an assault rifle and other guns. He began blazing away. Five people were killed, and another 20 were wounded and hospitalized.

The toll would have been far higher were it not for the instantaneous reaction of Rich Fierro, a combat veteran who was attending the drag show with his wife, daughter, and friends. When he heard the gunfire, he went into combat mode, pulled down the killer, and pummeled him with his own gun.

In an interview at his house, where his wife and daughter were still recovering from injuries, Mr. Fierro, 45, who left the Army in 2013 as a major, according to military records, described charging through the chaos at the club, tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun.

Richard M. Fierro said he was at a table in Club Q with his wife, daughter and friends on Saturday, watching a drag show, when the sudden flash of gunfire ripped across the nightclub. His instincts from four combat deployments as an Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan instantly kicked in. Fight back, he told himself.

“I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” Mr. Fierro said, shaking his head. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.”

Without Fierro’s immediate intervention, there would certainly have been more fatalities. In 2016, a shooter entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and murdered 49 people.

Of the five who died, three were gay or transgender, and two were straight. Club Q was a fun place until the killer arrived.

When the next mass shooting occurs, there may not be a combat veteran available to tackle the shooter. It may happen in a classroom, an auditorium, a bar, anywhere.

Thanks to the National Rifle Association, the Republican party that takes orders from the NRA, and the Supreme Court, which recently struck down state laws that were intended to limit access to high-powered guns or concealed guns, we are all targets. Nowhere is safe.

But let’s give discredit where discredit is due. The Republican Party has skillfully turned anything related to LGBT+ into a huge issue. “They” are coming for your children. Do not say what they are. Do not acknowledge their existence. Pretend they don’t exist. Deny medical care to transgender people and threaten to punish parents who seek it and physicians who offer it.

Crass politicians like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott speak of gays, lesbians and transgender people as the enemy of our righteous social order. DeSantis passed a law forbidding the acknowledgment of such people in K-12, even if they happen to be gay. Books about gay love and gay life are banned. Anything related to gay life is stigmatized as evil. For years, we have heard a steady public repetition of slurs, slanders, and obscenities directed at trans people, as though they were responsible for everything that has gone wrong in our national life.

The seeds of hatred and murder were planted by politicians who treated gays as “less than.” Twisted minds hear the incitement and think they will be celebrated if they kill these enemies of the people.

DeSantis, Abbot and other politicians who have demonized people who are transgender and who are LGBT have blood on their hands.

Words have consequences.

Categories Education Reform

The Slavic Battle of the Books

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2022 //
14

John G. Rodden writes on the website American Purpose about the educational struggle between Ukrainians and Russiand. Ukrainians want their children to learn the Ukrainian language and literature. Wherever Russia has captured tos, cities, or villages, it switches the curriculum to Russian language and literature. Rodden is a scholar who has written several books about George Orwell.

Rodden writes:

The 2022–23 school year in war-torn Ukraine began this fall under conditions that Americans—and even Europeans old enough to remember World War II—can barely fathom. Three-quarters of the schools have been unable to open at all because they lack bomb shelters, air raid sirens nearby, or underground classrooms and lavatories. Russian bombing campaigns can last for several hours; all classes are therefore held remotely, insofar as children have access to computers and Wi-Fi.

Understandably, the attention of the world, including that of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his advisors in Kyiv, is focused on battlefield advances and reversals. And yet a parallel war is under way, one that has received only spotty attention in the English-language media, though the German and French presses have covered it more extensively. It is a culture war, a Slavic “Battle of the Books” that goes far beyond the imaginary world in Jonathan Swift’s 1704 book. In Swift’s Battle of the Books, he imagined an epic battle in a library—a so-called “quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns”—where books come alive, with authors both classical (e.g., Homer, Pindar, Plato, Aristotle, Vergil) and contemporary (e.g., Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Dryden, Aphra Benn) duking it out.

The twenty-first century Eurasian counterpart is no mere entry in a game of literary fisticuffs conducted with courtly fellow men of letters. It is a deadly serious affair that Ukrainian officials regard as a retaliatory counteroffensive. For the Ukrainians this isn’t just a Battle of Books–this is a deep, visceral, and emotional reaction to their country being eviscerated and destroyed by Russian forces.

In their view, they have been forced into it by the ruthless “reeducation” policy that Russia has undertaken in occupied Ukraine. The Slavic Battle of the Books is about which authors Ukrainians will read and study. It is a war to “win the minds of men,” as the old Stalinist slogan phrased it. Wherever it leads, it has already validated one venerable contention about which both the Ancients and the Moderns were in full agreement: Ideas have consequences.

The rest of the article is behind a paywall.

Categories Academic Freedom, Education Reform, Freedom, International, Literature

William Phillis: Charters Are a Step Backward in Ohio

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2022 //
15

William Phillis, former deputy state superintendent of education in Ohio, is appalled by the waste and corruption in the charter sector. The state constitution requires a common school system, and charter schools and vouchers violate the state constitution. Ohio has had some of the biggest financial scandals in charter world (think ECOT), yet the Republican legislature continues to demand more funding for charters and vouchers. In this post, he likens charters to the one-room schools that were closed down long ago. He also notes that half of the 600 charters authorized in Ohio have closed.

William Phillis writes:

Charter Schools Conceptually and In Practice Are a Scourge on the Education Landscape In Ohio

Not all charter schools and their management companies are rife with fraud and corruption. Nor are all charters low-performing. Nor do all of them shortchange students to stack-up shameless profits. Nor do all of them practice nepotism in hiring, cherry-picking students, and closing without notice. However, the charter industry, as a whole, is rife with all of the above. Even if the charter industry would be free of all these negatives (and more), the concept and practice of chartering is wrong-headed.

The charter industry is inefficient within its own parameters and causes the whole of provisions for education to be inefficient. Historically the state has allocated between 34 to 45 percent of its General Revenue Fund (GRF) to K-12 education. Currently, about 40% of the state GRF is allocated to K-12 education.

Due to the demands of other state programs and services, the percentage of the state General Revenue Budget allocated to K-12 education will not likely increase substantially in the future.. Tax funds siphoned away from school districts for charters (and vouchers) duplicates facilities and programs which causes inefficient use of tax funds and reduces educational opportunities for students in both districts and charters.

Since 1900, the state forced school districts to consolidate to expand educational opportunities and to use tax dollars more efficiently. In 1900 there were about 3500 school districts. Ten thousand one room school buildings were in operation. Now there are 612 districts and no one room schools in operation. However, the state has issued more than 600 charters to private individuals, 300 or so of which have closed. Most charters serve less students than the school districts that the state forced to close. If smaller is finer, then why doesn’t the state force deconsolidation of school districts?

The smaller charter enrollments typically reduce breadth of programs and opportunities for students. The charters duplicate programs and services which exacerbates the inefficiencies. What are state officials thinking?

Charter schools are largely deregulated. For the sake of students and taxpayers there is no justification for a differential between public schools and charters in the matter of regulations. The original idea of chartering was that some teachers and parents would propose to a board of education that they would create innovative, creative programming and demonstrate better results in exchange for reduced regulations. As an industry, charters have been neither creative nor innovative. Nor has the charter industry outpaced traditional public schools in academic performance; however, reduced regulations have spawned fraud and corruption coupled with little or no accountability and transparency.

Charter schools have no constitutional basis.

The charter school experiment in Ohio has been rife with fraud and corruption and low performance. Billions in tax funding has been stolen and wasted. The experiment is a failure. There is no justification for this experiment to continue.

Learn more about the EdChoice voucher litigation

Learn About Vouchers Hurt Ohio
8 Lies About Private School Vouchers

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OhioEandA

VOUCHERS HURT OHIO

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 |ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://ohiocoalition.org

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, Ohio

New Orleans: The Great Charter Experiment Is a Farce! A Failure! A Mirage!

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2022 //
26

The New Orleans Tribune pulled the mask off the charade of reform in New Orleans. The much-heralded experiment of turning every public school into a charter school is a failure. In the latest state ratings, more than half the schools received a grade of D or F.

The newspaper’s editorial board writes:

It has been said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Well, NOLA Public Schools must be certifiably insane; because here we are — 17 years deep into a so-called education reform movement; and this year’s recently released school performance scores continue to reveal the what we have long known — this reform was and is a farce and a failure.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, laws were rewritten to make the takeover of public schools in Orleans Parish easier. The minimum school performance score needed to escape being considered a failing school was raised from 60 to 87.4 so that more public schools in New Orleans could be taken over by the Recovery School District. Veteran teachers were summarily fired without cause. School buildings and resources were turned over to quasi-private charter management organizations. Our children were and still are bussed all over the city.

Then in 2019, the reformers really dug in, and the Orleans Parish School Board got out of the business of operating schools all together, turning over every campus to a charter operator and an unelected and unaccountable board.

And all of this for what?

If any of this maneuvering would have resulted in success, we would have nothing to say.

But there are 65 charter schools loosely operating under the cavalier control of the Orleans Parish School Board, and based on the 2022 school performance scores released in November by the Louisiana Department of Education, more than half of them are D and F schools. In other words, they are failing or close to it. In fact, if the SPS of 87.4 that was purposefully raised to take over public schools in 2005 were applied right now all but four of the 65 NOLA public schools could be taken over TODAY!

Let’s say it again, another way — if the same standard that was intentionally changed to takeover and destroy public education in Orleans Parish in 2005 were applied to the 65 public charter schools operating under NOLA Public Schools today, a full 61 of those schools would be considered failing by the state RIGHT NOW!

All of the teachers and administrators should be fired without cause; their buildings and resources should be turned over to the RSD; their students and the money that follows them should be scattered to the wind.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. In order to mask the failure of this corporate takeover of public education masquerading as a reform movement, the minimum SPS has been lowered over the last decade and half, indicative of the fact that this so-called reform has never been about improving educational outcomes for our children.

And the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has refused to revisit its accountability policy.

That is because this reform is and has always been about power and control over resources, contracts, assets and the dollars that follow every student. It was never about the students….

So we ask: Where’s the reform . . . the change . . . the miracle results touted as the public school system in Orleans Parish was pillaged and plundered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?

We know the truth. The miracle was a mirage…It’s time to recall this reform! It is time to return public education in New Orleans to real local control so that another generation of children are not left by the wayside.

The New Orleans Tribune is an African American newspaper, so its views will be ignored by the powers that control the legislature and the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Louisiana, New Orleans

Georgia: Trump at Risk of Criminal Charges in Election Investigation

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2022 //
65

Jack Hassard, a retired science educator, has watched Donald Trump’s actions closely and even written a book called THE TRUMP FILES.

Hassard, Jack. The Trump Files: An Account of the Trump Administration’s Effect on American Democracy, Human Rights, Science and Public Health (p. 65). Northington-Hearn Publishing LLC. Kindle Edition.

In this post, he links to an in-depth study by scholars at the Brookings Institution, who examine Trump’s efforts to overturn the Georgia election results.

Hassard prints an excerpt from the Brookings report:

The researchers who wrote the Brookings report of the Fulton County Investigation of Trump’s election interference conclude:

We conclude that Trump’s post-election conduct in Georgia leaves him at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes. These charges potentially include: criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act violations.

Please open the link and read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cheating, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Fraud, Georgia

Texas: Conservatives Flop in Some Suburban Districts

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2022 //
5

The Texas Tribune reports that conservative school board candidates in some suburban districts failed with culture war issues.

School board elections: Even though school board races are nonpartisan, the Nov. 8 elections for Round Rock and Wylie independent school sistrict trustees drew high-profile endorsements from the Republican Party of Texas.

But in both districts, every candidate endorsed by the Republican Party of Texas, a total of nine, lost. In Round Rock, the races weren’t even close, with one candidate, Tiffanie Harrison, beating her opponent by 25 percentage points.

While Texas Republicans largely swept Tuesday’s elections and GOP-backed school board trustees made gains elsewhere in the state, the results in Round Rock and Wylie raise questions about the current conservative strategy in suburban school districts and the appeal of an agenda built on culture war issues.

One of the primary targets for conservatives running for school board seats has been critical race theory, a college-level discipline that examines racism within social and legal structures within the United States. It is not taught in elementary or secondary public schools in Texas, but Republicans have used the term to target how students are taught about race in schools.

Republicans leaned on a strategy modeled after one used in Tarrant County, where in May, a slate of 11 conservative, anti-CRT candidates won races in school boards. But the GOP was unable to mimic the occurrence in the midterm elections cycle.

Jill Farris, a Round Rock school board candidate endorsed by the Texas GOP who lost her race, attributed the results to a changing electorate that is more liberal than in previous years.

“Maybe we were all kind of relying a little bit on this red wave and thought that parents were just as angry as we were,” Farris said. “At least now, we know where the community stands and we can move forward.”

Categories Censorship, Education Reform, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Texas

Helen F. Ladd: How Charter Schools Disrupt Sound Educational Policymaking

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2022 //
12

Dr. Helen F. Ladd is one of the most eminent economists of education, possibly the most eminent. She has written important studies that document the importance of poverty in the lives of children and its impact on their educational outcomes. She has written critically about No Child Left Behind. And she has written international studies of school choice with her husband Edward Fiske, a veteran journalist.

I sponsor an annual lecture series on education at Wellesley College, my alma mater, and was delighted when Sunny Ladd, as she is known, accepted my invitation to be the first post-pandemic lecturer. She prepared this paper, which has been published by the National Education Policy Center.

She maintains that charter schools disrupt sound educational policy making.

This an overview of her important paper:

As publicly funded schools of choice operated by private entities, charter schools differ from traditional public schools in that they have more operational autonomy, their teachers are not public employees, and they are operated by nonprofit or for-profit private entities under renewable contracts. The main sense in which they are public is that they are funded by taxpayer dollars. This policy memo describes how charter schools disrupt four core goals of education policy: establishing coherent systems of schools, attending to child poverty and disadvantage, limiting racial segregation and isolation, and ensuring that public funds are spent wisely. The author recommends that policies be designed both to limit the expansion of charters and to reduce the extent to which they disrupt the making of good education policy.

Open the link and read it in full.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, National Education Policy Center, Privatization, Segregation

Parents: Speak Out for Student Privacy!

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2022 //
4

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy urges you to write a letter on behalf of your child or everyone’s children to the Federal Trade Commission. The deadline is November 21.

Right now, the Federal Trade Commission is collecting comments from the public about how their oversight of the use of personal data by commercial enterprises can be improved. As you know, many parents are rightly concerned that too many vendors that collect personal student data at the behest of schools and districts have recklessly allowed that data to breach, and/or have used it for advertising, sale, or other commercial purposes. The comment period to the FTC has been extended through this Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, and we encourage all parents to submit comments by the end of that day.

Since the pandemic, the risky use of digital programs and apps in schools has soared. Most of these programs are operated and owned by for-profit companies who have been collecting personal student data without parental consent, sufficient oversight, restrictions, and/or security protections. As a result, the number of student data breaches has exploded.

This is in part because the existing data security provisions in federal law are weak or non-existent. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, only requires “reasonable” security without the FTC having defined that term, while FERPA does not specify any security standards at all. And too many vendors are using personal data to target ads to students or their families, and/or to build new programs and services around, which are clearly commercial and not educational purposes.

We encourage you to submit your comments here; no later than this Monday at 11:59 pm. Let the FTC know that they should use all their authority to ensure that student data is safe and secure and used ONLY for educational purposes. A sample email is below, but please edit it any way you like. MOST important is for you to add any examples of when your children’s data was breached or improperly used. Please also share any such experiences with us, to aid us in our work going forward, by emailing us atinfo@studentprivacymatters.org

A sample email message is below. Thanks!

______

To the FTC:

I am a parent and am very concerned about how the number of student data breaches has skyrocketed in recent years, through hacking, ransomware, and other cybersecurity events. Moreover, too often school vendors are also using and abusing student data for commercial uses. I urge you to require enforceable contracts that require encryption, as well as other strong security standards for the collection, disclosure, and use of student data. Also, these contracts must prohibit vendors from accessing or using any data they do not need for the purposes of carrying out their contracted services, and the information they do collect should be deleted as soon as possible, preferably at the conclusion of each school year or at the very least, when students graduate or leave the district.

I also urge you to strongly prohibit the use of student data for any commercial purpose, including allowing vendors to sell it, to use it to target ads, and/or to use it to develop new products or services.

Yours sincerely [ add your name here].

—

And have a great Thanksgiving!

Leonie Haimson & Cassie Creswell, co-chairs
Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
info@studentprivacymatters.org
www.studentprivacymatters.org
Follow @parents4privacy
Subscribe to Parent Coalition for Student Privacy newsletter at https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/join-us

Categories Data, Education Industry, Privacy, Students

Timothy Snyder: Help Stop Genocide in Ukraine

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2022 //
24

Timothy Snyder, historian at Yale and expert on European history, invites you to contribute to a very important fund that he created.

He writes:

Sometimes things are very simple. If you can easily do something to halt a genocide, then you should.

As I have been arguing here in “Thinking about…”, the Russian intention in Ukraine has been genocidal from the beginning.

The notion that Ukraine does not exist, that its state is artificial and its national consciousness a confusion — this Putinist rhetoric was genocidal. Moscow’s claims that Ukrainians are all Nazis or gays or Jews or Satanists (the current line) is nothing more than a fascist politics of us-and-them: the enemy is defined via hate speech as subhuman, as beyond any ethical concern, existing only to be destroyed.

The standard Russian occupation practices of kidnapping children, raping women, and executing local leaders are genocidal. Everywhere that Russia has been forced to leave Ukrainian territory, for example in Kherson region these last few days, Ukrainians find the death pits and the torture chambers. These and other actions constitute genocide in the sense of the 1948 convention, as I explain in this lecture.

It is Russian policy to deprive Ukrainians of light, heat, and water during the winter by destroying civilian infrastructure. Just yesterday Russia fired dozens more missiles at civilian targets, leaving about ten million people without electricity during very cold nights and days. As I write, people I care about are in bomb shelters, listening to explosions.

This deliberate creation of misery and lethal conditions for civilians is contrary to the laws of war. It is also another violation of the genocide convention, which forbids “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” That this is indeed the intention is gleefully affirmed practically every day on Russian state television.

Yesterday’s attack was the largest on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure since the war began. Russia launched 95 missiles and drones. To stop the missiles, Ukraine needs Western government help with air defense and aircraft. The Shahed drones, from Iran, are what is known as loitering munitions. For weeks they have been used to destroy the Ukrainian power grid as well as other civilian targets. They are a terror weapon put to a criminal purpose.

The Ukrainians are good at repairing what the Russians destroy. But the large number of drones has made it hard to keep up. And the loss of the electricity grid as such will lead to horrific conditions and tremendous loss of life, especially among the vulnerable and the elderly.

This is where we can do something. We can help stop the drones. President Zelens’kyi’s United24Foundation asked me to raise money for a cause of my choice. As a historian, I could have chosen a destroyed library (which I visited in Chernihiv a few weeks ago), and in the future I will do just that. But right now Ukrainians need to get through this winter and win this war.

So rather than indulge my own preferences, I asked where I could be most immediately helpful. The answer from the Ukrainians I asked was a system to defend against the Iranian drones. And so that is what, as an ambassador of the president’s United24 platform, I have pledged to do: to raise $1.25 million for such a system, a Shahed Hunter.

Donate to fund a Shahed Hunter

I am honored to be among a wonderful group of ambassadors — including Mark Hamill, Liev Schreiber, and Barbra Streisand — who have made similar pledges to raise funds.

Now, the Ukrainians might think that I am famous, but I am not famous like these wonderful actors! So I am counting on you to help, and to spread the word.

A difference between this genocide and others is that you can do something to stop it easily and right now. Please make a contribution here to protect Ukrainians from the drones that are destroying their conditions of life. And then please share this post with others who might wish to do the same. Thank you.

Another great actor… and profoundly decent man. I did get him to laugh once or twice. The warmth and intelligence he is able to show in these profoundly distressing conditions is just hugely admirable. Help me to get to that smile again by providing Ukrainians with what they need most.

Categories Courage, Democracy, International

Indiana: Anti-CRT Forces Underperform in School Board Races

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2022 //
6

Steve Hinnefeld reports that the voters of Indiana did not buy the anti-CRT baloney in important school board races. Indiana is a solid red state where Republicans swept every statewide race. But parents mostly like their school boards.

He begins:

School board elections are the quintessential local elections. In most states, including Indiana, they are nonpartisan. Voters make their choices based on the pros and cons of candidates, not parties. Issues matter, but candidates with strong networks of friends and supporters are likely to do well.

That makes it hard to draw conclusions from the school board elections that took place across the state last week. But it appears that conservative culture warriors didn’t do as well as they had hoped.

In some school districts, candidates vowed to take on “critical race theory” and “wokeness” in the schools. Those folks won and now have a majorityin Hamilton Southeastern, an affluent suburban district north of Indianapolis where white parents protested the hiring of the district’s first Black superintendent last year. In the New Albany-Floyd County district, two candidates backed by Liberty Defense, a PAC that supports Republicans, were among four winners.

But in Carmel and Noblesville, suburban districts that are demographically and politically similar to Hamilton Southeastern, they gained a seat but remained a minority. In Zionsville and Avon, also Indy suburbs, supporters of teachers and administrators won all contested seats. Zionsville conservatives who wanted to rewrite curriculum, and one who made national news when he said “all Nazis weren’t bad,” fell short. In Northwest Allen Schools, a suburban Fort Wayne district, incumbents held off a challenge by conservatives, including one endorsed by U.S. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind.

One disturbing result was in Lafayette, where a winning candidate said he looked forward to scouring classrooms for “gay and lesbian flags, that sort of thing.” But he’s one board member. He can make an ass of himself, but he can’t dictate policy, much less curriculum.

Open the link and keep reading.

Categories Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Indiana
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