Paul Bonner is a retired public school leader.
He has an idea for the Democratic Party that would resonate with the 90% of Americans who went to public schools and whose children attend public schools.
Here’s an ad I would run if I were a PAC supporting the Democratic Party:
Narrator: (As numerous images of schools, students, and teachers engaged in learning are shown across the screen)
“In the early twentieth century the United States of America reinforced a universal commitment to Public Schools. This resulted in an economic powerhouse that generated more wealth than at any time in the history of the world. The alumni of these schools led Democratic governments in the defeat of tyranny in World War II and resulted in the establishment of universities that are the envy of the world. Industry and finance thrived. Yes, the public schools did this.”
(Pan to politicians advocating privatization and attacking teachers)
“Today, there are those who would like to pretend that the public schools have been a failure. That government efforts to educate our children could never produce the work force that would result from subsidies for private efforts. They are wrong!”
(Show closed charter buildings and parents seeking help for their children)
“Any implementation of vouchers has resulted in subsidies for those who already attend private schools, charters have not outperformed public schools academically, and closing public schools with unfulfilled promises of better results has resulted in decimated communities.”
(Pan to schools and parents who are engaged with their public schools in the myriad of ways this happens every day).
The only way to improve educational opportunity in America is to vigorously fund our Public Schools. To support teachers through greater resources, district support, and higher pay. To provide facilities that are equally great in all communities. America has thrived through our support of public schools. We as citizens, need to recommit to Public Schools with our purse and our fervor.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Might as well wait for Godot. Ain’t gonna happen. A good recent example. Former Ohio party chair David Pepper is now the “it” boy for many Dems for an idiotic book he just published “showing the way forward” for the party. Probably more Tim Ryan-esque crap to build a GOP-Lite party. Pepper was chair when charters and ECOT were running wild here and he refused to make it an issue. I met him at a fundraiser once, made the point about raising the level of education a core state Democratic issue because of all the malfeasance that was out in the open for everyone to see and he replied people didn’t care about the issue. I agreed with him and reminded him that elevating it was a task of relevant politics. We see what he didn’t accomplish.
I also include Rosa DeLauro in this criticism. As nice and committed as she is, she has not done anything to highlight this issue in a broad public forum. She speaks to her supporters, makes anodyne statements, and did not stand for education in a substantive way when she chaired the appropriations subcommittee. She is representative of what Democrats have done with education since the Carter era, talk, squawk, and do little. Few teachers outside the even fewer who pay attention to politics even know who she is. And ask any committed public school teacher in any state if they can name a single prominent Democrat on the national stage who has made education more visible on it.
republicans are winning this game. We still haven’t convinced a majority of Democrats that the Nation at Risk report of the EARLY 1980s is a pile of crap on top of a pool of festering lies. And they’re supposed to lead us to the promised land? And we wonder why there are cult followers all around us? Not sure I conveyed how I really feel about this issue.
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Next time someone has a chance to speak to her, ask her if she honestly thinks she build or spent any political capitol on education issues as compared to her efforts on behalf of ovarian cancer research.
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And you left out Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, who is often viewed as a progressive but is no help to Ohio public schools.
The truth is that even AOC and Bernie Sanders are pretty quiet when it comes to standing up against the privatization of public schools (and Bernie was still legitimizing and praising “good public charters” during the 2016 campaign.) During the discussion about eliminating single exam admissions for NYC specialized high schools — not eliminating the high schools but changing admissions so it is not exclusively based on a single test’s score — AOC punted.
The discussion has always been framed in the media in a way that makes even progressive politicians try to sidestep. And frankly, they or their staff can’t be bothered to really understand it in a way that would allow them to challenge the prevailing narratives.
One reason I wanted Hillary Clinton to win in 2016 is because she was the only politician I have ever heard who understood exactly how to frame the issue and her framing got a rabidly pro-charter Roland Martin to go speechless and then immediately change the subject during a town hall in South Carolina. The ed reformers can’t actually answer any thoughtful challenges to their false narratives, but except for John Merrow and Hillary Clinton, they never have to since the rest of the press simply repeats their false narratives without question and the Dems – except for Hillary Clinton and maybe Jamaal Bowman – don’t understand how to frame their support in a way that totally undermines the false narratives instead of legitimizes them.
Most education reporters at so-called liberal media are stenographers, not journalists. That’s why the anti-public school folks adore having interviews with people who never challenge their narratives. The one time that someone did was when John Merrow interviewed Eva Moskowitz. Unlike the usual stenographer/reporters who cover education, Merrow interviewed Eva Moskowitz as a journalist, not a stenographer. It was clear that Eva Moskowitz expected him to act like the other stenographer reporters on the education beat and dutifully amplify her false narratives, with the reformer-approved disclaimer that someone with no credibility — a partisan teachers union hack – “disagreed”.
But instead, Merrow challenged Moskowitz’ ridiculous false narratives with facts and asked her to defend her false narratives, and she was shocked to encounter a reporter instead of the education stenographers who masquerade as journalists. Her response is a classic. She sputtered and broke out into hives and looked like some entitled and spoiled Queen Bee teenager so used to her rich parents giving her everything she wanted and her sycophant friends doing whatever she ordered that she was furious and speechless that anyone would challenge her. She made some implicitly racist defense that she would never have gotten away with if the public believed she was talking about white 5 year olds instead of Black 5 year olds about how she frequently had to tell Success Academy parents their very young children were dangerously violently in their Success Academy kindergarten and first grade classrooms and needed to be given out of school suspensions, and she bemoans that those parents (who listeners understand are not middle class white parents) just don’t believe her and are surprised to learn how violent their 5 year old children really are. “But they weren’t there”, Moskowitz shares, and the “model teachers” who we saw in the video demonstrating the model techniques that harrass, punish and humiliate young children they don’t like WERE there.
And at the SC Carolina townhall with Roland Martin in late 2015, Hillary Clinton showed how to frame the issue:
“Most charter schools don’t take the hardest to teach kids, or if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation because they do, thankfully, take everybody. And then they don’t get the resources and help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.”
Roland Martin had to change the subject. Because he couldn’t do what so typical education stenographers do because they have embraced and amplified the lies of the charters no matter how absurd. When the discussion of public schools BEGINS with the absolutely unimpeachable truth stated clearly by Hillary Clinton – that charters only teach who they want to teach — an education reporter who keeps harping “but they get such good results teaching only the students who perform well and kicking out the rest” look like idiots. If that unimpeachable truth was the beginning of every discussion, there might be some good policies coming out of it. But too many progressive politicians who believe they are pro-public school don’t think its important. “We gotta support union teachers because they are better than charter teachers” isn’t a winning argument because the framing starts with the false narrative that charter schools get better results and how can public schools improve to match those results. As if it is ever possible for a public school that teaches all kids to match the results of a charter that exclusively teaches the kids that get good results and dumps the rest back to public schools. It’s a set up for a fake competition where the winner will always be charter schools.
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I left out a lot of people, as you rightly pointed out. As a Brown constituent and one-time rabid supporter, his equivocation on this and other issues is starting to obscure whatever good he does. As I may have mentioned before, when he ran in 2012 against Josh Mandel, it was the first and only time I contributed what for me was a lot of money. I had to make sacrifices, minor, I will confess, but it was a conscious choice. I wrote a published letter to the editor in support of him. Since then, my enthusiasm has waned considerably. I’ll vote for him. But I’m probably not going to be making much, if any effort on his behalf. Maybe a yard sign if I don’t have to pay for it.
He used to be very good with constituent services. Now, like most Dems, he takes his friends for granted while he chips away at what I thought were his principles. He does so by trying to align with working class constituencies like those in greater Youngstown, Lima, or Dayton. Those who now vote consistently republican because of a mix of racial, social, economic, xenophobic, and geographic resentments. His strategy is to get their vote, regardless of what their other votes are. It’s a dangerous game.
As you rightly point out, he equivocates more and more rather than educate about why certain principles are right. He continues to survive without the state Democratic Party, thank goodness, but that’s a long-term Catch-22, as the pathetic reality of the party in this state demonstrates.
I have been trying to get an appointment with him or his staff for two months to discuss in further detail on an op-ed published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in the aftermath of East Palestine about what needed to be done to address the long-term health needs of the region immediately. The history of events like this is a noticeable uptick in respiratory diseases and cancers in the next 5-30 years of the people who were exposed to this and future disasters like it that will happen. They need a system of immediate and sustained long-term monitoring and access to the best treatments should they be diagnosed with a related disease. This region has the scientific capability and expertise to put together and implement a program with proper support and funding. Brown and cult bishop J.D. Vance have touted their bipartisan bill to restore the region with very weak, nebulous language that will do nothing substantive. One would think making sure a provision to implement a broad-based, anticipatory program to respond to disasters like this with long-term health planning for all would be something a Democrat like Brown, who wants to broaden his base, would welcome a discussion for. The old Brown? Yes. The current Brown? Governs now like a California senator who has many targeted groups but no real constituent services.
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Yeah, I wish Brown was better, but I still would vote for him in a heartbeat if he was the nominee, and prefer him to Tim Ryan, who couldn’t even win the votes of his own NE Ohio constituents in the Senate race! But Republican voters seem to respect politicians who stand up for things strongly, even if those voters don’t actually support all the things that politician stands up for and even if that politician doesn’t immediately deliver on the policies they do like. Whereas Democrat voters today seem to expect immediate gratification or they decide the Dem is no better than a Republican.
You NEVER heard a Republican voter saying that a Republican is no better than a Democrat and they know that there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties because abortions weren’t completely abolished and the wall didn’t get built, and vouchers for religious schools weren’t required in every state. Republican voters KNEW there was a difference and if they just kept electing more and more Republicans, and then even more Republicans, and then more, that slowly and surely they could turn the US into the right wing nirvana of their dreams. And they are certainly getting close to that because Republicans play the long game and have voters who stick with them even when they don’t deliver quickly, while Democrats are dependent on constituencies who are easily swayed by right wing propaganda to believe that Dems are sell outs because they haven’t delivered on everything with a tiny majority.
I mean, we live in a country where a mass of progressive voters said there was no difference between the parties when the Supreme Court had an open seat with a chance for RBG to get majority votes to repeal Citizens United and other decisions so harmful to democracy. I grew up in what is now Trump country, and not a single Republican acquaintance said “there’s no difference”. Those voters wanted a Republican president appointing justices because they know there is a difference.
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RBG should have left the Court in the middle of Obama’s second term. She was very sick and very old. She rolled the dice and the country lost
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GregB,
I forgot to add THANK YOU for doing the hard work of trying to hold Sherrod Brown’s feet to the fire. There is no excuse for him not being better. I guess it’s scary to be a Dem in Ohio these days. Like Florida, the right wing used its state power to permanently tilt the playing field toward Republicans. I don’t think he will get re-elected no matter how much he kowtows to the white working class Trump voters. If he does, maybe with a 6 year term he will be the progressive I once thought he was.
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Sorry I couldn’t get ion this discussion earlier. My first question becomes, so why bother with this blog? Yes, we have an uphill battle with much of the political intelligentsia in both parties, but we have to find voices who will pick up the fight. Jamal Bowman comes to mind and there could be many others. Corporate America will not only run the public schools into the ground, but much of the middle class if we remain compliant. I have had too many great experiences with schools, struggling and successful, to sit back and simply take the ongoing move to privatization. There has to be a way to fight this.
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I am frustrated and angry, yes. My point is that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working and expecting it to finally click and work in the future is a fool’s errand. We need a new language for a new strategy. If we don’t find some, that I would likely come the conclusion that we no longer need to bother with this blog or any other. Public education will not be around to defend, much less improve.
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GregB I keep thinking a sustained ad campaign would be really helpful. CBK
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“I keep thinking a sustained ad campaign would be really helpful. CBK”
Totally agreed, Greg.
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Or should I say, “Catherine”?
Regardless…YES! Costs money to run a sustained ad campaign but it would be worth it.
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Diane,
Your reply about RBG is exactly what I am talking about. Scapegoating RBG and blaming her instead of blaming the voters who specifically voted against a Democrat filling a vacant Supreme Court with the court tied 4-4, nearly 4 years before RBG died.
We have a right wing Supreme Court for one reason only. Because the Democrat didn’t win in 2016. But instead of doing what the Republicans do and making sure voters understand that simple fact, we confuse the issue. We tell voters that the consequences of their vote to prevent a Democrat from filling a vacant Supreme Court seat can be laid entirely on RBG’s head. I wish I could recall how we exonerated those Democrat-hating voters in 2017, 2018, 2019 when right wing Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were cementing the 5-4 right wing Court and RBG was powerless. Did we tell them that having Gorsuch on the Court joining the hard right 5-4 majority instead of Merrick Garland joining a new 5-4 liberal majority led by RBG had nothing to do with Trump’s 2016 election but is all RBG’s fault for not retiring years ago? That is so illogical!
Did we tell those voters in 2017, 2018, 2019 and the first half of 2020 that having a 5-4 right wing Supreme Court majority for 3 1/2 years had absolutely nothing to do with them voting to prevent the Dem from filling a vacant seat?
Because RBG was probably going to die and make it a 6-3 right wing majority?
Why do we do this? Why do we reinforce the false narrative that considering the make up of the Supreme Court shouldn’t be a voting issue, because it won’t be the fault of the president, but the fault of the Supreme Court Justice being replaced?
Republicans do the opposite, which is probably why they win. They focus on telling their voters one thing — if you want a right wing Supreme Court, vote for a right wing Republican. In 2016, they didn’t blame Scalia for dying at the wrong time or not stepping down at the wrong time. The Republicans instead had a single message to their voters: This is an open seat and the Supreme Court is tied 4-4 and the next president will choose who fills it, and if you want it to continue to be right wing, vote for Trump.
While in 2016, our side make a confusing pitch in which we said that because RBG was still on the court instead of a different liberal justice, this election is no longer about which president fills a vacant Supreme Court seat with the court split 4-4. We told voters that because RBG was one of the 4 Justices on the Supreme Court and not some other liberal judge, they should feel free to ignore the Supreme Court as an issue in 2016. It made absolutely no sense. The
Republicans knew there was only one issue — which president did you want to fill a vacant seat with the court tied 4-4, and even people who didn’t like Trump voted for him because of that.
Meanwhile, too many voters on our side changed the message from “this is an election about who fills that vacant seat” to “this is not an election about who fills that vacant seat, because the real issue to talk about is that RBG is still on the court and she didn’t step down.”
We complain that the Dems are lousy at messaging and don’t see how we all help legitimize the right wing framing that completely undermines the message. I do it too, and try to catch myself when I realize how I have been propagandized.
The Republicans have a simple message: you want a right wing Supreme Court, vote for a Republican president. We should be saying if you want a progressive Supreme Court vote for a Democratic president. It’s true and it’s simple.
If Clarence Thomas steps down Republicans aren’t going to tell their voters that Biden replacing him with a liberal justice is Clarence’s fault. They are going to tell their voters that Biden replacing him with a liberal justice is because Biden won the election! They are going to reinforce that they must vote for the Republican to change this.
Imagine if every time a Republican said that elections have great impact on the Supreme Court which they know is an excellent way to get out the conservative voters, the rest of the Republicans shouted them down and said “stop talking about elections matter because we want to talk about how this is all Clarence Thomas’s fault for not retiring earlier.”
Republicans know not to undermine their most powerful messages to get out their voters by amplifying a message that makes people dislike Republicans and believe that their vote doesn’t matter.
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I didn’t scapegoat RBG.
I criticized her for not knowing when to quit.
She could have retired in the middle of Obama’s second term and he would have been able to replace her.
She was 87 years old and had survived several bouts with cancer.
She could have stepped down when she was 85. But she was greedy and held on to her seat.
She gambled that Obama would be replaced by Hillary.
Bad gamble. The nation lost.
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My 26 year old daughter and her friends are extremely upset about Ginsberg’s decision to stay on.
Ava is a very intelligent person and understands that there are other factors to be considered in what’s transpired since her death. An obvious is that Trump was elected. The snake slithering in the corner is McConnell’s stonewalling of Merrick Garland.
But RBJ’s decision did have its ramifications which have contributed to what we see, today. She didn’t think Obama would be able to find a suitable replacement:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/09/24/ruth-bader-ginsburg-obama-couldnt-appoint-an-acceptable-replacement-for-me/
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Gitapik,
RBG let her vanity overwhelm her judgment. Her admirers convinced her she was irreplaceable. She was replaced by Neal Gorsuch, staunch conservative. He’s supposedly the vengeance for his mother Anne, who was appointed EPA administrator by Reagan. She was so energetic in trying to throw out regulations that Democrats hated her and Reagan fired her.
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And that’s why Ava and her friends are disillusioned with her. She didn’t look at the bigger picture.
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“She could have stepped down when she was 85.”
Do you mean that RBG should have stepped down at age 81? She was 87 when she passed in 2020, but she would have had to step down before the Republicans won control of the Senate in 2014, when she was 81, since the Senate refused to hold any hearings or votes on Obama nominees once they won control at end of 2014. But I agree that if RBG had stepped down at the beginning of 2014 when she was still 80, the Democratic Senate would have had enough time to confirm her before the Republicans took control.
“She gambled that Obama would be replaced by Hillary.”
Or she gambled that the Democrats would hold the Senate in 2014, allowing her to retire in 2015 or 2016 and be replaced by Obama, and then she realized in January of 2015 that the Republicans would simply hold open her seat and use it as a powerful campaign tool, just like they did with Scalia’s vacant seat. Can you imagine if conservative Republican voters kept hearing that if they voted for Trump they could have TWO right wing Supreme Court Justices? Trump could have won in a landslide.
Because while the Republicans were saying “this election is about filling those two vacant seats” and making their voters determined to vote for the Republicans, the progressives would be campaigning on the message: “RBG was too greedy to step down in 2014 before Mitch McConnell and the Republicans took over and we need to talk about that so that no progressive voter feels any guilt about about voting against a Democrat to fill those 2 vacant seats.”
“Bad gamble. The nation lost.”
The nation ALREADY lost in 2016, when conservative voters were absolutely determined to vote for a Republican to fill an open seat with the Court divided 4-4, while too many progressive voters decided the Supreme Court didn’t matter. The nation ALREADY lost in early 2017, when right wing Justice Gorsuch was appointed by the Republican winner of the 2016 election and the Supreme Court maintained it’s 5-4 right wing majority.
Almost 4 years AFTER the nation lost because of the gamble some progressive voters made that they could vote against a Democrat because it wasn’t important to have a Democrat filling open Supreme Court seats, we learned that RBG’s gamble didn’t pay off. So it’s fair to say that the nation lost even more. In 2016, the nation lost because conservative voters cared very much who filled SCALIA’s vacant seat and some progressive voters did not. The nation lost hugely in 2016 – they lost the chance to repeal Citizens United and they lost the chance to end the far right control of the Supreme Court. The huge loss suffered in 2016 wasn’t RBG’s fault, since she was living and would live another 4 years during which the nation was greatly suffering from the 2016 loss.
RBG lost her gamble in 2020 and it definitely increased the great harm already done to this nation by progressive voters who almost 4 years earlier had gambled that preventing a Democrat from filling vacant Supreme Court seats was a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. They were wrong. It was a bad thing.
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I was as critical of progressives who didn’t support the Democratic candidate as you were and are. I wrote repeatedly about the danger of Trump to the Supreme Court and all the rights it protects.
That doesn’t stop me from criticizing RBG when she didn’t step down sooner so that Obama could replace a liberal with a liberal. She could have stepped down in 2014, before the midterms. She had had four bouts with cancer. Her survival was a serious question. If Democrats had held on to her seat, there would be a 5-4 split, not a 6-3 split.
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ABSOLUTELY AGREE. I live in California and our equity focused funding formula, the “Local Control Funding Formula,” or “LCFF,” that offers more dollars to districts that educate a disproportionate number of homeless, foster, poor and English Language Learner students, in actuality perpetuates and exacerbates concentration of these students in many districts. My county has 40 school districts with under 500,000 people, an extraordinary number of distinct districts, several with only 3-100 students, the largest with 15,000 students in 27 schools. A recent study to consolidate some of these school districts garnered great opposition for various reasons: major ones being that some districts would 1- no longer qualify for the extra state dollars due to a “dilution” of the percent of the neediest students, and 2-wealthier districts (per property taxes, which funds education) would lose the extra dollars they generate to fund themselves (if their tax base is above the threshold needed by California for school funding). These are disincentives to consolidate and keep the neediest students in pockets of school attendance with the unintended consequence of further segregation by race and class. As a school board member whose district asked for the consolidation study, we saw this Catch-22 issue immediately. As a principal in this district, I saw this on a daily basis, where funding structures designed to promote equity also created systems of failure in the disaggregate of individual schools and classrooms.
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YES!!!!!!! LET’S DO IT!!!!!!
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This is what’s up: Run a segment like this FOR TEACHERS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYOg8EON29Y
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A classic! I used this in a staff meeting many years ago.
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While our public schools are a most precious public asset, citizens should resist all forms of privatization. Privatization extracts value from regular citizens and transfers funds to wealthy interests. It undermines communities and contributes to our widening income inequality and debt. Wealthy interests are lobbying behind the scenes to gain access to any and all public services. It doesn’t help when a number of Democrats join in to undermine our public services and enable the transfer of wealth to the top socioeconomic tier. Privatization benefits the wealthy at the expense of working people that generally end up paying more for a worse service. Our private health care system is built to maximize profit while working people end up selling off their homes to shoulder medical debt. Our bloated military budget reflects the negative consequences of privatizing essential goods and services. It is a myth that private companies are superior to public services. This myth is part of the propaganda campaign to enable the takeover of public services. Privatization is a tool to lower wages for working people, crush unions and turn workers into at will employees with few rights or benefits.
Citizens need to squeeze and pressure representative Democrats. Unless they feel the pressure to respond to voters, many of them will continue to work for campaign donations and ignore citizens. They know that the GOP has gone off the rails so reasonable voters are left with little choice, and that lack of choice has resulted in working people losing something in every election cycle.
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We’ve been using the word privatization since at least 2010 and look where it gotten us. Nowhere. Public awareness still doesn’t understand what it entails. We need a new vocabulary if we are going to even contemplate action. The old vocabulary is meaningless.
So what is it that bonds privatizers with some examples in the news? What do they have in common with the “explorers” (analogous to “scholars”) whose hubris gets them killed and then sucks up public resources and attention? With Elon Musk, whose self driving Teslas and underground short cuts in Las Vegas and other locals? With the complete waste of resources for space tourism and public obligations it places on federal resources? Kobe Bryant’s helicopter slamming into a hillside? Billionaire’s Row in Manhattan? Legally sanctioned casinos and lotteries?
The insatiable quest for exclusivity. It’s the rhetorical umbrella that covers them all. Public resources, awareness, and media attention are disproportionately focused on the bells and whistles of exclusivity rather than public priorities. The world is focused on the fate of the folly of five ultra-wealthy persons in a stupid craft to sightsee something few can and then brag about it, all the while elevating sitting on an expensive kindergarten floor. Rather than invest in useful technologies or just do things like pay federal employees. Elon Musk’s entire brand is about creating individual exclusivity. How about focusing on safe, reliable national rail service and urban public transportation instead of how to park on the side of the road and go down an elevator to bypass a traffic jam. Every one of his “technologies” is built on the same philosophy.
Bryant’s helicopter, the obscenity at every level of Billionaire’s Row, and privatization of public education are all related by attitude and perspective. Privatizers want to make money on children’s education to make money that will allow them to send their children to exclusive schools that do none of the things they want to impose on the nation. And do their best to perpetuate the exclusivity.
DNC elites are a major part of the problem. Expecting them to do something is more remote than entering the Exclusivity Zone.
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About a dozen years ago, I had a conversation with a columnist at The NY Times and told her my concerns about privatization. She listened sympathetically. I asker her if she would write about it. Her answer: “The word ‘privatization’ puts my readers to sleep.”
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Diane and Greg My first thought about replacing “privatization” was a version of “kleptocracy” or “corporate kleptocracy.” They scream “freedom” all of the time, but it’s theirs, and freedom for everyone is on the line.
Part of the problem is that we’ve been at democracy for a long time now, and regardless of its many foibles, way too many still have no idea what we already have, much less that it’s in danger, or what it would be like NOT to have it. We need a revolution (again), . . . not away from democracy, but towards understanding what we already have in living in one. (In my view, January 6 was a manifestation of a gross misunderstanding of what that kind of revolution means.)
However, the problem of political lethargy is woven into the very structure of democracy. Take away kings, gods, or just powerful “authority figures,” and you have an historical authority vacuum. The locus of power moves from “from above” to “from below” … in the person, each of us.
Democracy is where a bunch of people, whose multiple leaders are all too human, and easy to be bought off, need to be educated towards integrity and where that means we are thoughtful, self-mastered, aka, self-ordered, self-controlled, collaborative and fundamentally mature, even loving. In our situation, however, too many powerful ingrates and idiots are trying to fill that vacuum. (Be careful what you wish for, Koch, Betsy, Leo, SCOTUS, for instance?)
But we still have small-d government, such as it is. The only “choice” then is between ba-ba-ba-boom: The Government . . . filled with as many intelligent people of integrity as we can find to fill the plethora of offices, and rule by the rich albeit often through octopi corporations, some of which actually do good for all–not easy to unravel without destroying what’s good about it.
I’m for the right kind of revolution, but then I hear that little voice in my head saying: Good Luck With That.
Speculating here: keep the word “privatization” or derivatives of it; but connect that word with a picture campaign of situations that reflect the horrible results of privatization juxtaposed with, e.g., obscene yachts and phrases like “THIS is Privatization.”
But if you need a new coverall word that has instant recognition for most who have no clue that the camel’s nose is under the tent, ask the poet, SomeDam. CBK
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I have had precisely the same experience over and over again. I have a good friend, an informed liberal, not one who goes overboard like us. We agree on virtually everything, but she will not abide any discussion of Dems and education. She thinks we should vigorously support public education but sees nothing wrong with experimentation. To her, charters are not THE problem, but a solvable problem; they can coexist in peace. She buys the Dem deformer line. So like I avoid discussions at all with cult now, when she and I talk politics, education is off the table. She will not see how it is essential to so many political issues.
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Can’t believe I left out most recent, most public example, the Supreme Court. That’s the most exclusive exclusivity. Only six available and at least half of them have been purchased already, maybe all six.
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It’s basically pilfering of public funds with a wink and a nod from Congress.
Both Republicans AND Democrats hand out billions of public funds to billionaires like Musk and Bezos, who use it for their latest vanity projects.
These people and their companies not only don’t pay anywhere near their share in taxes, but they continue to rake in billions in government subsidies (eg, in contracts with NASA and other agencies and in emissions credits and payment for highways that are used by Amazon ). Year after year.
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Who decided we should spend billions on putting humans on Mars, anyway?
What a complete waste of money.
What the NASA head will never mention is that getting to Mars is actually the easy part. Establishing a self sustaining outpost is harder — and more expensive — by orders of magnitude .
And for what purpose ? So a few people can survive when the human race extinguishes itself on earth. If we can’t get along here on earth in the land of plenty, there is no way in hell people are going to be able to get along in the harsh, resource scarce environment of Mars. There sill be incessant wars between the people living there and my guess is that even if colonies manage to eke out an existence, internecine conflict will wipe them out within a very short time.
So, all the money putting them there will have gone down a rat hole
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DBT did a song about something like that:
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I agree 100%. We need a vocabulary that rings true to the millions who continue to believe in their schools. Public education is so often reported as a failure while there are literally thousands of schools that do the hard work and provide opportunities for students. We have models for success throughout the public school biosphere that value autonomy, teacher support, and community engagement. Replicating such models throughout districts could have significant results.
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My colleagues and I have been involved in fighting these billionaires and offering alternatives to anyone who will listen for decades. I don’t believe it’s a lost cause. It’s, as you say, Paul, an uphill struggle. We’ll continue to battle. It’s just important to know what we’re up against.
As Diane mentioned about her interview with the Times correspondent: people aren’t interested in the word, “privatization”. Puts them to sleep (aka: loss of readership/$$$).
So I ask, “Why does the word not generate interest?” and, imo, the answer has to do with presentation. The large scale news outlets are owned and run by the wealthy and their subordinates/enablers. They run in the same circles as the privatizers. Similar interests in maintaining the status quo. We don’t see a lot of pro union/public schools articles or Op-Eds in the Times. NY or Washington.
So this makes getting the word out to the public more difficult. Add to that the need for campaign finance reform in politics and the hill we’re fighting on gets that much steeper.
I don’t see what I’m writing here as “doom and gloom” so much as information that a concerned parent/citizen should know about. And this education blog is the most widely read in the nation. Hopefully we reach a wider audience this way along with others.
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I agree. I see some young dynamism in Congress that we could tap into along with a willingness to step into middle America to show what this could look like. Like others have said on this thread, rebuttal serves little purpose. A vigorous advocacy is required.
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We can forget phone calls and letters to representatives. We need a more annoying form of activism, maybe a wall of shame for Democrats that support privatization or a score card for legislators. In the states people can work to get enough signatures to put public funds for public services on the ballot, similar to what abortion activists are doing in many states. We have to do something more than holding our noses and voting.
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With respect, we need more than phone calls and letters because they will be using failed arguments. We need a radical change in language, strategy and tactics. That calls for honest discussions about the role of the military in all parts of American society, from spending to use of public relations like surprising children with parents returning from duty. All of it is propaganda.
After that we need to put education at all levels, including old dogs learning new tricks, at the center of the policy debate.
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Yup. We need to stop the bleeding of public assets being transferred to private entities. https://inthepublicinterest.org/you-have-to-be-carefully-taught/
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Nicely done, Paul. There are many such ads that a political party that was a clear alternative to the Repugnican might run.
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Democrats have a problem: some or many within their ranks are supportive of charters, even vouchers. Corey Booker; Michael Bennett; Hakeem Jeffries; Jared Polis; Tony Evers; Josh Shapiro. Bill Clinton supported charters and high-stakes testing. He believed that these “reforms” were Third Way. Obama embraced No Child Left Behind and encouraged charter growth. The era from 2002-2021 was the “Bush-Obama” years. Obama made NCLB even more punitive.
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Yup. And they have a similar problem with regard to meaningful universal health care. And a similar problem with regard to gun control.
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And wow, Diane, what a great capsule summary!!!!
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“Obama made NCLB even more punitive.”
In retrospect, it was when you convinced me of this when I first read it in 2010-2011 that I first became aware of the gravity of your analysis. As I hope I make clear above, the tragedy of DNC and state party is the collective failure to recognize the central importance of education as an essential political issue worthy of effective messaging. It is long past time to fix this, and I fear that time will be longer still.
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I keep wondering how could NPE be a conduit to invite “flippable” politicians to reconsider their positions through a meaningful conversation with educators. I am really impressed with Jamal Bowman’s forcefulness and there are others in Congress such as Katie Porter who have a firm grasp on reality. Recruiting a critical mass of leaders could have a profound impact in this regard.
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And don’t forget the “liberal giant” Ted Kennedy couldn’t sign on to NCLB fast enough. The great irony of all of this is that elite schools like the ones Obama, the Bushes, and the Kennedy’s attended currently promote educational practice very similar to what is advocated on this blog while the legacies that think they know all simply believe reading proficiency and basic math skills are adequate for the masses. I have a sister who is a fund raiser for such a school that values the use of maker spaces and inquiry based on student interest. I have a daughter who teaches at an independent school after five years at a Title 1 middle school where an innovative teacher-centered principal was moved to a high school and replaced by a TFA “data is everything” alum. I know this mountain is high, but my question is how do we climb it.
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Good thing using the economy,
as a measuring tool, doesn’t
reinforce free-market hubris.
Good thing stragic incompetence
isn’t known to be the cause of
being late to the meaningful
change party.
Good thing all the retired
overseers NOW have the
“agency” to undo the shit
that happened during their
“watch”.
Good thing crazy, isn’t linked
to doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting
change.
Good thing political irrelevance
is negated by the use of stronger
adjectives.
Good thing the intellectual
legacy, established through
schooling, ensures a symmetry,
in the distribution of
benefit.
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What message should Democrats have for the good people in this video to motivate them to be public? Or at least discourage the nuts from being vocal and voting? (Truth in advertising: I graduated from a high school on the same street and less than a mile from where David Duke lived until the mid-1990s. He’s in in Mercedes Scheider’s neighborhood now.)
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GregB . . . a chart with two money flows:
ONE from taxes to public institutions and projects for all of “the people”, (like roads and bridge repair, education, etc.)
ONE from oligarchs (and from some oligarch-controlled taxes) to pet projects, propaganda, chandeliers in oligarch’s bathrooms, and stuff like quashing climate control, notably with another arrow pointing to “everyone else.” Small photos would be good. CBK
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Diane and All FYI, I thought this, which was sent today (with links), might be related this and some other threads. It’s about refugee services from the NLA group (National Literacy Association Adult Education Google Group):
ALL COPIED BELOW
HEADING: Good advocacy-related news from DC!
In this case, I want to share some news that isn’t about federal funding per se but about potential partners we might work with in our advocacy efforts. (I know what I’m about to describe isn’t such a new idea for some of you, but I wanted to give you a nice example.)
On a beautiful day on the grounds of the National Cathedral in DC yesterday, I attended the fourth annual “One Journey Festival” (https://www.onejourneyfestival.org/ ).
It was a gathering of individuals and organization involved in DC-area refugee services. These included:
— faith-based groups (from the National Cathedral congregation, Catholic Services, and others),
— a poetry-writing organization that worked with refugees to create a beautiful One Journey “Community Poem”
(OneJourney.TravelingStanzas.com) ,
— musicians and dancers from diverse countries, organizations selling refugee-made crafts, art, and yummy food),
— an Interfaith Power & Light organization whose “congregations are turning away from burning fossil fuels at home, in our communities, and across our region” (www.ipldmv.org),
— KAMA DC (a grassroots, volunteer-led organization in Washington, DC that provides a platform for immigrants to share their skills and stories”, https://www.kamadc.org/ ),
— Homes Not Borders ( https://www.homesnotborders.org/, which helps refugees access decent housing as well as other supports like job training that takes advantage of the considerable skills that refugees bring with them),
— St. Andrews Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral (which has a Humanitarian Center serving Ukrainian refugees, https://www.standrewuoc.org/), and
— the Washington English Center (www.washingtonenglish.org in which English language learners can “become part of a community of English learners, make new friends, learn about other cultures, gain confidence in speaking and writing in English, and take citizenship classes.”
As I observed and talked with the many good people at this festival, AFE-advocate me was naturally thinking about the common thread of “ESOL integrated with other supports” that was explicitly or implicitly embedded in the efforts of all the organizations and individuals present.
U.S. communities now have significant, growing populations of immigrants and refugees who could benefit from ESOL and other services, as well as many individuals and organizations who are trying to provide such services. These stakeholders all are potential partners for ESOL/AFE advocates. Participants on the AAACE-NLA group occasionally give examples (e.g., https://www.literacyjustice.org/ ) of concerted efforts to create coalitions of AFE providers and other stakeholder groups.
Can anyone else in this group give examples of how AFE advocates in your community are partnering with (and creating coalitions with) other organizations for advocacy and other purposes? Paul Jurmo
END QUOTED MATERIAL CBK
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Privatization is discussed without mentioning that the usurpation of government function and its accompanying taxes have made Catholic organizations the nation’s 3rd largest employer? How about addressing the increase in the Church’s power after voucher money enriches Catholic schools?
Guardian has an insightful article about Ireland in the period 1925-1961 (“A Stain on Ireland’s Conscience”- 6-25-2023). It’s the story about privately-run St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, under the direction of an order of nuns. The community member who exposed the very sad story of the, “hunger and neglect that afflicted the children of Tuam (Latin),” describes, “the prettier babies were put up for adoption – it was a money-making racket.” She describes the Catholic Church, subsequently, trying “to deny what happened …and lying.”
Future historians will review the U.S. during our period of history and recognize the covert power plays (and, enablers) that led to the takeover of schools, social services, pregnancy clinics, hospitals, etc. and the source of the wins against women’s and gay rights. The review will have had its parallel in those looking back in 2023, to document the white churches’ role in perpetuating slavery and, fascism in Germany and Italy during WWII.
Jefferson warned, in every age, in every country, the priest aligns with the despot. Americans should heed the warning and prohibit all tax dollars from going to religious sects and to fully tax their revenue sources.
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A Leonard Hitchcock post that would promote discussion at the Ravitch blog can be found at Idaho State News (8-26-2022), “What Alito and the Supreme Court Are Up To.”
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Democrats cozied up too close to Bill Gates, Reed Hastings, and the rest of the tech moguls, as well as Eli Broad, hedge fund managers, and the rest of the investment moguls. Democrats went from crats of the demos to crats of the pecunia. Even though tech billionaires are no longer widely (incorrectly) considered genius do-gooders, they still exert enormous influence over the Party. The Democratic Party’s biggest problem in the area of education remains Bill Gates. Flush him and everyone of his self-dealing foundation OUT.
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Democratic politicians get funding from Wall Street and others they should regulate
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You are correct This message, easily defended, would resonate with a high percentage of voters. Unfortunately the corporate DNC receives its lobbying funds from the health care, pharmaceuticals, and fossil fuel industries and not public institutions like the postal service and public education so they pay lip service to the destructive Republican policies against these important public institutions rather than fighting against them.
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The Dems would also find themselves in a sticky situation for another reason. Their campaign against the tyranny of privatization would expose the significant role that the Catholic Church and its almost 50 state Catholic Conferences are playing e.g. (1) the Catholic Conferences that have co-hosted with Koch’s AFP, school choice rallies in state capitols (2) the privatization activities of Notre Dame’s ACE (3) the rulings favorable to religious schools by the demographic – conservative Catholic jurists on SCOTUS (4) conservative Catholics who take credit for the initiation and enactment of school choice legislation in states, Florida and Indiana, to name a few, and, etc.
The Dems would have to be willing and able to counter the media’s false narrative about the Catholic Church as liberal.
That would require careful crafting so as to separate out the liberal Catholics in the executive, legislative and judicial branches (they are greatly different because they have no access to the right wing Church’s coffers nor well-honed political machine). The Dems would be slammed, mercilessly, by the tribalists. And, they could count on self-serving tribalists (witting and unwitting) for knee-jerk and false claims of anti-Catholic bias and that their “religious liberty” is under attack. Republican politicians rely on the emotionalism that can be drummed up from the pulpits.
Of all of the false flags perpetrated on Americans today, the religious “liberty” fraud, which is denial of rights for women and people who are gay, an embrace of social Darwinism, and indoctrination in patriarchy via religious schools is most egregious.
The substantial problem is that when an enemy is too feared to be named, a winning strategy is made more difficult. Currently, the Dem and Republican strategy is the guise that conservative Catholics aren’t driving the nation’s turn to the right. The narrative is that it is fundamentalist Christians which the public interprets as protestants of the Jerry Falwell brand. The focus should be on the Pat Buchanan, Ryan Girdusky, Neil McCluskey, EPPC, CUA, Robert P George, and Adrian Vermuele brand.
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I’d love to see this but, unfortunately, the education “reform” movement seems to be a bi-partisan effort. Red and blue reps are tied to the campaign contributions of the movers and shakers.
But wouldn’t it be nice to to have a PAC with that kind of money and clout, that would insist on this as a major part of the candidate’s platform?
If someone did run that ad (which is a very good one), I’d leave the “purse and ferver” part out. Especially the “purse”. Reagan started the push against taxes (for RICH and poor) (note emphasis on the former) and every administration since has just continued that drumbeat.
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lol! Nearly quarter million kids have left public schools in NYC because of dem policies. Forced masks vaccines, no accountability, lawlessness, 1619 projects, white privilege, gender identity etc. The party of 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮. Its not the 90’s dem party its a sick far left socialist party.
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I suspect that many Dem leaders as well as average Dem voters benefit from vouchers. Some may not wish to incur the wrath of the Catholic church. Although it seems like a no-brainer that Dems would stand up for public schools, they have actively worked against them in the past. There is obviously more to this story than meets the eye. I suspect it is money.
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Definitely: money is involved in the equation and all of your points are, to my point of view, valid and on target.
My focus, lately, has been on why we, as a society, have moved further and further apart in terms of “working together” for a common good. “Taxes” has become a forbidden word in politics. This privatization movement in education seems to be designed to play off of the self-serving aspect of our personalities.
I’d have thought that the pandemic would have created a stronger need/desire for us to come together for a common, public cause. But the intense resistance to masks and vaccines, fueled by politics (which, of course, translates to business interests), was pretty telling in what we could expect, coming out of the lockdowns. Same with climate change. These are large scale events which could be determiners of commensurate degrees of cooperation for the common good. But it seems that the big money interests are determined to put a cork on such movements.
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I am often reminded of Timothy Snyder’s first lesson (in “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century”): Don’t obey in advance. I think many people and even local governments get intimidated and then shy away from words/concepts like “taxes”, “public”, “equity”, “CRT”, etc. when they get hijacked by the authoritarians as if they were somehow unclean. We need to stand up for ourselves and one another and refuse to be othered by the alt-right cabal.
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Yep
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