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Swedish Expert: The Market System Is a Disaster for Students and for Sweden

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2023 //
19

Over the years, I have made friends on Twitter with educators and scholars in Sweden, who have generously provided me with analyses of Sweden’s free market of schooling. My friends, not surprisingly, agree that the introduction of “choice” and for-profit providers has been a disaster for schooling in Sweden. The outcome has been more socioeconomic segregation and an impoverishment of public schools. The following post was written by Linnea Lindquist, experienced educator and journalist.

THE SWEDISH SCHOOL SYSTEM

By Linnea Lindquist


I believe many in Sweden choked on their coffee when Lotta Edholm, the school minister from the Liberal Party, critically spoke about the school system in an interview with The Guardian. She stated, “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything.”

I have been a part of the school debate for several years and there has been a change in how politicians talk about the school system itself. I will return to this later in the text.

Sweden has one of the most extreme school systems in the world. Whether schools are run by municipalities, the state, or as independent entities, they are funded entirely by taxpayer money. It is the combination of per-student funding, free school choice, and unlimited profit extraction that makes Sweden’s school system unique (in a bad way) in the world. However, this is not enough. We also have free establishment rights for independent schools, meaning that anyone can apply to start a school. The state School Inspection Authority grants permission, but it is the municipalities that finance the schools. This means that municipalities have no control over the number of schools in their area. As a result, municipalities are forced to maintain many empty school places, diverting funds that could have been used for teaching to finance these empty spots. The problem is not that the municipalities have empty classrooms, the problem is a few empty chairs in each classroom.

Sweden has significant performance disparities between schools. While parents in neighboring Finland feel confident that the nearest school is among the world’s best, Swedish parents lie awake at night wondering which school to choose for their children. When students fail in school, the blame is placed on parents for making the wrong school choice.

Sweden has major problems with its school system, and in this text, I will try to explain the reasons for these issues and what needs to be done to solve them. Let’s start with how the school system is structured.

Market-Driven Schools


In most of Sweden’s 290 municipalities, schools are financed with a per-student funding model. This funding is not the student’s money to shop for education; it is merely a model for distributing money between schools. Legislation states that the funding should be equal for municipal and private schools. Private schools in Sweden are free of charge as they are financed by taxes. This means that if a municipality compensates its own schools with 100,000 SEK per student, it should also compensate independent schools with the same amount per student. One might think this is reasonable since all schools provide education.

However, in Sweden, we have a supply responsibility. What is the problem with that? I’ll try to explain.

We have compulsory schooling, meaning all students in primary education (ages 6-16) must attend school. The state has given municipalities the responsibility to ensure that all students have a school placement. This is known as supply responsibility. In turn, this means that municipalities must always be prepared to accommodate students who do not wish to continue studying in independent schools or if the independent school decides to cease operations. Independent schools are businesses and can shut down whenever they want. Municipalities must also have schools in all geographical areas since all citizens of a municipality do not live in the same geographical location. All this costs money, and since we have a principle of equal treatment, the municipalities receive zero compensation for these additional costs.

When independent schools are established in a municipality, it often results in a budget deficit for the municipality as it creates more empty school places. When they have a deficit, they have to spend more money than budgeted for at the beginning of the year. Then the per-student funding increases as independent schools must receive the same funding as the municipality’s schools. This results in what’s called the “independent school penalty.” Municipalities must compensate independent schools with the same amount per student that they have in deficit for all students attending independent schools. This creates new deficits and the negative spiral begins.

It is the principle of equal treatment in the School ordinance that leads to significant problems in the school market. In Sweden, we pay independent schools for a responsibility they do not have. Yes, I know you won’t believe me, but this is the foolish system we have in Sweden.

For an independent school to make a profit, they must operate at a lower cost per student compared to the municipality’s average. How do you cut costs easily? By employing fewer qualified teachers, serving cheaper food, and providing less teaching resources. Most importantly, one must have students that mainly come from academic homes. When you have students from academic homes, you can have larger group sizes and every additional student in a group, compared to the municipality’s average, is pure profit. It costs the same to educate a group of 20 and 25 students. The income is obviously much higher if you have 25 students per teacher as we have per-student funding. The cost of schools is 90 percent fixed since the largest expenses are rent and salaries. However, revenues are 100 percent variable because each student generates a per-student funding for the principal’s annual budget.

The per-student funding that municipalities pay to independent schools is something that a municipality can not control. It is up to the independent school what they use the money for and if it is a private company there is no demand for publicity due to competition legislation. The Swedish school system is entirely unregulated, meaning there are no requirements on the proportion of teachers, size of groups, or whether a school must have a cafeteria, library, or gymnasium.

I wrote initially that we have free establishment rights in Sweden. This means that schools are started even when there is no need for more schools. The state’s School Inspection Authority overrides the municipalities all the time. Municipalities express their views and describe to the School Inspection Authority that granting permission leads to cuts in the municipal education. The municipalities state that there are no needs for more schools and that school segregation will increase. Unfortunately, the state’s extended arm does not listen to those who are close to the schools runned by municipalities. Those who advocate the current school system argue that it is important for freedom of choice that we have free establishment rights. Anyone who knows anything about schools has by now understood that it’s not about freedom of choice. It has never been about freedom of choice.

The free establishment right, and what we will now come to – the free school choice, has never been about freedom of choice. The so-called freedom of choice reforms, implemented in the early 90s, were meant to legitimize school segregation. It’s not about choosing to – it’s about choosing not to. System-savvy and quick-footed parents were given the opportunity to avoid poor schools. Today, school choice is used to avoid schools where students have less-educated parents. Regardless of where in the school system the students are, a significantly higher proportion of students from academic homes attend independent schools. There are no independent schools that have a student base that matches that of the municipalities. I have not found any examples of this, and I have read 1,400 municipal school budgets and reviewed the statistics of hundreds of schools in cities with vulnerable areas.

Opinion


I initially wrote that public opinion has turned when it comes to market-driven schools. When I entered the school debate over five years ago, I was called a free school hater, an opponent of freedom of choice, and a communist every time I wrote about the problems with the school system. Now, politicians on the right side of the political spectrum have started using the words and concepts that I, and other critics of the school system, use when we describe the system’s flaws. It’s not the politicians who have changed the opinion; they have been forced to change their view of the school system due to public opinion. In Sweden, it is now political suicide to defend the current system. However, I don’t believe the politicians have changed their opinions, but they are forced to make changes in the system if they want to be re-elected in the next parliamentary elections in 2026.

Marcus Larsson and Åsa Plesner, who run the think tank Balans, have mapped the prevalence of lobbying in the welfare sector, especially in education. They have shown many examples of politicians being lobbyists in the independent school sector while holding political positions of trust. Sweden stands out when it comes to allowing politicians to sit on double or triple chairs. Several of those who created the market-driven school in the early 90s now own school corporations with high profitability.

If one wonders why the market-driven school remains, despite the majority of the Swedish population wanting change, one should look at the politician’s school-business. When politicians own school corporations and sit on boards for school companies, it is not hard to understand that they want to maintain the system. Lotta Edholm, the schoolminister, sat on the board of a school corporation until the day she took office as a minister. There are many examples of politicians having fingers in several pies.

The freeschool system is a threat to national security


The Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI has released a report titled “Foreign Investments and Ownership in Swedish Primary and Secondary Schools – A Study of Risks”. It’s authored by Maria Refors Legge, Alma Dahl, Michal Budryk, Helene Lackenbauer, and Jens Lusua. There are numerous ways an antagonist could influence the democratic education and rights of Swedish students, one being the acquisition of existing school authorities. This allows for rapid establishment across the country. If one aims to influence Sweden, reaching a large number of students is easier, but it also increases the risk of detection. The report offers several examples of how foreign owners or Swedish school owners who do not wish to operate schools based on democratic principles can function. They describe how schools can be used to counteract the integration of students and parents in vulnerable areas, maintaining and reproducing norms and values that are anti-democratic.

The report explains how the free choice of teaching materials can influence student values and support school ownership. The risk of being detected is relatively low, and if detected, one can continue operating a school, even if deemed unsuitable, by having all paperwork in order.

The report outlines various risks and our vulnerability in Sweden to foreign influence through our school system. There are risks in the free school system that could be exploited by a foreign owner with antagonistic intentions, such as influence operations undermining democratic values. The authors emphasize that the security risk is not due to foreign ownership of schools but rather how the Swedish free school system is structured.

Since it’s impossible to trace how school funding is used, authorities can’t intervene against an antagonist. School owners can use the school funding as they wish, and thus neither municipalities nor the state can control whether it’s used for anti-democratic purposes. The authors argue that the School Inspectorate and other supervisory authorities lull us into a false sense of security, having few tools to detect antagonists in the school system. This makes Sweden particularly vulnerable.

I shouldn’t say – I told you so, but I’m saying it anyway.

What’s stated in the report should not be news. We’ve known for many years that the school system is open to corruption and to foreign and anti-democratic forces. It’s astonishing that the security risk doesn’t come from foreign ownership of independent schools but from how we’ve structured the Swedish freeschool system. For 30 years, we’ve had an education system structure that’s a potential threat to national security. Swedish politicians should let this sink in.

Every time an antagonist is exposed, politicians scream for a more powerful School Inspectorate. It doesn’t matter how much the School Inspectorate, the Security Police, and other authorities check the independent schools. When we have a free-school system closed to scrutiny yet wide open to corruption, anti-democratic forces will use it for their own gain.

Believing that free school choice and freedom of choice would protect against corruption and anti-democratic school owners is naively lawful. Parents choose schools that match the values and norms they want to pass on to their children. Parents with children in schools run by anti-democrats think it’s good, otherwise, they wouldn’t have placed their children there. Rather, parents uphold and reproduce anti-democratic values through free school choice.

We have foreign owners of schools in Sweden that we probably don’t know about. Long chains of ownership, subsidiaries, and funds, combined with a lack of transparency, make us extremely vulnerable.

The worst thing in all this is that we have politicians who on one hand say that they are concerned about the terror threat, and on the other hand, they defend a free-school system which itself is a threat to national security.

In conclusion


When the Education Minister expresses herself in The Guardian with the words – “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything,” it is proof that she has been influenced by public opinion.

I don’t have high hopes for any system changing reforms. The government wants to limit profits, but anyone who knows anything about business economics knows there are many ways to circumvent profit restrictions.

The government wants independent schools to be more tightly controlled. Anyone who knows anything about the school system knows that you can’t control systemic errors. It’s the incentives that must be removed. This means that if we want independent schools to compete with quality, we must stop paying them for a responsibility they don’t have. Municipalities must be allowed to decide how many schools there should be in a municipality.

If we want freedom of choice in the school system, we must have admission rules that are common to all schools, regardless of who runs them. Therefore, the queues for charter schools must be abolished.

If the government wants order in the school system, they must open up those schools for scrutiny under the same principles as municipal schools. They must regulate lobbying and forbid politicians from sitting on multiple chairs at the same time.

I have worked as a principal in Sweden’s toughest areas for the past 12 years. Before that, I was a teacher in a particularly vulnerable area. I see segregation with my own eyes daily.

The consequences of the school market for students is clear.

I have a dream.


A dream that politicians will start making decisions based on what’s best for the children. I wish they would do more of what we expect of them, not the least they can get away with in the next election.

Björn Dahlman, a well-known teacher, author and school debater in Sweden, wrote a wise thing on Twitter, currently X ,a while ago. – “In Sweden, municipalities are punished for educating the students that privately owned schools can not make money on.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

To address the problems in the Swedish school system, we must:
– Rework the school funding system so that municipal schools are compensated for their supply responsibility.
– Abolish the free establishment right.
– Make school choices collectively. No queues.
– We should not allow foreign owners to Swedish schools. 
….to begin with. 

Why should we make these reforms? The answer is: for the sake of the students. It’s also for the sake of national security, future democracy and freedom of speech. If we want an education with high quality for all children and competence provision in the future, we need a school system without principles of market. 

To politicians in other countries, I have one thing to say to you: Don’t copy our school system. It’s a true disaster and a failure for the nation. Don’t go that way, please!

Thank you for reading this far.


Linnea Lindquist

If you want to read more from me, please visit my blog at www.rektorlinnea.com

Linnea Lindquist: @rektor_linnea

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, International, Segregation

Sweden: Education Minister Declares For-Profit Schools a Failure

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2023 //
14

Is it possible that we might learn from other countries’ experience of “school reform”? Why not start with Sweden?

The Swedish education minister just called for a major overhaul of Sweden’s all-choice system. Critics of the Education Minister believe that her reforms will have no effect “because it proposes that only when new, privatized schools have proved good effects/results for some years they would be able to take out a profit for owners/shareholders. But no one gets the money back the first years. So what?” (Sara Hjelm)

The consequences of widespread “marketization”have been bad for education and bad for Swedish society.

The Guardian reports:

Sweden has declared a “system failure” in the country’s free schools, pledging the biggest shake-up in 30 years and calling into question a model in which profit-making companies run state education.

Sweden’s friskolor – privately run schools funded by public money – have attracted international acclaim, including from Britain, with the former education secretary Michael Gove using them as a model for hundreds of new British free schools opened under David Cameron’s government.

But in recent years, a drop in Swedish educational standards, rising inequality and growing discontent among teachers and parents has helped fuel political momentum for change.

A report by Sweden’s biggest teachers’ union, Sveriges Lärare, warned in June of the negative consequences of having become one of the world’s most marketised school systems, including the viewing of pupils and students as customers and a lack of resources resulting in increased dissatisfaction.

Now Lotta Edholm, a Liberal who was appointed schools minister last year during the formation of Sweden’s Moderate party-run minority coalition, has launched an investigation into the issue which, she said, would oversee her plans for reform.

“It will not be possible [in the reformed system] to take out profits at the expense of a good education,” she told the Guardian at the ministry of education and research in Stockholm.

Edholm said she planned to “severely limit” schools’ ability to withdraw profits and to introduce fines for free schools that did not comply.

“It can’t be that the state pumps in lots of money so that you can improve your business and at the same time a portion of that money goes out to you as profits. That we will put a stop to,” she said.

The largest profits were made by upper secondary schools, known in Sweden as gymnasieskola, she said. “There it has been easier to make profits through having bad quality.”

There are thousands of friskolor – directly translated as “independent schools” but known as “free schools” – across Sweden, with a higher proportion in cities. About 15% of all primary schoolchildren (six- to 16-year-olds) and 30% of all upper secondary school pupils (16- 19-year-olds) go to a free school.

Edholm said she could not put a number on how many schools were experiencing these issues but said the problem lay in the system itself. “It’s not just a problem that it is a number of schools, but it becomes a system failure of everything.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, International, Vouchers

Watch This! Gloria Ladson-Billings Speaks at NPE Conference about Attacks on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2023 //
6

If you missed the 10th annual conference of the Network for Public Education, you missed some of the best presentations in our ten years of holding conferences.

You missed the brilliant Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor Emerita and formerly the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ladson-Billings gave an outstanding speech that brought an enthusiastic audience to its feet. She spoke about controversial topics with wit, charm, wisdom, and insight.

Fortunately, her presentation was videotaped. If you were there, you will enjoy watching it again. If you were not there, you have a treat in store.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, Network for Public Education, Parents, Privatization, Racism, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching

A Useful Guide to the Privatization Movement: Please Add Your Nominees!

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2023 //
5

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science and an expert on dark money in education elections, prepared A CITIZEN’S GUIDE TO SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION.

It is posted on the website of the Network for Public Education.

It is a glossary of the organizations and individuals who lead the effort to privatize education.

Please open the guide and see if you have names and groups to add. The GUIDE is meant to be built on the foundation created by Cunningham. Please send your suggestions. Are there groups active in your community that were not included? Send them to the Carol Burris at the Network for Public Education.

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org.

Carol will forward your tips to Maurice Cunningham for review and possible inclusion.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Fake, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers

Texas Suburb Removes Ban on Gender Roles in Student Production of “Oklahoma”

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2023 //
19

The school board of Sherman, Texas, was faced with a dilemma. The theater department of the high school had planned for months to put on a production of “Oklahoma,” a standby of American musicals. The cast was selected, the students built a set, the play was scheduled. But when the lead left the cast, the director replaced him with Max Hightower, a transgender student. The district superintendent promptly canceled the production; the set was demolished. But then something amazing happened.

The New York Times reported:

A school district in the conservative town of Sherman, Texas, made national headlines last week when it put a stop to a high school production of the musical “Oklahoma!” after a transgender student was cast in a lead role.

The district’s administrators decided, and communicated to parents, that the school would cast only students “born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.” Not only did several transgender and nonbinary students lose their parts, but so, too, did cisgender girls cast in male roles. Publicly, the district saidthe problem was the profane and sexual content of the 1943 musical.

At one point, the theater teacher, who objected to the decision, was escorted out of the school by the principal. The set, a sturdy mock-up of a settler’s house that took students two months to build, was demolished.

But then something even more unusual happened in Sherman, a rural college town that has been rapidly drawn into the expanding orbit of Dallas to its south. The school district reversed course. In a late-night vote on Monday, the school board voted unanimously to restore the original casting. The decision rebuked efforts to bring the fight over transgender participation in student activities into the world of theater, which has long provided a haven for gay, lesbian and transgender students, and it reflected just how deeply the controversy had unsettled the town.

The district’s restriction had been exceptional. Fights have erupted over the kinds of plays students can present, but few if any school districts appear to have attempted to restrict gender roles in theater. And while legislatures across the country, including in Texas, have adopted laws restricting transgender students’ participation in sports, no such legislation has been introduced to restrict theater roles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The board’s vote came after students and outraged parents began organizing. In recent days, the district’s administrators, seeking a compromise, offered to recast the students in a version of the musical meant for middle schoolers or younger that omitted solos and included roles as cattle and birds. Students balked.

After the vote, the school board announced a special meeting for Friday to open an investigation and to consider taking action against the district superintendent, Tyson Bennett, who oversaw the district’s handling of “Oklahoma!,” including “possible administrative leave.”

Suddenly, improbably, the students had won.

“I’m beyond excited and everyone cried tears of joy,” Max Hightower, the transgender senior whose casting in a lead role triggered the ensuing events, said in a text message on Tuesday. He and other theater students were at a costume shop on Tuesday, a class trip that had been meant as a consolation after the disappointment of losing their production. Instead, it turned into a celebration. “I’m getting new Oklahoma costumes!!” he said.

Before the school board vote Monday night, high schoolers and their parents had gathered at the district’s offices along with theater actors and transgender students from nearby Austin College. Local residents came to talk about decades of past productions at Sherman High School of “Oklahoma!,” which tells the story of an Oklahoma Territory farm girl and her courtship by two rival suitors. Many scoffed at the district’s objections to the musical, which school officials complained included “mature adult themes.”

“‘Oklahoma!’ is generally regarded as one of the safest shows you could possibly pick to perform,” said Kirk Everist, a theater professor at Austin College who was among those who came to speak. “It’s almost a stereotype at this point.”

Every seat in the room was filled, almost entirely with supporters of the production. Some lined the walls while others who were turned away waited outside. Of the 65 people who signed up to speak, only a handful voiced support for the district’s restrictions.

The outpouring came as a shock, even to longtime Sherman residents.

“What you’re seeing today is history,” said Valerie Fox, 41, a local L.G.B.T.Q. advocate and the parent of a queer high schooler. Ms. Fox said she was taken aback by the scene of dozens of transgender people and their supporters holding signs and flags outside the district offices. “This is one of the biggest things we’ve seen in Sherman.”

The town, a short drive from Dallas, has been a place where many conservatives have gone to escape the city. Some were supportive of the superintendent’s initial decision to restrict the musical.

“Adult content doesn’t belong in high school; they’re still kids,” Renée Snow, 62, said earlier on Monday as she sat with her friend on a bench outside the county courthouse. “It’s about education. It’s not about lifestyle.”

Her friend, Lyn Williams, 69, agreed. “It doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to stand up for anything anymore,” she said.

At a local shoe store, no one needed to be reminded of the details of the controversy. One shopper, shaking a pair of insoles, said that she believed that God made people either male or female, and that the issue was a simple as that.

Inside the courthouse, Bruce Dawsey, the top executive for Grayson County, described a rural community coming to terms with its evolution into a place where urban development is altering the landscape. Not far away, more than a half-dozen cranes could be seen towering over a new high-tech facility for Texas Instruments. The high school, with more than 2,200 students, opened on a sprawling new campus in 2021, its grass still uniform, its newly planted trees still struggling to provide shade. With all the growth, the school is already too small.

“The majority is Republican, and it’s conservative Republican,” Mr. Dawsey said. “But not so ultraconservative that it’s not welcoming.”

Still, some in and around Sherman have chafed at the changes. When Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for governor, campaigned through the county last year, he was met with aggressive protesters who confronted him over gun rights, some carrying assault-style rifles. A few wore T-shirts suggesting opposition to liberal urban governance: “Don’t Dallas My Grayson County.”

But the controversy over “Oklahoma!” came as a surprise. The musical had been selected and approved last school year, casting was completed in August and more than 60 students in the cast and crew — as well as dozens of dancers — had been preparing for months. Performances were scheduled for early December.

Max, 17, had been cast in a minor role. But then, in late October, one of the leads was cut from the production, and Max got the part, the biggest he had ever had. He was elated.

Days later, his father, Phillip Hightower, got a call from the high school principal, who told him that Max could not have the part because, under a new policy, no students could play roles that differed from their sex at birth. “He was not rude or disrespectful, but he was very curt and to the point,” Mr. Hightower recalled.

The district later denied having such a policy. But the principal also left messages for other parents whose children were losing their roles, one of which was shared with The New York Times.

“This is Scott Johnston, principal at Sherman High School,” a man’s voice said on the recording. “Moving forward, the Sherman theater department will cast students born as females in female roles and students born as males in male roles.”

The message diverged from the rules for high school theater competitions in Texas, which allow for students to be cast in roles regardless of gender.

The district did not make Mr. Johnston or the superintendent, Mr. Bennett, available for an interview.

In his previous role as an assistant superintendent, Mr. Bennett had objected to the content of a theater production by Sherman High School, according to the former choir director, Anna Clarkson. She recalled Mr. Bennett asking her to change a lesbian character into a straight character in the school’s production of “Legally Blonde” in 2015, and to cut a song entitled “Gay or European?”

At the school board meeting on Monday, theater students from the high school described how things had become worse for gay and transgender students at school since the production was halted. Slurs. Taunts. Arguments in the halls.

“People are following me around calling me girl-boy,” said Max.

Kayla Brooks and her wife, Liz Banks, arrived at the meeting bracing for a tough night. Their daughter Ellis had lost a part playing a male character, and they had been actively working with other parents to oppose the changes.

“We were both nervous, because we live in Sherman,” said Ms. Banks. Then they saw the large, supportive crowd outside. “We began weeping in the car,” Ms. Brooks said.

The school board sat mostly stone-faced as dozens of people testified in support of the theater students, sharing personal histories. A transgender student at Austin College said he had not before come out publicly. Sherman residents lamented the way the school district’s position had made the town look.

“I just want this town to be what it can be and not be a laughingstock for the entire nation,” one woman, Rebecca Gebhard, told the board.

After nearly three hours, the board went behind closed doors. The crowds left. Few expected a significant decision was imminent.

Then, after 10 p.m., the board took their seats again and introduced a motion for a vote: Since there was no official policy on gender for casting, the original version of the musical should be reinstated. All seven board members voted in favor, including one who had, months before, protested against a gay pride event.

“We want to apologize to our students, parents, our community regarding the circumstances that they’ve had to go through,” the board president, Brad Morgan, said afterward.

Sitting in their living room on Tuesday morning, Ms. Banks and Ms. Brooks recalled how their daughter delivered them the news. “She just said, ‘We won,’” Ms. Brooks said. “She was beaming, smiling ear to ear.” The musical would be performed in January.

The couple decided, for the first time, to hang a pride flag in the window of their home. For now, they felt a little more confident in their neighbors than they had a day before.

Categories Arts Education, Bigotry, Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Gender, Parents, Students, Texas

Mideast: Deal to Exchange Some Hostages for Prisoners Seems Near

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
4

David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post about a possible release of a significant number of hostages seized on October 7 from Israel. The youngest is a 10-month-old baby.

TEL AVIV — Israel and Hamas are close to a hostage deal that would free most of the Israeli women and children who were kidnapped Oct. 7, according to a high-ranking Israeli official. The agreement could be announced within days if final details are resolved, he said.

“The general outline of the deal is understood,” the Israeli official explained in an interview Monday, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. The tentative agreement calls for Israeli women and children to be released in groups, simultaneously with Palestinian women and young people held in Israeli prisons.

Israel wants the release of all 100 women and children taken from Israel, but the initial number is likely to be smaller. Hamas has indicated it is ready to release 70 women and children, according to a statement by one of its officials on the group’s Telegram channel cited by Reuters on Monday. The number of Palestinian women and young people who might be released is unclear, but an Arab official told me last week that there were at least 120 in prison.

A temporary cease-fire of perhaps five days would accompany the exchange of hostages and prisoners, the Israeli official said. This truce would allow safe travel for the Israeli captives. It could also permit more international assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and should ease the humanitarian crisis there, the Israeli official explained.

President Biden voiced strong U.S. support for a hostage deal in a call Sunday expressing personal “appreciation” to the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, whose nation has acted as mediator with Hamas. “The two leaders agreed that all hostages must be released without further delay,” a White House statement said.

A temporary cease-fire of perhaps five days would accompany the exchange of hostages and prisoners, the Israeli official said. This truce would allow safe travel for the Israeli captives. It could also permit more international assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and should ease the humanitarian crisis there, the Israeli official explained.

President Biden voiced strong U.S. support for a hostage deal in a call Sunday expressing personal “appreciation” to the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, whose nation has acted as mediator with Hamas. “The two leaders agreed that all hostages must be released without further delay,” a White House statement said.

U.S. officials hope a hostage-release agreement and temporary truce could reduce the international uproar surrounding the war. Israel won’t agree to end its campaign to destroy Hamas’s military power. But officials here recognize the need to assist Palestinian civilians whose situation has become desperate.

U.S. officials hope a hostage-release agreement and temporary truce could reduce the international uproar surrounding the war. Israel won’t agree to end its campaign to destroy Hamas’s military power. But officials here recognize the need to assist Palestinian civilians whose situation has become desperate.

Israel wants confirmation that its people held captive, each identified by name, are being released as it exchanges the Palestinian prisoners. This process of verification is one of the details that officials were still negotiating Monday.

Israel’s negotiation with Hamas has been conducted indirectly through Qatar, where Hamas’s political leadership is based. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani outlined the mediation effort in an interview with me last Wednesday in Doha. The next day, he met with CIA Director William J. Burns and David Barnea, director of Israeli intelligence service Mossad, to discuss the framework that now appears to be near a final package.

Mossad has worked closely with Qatar and the CIA in shaping the deal. Israeli officials appreciate Qatar’s help, but they want the Qataris to exert their influence on Hamas to release its captives, rather than just mediate. Egypt has also played a helpful role in encouraging the negotiations and pressuring Hamas, Israeli officials believe.

Release of Israeli women and children would be a first step toward what Israel insists must be freedom for all hostages in Gaza. The high-ranking Israeli official said that a total of 240 to 250 hostages are being held. Most of them are Israeli citizens, including some dual nationals who are also citizens of the United States, Germany and other countries. About 35 are non-Israeli foreigners, most of them Thais who were working in Israel, the official said.

The Israeli official said his government is committed to freeing all the hostages, including roughly 90 male civilians and a smaller group of soldiers, whom Hamas probably sees as the most valuable. “We want as many as possible, as quickly as possible, and no one stays behind,” the official stressed.

Hamas has told the Qataris that its operatives seized only Israeli soldiers, but the Israeli official said this claim is false. Hamas holds the “vast majority” of the hostages, including a small number of dead bodies that were taken into Gaza by the terrorists, the Israeli said. Some hostages are kept by other groups, in disparate locations, but Hamas has the power to negotiate for nearly all of them, he argued. One smaller group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad holds about 35 captives, and a militia known as the “shabiha” and other smaller groups hold a few dozen more, the high-ranking Israeli said.

The hostages are a bitter, daily reminder for Israelis of the agony of the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7. The Israel Defense Forces formed a special task force, headed by retired Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, to coordinate activities to free them, according to Israeli news reports.

“Bring them home” is a national passion for Israel. Pictures of the captives line the main entry hall at Ben Gurion Airport, to remind arriving passengers of the hostages’ plight. In the border towns and kibbutzim where many of them lived, their names and faces are displayed in vivid banners.

The next few days will be delicate, as Israelis hold their breath waiting for the first group to be freed and united with their families — and worrying about those who will remain captive. After the pause, the brutal reality of the war will resume — and the Biden administration will remain torn between its support for Israel and its growing concern about the plight of Palestinian civilians.

Categories Accountability, International

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Embraces Fascist Language and Policies

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
29

Heather Cox Richardson points to Donald Trump’s plain-spoken fascism. Believe him.

She writes:

In a speech Saturday in Claremont, New Hampshire, and then in his Veterans Day greeting yesterday on social media, former president Trump echoed German Nazis.

“In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day [sic] we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream…. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

The use of language referring to enemies as bugs or rodents has a long history in genocide because it dehumanizes opponents, making it easier to kill them. In the U.S. this concept is most commonly associated with Hitler and the Nazis, who often spoke of Jews as “vermin” and vowed to exterminate them.

The parallel between MAGA Republicans’ plans and the Nazis had other echoes this weekend, as Trump’s speech came the same day that Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times reported that Trump and his people are planning to revive his travel ban, more popularly known as the “Muslim ban,” which refused entry to the U.S. by people from some majority-Muslim nations, and to reimpose the pandemic-era restrictions he used during the coronavirus pandemic to refuse asylum claims—it is not only legal to apply for asylum in the United States, but it is a guaranteed right under the Refugee Act of 1980—by claiming that immigrants bring infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

They plan mass deportations of unauthorized people in the U.S., rounding them up with specially deputized law enforcement officers and National Guard soldiers contributed by Republican-dominated states. Because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doesn’t have the space for such numbers of people, Trump’s people plan to put them in “sprawling camps” while they wait to be expelled. Trump refers to this as “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

Trump’s people would screen visa applicants to eliminate those with ideas they consider undesirable, and would kick out those here temporarily for humanitarian reasons, including Afghans who came here after the 2021 Taliban takeover. Trump ally Steve Bannon and his likely attorney general, Mike Davis, expect to deport 10 million people.

Trump’s advisors also intend to challenge birthright citizenship, the principle that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen. This principle was established by the Fourteenth Amendment and acknowledged in the 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court decision during a period when native-born Americans were persecuting immigrants from Asia. That hatred resulted in Wong Kim Ark, an American-born child of Chinese immigrants, being denied reentry to the U.S. after a visit to China. Wong sued, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court agreed. The children of immigrants to the U.S.—no matter how unpopular immigration was at the time—were U.S. citizens, entitled to all the rights and immunities of citizenship, and no act of Congress could overrule a constitutional amendment.

“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Trump immigration hardliner Stephen Miller told the New York Times reporters. “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”

In addition to being illegal and unconstitutional, such plans to strip the nation of millions of workers would shatter the economy, sparking sky-high prices, especially of food.

For a long time, Trump’s increasingly fascist language hasn’t drawn much attention from the press, perhaps because the frequency of his outrageous statements has normalized them. When Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 referred to many Trump supporters as “deplorables,” a New York Times headline read: “Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers ‘Deplorables,’ and G.O.P.* Pounces.” Yet Trump’s threat to root out “vermin” at first drew a New York Timesheadline saying, “Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction.” (This prompted Mark Jacobs of Stop the Presses to write his own headlines about disasters, including my favorite: “John Wilkes Booth Takes Visit to the Theater in a Very Different Direction.”)

Finally, it seems, Trump’s explicit use of Nazi language, especially when coupled with his threats to establish camps, has woken up at least some headline writers. Forbes accurately headlined yesterday’s story: “Trump Compares Political Foes to ‘Vermin’ On Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda.”

Republicans have refused to disavow Trump’s language. When Kristen Welker of Meet the Press asked Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel: “Are you comfortable with this language coming from the [Republican] frontrunner,” McDaniel answered: “I am not going to comment on candidates and their campaign messaging.” Others have remained silent…

The Right’s draconian immigration policies ignore the reality that presidents since Ronald Reagan have repeatedly asked Congress to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws, only to have Republicans tank such measures to keep the hot button issue alive, knowing it turns out their voters. Both President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have begged Congress to fund more immigration courts and border security and to provide a path to citizenship for those brought to the U.S. as children. They, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, have tried to slow the influx of undocumented migrants by working to stabilize the countries from which such migrants primarily come.

Categories Elections, Fascism, Trump

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Is Trump Our Mussolini?

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
24

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of History at New York University who specializes in European history, especially Italy, and authoritarianism. On her blog Lucid, she has chronicled Trump’s flirtation with authoritarianism, and she now sees him openly endorsing it.

She writes:

Former President Donald Trump REALLY does not want you to call him a Fascist. Being compared to old-school dictators such as Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini makes him and his handlers crazy: he even sued CNN for defamation over this issue (a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the lawsuit). So why is he using Fascist rhetoric?

If you’ve read the news lately, you’ll know that Trump went to New Hampshire on Veterans Day and delivered a news-making speech that included a “pledge” to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

As I argued in a recent Lucid essay, violence is now Trump’s brand. To that end, he conjures existential threats to the nation from non-White immigrants and an expanding cast of internal enemies, calls the thugs who are in prison for assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6 “political prisoners,” and praises autocrats such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin who depend on propaganda, corruption, and repression to stay in power.

All of this is part of his effort to re-educate Americans to see violence as justified, patriotic, and even morally righteous.

But to get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. That’s what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the “black parasites of the nation” in a 1920 speech. By the time Hitler got into power in 1933 and translated dehumanizing rhetoric into repressive policies, Germans had heard these messages for over a decade.

As a historian of autocracy with a specialization in Italian Fascism, the use of the “vermin” image got my attention. Mussolini used similar language in his 1927 Ascension Day speech which laid out Fascism’s intention to subject leftists and others to “prophylaxis” measures to defend the Italian state and society from their nefarious influences.

By the time Il Duce delivered this landmark address, the dictatorship had been in place for two years, and opposition politicians and the press were in prison or had gone into exile. That did not stop him from talking about killing “rodents who carry infectious diseases from the East: the East that brings us lovely things, such as yellow fever and Bolshevism.”

Mussolini loved to make jokes in his speeches to Parliament, and this one elicited laughter —or so says the official transcript. He is speaking about actual rats but, as the Bolshevism comment makes clear, also about Communists. “We remove these individuals from circulation just like a doctor does with an infected person,” he concluded chillingly about leftists and other targeted categories of people.

Trump’s recent comment about undocumented immigrants “polluting the blood of our country” is in the same vein, as are the ideas circulating among his 2025 advance team to deport millions of immigrants and “quarantine” others in massive camps.

Typically, Trump and his advisors took exception to being called out for deploying Fascist rhetoric, resorting to threats that simply strengthened the case against them. As the Washington Post reported, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung had this to say about those (like me) who make such comparisons: “their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

Only later did Cheung apparently realize that using Fascist language was unhelpful and claimed that he meant to say their “sad, miserable existence” instead of their “entire existence” —whatever that means.

Some will note that Trump includes Fascists as well as Communists among the “vermin” to be “rooted out” of America. This is classic authoritarian doublespeak. He has to set himself up as the bearer of freedom against all forms of tyranny, even as he signals to left and right-wing autocrats that he will be their staunch ally if he manages to win his “final battle” and return to the White House.

“When two irreducible elements are locked in a struggle, the only solution is force,” Mussolini said on Jan. 3, 1925, as he declared the start of dictatorship in Italy. America may never become a one-party state on the classic Fascist model, but Trump and his GOP enablers carry forth this Fascist mentality. We must take their speech seriously as declarations of intent to wreck American democracy and engage in persecution on a large scale as part of that process.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fascism, Trump

Politico: House Republicans Want Deep Cuts to Education Funding

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
4

Political parties show their true colors when they offer a budget. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives just showed that they don’t care about funding education. They especially don’t care about funding schools attended by poor kids. They want to slash Title I—the most important federal funding for poor kids—by 80%. Remember that the next time that Republicans cry crocodile tears for poor kids.

Politico reported:

HOUSE TAKES UP EDUCATION FUNDING AS SHUTDOWN LOOMS: As House leaders wrangle votes for a stopgap measure to head off a shutdown at the end of the week, House Republicans are also turning to longer-term appropriations for education programs. The House is set to consider on the floor this week Republicans’ education funding bill that would make deep cuts to federal education programs, including drastic reductions to aid for low-income schools.

— What’s in the bill: The GOP bill to fund the Education Department for the 2024 fiscal year would provide $67.4 billion of new discretionary funding, a reduction of about 15 percent compared with 2023. But the bill would also rescind more than $10 billion of funding for K-12 education that was already approved by Congress, bringing the overall cut to the Education Department to about 28 percent from fiscal 2023.

— Among the most drastic proposed GOP cuts would be the $14.7 billion reduction to federal spending on low-income school districts under Title I, an 80 percent reduction. Democrats say that funding level would translate into 220,000 fewer teachers in classrooms across the country.

— The bill also includes policy riders that would block a slew of Biden administration education policies, such as its overhaul of Title IX rules and new student loan repayment program known as SAVE. The bill would also end the administration’s safety net program that eliminates most penalties for borrowers who miss their monthly payment for the next year.

— The GOP’s top-line funding levels for education won’t survive negotiations with the Democrat-led Senate and White House. A bipartisan proposal by Senate appropriators calls for keeping overall spending on education at roughly the same level as 2023. Biden’s budget requested a 13.6 percent increase.

— But the vote on making deep cuts to funding for schools could put some moderate House Republicans in a tough spot and hand Democrats some election-year messaging fodder.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Poverty, U.S. Department of Education

“In Texas, the Only Good Voucher Bill Is a Dead One”

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2023 //
8

The Houston Chronicle published a stunning editorial denouncing the voucher legislation that Governor Abbott demands. Abbott has called four special sessions of the Legislature, and so far rural Republicans have blocked vouchers. Now the Governor threatens to run a candidate in the primary against every Republican who opposes vouchers. Why the pressure? To satisfy two billionaires.

The editorial board writes:

In March, when Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the state’s new school voucher program into law, she repeated several talking points that advocates use to justify using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school tuition.

“We’ve seen how the status quo condemns Arkansans to a lifetime of poverty,” said Sanders. “We’re tired of sitting at the bottom of national education rankings.”

Arkansas tried to avoid the pitfalls of some other states’ voucher programs. Participating private schools would have to select a standardized test to use — a small measure of, if not accountability, at least transparency. Likewise, the schools must prove they are accredited or working toward accreditation. And the state set eligibility requirements that should have helped target funds toward the neediest students, including those in foster care, enrolled in failing public schools, experiencing homelessness or living with a disability.

But in the first annual report on the program since its launch, the state found that of the more than 4,700 participants, nearly all were either new students enrolling in kindergarten or existing private school students.

The promise of transforming the lives of poor students trapped in failing public schools hasn’t materialized. Instead, the state has taken on significant new costs to fund both existing public school students and voucher recipients.

SPECIAL SESSION: School vouchers, border bills fall short as Gov. Abbott calls fourth session

From what we can see, Texas lawmakers — whom Gov. Greg Abbott called abruptly back into special session Tuesday for the fourth time this year — have worked to craft school voucher bills that also seek to avoid some of the worst abuses seen in other states. Bills have included some degree of required testing, fraud guardrails, effective enrollment caps and prioritization for lower-income students and those with disabilities. There have also been sweeteners for folks planning to stay in public schools: an increase in the per-student allotment and one-time teacher bonuses, among others. As voucher bills go, the House version proposed last special session was one of the most palatable around.

It still wasn’t good enough for Abbott, who continues to push for a more universal program.

And it isn’t good enough for us, either. Because there is no such thing as a good voucher bill. Not the bill passed by the Senatethat would create $8,000 vouchers nor the one that, for the first time this year, made it through the House committee Friday that would offer students $10,500 annually to attend private schools. Even seemingly benign or narrowly tailored bills have a way of ballooning in cost and generating underwhelming results.

Not only have wide-scale voucher programs largely failed to produce resounding academic improvements for participants, states have consistently seen the programs benefit existing private school students, whose parents most likely could already afford the tuition. They don’t really benefit the struggling public school students often used to sell them.

In Arkansas, restrictions meant to target students with disabilities have been almost meaningless after the state lowered its standards for approval. Investigative reporting there revealed that some of the 44% of students who were granted vouchers based on disabilities had as little as a doctor’s note worth of documentation. Here in Texas, the current House version — an omnnibus school spending bill with education savings accounts wedged inside like a booby trap waiting to spring — makes clear that students who are currently in private schools would still be eligible for the voucher.

TOMLINSON: Texas school vouchers would be financially ruinous, fundamentally unfair or quite likely, both

Then there’s the price tag. The estimated price of the Senate’s voucher program put forward in the previous session was $500 million for the first year.

But buyer beware, that’s just the first year. What voucher advocates want is a foot in the door. And within two or three budget cycles, the number of participants will soar and — more than likely — all those careful (or not so careful) restrictions meant to narrow the program would disappear.

“They’re telling you you’ve got an interest free payment: You can sign up to get vouchers for the next, say, two, three budget cycles. And then the price tag really comes due,” said Josh Cowen, a policy analyst and professor of education policy at Michigan State University. He has been following voucher bills — often nearly identical ones — working their way through state legislatures and sees a cautionary tale in Arkansas.

While some districts may feel the loss of public funding, the real threat, Cowen explains, is that this program will end up helping existing private school families. Meaning the state — and you, dear taxpayer — will be on the hook for two systems.

There are many reasons to oppose vouchers: They don’t guarantee academic improvements; they’ve been shown to increase segregation; they don’t protect the legal rights of students with disabilities in private schools that can discriminate against them; they use public dollars to support private and often religious instruction.

Lawmakers can nip and tuck to address some concerns. But there’s not much they can do to make vouchers less economically disastrous or to slake the thirst of deep-pocketed, pro-voucher advocates pouring in buckets of dollars. Those Wilks and Dunn types aren’t funding this because they want to help low-income students escape failing public schools. They want a universal program that undoes the power of the public school as a secular, accountable, publicly funded institution.

CARTOON EXPLAINER: Austin’s the new Kremlin! A guide to vouchers and puppet masters Wilks and Dunn.

Some want to use carrots to lure lawmakers. Others prefer a stick, threatening to primary out those rural Republicans who have stood up time and again for their communities and against vouchers. There’s a reason this is so hard. It’s clear that, after decades of bipartisan rejection, Texans don’t want this voucher scheme.

So why are we on the verge of passing it, of making the same mistake as Arkansas and other states?

State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, said it best amid the marathon testimony that opened the latest special session: “All this for one man and two billionaires.”

Only Abbott, Wilks and Dunn will benefit if bipartisan opposition crumbles. Texas public schoolchildren and taxpayers will lose.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Rural Schools, Texas
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