Archives for the year of: 2023
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Trump Plans to Increase Power of the President If Re-Elected

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
54

The New York Times describes a frightening plan developed by Donald Trump’s administration-in-waiting to consolidate power in the President’s hands. The plan would give the President direct control of independent agencies. Trump believes he didn’t accomplish his goals because the “deep state” restrained him.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

In addition, every federal employee would serve at the pleasure of the President.

He intends to strip employment protectionsfrom tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country…”

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Houston: Teachers Strong-Armed into Joining Mike Miles’ Reform Plan

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
5

Josephine Lee of the Texas Observer interviewed teachers in Houston and learned that teachers are being railroaded into joining the plans of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles.

Lee writes:

In the packed cafeteria of Pugh Elementary School Tuesday evening, Houston Independent School District (HISD) Superintendent Mike Miles worked hard to sell his wholesale campus reform program, called the New Education System (NES), to a resistant crowd, some holding signs that read “Our Children, Our Schools.” Miles boasted that 57 campuses had voluntarily opted into the program.

“They love this,” Miles said. “That’s why teachers at 57 schools volunteered.”

As part of the state’s takeover of HISD—which ousted an elected school board and replaced its leadership with a board of managers and a superintendent handpicked by State Education Commissioner Mike Morath—Miles has previously said that 150 HISD schools would be under the NES by 2025. In March, the Texas Education Agency seized control of HISD, citing past failures to meet state standards at one high school. In addition to the schools that opted in, another 28 were required to participate because the schools are elementary and middle schools with students who “feed into” three high schools with lower accountability ratings.

NES originates from the Third Future Schools, a charter school network Miles founded. It requires teachers to teach from a scripted curriculum. The district will decide campus schedules, staffing, and budgets. Students who are considered disruptive are pulled out of the classroom to attend via Zoom. In addition, Miles has promised teachers support for grading, making copies, small-group instruction, and a stipend of $10,000. Salary schedules for teachers at what he calls “NES-aligned schools,” or those that opted in, will remain the same while teachers at NES-mandated schools receive a salary bump and have to reapply for their jobs. As part of the sweeping changes, last Friday Miles eliminated up to 600 administrative positions from the central office.

Since the Texas Education Agency appointed Miles to lead the school district, he has faced community protests by citizens opposed to the state agency’s takeover. But he has maintained that schools are embracing his changes.

But interviews, email correspondence, and audio recordings of campus meetings that the Texas Observer obtained contradict Miles’ public relations message that there is widespread teacher support for his program. Teachers, parents, and community members from nine of the 57 schools we spoke to said they had no opportunity to weigh in; teachers were threatened with losing their jobs if their campus did not join the program.

“Our hours will change. Our schedules will change. Our curriculum will change. But we have no input in it,” said Michelle Collins, a teacher at DeZavala Elementary School. “Neither do parents.”

According to the state education law, a Shared Decision Making Committee (SDMC) composed of parents, community representatives, teachers, other campus personnel, and a business representative is required to be “involved in decisions in the areas of planning, budgeting, curriculum, staffing patterns, staff development, and school organization.”

While Miles has publicly asked principals to obtain school input, SDMC committee members from five schools in the program confirmed with the Observer that they never met to discuss the issue. SDMC members and teachers from other schools reported that even when they did meet, they did not have a vote in the decision. One teacher said their staff voted not to opt in, but then later saw their school’s name included in the list of 57 schools in the news.

HISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Observer will update this article if they do.

In an audio recording of Wainwright Elementary School’s SDMC meeting held July 10 and shared with the Observer, Principal Michelle Lewis told committee members, “If you’re not willing to dive in and do this with us, then this is not the campus for you.” No teacher representatives attended the meeting.

Categories Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston

North Carolina: Vouchers Fund Schools That Discriminate Based on Religion, Disability, LGBT Status

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
12

Justin Parmenter, a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina, is concerned that vouchers in his state will go to private and religious schools that discriminate when they choose their students. Republicans in the Legislature have a super-majority since a teacher elected as a Democrat—Tricia Cotham—betrayed her voters and flipped parties. Republicans ca pass whatever they want without fear of a veto. Would you want your tax money to fund a school that would not accept your own child or one where teachers speak in tongues?

He wrote recently:

As this year’s legislative session hits the homestretch, public education advocates are waiting to see whether proposed changes to North Carolina’s school voucher system become law.

On the House side, brand new Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham sponsored House Bill 823, a bill which would expand funding for vouchers by hundreds of millions of dollars a year until the annual amount going to school vouchers eclipses $500 million in school year 2032-33 and every year thereafter.

In addition to massively increasing funding for vouchers, the proposed legislation eliminates income eligibility requirements so that any student in the state–regardless of financial need–may use public money to attend private schools. That means North Carolina taxpayers will be subsidizing the tuition of wealthy families whose students already attend private schools.

A parallel bill has been filed in the Senate.

Advocates are concerned about the proposed legislation for a variety of reasons. Among them are the continued depletion of resources available to public schools; the relative lack of accountability charter and private schools have, which mean no real way to track return on investment, and; the use of public dollars to support institutions which are legally able to discriminate against children.

Federal civil rights law prohibits discrimination on a variety of grounds for institutions that receive federal funds, among them religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity) and disability.

In most cases, those prohibitions do not extend to religious private schools which take in more than 90% of North Carolina’s voucher students. Many of those schools accept public tax dollars via the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program and deny admissions to LGBTQ students, students whose families practice the “wrong” religion, and students who have special needs such as learning disabilities. And many of the schools come right out and advertise their discriminatory practices in official school documents.

Here are a few examples:

Students with special needs:

Alamance Christian Academy in Graham, NC, assesses students based on their “emotional readiness,” as well as academic and behavioral histories as justification to refuse admission to students with “deficiencies.”

Southeastern Christian Academy in Shallotte, NC says “A student may be ineligible for enrollment based on achievement and/or individual learning styles. Because SCA is a private school, compliance with IEPs [Individualized Education Programs] issued by the public school system is not required.”

North Raleigh Christian Academy also discriminates against children with special needs. The school’s admissions policy states that NCRA only accepts students who score on grade level and will not admit anyone with an IQ of 90 or below. IEPs are not available at NCRA.

LGBTQ students:

Many of North Carolina’s private schools that receive millions in taxpayer funding via vouchers specifically deny admissions to LGBTQ students or vow to expel any student who is discovered to be LGBTQ after enrolling.

For example, Wesleyan Christian Academy does not accept students who are discovered to be “participating in, supporting, or condoning sexual immorality, homosexual orientation, homosexual activity, or bisexual activity; promoting such practices; or being unable to support the moral principles of the school.”

Wesleyan’s promise to exclude those students appears on the same handbook page where the school claims to seek students who are “reflective of the global community in which we live.”

Fayetteville Christian School similarly bars LGBTQ students, labeling them “deviate [sic] and perverted.”

High Point Christian Academy also accepts public funding through Opportunity Scholarship vouchers. This institution makes it clear that attendance is “a privilege and not a right,” and explains that when conduct within a student’s home diverges from “the biblical lifestyle the school teaches,” the school may refuse admission or discontinue enrollment.

Students with religious differences:

More than 90% of the students claiming public voucher dollars attend religious private schools, and the vast majority of those schools are Christian schools. While some are tolerant of religious diversity, many of them will not accept students unless they are Christian.

Freedom Christian Academy in Fayetteville only accepts students “whose home life is led by parents who have a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ.” The student’s spiritual life must demonstrate “a relationship with Jesus Christ resulting in age-appropriate virtue and high moral character.”

Fayetteville Christian Academy, previously mentioned above for denying admissions to LGBTQ students, specifically states in its admissions requirements that it will “not admit families that belong to or express faith in non-Christian religions such as, but not limited to: Mormons (LDS Church), Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims (Islam), non-Messianic Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.”

Research clearly shows that the most important factor in student learning outcomes is access to excellent teachers. North Carolina requires public school teachers to be licensed in order to demonstrate they have the necessary skills for the job.

Mount Zion Christian Academy in Durham does not require teachers to be licensed, but this voucher-receiving organization is proud of the fact that the school’s entire staff has demonstrated being filled with the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues.

Public schools are proud to welcome, accept and support our students exactly as they are. It’s disappointing that North Carolina’s state legislature and “school choice” proponents are moving in the opposite direction by exponentially increasing public funding for schools that deny learning opportunities to specific students.

If you object to your public tax dollars funding institutions that discriminate in this way, please contact your state legislator and urge them to oppose expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, North Carolina, Vouchers

Idaho: How to Destroy Public Schools and Grab the Money: Connect the Dots

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
16

Steve Berch is a member of the Idaho House of Representatives, one of only 11 Democrats in a body with 70 members. He is serving his third term. His analysis of the attack on public education in Idaho and other states is brilliantly cogent. He understands that privatization is all about the money. This article appeared in the nonprofit IdahoEdNews.org.

Berch describes the playbook of the privatization movement.

Berch writes:

Idaho will spend $2.3 billion on K-12 public education in 2024. There are powerful out-of-state forces who want to get their hands on that money. Some are driven by profit, others by political ideology, religious beliefs, or a combination of interests. They all share one common goal: shift your public schools dollars to the private sector. Here are some of the dots to connect in the “privatizing public education” playbook:

  1. Make public schools look worse than other school choices. The legislature does this by continually underfunding public education. Schools can’t meet parental expectations, accommodate growth, or hire/retain experienced teachers when salaries are not competitive and buildings are falling apart. Idaho has a backlog of over $1 billion in K-12 school building maintenance and we’re still at or near the bottom in per-student investment, even after having a $2.1 billion surplus and a recent budget increase. This makes other school choices look more attractive by comparison.
  2. Undermine confidence in public schools. Propaganda campaigns incite fear and anger against local schools. Parents are bombarded with false claims about porn in libraries, groomers in classrooms, and student indoctrination. Non-stop postings on social media perpetuate these inflammatory accusations. Self-proclaimed “think tanks” funded by third-parties produce official looking reports that create a false perception of legitimacy to these manufactured fears.
  1. Hide the facts. Legislative leaders tried to kill the Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) – which provides factual, in-depth, unbiased research and analysis to the legislature. The public wouldn’t know about the billion dollar backlog in school building maintenance if OPE didn’t exist. The OPE report that revealed this new information angered political leaders trying to tell a different story. Without facts, false narratives go unchallenged.
  2. Legislative intimidation. New laws are making classrooms a hostile workplace. This includes bills that threaten to sue educators, imprison librarians, fine school districts, muzzle teachers, and empower the Attorney General to aggressively prosecute the targets of these punitive laws. No wonder teachers are leaving Idaho.
  1. Promote “school choice” and “education freedom.” This is clever rhetoric, but it is meaningless since Idahoans already have a myriad of education choices – none of which are going away. It’s not about having choice, but rather having you pay for someone else’s choice. A recent in-depth investigationrevealed a vast network of powerful forces funneling money into Idaho to promote and sell their alternative education choices to the public.
  2. Kill public education with vouchers (deceptively called Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs). An attempt was made earlier this year to convert most of the $2.3 billion public education budget into checks sent to parents to spend however they want – without accountability. This would starve Idaho public schools into oblivion.

The 2023 bill tried to hit a home run and failed. However, the lobbyists behind privatizing public education will be back, fronted by their legislative allies. Expect to see legislation next year that allows public tax dollars to pay for private and religious school tuition in limited amounts and isolated situations.

This is fool’s gold – there is no room for compromise. If the legislature allows just a small amount of public tax dollars to be spent on tuition for any private school, your tax dollars must be made available to all types of private schools and religious schools. Once one bill passes, the flood gates open up to flow your public education dollars to the bottom line profits of private sector businesses.

Your public education tax dollars belong in your public schools, not in their pockets.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Education Industry, Funding, Idaho, Lies, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner: The Thrilling Promise of Science

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2023 //
136

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner divert us from our daily concerns with a thrilling image transmitted from outer space by the James Webb Space Telescope. You have to open the link to see the image. If science can produce such wonders, how might it be deployed to slow and reverse the severe damage to the earth now caused by climate change? It’s hard to believe after a year of extreme events—storms, fires, flooding, drought, extreme temperatures—that there is a significant number of people who deny that climate change is a reality.

They write at their blog Steady:

With so much riveting us here on Earth, it is easy to forget that up there, out there in the High Frontier — outer space, the far cosmos, whatever you choose to call it — exciting, promising accomplishments are happening that will profoundly affect our future.

There is a reminder today as NASA marks the first birthday of the James Webb Space Telescope. Like any proud parent, NASA is sharing pictures. And these are literally out of this world (our apologies for the silly dad/grandad jokes, but we couldn’t resist).

When we look at the photo above, we see awe-inspiring beauty and mystery. But we also see the wonder and ingenuity of science. We’ll leave it to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson to put what we’re seeing into better context:

In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time. Every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of.

Empowering new questions. Isn’t that the very essence and promise of science? And that’s part of what makes this so exciting. It’s not just what we now have the ability to see — it’s all the unpredictable insights that will follow.

Putting a powerful extension of our human senses into space requires harnessing tremendous amounts of intellect. It requires planning, commitment, and funding. It requires a belief that our innate inquisitiveness as a species should be cultivated. And it requires cooperation. Dr. Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, called the Webb Telescope “an engineering marvel built by the world’s leading scientists and engineers.” Indeed.

So what are we looking at exactly? Once again, we will let the rocket scientists at NASA explain. Basically, it’s “star birth like it’s never been seen before.” And if you want a bit more detail:

The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems.

The vast majority of the millions of people around the world who will encounter this beautiful picture will not understand its astronomical implications. Even so, we can be comforted that there is a community of researchers — all across the globe — who see with the trained eye of science.

We can also be proud that we live in a country that supports this work. And we can celebrate a quest for knowledge, the yearning to cross horizons, and the intricate dance of data and discovery.

Yes, this image is breathtaking. And that is a reason to smile. But we can also find joy in all that it took to make this celestial camera possible and the future generations who will benefit from the knowledge it unleashes.

Categories Creativity, Environment, Science

National Education Policy Center: School Choice for Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2023 //
45

The National Education Policy Center recently posted a study of how teachers choose their workplace. The study was conducted in San Antonio, where about one quarter of students attend charter schools. Why do some teachers choose to teach in public schools while others prefer charter schools?

School choice involves different choosers—students, their parents, and of course the schools themselves. But teachers choose too when they decide where to work. Increasingly, this process involves deciding whether to work or not to work in the charter sector.

A recently published study by Andrene J. Castro of Virginia Commonwealth University, NEPC Fellow Huriya Jabbar of the University of Southern California, and Sebastián Núñez Miranda of the University of Texas at Austin takes a closer look at this process via interviews with 23 prospective or new-to-the-profession teachers and 22 current educators about their job searches in San Antonio, Texas, where about a quarter of the students attend charters. The semi-structured interviews were conducted pre-pandemic, during the 2016-17 school year. The study was published last summer in Education Policy Analysis Archives, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal.

The goal of the research was to examine “how choice policy contexts alter teachers’ professional identities as they search for jobs,” a topic that had received only limited attention from researchers. The researchers describe how:

[T]he job search is not separate or isolated from teachers’ professional identity, rather it is a critical juncture where teachers evaluate their professional identity as they make choices about the sector—charter or TPSs [traditional public schools]—and/or school organizations that best align with their professional beliefs and values.

Teachers, the researchers write, “largely construct professional identities to match positions in the primary sector, that is, jobs in TPSs, which typically offer greater stability, higher salaries, and predictable career paths.” These qualities of TPSs appealed to most of the interviewees.

As one interviewee noted,

Even though they [charter schools] tell you that you’re going to get paid more, in all reality once you sign the contract, the pay is not what you’re told at the beginning of signing the contract. It’s a little more frustrating because I feel like you have to fight more . . . I think it’s more of a challenge now than working at the regular big public schools.

Some interviewees also indicated that charter schools were not in line with their professional identities or values. “I’m not really interested in charter schools,” one job seeker said. “I feel like the public schools, there’s a lot of areas that we need to improve. That’s where I feel like I can do the most good.”

For these and other reasons, the interviewees in this study typically turned to charters as a last resort, explaining that charters tended to pay less, offer temporary contracts, and lack transparency. But some interviewees embraced a charter school career, responding to a different professional identity.

Teach for America participants emerged as a group favoring charters over TPSs. They perceived that the values of TFA aligned with the missions of specific charter management organizations. Also, a few younger teachers who were interviewed felt more comfortable at charters because they tended to have younger staffs, with many teachers who were new to the profession.

Teachers also applied to charters because they believed that those charters provided higher levels of autonomy, better opportunities to learn a lot in a short period of time, and the chance to receive pay raises and promotions more rapidly than might be possible in the traditional public school system. One interviewee noted:

You can be stuck in the same teaching position for seven years [at a TPS] as opposed to [charter school] where if you’re really just doing a rock-solid job at what you’re doing now you can be within mid-management principal-ship within five, 10 years.

One additional finding from the study has clear policy implications for those hoping for cross-fertilization and sharing of ideas and experiences between the sectors: Prospective teachers were more open to switching sectors than were current teachers seeking to change jobs.

“To some extent, we found these segmented identities led to sector entrapment, constraining teachers’ notions, both individually and collectively, regarding what it means to be a teacher in either sector, rather than the profession at large,” the researchers conclude.

NEPC Resources on Charter Schools ->

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, School Choice, Teach for America, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Texas

Oklahoma: $39 Million in Federal Pandemic Funds Tilted Towards Private Schools, Not the Neediest

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2023 //
3

Two nonprofit news organizations in Oklahoma—The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch—teamed up to discover a misuse of federal funding by special interest groups. One such group was Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. The state received $39 million to aid students during the pandemic.

Millions in federal relief money meant to help Oklahoma students during the pandemic was misspent at the hand of special interest groups who gave preferential treatment to private schoolers while hundreds of needy children missed out on financial aid, a state audit has found.

The Stay in School program provided tuition assistance of up to $6,500 for private school students whose families were financially affected by the pandemic.

An audit released Tuesday also confirmed flaws in how the state handled the Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet pandemic relief program. A joint investigation by The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch last year revealed how families spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bridge the Gap money on video game consoles, Christmas trees and grills.

Both programs were funded through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, a pot of flexible federal money intended to give governors the power to fund educational programs during the pandemic…

Before he was elected State Superintendent last year, Ryan Walters oversaw the implementation of the pandemic programs funded with federal relief money while he was executive director of the pro-school reform nonprofit Every Kid Counts Oklahoma and after Stitt appointed him Secretary of Education in September 2020. State auditors were unable to find any contract authorizing Every Kid Counts Oklahoma to oversee the programs.

E-mail records obtained by Oklahoma Watch and The Frontier show Walters issued a “blanket approval” for purchases of all vendor items available on the ClassWallet platform, after the company gave him a chance to restrict which items could be purchased….

State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd’s audit found $1.8 million in questioned costs for the Bridge the Gap Program and $6.5 million for the Stay in School program. The report found programs were overseen by individuals and private organizations who were unqualified, didn’t have contracts with the state authorizing them to perform the work and were granted access to confidential student records.

The audit found that almost 20% of purchases through the Bridge the Gap program were spent on non-educational items, against grant guidelines.

According to Byrd’s report, administrators of the Stay in School program were involved in a “deliberate operation to give selected private schools and individuals preferential treatment by allowing early access for application submission prior to the date this program was offered to the general public.”

Jennifer Carter, a prominent school choice advocate and president of Libertas Consulting LLC was named as an administrator for the Stay in School program administrator without entering into a contract with the state, the audit found.

Carter is a senior advisor for former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos’s education privatization organization Federation for Children, served as chief of staff and campaign manager for former State Superintendent Janet Barresi and has been involved in multiple school-choice efforts in Oklahoma. ClassWallet also listed Carter as a district administrator.

With Carter’s direction, five, unnamed private schools were given preferential treatment for the Stay in School program, the audit found.

Students from the preferred schools were awarded the maximum $6,500 per-student and received enrollment exceptions for children who had not previously attended, the audit found.

After funds ran dry, 657 students of low-income families who qualified for the Stay in School program did not get the financial assistance. More than $5.3 million went to families who said they did not have a pandemic-related financial hardship. The audit also found private schools received $1.8 million in excess of families’ tuition responsibilities.

In a statement to The Frontier, Carter said the American Federation for Children did not bill the state for its work on the program.

“As the nation’s leading voice for education freedom, AFC was happy to offer advice to the state around the implementation of the Governor’s Stay in School Fund GEER program,” Carter said. “The Stay in School Fund, which was aimed at minimizing students’ education disruption during COVID, served almost 1900 kids with tuition assistance. We gladly provided this service at no expense to taxpayers….”

The state auditor said:

“This was a tangled web of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and non-government individuals representing special interest groups managing millions of tax dollars with no contracts and no written agreements,” Byrd said. “Sadly, millions of tax dollars were misspent because certain individuals who were put in charge of managing these programs seemingly ignored federal grant guidelines.”

Wasn’t it charitable of the American Federation for Children to divert money away from impoverished children to private school students, at no cost to the state?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Oklahoma

Heather Cox Richardson: The GOP Crazies Sabotage the Defense Budget

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
51

Heather Cox Richardson wrote early today about the GOP’s irresponsible politicization of the defense budget. Typically the defense budget passes with a bipartisan vote. But not this year because the House GOP majority is completely cowed by the hard-right extremists. The Republican crazies inserted all their anti-WOKE priorities into the bill, which will not be passed by the Senate. Marjorie Taylor Greene owns House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Richardson writes:

Traditionally, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the annual budget and appropriations of the Department of Defense, passes Congress on a bipartisan basis. Since 1961 it has been considered must-pass legislation, as it provides the funding for our national security. For all that there is grumbling on both sides over one thing or another in the measure, it is generally kept outside partisanship.

Late last night, House Republicans broke that tradition by loading the bill with a wish list from the far right. Republicans added amendments that eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the Defense Department; end the Defense Department program that reimburses military personnel who must travel for abortion services; bar healthcare for gender transition; prevent the military academies from using affirmative action in admissions (an exception the recent Supreme Court decision allowed); block the Pentagon from putting in place President Biden’s executive orders on climate change; prevent schools associated with the Defense Department from teaching that the United States of America is racist; and block military schools from having “pornographic and radical gender ideology books” in their libraries.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tweeted: “We don’t want Disneyland to train our military. House Republicans just passed a bill that ENDS the wokism in the military and gives our troops their biggest pay raise in decades.”

In fact, the events of last night were a victory for right-wing extremists, demonstrating that they hold the upper hand in the House. Representatives Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), both military veterans, expressed shock that so many Republicans voted to strip abortion protections from military personnel. “[T]hey will say, ‘this is a really bad idea,’ ‘this is not where the party should be going,’ ‘this is a mistake,’” Sherill said. “[W]ell then why did everyone but two people in the Republican conference vote for this really bad amendment?”

The bill passed by a vote of 219 to 210, largely along partisan lines. This year’s budget is $886 billion as the U.S. modernizes the military to compete with new threats such as the rise of China, and it provides a 5.2% increase in pay for military personnel.

But Senate Democrats will not vote for it with the new partisan amendments and are working on their own measure. While there will be a conference committee to hammer out the differences between the two versions, McCarthy has offered a position on that committee to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), one of the extremists. This is an unusual offer, as she is not on the House Armed Services Committee.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said: “Extreme MAGA Republicans have hijacked a bipartisan bill that is essential to our national security and taken it over and weaponized it in order to jam their extreme right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people.”

“We are not going to relent, we are not going to back down, we’re not going to give up on the cause that is righteous,” Representative Scott Perry (R-PA) said.

Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) summed up the vote today on Twitter. “The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is the bill that funds all of our military operations. It is typically bipartisan and is about as serious as Congress gets. What weapons of war we fund, which allies we share them with, how we recruit. National security is a BFD. We can have our political debates about any number of issues but it is generally understood that when Americans are willing to sacrifice their lives to defend us, it’s time to check the crazies at the door. But today, the crazies won.

“They won first because [McCarthy] put the crazies in positions of power. But second because none of the “moderate” Republicans had the courage to stay the hell out of KrazyTown…. Is every member of the [House Republican Conference] a homophobic, racist, science denying lunatic? No. But the lesson of today is that the ones who aren’t are massive cowards completely unfit for any position of leadership.

“There is space—and demand—for reasonable differences of opinion in our democracy. This isn’t about whether we agree. It’s about whether we can trust that—differences aside—we trust that we’ve got each other’s back if we ever find ourselves in a foxhole together. That’s usually a metaphor, conflating the horrors of war with the much lower-stakes lives that most of us are fortunate enough to lead. But today, the entire [House Republican Conference] told us—both literally and metaphorically—that they don’t give a damn about the rest of the unit.”

Categories Bigotry, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Funding, Stupid

Arnold Hillman: How to Reform NAEP Scores: A Satire

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
18

Arnold Hillman is a retired educator who spent his career in Pennsylvania and retired in South Carolina. Bear this in mind when you read his satire. Must be the SC water.

The decline of both reading and math scores on the NAEP national test is a harbinger of a predictive outpouring of solutions to the problem. That has been the standard for the last 100 years of public education. We typically find panaceas to “fix” problems in education.

Here is a very simple one. Until the beginning of the 20th century, education was rather simple- teach reading, writing and arithmetic. On the side you might provide vocational programs. However World War I provided us with a look into the future.

Many of the conscripts in the American army were seen not to be physically fit. That was a danger in a war. There was no part of the constitution that mentions education. The idea of a healthy mind and healthy body was promulgated by none other than John Dewey. World War I was an instigator, and schools took up the mantle.

That’s how things change in education. The nation needed more scientists to combat Russia’s preeminence in space and so Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). I know that you are getting the idea now. If you live long enough, you will see even more of these things.

Now, how will the decline in these scores be cured by those with the money to do it. Seems like administrations these days are not in the business of fixing education. You can tell by all ofthe news about investigations, indictments, Russian problems and all sort of other adjuncts to those happenings. So then, who or what will come through to help us climb out of this educational abyss?

Lets try this on for size. How about the Broad Foundation. Let’s give them leave to train all of the school superintendents in the nation. That’s only 13,452 school district superintendents. With all of the resources available to the foundation, this could be accomplished in the wink of an eye (see the movie “I Robot” for a reference).All problems of reading and math will follow the same successes that the Broadies have had in all of the places where they have been installed as superintendents. That’s for sure.

Let then have the voucher folks come up with the plan to take over public schools and do their level best to cherry pick the students that they will help. There will certainly be some unintended consequences, such as massive dropouts, higher crime rates, more unemployment and many other charming things.

These voucher folks have a way with statistics. In their first year of operation, math and reading scores will soar. All students will be on grade level in reading and all of them will be up to fractal geometry, after surpassing the highest scores ever on the NAEP test.

Another challenger will be the charter school folks. All schools could be “charterized” and escape from the silly laws that restrict public schools in their education of kids. Since charters do not have to have all certified teachers, that will be a great advantage. We can then dismiss those pesky teachers who have not been doing a good job anyway.

There would not be any responsibility for those charters to have any parental involvement. Parents or guardians will only know what is going on when their child gets a report card.

Huge management companies will continue to “buy up” these charters and run them for profit. The movement to make these charters non-public has already happened in the Washington state Supreme Court. It has decided that Charter Schools were not, in fact, public schools.

Think of all the improvements that charter schools have made across the country since their inception in Minnesota. We can have a myriad of online charter schools which will definitely improve reading and math scores, especially in kindergarten.

We are fortunate to have a parents group that is very interested in improving education by going onto the nation’s school boards and making things so much better when they are there. Incompetent administrators are fired by the dozens and reading and math scores have already risen as a result of these actions.

The premiere group is called “ Moms for Liberty.” Not sure why there are no Dads included. There must be a Title IX reason. These folks have the kind of enviable clout that gets these students on their way to improving their math and reading scores.

With “Moms for Liberty” in charge, schools will have the advantage of being close to those who lead our country. They are proud to have national figures, some even running for President, who will make sure the schools are doing the right thing.

Then we have a group that includes some very wealthy folks. Some of them are anonymously giving funding and directions to those who were described earlier. They are famously supporters of vouchers, privatization of public schools, charters and the like. They support parent groups like “Moms for Liberty.” Their aims are certainly to help students improve their reading and math scores. We will call them, for better or worse, “ The Billionaire Class.”

With all of these folks helping out, how long do you believe it will take for our youngster’s math and reading scores to soar?

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Humor, Innovation, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Bill Phillis: Ohio Republicans Transfer Powers of State Board of Education to Governor

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
2

William Phillis, a former deputy state commissioner of education in Ohio, has devoted his retirement to fighting against the privatization of the state’s public schools. He reports here on the GOP’s latest gambit:

HB33 strips the State Board of Education of its primary powers and duties, contrary to Article VI section 4 of the Ohio Constitution.

The transfer of the State Board of Education functions is unconstitutional. Additionally, the 135th General Assembly and Governor violated the single purpose clause (One-Subject) provision of the Ohio Constitution. Article II section 15(D) states, “No bill shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly stated in its title.” HB33 is a budget bill. The transfer of the primary duties of the State Board of Education to the Governor’s office is a policy matter unrelated to finance. This matter should immediately be challenged in Court.

If the “transfer” would be enacted as a separate bill (it was HB12 before being injected into HB33), it could be successfully challenged in Court. In 1953, the people of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment that transferred the Department of Education from the Governor’s office to the State Board of Education.

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VOUCHERS HURT OHIO

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

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Elections, Ohio, Privatization
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