Archives for the year of: 2023
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner: House GOP Remains Loyal to the Big Lie

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2023 //
28

How to explain the radicalization of the Republican Party? It just chose a defender of the Big Lie as Speaker of the House. Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner explain:

The drama around a speakerless House of Representatives has come to an end, at least for the moment. It has been a sad spectacle, to be sure, but the means by which it was resolved, and what it augurs for the future, offer no reason to celebrate.

Quite the contrary.

If the elevation of Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson to the speaker’s gavel with unanimous Republican support counts as compromise within the party’s caucus, it reinforces what we already knew — this nation faces grave threats to its constitutional order, because one of our two major political parties has embraced autocratic extremism.

This is not hyperbole. The person who rallied his party to make him second in line to the presidency was a cheerleader for the end of American democracy. There should be no normalization of this fact.

In the wake of President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, the vast majority of the Republican Party fell in line behind Donald Trump’s attempts to destroy one of the most sacrosanct features of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. We all know what came next, including a violent attempted coup that swarmed the Capitol on January 6. On that day, 139 Republican members of the House of Representatives (including Johnson) voted not to certify the election. It marked arguably the greatest threat to the continuation of the republic since the Civil War.

The new speaker of the House might not be well known by the American public. But he was an influential leader of the movement to deny the will of the people and their selection of president. In late 2020, Johnson pushed House members to sign on to a lawsuit, filed by Texas, that would have thrown out the votes in key battleground states — in essence disenfranchising millions of Americans. To call this ridiculous legal maneuver “fringe” is insufficient. This wasn’t just “out there.” This was the legal equivalent of orbiting Pluto. Even the reactionary right-wing Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

But the purpose of the lawsuit wasn’t just to deny Biden the presidency. It was to delegitimize a legitimate election. And all you have to do to understand how successful this movement has been is to see Mike Johnson now sitting in the speaker’s chair.

It should be noted that Johnson holds the speakership despite espousing extremely radical views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. He also seems to be following Trump’s lead in wanting to stymie U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. That these views were not disqualifying for a single Republican member — including those purported “moderates” who come from districts Biden won — shows how the party marches in lockstep with radicalism and in the opposite direction of where a majority of Americans want the nation to go.

In the days before Republican elected officials crowned an architect of authoritarianism to lead the House, several of the Trump lawyers who helped orchestrate the specious legal rationale for the coup were busy pleading guilty in the conspiracy case of election interference in Georgia. Georgia, it turns out, was one of the states where Speaker Johnson wanted votes to be thrown out.

In their plea deals, the Trump lawyers had to admit what was obvious from the beginning: All the attempts to steal the election were built on lies. The rule of law seems to be closing in on Trump. And it is being fueled by the truth.

Yet the Big Lie continues to fuel Republicans outside of the courtroom, and especially in the halls of Congress. This puts our nation in peril. We are at a point where the very thing that should most disqualify someone from political leadership in America — the desire to destroy our democracy — has become the litmus test for the speaker of the House.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Republicans, Trump

Politico: The New Speaker of the House is Deeply Conservative

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2023 //
15

The Republicans in the House of Representatives finally united to elect Rep. Mike Johnson as the new Speaker of the House. Johnson was elected to Congress in 2016. He was a leading figure in the effort to overturn the election in 2020. He gathered signatures among his colleagues to support an appeal by the Texas Attorney General to the U.S. Supreme Court to disqualify the votes cast in contested states. The Court didn’t hear the case, ruling that Texas did not have standing to reverse the results in other states.

So, yes, Johnson is an election denier. Less well known are his deeply conservative views on social issues. He opposes abortion and gay marriage. As a representative of oil country, he dismisses claims that fossil fuels contribute to climate change.

Politico wrote about Johnson:

BROADCAST NEWS — It’s finally over. After more than three weeks without a leader, House Republicans came together to unanimously select Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as the 56th Speaker of the House of Representatives. Johnson served as a consensus pick among the numerous factions, appeasing both the right flank of the party that tossed out former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and moderates. While he’s served as vice chair of the Republican Conference, he has served just four terms in Congress and remains little-known within Washington.

What’s clear, however, is that Johnson is a social conservative’s social conservative — the most culturally conservative lawmaker to ascend to the speakership in decades, if not longer.

He has longstanding ties to the evangelical activist group Family Research Council — which could one day prove discomfiting to members from swing districts or of a more secular orientation.

His first brush with national prominence came in April 2015, when Johnson, then a Louisiana state legislator, proposed a bill called the Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act that would have prevented “adverse treatment by the State of any person or entity on the basis of the views they may hold with regard to marriage.” Critics called it legalized discrimination against married gay couples, and the bill failed, but the media attention got him on the radar of the influential FRC and its president, fellow Louisiana native Tony Perkins.

Perkins, who hosts a national radio show called Washington Watch, began tapping Johnson to guest host. Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, appeared to be a natural — by December 2015, local Shreveport, La. ABC affiliate KTBS said he “may have a budding second career on the airwaves.”

The FRC and Perkins are political lightning rods among non-evangelicals — some of Perkins’ stances, like his argument that natural disasters are divine punishments for homosexuality, don’t sit well with broad swaths of the electorate. But Johnson’s political and religious beliefs dovetail with Perkins’ views. In a 2004 op-ed, Johnson argued that “homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural… society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle.”

When he ran for Congress in 2016, Johnson placed his faith at the center of his campaign, telling the Louisiana Baptist Message, “I am a Christian, a husband, a father, a life-long conservative, constitutional law attorney and a small business owner in that order.”

His connection with Perkins — and his interest in evangelical radio as a political tool — continued after he was elected to the House in 2016. As a freshman lawmaker, Johnson announced his bid to lead the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus that currently counts 156, on Washington Watch with Perkins. He won the election.

Johnson used the skills he sharpened on talk radio and in televised FRC interviews to start a weekly podcast in 2022 with his wife, called “Truth be Told with Mike and Kelly Johnson.”

During the first episode in March 2022, entitled “Can America be Saved?” Johnson says that “we’ll review current events through the lens of eternal truth,” and noted that in each podcast they intended to incorporate a themed scripture because “the word of God is, of course, the ultimate source of all truth.” Guests have included Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Charlie Kirk and Jordan Peterson.

On occasion, Kelly Johnson will tee up her husband for an answer. “Why are we the freest, most powerful, most successful, most benevolent nation in the history of the world, and why does every other nation on the planet look to us for leadership and even expect it of us?” she asks in one episode. Her husband responds explaining that America is the only country in the world founded upon a creed, or a “religious statement of faith.”

As a matter of fact, Kelly Johnson is wrong. The Constitution of the United States does not include a creed or a “religious statement of faith.” It specifically mandates freedom of religion and prohibits the establishment of any religion. It also bars any religious test for officeholders.

Mike Johnson is an evangelical Christian whose strong personal views are bound to affect his political views and actions.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Extremism, Gender, Religion, Republicans, Trump

A Hero for Public Schools in Texas: James Talarico

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2023 //
6

James Talarico is a state legislator in Texas who stands up for public schools. He is a Democrat who supports gun control and expanded health care (he calls it “health care for y’all)”). He graduated from public schools in Round Rock, Texas, then earned his BA at the University of Texas and his MA in education policy at Harvard. He joined Teach for America and taught at a middle school in San Antonio, where his class had 45 students.

I’m usually skeptical about TFA teachers, but knowing Gary Rubinstein—an early TFA corps member—has taught me not to be so judgmental.

Talarico is a phenomenon. He’s an effective, outspoken opponent of vouchers. If you are still on Twitter (aka X), watch his powerful debunking of voucher myths. Vouchers are not “school choice,” because schools choose, and they can discriminate against anyone they want, for any reason.

Talarico recently co-sponsored a bill called “Fully Fund Our Schools,” which increases funding for the state’s public schools and provides a $15,000 raise for every teacher. Texas can afford it; the state has a $33 billion budget surplus.

Politico wrote about Talarico a few months ago and suggested that he might be the Democrat who is able to win a statewide office. He might run against Greg Abbott for governor in 2026. Talarico Represents a better future for Texas.

Talarico is a devout Christian. As the Politico story explains, he is taking classes at a seminary and hopes to be ordained as a pastor. He is steeped in Biblical knowledge, and he can respond to bigoted evangelicals and fundamentalists with the sense of love, hope, kindness, and charity that represents progressive Christian thought.

For his leadership, for his determined support for the public schools attended by 5 million students, for his enlightened support for progressive values, I am pleased to add James Talarico to the honor roll of this blog.

Categories Courage, Education Industry, Honor Roll, Texas, Vouchers

The Atlantic: IDF Shows Video from the Terrorists’ Cell Phones

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2023 //
33

Hatred is corrosive. It dehumanizes its perpetrators, as well as its victims. The Israel Defense Forces collected the contents of body cameras worn by terrorists on October 7. It showed these videos to journalists. One who saw the display was Graeme Wood of The Atlantic. I hope and pray that Israel does not invade Gaza. The bloodshed on all sides would be horrendous. I pray for Netanyahu’s ouster. I pray for peace. The Biden administration has been pursuing negotiations in order to free the hostages and avert a wider war. I pray for the President’s success and am glad that he is in charge of our foreign policy at this woeful moment.

Wood describes what he saw:

This afternoon, at a military base north of Tel Aviv, the Israel Defense Forces held a grisly matinee screening of 43 minutes of raw footage from Hamas’s October 7 attack. Members of the press were invited, but cameras were not allowed. Hamas had the opposite policy on cameras during the attack, which it documented gleefully with its fighters’ body cams and mobile phones. Some of the clips had been circulating already on social media in truncated or expurgated form, with the footage decorously stopped just before beheadings and moments of death. After having seen them both in raw and trimmed forms, I can endorse the decision to trim those clips. I certainly hope I never see any of the extra footage again.

It was, as IDF Major General Mickey Edelstein told the press afterward, “a very sad movie.” Men, women, and children are shot, blown up, hunted, tortured, burned, and generally murdered in any horrible manner you could predict, and some that you might not. The terrorists surround a Thai man they have shot in the gut, then bicker about what to do next. (About 30,000 Thais live in Israel, many of them farmworkers.) “Give me a knife!” one Hamas terrorist shouts. Instead he finds a garden hoe, and he swings at the man’s throat, taking thwack after thwack.

The audience gasped. I heard someone heave a little at another scene, this one showing a father and his young sons, surprised in their pajamas. A terrorist throws a grenade into their hiding place, and the father is killed. The boys are covered in blood, and one appears to have lost an eye. They go to their kitchen and cry for their mother. One of the boys howls, “Why am I alive?” and “Daddy, Daddy.” One says, “I think we are going to die.” The terrorist who killed their father comes in, and while they weep, he raids their fridge. “Water, water,” he says. The spokesman was unable to say whether the children survived.

The videos show pure, predatory sadism; no effort to spare those who pose no threat; and an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims. In several clips, the Hamas killers fire shots into the heads of people who are already dead. They count corpses, taking their time, and then shoot them again. Some of the clips I had not previously seen simply show the victims in a state of terror as they wait to be murdered, or covered with bits of their friends and loved ones as they are loaded into trucks and brought to Gaza as hostages. There was no footage of rape, although there was footage of young women huddling in fear and then being executed in a leisurely manner.

Edelstein said that the IDF chose to show the footage out of necessity. It is not every day that snuff films of Jews are shown at an IDF screening hall. (The original site of the screening was a commercial theater, which would have been even worse.) “What we shared with you,” Edelstein said, searching for words, “you should know it.” And he said he struggled to understand how some journalists could present the IDF and Hamas as comparable. This footage would refute that false equivalence.

“We are not looking for kids to kill them,” he said. “We have to share it with you so no one will have an idea that someone is equal to another.”

To me the most disturbing section was not visual at all. Like the clip of the father and his boys hunted in their pajamas, it was upsetting in part because it showed a relationship between parent and child. The clip is just a phone call—placed by a terrorist to his family back in Gaza. He tells his father that he is calling from a Jewish woman’s phone. (The phone recorded the call.) He tells his father that his son is now a “hero” and that “I killed 10 Jews with my own hands.” And he tells his family, about a dozen times, that they should open up WhatsApp on his phone, because he has sent photographs to prove what he has done. “Put on Mom!” he says. “Your son is a hero!”

His parents, I noticed, are not nearly as enthusiastic as he is. I believe that the mom says “praise be to God” at one point, which could be gratitude for her son’s crimes or pure reflex, indicating her loss for words to match her son’s unspeakable acts. They do not question what their son has done; they do not scold him. They tell him to come back to Gaza. They fear for his safety. He says, amid rounds of “Allahu akbar,” that he intends “victory or martyrdom”—which the parents must understand means that he will never come home. From their muted replies I wonder whether they also understand that even if he did come home, he would do so as a disgusting and degraded creature, and that it might be better for him not to.

Graeme Wood is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters With the Islamic State.

Categories Education Reform

A PAC That Seeks to Win Local School Board Seats for MAGA Candidates

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2023 //
2

I received a fund-raising appeal from a group giving money to MAGA school board candidates. It’s called the 1776 Project PAC, and its goal is to elect conservatives to local school boards. Be aware of them. They have this loopy idea that local school boards are controlled by Marxists. Ah, the good old days of 1776, when women couldn’t vote, and most Blacks were enslaved.

“So you’re trying to offset what George Soros has been doing for 30 years by influencing local elections?”

“Maybe you should stop and consider writing a check to Ryan Girdusky, [Founder of the 1776 Project PAC]”

– Tucker Carlson

“I am a fairly large donor to the 1776 Project PAC, which focuses on school board races and has shifted over 100 school board races in the last year…They’re doing an excellent job.”

– Ben Shapiro

“Help is on the way from a new political action committee called the 1776 Project PAC!”

“All politics is local… This is how you win back the country!”

– Laura Ingraham

“All three candidates won their race… And they were endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC.”

– Glenn Beck

“Now there’s a way for patriots like you and me to fight back.

Allow me to introduce you to the 1776 Project PAC”

“No other organization is doing what Ryan Girdusky and the 1776 Project PAC are doing”

– Ann Coulter

“That’s why the 1776 Project PAC’s mission is so important.

For the first time ever, conservatives have a true grassroots organization, fueled by patriots like you, to fight back against shady leftist billionaires in schools.”

– Liz Wheeler

“That’s why the 1776 Project PAC is different from any other group out there…”

– Donald Trump Jr. 

“That’s why I believe we need to fight back TODAY by investing in local school board races across the country. This is where my friend, Ryan Girdusky, founder of the 1776 Project PAC comes in.”

– Rep. Jim Banks

“I’m grateful that 1776ProjectPac helps elect pro-parent and pro-family candidates for school board. These seats are critical. And there’s no more important fight than keeping Marxism out of schools.”

– Sen. Tom Cotton

The 1776 Project PAC is the most successful conservative school board PAC in the country, taking back our schools from the radical left one race at a time…

We’ve already tallied over 130 victories nationwide. Flipping schools boards from LIBERAL TO CONSERVATIVE…

Now our biggest election day EVER is one month away on November 7, 2023 and we need your help to support over 120 brave conservative school board candidates.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Republicans, Trump

A “Culture of Fear” Does Not Encourage Great Teachers or Successful Students

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2023 //
8

Michael McDonough retired last year after more than 30 years as a teacher, principal and administrator in the Houston Independent School District. He has spoken to many of his former colleagues, and they have described a “culture of fear” created by state-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles. McDonough is speaking out because he is free to do so. He can’t be fired. This article appeared in The Houston Chrinicle.

McDonough writes:

For over 30 years, I served the Houston Independent School District in a variety of capacities, including teacher, coach and administrator. I worked as a secondary principal for 18 years across three different campuses — Pin Oak Middle School, and Westside and Bellaire High Schools — and was recognized for excellence in leadership multiple times. I retired from HISD last year, before the state takeover, after a public disagreement with the previous administration.

I still care deeply, though, for the district and its students and teachers. As a resident of the district, I had hoped for the best with our new superintendent, Mike Miles. But that’s not what I’m seeing.

One of the most important leadership lessons I’ve learned is that an organization is in trouble when its most passionate people grow quiet. Through my conversations with former HISD colleagues, it has become clear to me that under Miles, a culture of fear prevents them from speaking up about valid concerns…

The current state of the district is not sustainable. In addition to HISD’s documented financial challenges, it’s short on an even more critical commodity: human capital. Similar to other districts, we simply do not have enough great people.

You can’t fire your way to improvement, and causing employees to flee isn’t much better. Instead, we should commit our scarce resources toward growing and strengthening our best people, and make our decisions based on what serves them. That is the surest path to excellence and a high-performance culture.

Experience has taught me that to keep our best people, a fair salary is a must. But that’s not enough. The leader we need now must understand all the facets of a high-performance culture, one that empowers teachers to create a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for students. This same high-performance culture provides spaces for teachers to experiment, innovate, and reflect on their practice so they can continue to develop. The current administration’s one-size-fits-all approach fails in each of these areas.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, Disruption, Fake, Houston, State Takeover, Students, Teachers, Texas

Jan Resseger: Why I Am Looking Forward to NPE Conference This Weekend

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2023 //
4

Jan Resseger is a dedicated supporter of public schools. She has a deep understanding of the role that public schools play in building community and strengthening democracy. she is coming to the Network for Public Education conference in D.C. this weekend. There is still time for you to register!

Jan Resseger writes:

Many of us will be traveling to Washington, D.C. next weekend for the 10th Anniversary Conference of the Network for Public Education. We will have an opportunity to greet friends and colleagues, listen to experts examine today’s attack on public schooling, and strategize about confronting the opponents of our society’s historic system of free and universal public education.

As well-funded interests like Moms for Liberty try to invade local school boards, as the Heritage Foundation, EdChoice, the Bradley Foundation, Koch and Walton money, and Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children support a school voucher revolution across the state legislatures, and as state legislators in many places obsess over test scores without grasping the human work teachers and students must accomplish together, we will gather to strategize about strengthening support for the public schools that remain the central institution in most American towns and neighborhoods.

There will be keynotes from Gloria Ladson-Billings, former chair of urban education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Becky Pringle, President of the NEA; Randi Weingarten, President of the AFT; Diane Ravitch, and several other prominent speakers. Participants will also be able to choose from among more than 40 workshops:

  • sessions exploring strategies and messaging to fight school privatization—including reports from Indiana, Florida and Arizona on vouchers; sessions on problems with charter schools in Pennsylvania and Texas; and a workshop on constitutional issues around religions charter school;
  • workshops addressing the need to overcome far-right attempts to hijack school boards including the fake grassroots parents’ groups funded by far-right philanthropy; reports on advocates working in a number of communities to engage parents as local school board advocates; and several Florida school board members sharing their experiences as their school boards were taken over and politicized;
  • discussions exploring the long impact of test-and-punish school reform including workshops examining state takeovers in several districts including this year’s state seizure of the Houston, Texas Public Schools; and a session about efforts to rid the Denver Public Schools of Portfolio School Reform;
  • conversations helping advocates support the retention and recruitment of teachers in these difficult times when, after COVID, many have blamed teachers for test scores and discipline problems, and when teachers’ autonomy has been undermined and their salaries remain low;
  • sessions to develop skills for coalition building, one of them from California stressing the need to build joint parent-teachers union coalitions; another from Wisconsin on statewide parent organizing; and other workshops emphasizing coalition building with communities of faith to preserve the Constitutional protections for religious liberty;
  • conversations helping advocates better frame and articulate an agenda to undermine racism, protect a diverse curriculum, and focus on students’ needs;
  • workshops celebrating full-service, wraparound Community Schools and strategizing to expand the number of Community Schools; and
  • discussions of specific issues: support for early childhood education, the need to protect student privacy, and the danger of outsourcing the work of education support professionals to private contractors.

As a blogger and an Ohio resident who worries about the diversion of public school funding to our state’s new universal vouchers, however, I am also looking for some broader help than any one of these specific workshops can provide. While it is possible to identify the forces unraveling support for public education, I struggle to find adequate language to articulate why the public schools we have taken for granted for generations are so important. I will be grateful at this conference to listen as experts name the essential role of the public schools in our diverse, democratic society. I will be listening as presenters and advocates emphasize these core principles.

Here are three examples of people writing about or speaking about what public schooling can accomplish. First from the late political theorist Benjamin Barber is a rather complex but also important declaration about school privatization as an expression of radical individualism in contrast with public education as an institution in which the public can protect citizens’ rights: “Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics. It puts us back in the state of nature where we possess a natural right to get whatever we can on our own, but at the same time lose any real ability to secure that to which we have a right. Private choices rest on individual power… personal skills… and personal luck. Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities, and presume equal rights for all… With privatization, we are seduced back into the state of nature by the lure of private liberty and particular interest; but what we experience in the end is an environment in which the strong dominate the weak… the very dilemma which the original social contract was intended to address.” (Consumed, pp. 143-144)

Second, William Ayers updates John Dewey’s 1899 declaration in The School and Society: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.” Here is how, in an essay in the 2022, Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, Ayers defines the kind of public education that every American child today ought to have: “Every child has the right to a free, high-quality education. A decent, generously staffed school facility must be in easy reach for every family. This is easy to envision: What the most privileged parents have for their public school children right now—small class sizes, fully trained and well compensated teachers, physics and chemistry labs, sports teams, physical education and athletic fields and gymnasiums, after-school and summer programs, generous arts programs that include music, theater, and fine arts—is the baseline for what we want for all children.” (Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, p. 315)

Third, Jitu Brown, the Chicago community organizer who now leads the national Journey4Justice Alliance, will be a presenter again at this year’s Network for Public Education conference. My notes from one of the earlier conferences quote Brown rephrasing in another way Dewey’s formulation about what public schooling must accomplish: “We want the choice of a world class neighborhood school within safe walking distance of our homes. We want an end to school closings, turnarounds, phase-outs, and charter expansion.”

I am looking forward to next week’s conference. In addition to all the practical strategy sessions and great keynotes, I hope we will actively be sharing our continued confidence in the foundational values represented by our American system of public schools—publicly funded, universally available and accessible, and guaranteed by law to meet each child’s needs and protect all children’s rights. School privatization cannot move our society closer to these goals. Although we will need to work doggedly to ensure greater equality of opportunity and to continue to improve our public schools, they remain the optimal educational institution for the investment of our efforts and tax dollars.


https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2023/10/24/why-i-am-looking-forward-to-next-weekends-network-for-public-education-conference/

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Supporting public schools

Florida: DeSantis’ Ally Gets $1.3 Million to Lead State’s Smallest College

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2023 //
16

New College is the honors college of the state university system. It cared too much about race and gender, so Governor Ron DeSantis grabbed control by appointing hard-right conservatives to the New College board of trustees. The new board fired the President, a respected scholar who earned $350,000 a year and replaced her with politician Richard Corcoran, who served as Speaker of the House and State Commissioner of Education. He has no experience in higher education, but is an enthusiastic proponent of charters and vouchers, as well as DeSantis’ ally in fighting “woke,” liberalism and progressivism.

His charge is to turn this small bastion of progressivism into a small bastion of conservatism.

The New College Board voted to give him a five-year compensation package of salary and bonuses that may total $1.3 million, equal to that of the president of the University of Florida, which enrolls 61,000 students. New College has about 800.

So far, Corcoran has succeeded in driving out one-third of the faculty and has abolished diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, as well as gender studies. He has established athletic teams and is recruiting athletes.

Mel Brooks said in his film “A History of the World, Part 1,” that “It’s good to be the king.” In Florida today, it’s good to be a crony of DeSantis.

Categories Academic Freedom, Curriculum, DeSantis, Florida, Higher Education

Carol Burris: Fleecing the Taxpayers! Write Your Senator Now!

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2023 //
6

Carol Burris writes here about a new legislative proposal, co-sponsored by some Democratic Senators, to shower millions of dollars on organizations that promote or planet new charter schools, including religious charter schools. This is a ripoff of government funds. Write your Senator now to kill this bad proposal..

Burris writes:

Eight senators (Bill Cassidy [R-La.], John Coryn [R-Tx], Cory Booker [D-NJ], Tim Scott [R-SC], Michael Bennet [D-CO], Mike Braun [R-Ind], Maggie Hassan [D-NH], Brian Schatz [D-HI]) introduced a bill last week that was clearly written with the help of the charter lobby. The Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act would allow billionaire-funded nonprofits operating as “state entities” to keep more of a cut when dispersing Charter School Program (CSP) grants. The bill would also allow these “state entities” to award up to $100,000 to would-be charter entrepreneurs, including religious organizations, to pre-plan a charter school before they have even submitted an application to an authorizer.

Send your letter to your senator to oppose the charter lobby’s bill today. Click HERE.

As we documented in our reports, CSP planning grants have led to enormous waste and fraud. NPE found that millions of CSP dollars have gone to school entrepreneurs who never opened a school—confirmed by the Department of Education and the GAO. That is why the 2022 reform regulations we supported put some modest guardrails on how and when planning grants could be spent.

That did not sit well with the charter lobby, led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which persuaded these eight Senators to make it even easier to get funding to pre-plan a school. 

But it gets worse.  This bill would also increase the funding state entities can keep for themselves when they disperse grants. That cut is already at 10%. This bill would raise it to a whopping 15%. 

Here is an example that shows the impact. The Opportunity Trust is funded by millionaires and billionaires, including the Walton Family Foundation and The City Fund, which itself was funded by billionaires Reed Hastings and John Arnold. It just received a $35,555,557.00 Charter School Program SE grant to open more charter schools in Missouri, even though the St. Louis School Board and the municipal government have made it clear they do not want more charter schools in the city. Charters are only allowed in St. Louis, one unaccredited district, and Kansas City, which their application failed to mention. 

The democratically elected school board of St. Louis just passed a resolution asking the U.S. Department of Education to rescind the grant, stating, among other objections, that the Opportunity Trust lied in its application regarding its working relationship with the district. The one charter school in the unaccredited district that Opportunity Trust opened has been a financial disaster. 

Yet, The Opportunity Trust can currently keep more than $3.5 million for administering grants and “technically assisting” charter grantees. This new bill would allow Opportunity Trust to increase the amount it can keep to more than $5.3 million. 

In addition, the bill would allow the Opportunity Trust to award nearly $1.8 million to would-be charter entrepreneurs to pre-plan schools in a city where they are not needed or wanted. This June, St. Louis Today exposed how three present and former executives of the controversial Kairos Academy, an Opportunity Trust-sponsored school, double-dipped to receive over a half million dollars to “plan” the charter school even while receiving a full salary from their public schools. Two of the three have already left the charter school. 

Shockingly, the Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act would not only encourage such double-dipping, it would also increase the funding stream.  

At the beginning of the CSP, only state education departments could receive these large grants. However, the charter lobby worked to change the law so that nonprofits like Opportunity Trust could also control who gets the money and keep a share for themselves. 

Half of the 2023 CSP SE awards went to organizations like Opportunity Trust—nonprofits that advocate and lobby for charter schools and are unaccountable to the public. 

Contact your Senators today. Stop the charter school lobby’s new attempts to fleece American taxpayers and undermine public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion

Oklahoma: State Attorney General Sues to Block Religious Charter School

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2023 //
13

Gentner Drummond, the Attorney General for Oklahoma, sued to block the authorization of a Catholic charter school. Drummond disagrees with Governor Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters. Even the lobbyists for the charter movement oppose the religious charter school, which is a back door voucher.

Sean Murphy of the AP reported:

Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond on Friday sued to stop a state board from establishing and funding what would be the nation’s first religious public charter school after the board ignored Drummond’s warning that it would violate both the state and U.S. constitutions.

Drummond filed the lawsuit with the Oklahoma Supreme Court against the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board after three of the board’s members this week signed a contract for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit states.

The school board voted 3-2 in June to approve the Catholic Archdiocese’s application to establish the online public charter school, which would be open to students across the state in kindergarten through grade 12. In its application, the Archdiocese said its vision is that the school “participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out.”

The approval of a publicly funded religious school is the latest in a series of actions taken by conservative-led states that include efforts to teach the Bible in public schools, and to ban booksand lessons about race, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Oklahoma’s Constitution specifically prohibits the use of public money or property from being used, directly or indirectly, for the use or benefit of any church or system of religion. Nearly 60% of Oklahoma voters rejected a proposal in 2016 to remove that language from the Constitution…

Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who earlier this year signed a bill that would give parents public funds to send their children to private schools, including religious schools, criticized Drummond’s lawsuit as a “political stunt.”

“AG Drummond seems to lack any firm grasp on the constitutional principle of religious freedom and masks his disdain for the Catholics’ pursuit by obsessing over non-existent schools that don’t neatly align with his religious preference,” Stitt said in a statement.

Drummond defeated Stitt’s hand-picked attorney general in last year’s GOP primary and the two Republicans have clashed over Stitt’s hostile position toward many Native American tribes in the state.

The AG’s lawsuit also suggests that the board’s vote could put at risk more than $1 billion in federal education dollars that Oklahoma receives that require the state to comply with federal laws that prohibit a publicly funded religious school.

“Not only is this an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty, but it is an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars,” Drummond said in a statement.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a nonprofit organization that supports the public charter school movement, released a statement Friday in support of Drummond’s challenge.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Resistance
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »