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

North Carolina: Some Voucher Schools Get More Vouchers Than Students

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2023 //
8

Kris Nordstrom of the North Carolina Justice Center reports on a shocking study of the state’s voucher program. It found that a significant number of voucher schools receive more vouchers than they have students. Most of those profiting by the state’s negligence are religious schools.

Will anyone care?

He wrote:

This session, General Assembly leaders have placed a massive expansion of the state’s voucher program at the top of their education agenda. Legislative leaders in both the House and the Senate want to triple the program’s size by opening it to wealthy families who have already enrolled their children in private schools. But new data shows that the existing program lacks adequate oversight and is potentially riven with fraud.

Data from the two agencies charged with overseeing private schools and North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship voucher program show several cases where schools have received more vouchers than they have students. Several other private schools have received voucher payments from the state after they have apparently closed.

The Department of Administration’s Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE) compiles annual directories of active private schools. The North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (SEAA) publishes data showing the number of voucher recipients at each private school.

An analysis of this data shows 62 times where a school received more vouchers than they had students.

For example, Mitchener University Academy in Johnston County reported a total enrollment of 72 students in 2022. That same year, the state sent them vouchers for 149 students. Based on this data, either every student received two vouchers, or the school pocketed about $230,000 of state money for students that never existed….

The actual number could be higher. Since 2015, 449 vouchers have been awarded to schools that failed to report their enrollment to DNPE.

In addition, 23 schools continued to receive vouchers after they stopped reporting to DNPE altogether. It’s unclear whether these schools were operating in the years they received vouchers. For example, Crossroads Christian School of Statesville submitted reports to DNPE from 2009 through 2019. They stopped reporting to DNPE in 2020. Yet that same year, the school received $57,300 for 15 voucher students, even though it’s unclear whether the school was operating for the entire school year.

These data discrepancies should represent a major red flag for lawmakers pushing voucher expansion. These discrepancies could represent innocent mistakes, or they could represent massive fraud. Unfortunately, lawmakers have failed to equip either DNPE or SEAA with the staff or authority to determine the reason for the discrepancies.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Scandal, Vouchers

NYC: Advocates for Justice Files Lawsuit to Block Forced relocation of Two Schools

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
12

I wrote at the end of April about an effort by the NYC Department of Education to force a high school for overage students in Manhattan to trade places with a billionaire-funded high school on the other side of town. The school for the high-needs students had better facilities, including a gym. I suggested at that time that the Tisch family, which funds the Young Women’s Leadership Academy, could well afford to buy or build a better facility rather than force out the last-chance students in West Side High School. A few days later, the New York City Board of Education, controlled by Mayor Eric Adams, voted to oust the students from the West Side High School and give their home to the Young Women’s Leadership Academy.

It’s not over. A pro bono law firm, Advocates for Justice, has filed a lawsuit to block the swap. The lawsuit includes another school for overage students that opposes the co-location of another school in its building.

For immediate release: Thursday, June 22, 2023

More information: Laura Barbieri, lbarbieri@advocatesny.com, 914-819-3387

Sarah Frank, sarfrank@gmail.com, 617-838-2032

Lawsuit filed to block the re-location of West Side High School and the co-location of Brownsville Academy -both transfer schools with vulnerable overage and undercredited students

Today, Thursday, June 22, 2023, a lawsuit was filed in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of parents, students, and teachers to prevent the NYC Department of Education from forcing the Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School from moving across town to a smaller building and to block Brownsville Academy from having to share its building with another school,  Aspirations Diploma Plus High School.  

Both of these schools are transfer schools, designed to ensure that vulnerable, over-aged and under-credited students have the support they need to remain in school through graduation. Many of these students have already dropped out of school once or are at increased risk of dropping out in the future, so any negative change in their learning environment jeopardizes their life chances.

The lawsuit, filed by the pro bono law firm Advocates for Justice, focuses on the inadequacy of the Educational Impact Statements [EIS’s] that the NYC Department of Education is required to prepare in advance of the votes by the Panel for Education Policy to approve these changes in school utilization that occurred on April 19, 2023, and May 1, 2023.

Instead, both EIS’s for these proposed changes in school utilization explicitly assumed that current class sizes at both schools would continue indefinitely, even though half of the classes at Brownsville Academy and more than half of the classes at Edwards A. Reynolds West Side High School are larger than the cap of 25 students per class required by the new state class size law, to be phased in over five years.

In addition, students with disabilities in both schools will likely lose their dedicated rooms for mandated services in these new, far more limited spaces. Both schools have very high percentages of such students: 43% at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High school and 26% of the students at Brownsville Academy have disabilities.

 The failure of the EIS’s to analyze the profound educational impacts of these changes is a clear violation of state education law, and in an innovative legal strategy, the lawsuit also argues that the deprivation of critical space from students with disabilities would cause a disparate impact on these vulnerable students, in violation of the New York City Human Rights Law.

Most egregiously, perhaps, is how the students at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School will be deprived of their on-site GED program, their full-size gym, the Ryan health care center, and the LYFE day-care center, designed to take care of the young children of these overaged students while they are attending school. Yet the DOE fails to assess the likely negative educational impacts of these profound losses, or even acknowledge them in the EIS .

Also highly questionable is the way in which the DOE and certain members of the Panel for Educational Policy ignored their obligations under the Open Meetings Law (OML). Specifically, the law requires that all voting by members of public bodies must be publicly performed. However, many of the Mayor-appointed PEP members failed to turn on their cameras during the meetings that approved these changes in school utilization, which should nullify their votes. In addition, the DOE failed to record the first several hours of the PEP meeting on May 1, which is also an OML violation. Together, these violations call into question whether these PEP proceedings or their votes were legally valid.

State Assemblywoman Latrice Walker said: ““I have long been concerned about the plan to re-site Aspirations Diploma Plus and co-locate it with Brownsville Academy High School. Though well-intentioned, the proposal would harm two communities. Aspirations is the only transfer school in Crown Heights, and I fear they will lose scholars who are not willing to travel to Brownsville. I also share the concerns of the staff at Brownsville Academy, who are worried about the potentially drastic reduction in the number of rooms. The co-location process would deprive the Brownsville Academy of the space currently being used for counseling, an internship program, and their very successful mentoring services. Brownsville Academy has served the community and its students well, consistently ranking in the top 10 in graduation rates, attendance, and career readiness for transfer schools in the city. The potential impact on the student-to-teacher ratio and the reduction of services would have an adverse impact on some of Brooklyn’s most vulnerable students.”

“I strongly support West Side High School staying where it is and appreciate the effort by Advocates for Justice to halt the move,” said Council Member Gale A. Brewer. “It is inequitable to take away from the student population the LYFE Center, the wellness and health center, the large gym and field, and the kitchen. If the TYWLS building is not adequate to meet the needs of its current student population, then it cannot be adequate for the students now at West Side High School.”

“The relocation of West Side High School and the co-location of Brownsville Academy presents a number of challenges to the families, students, and teachers in both schools.” Said New York City Council Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala. “Students within these schools have either dropped out once before or require special accommodations to ensure they receive a quality education. The Department’s relocation plan does not take those factors into consideration and their decision further jeopardizes the educational prospects of the students within these schools. I urge the Department to reconsider this decision and to work with both schools to find a compromise that focuses on the students rather than the ideal location.”

Added Ashley Norman, a plaintiff, a parent of a current student at West Side High School and herself a graduate of the school: “West Side has paved the way for so many students in its time. Myself and everyone I know felt as if dropping out would be the best option, until we went to this school. They do their best to meet you where you are and push you for greatness. This school is so important for young parents. You can receive your education, have your child cared for, and receive not only mental health care but your physical healthcare as well in the Ryan Center -things that being a young parent are hard to juggle. I decided to participate in this lawsuit because I also worry about the potential for gang violence on the East side that our kids might be exposed to. I believe this school NEEDS to stay here for the benefit and more importantly the safety of our community.”

Lucie Gaba, a plaintiff and parent at Brownsville Academy commented: “Before attending Brownsville, my son attended another high school where he struggled with attendance issues and with being on time. Since switching schools, his attendance has improved and the wonderful staff have inspired him to become an active member of the school community. Brownsville Academy has helped my son improve his academics greatly. I am worried that the co-location will make it harder for him and his friends to get the dedicated help they have come to count on. English is his second language and he receives extra services for this reason. I am very concerned that if the co-location happens, the increased crowding will cause him to lose these services.”

Grisslet Rodriguez, plaintiff and parent of a current West Side High School student, said: “I’m participating in this lawsuit because it is the right thing to do for all of the students in West Side High School. I want to be a voice for my son and all the West Side students since their voices are not being heard. My concern is that if our students are moved to another location, the outcome is going to be devastating. It will have a negative impact on a minority group that already struggles. Students might drop out, have emotional damage, and more mental health challenges. My top concern is the lack of safety in the neighborhood that is on the East side and is dangerous. The new location across town will require many students, including my son, to take a bus and a train, which is a longer commute. Health-wise, there is no gym and no clinic, which is so important for the health, well-being, and growth of the students. The daycare center is crucial to keep the young mothers in school. I hope students can remain in West Side High School, where they feel safe. These students have been through a lot, and we are so proud of them and happy that they found a place where they feel they belong.”

Sarah Frank, teacher at West Side High School and a plaintiff, said: “We have been pushing back on this relocation from the moment it was announced because as a transfer school, we know our vulnerable students need access to smaller classes and additional services and support. Our current building was specifically designed for West Side High School in the 1990s to have an on-site daycare and health clinic. Our Public School Athletic League teams play in our beautiful gym and the field adjacent to the school. The building we are being relocated to on the East Side has none of these resources, and traveling to other locations for daycare, healthcare, and athletics is a huge barrier for our students. While we have had enrollment struggles, our enrollment has grown tremendously in the last few months. The new space will not allow us to meaningfully lower class size and will not afford the space for small groups and other social-emotional supports we have always offered our students, particularly the nearly 50% of our special needs population with IEPs. Our students do not gain anything from this move, they only lose.”

Marissa Moore, a plaintiff, and parent at Brownsville Academy HS pointed out: “Brownsville Academy has provided my son with a rigorous academic experience along with rich social emotional support which is so needed coming out of the pandemic. Under the co-location proposal, I am concerned that BAHS will become overcrowded and offer fewer services just like the larger schools which failed to serve him previously.”

Concluded Hon. Carmen Quinones, President of the Frederick Douglass Houses Association where many of the students who attend West Side High School live, “This is not what Justice looks like: putting a target on our children’s back and making them choose to drop out of school or die trying!”

Here are notes:

Memo of Law ; Verified Petition, and affidavits from Lucie Idiamey-Gaba, Sarah Frank, Anneris Fernandez , Chance Santiago, Marissa-Moore, Grisslet Rodriguez, Ashley Norman, and Leonie Haimson.

 

###

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Inequity, New York City

NAEP Scores Show Effects of Pandemic: Duh.

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
125

The release of the NAEP Long-Term Trend data yesterday set off the usual hysterical reaction. The scores fell as a consequence of the pandemic, when most kids did not get in-school instruction.

These are not secrets but they bear repeating:

*Students don’t learn what is tested when they are not in school for long periods of time.

*Learning online is inferior to learning in-person from a qualified teacher.

*It’s better to lose points on a test than to risk serious illness or death or infecting a family member or teacher or other member of the school staff.

During the depths of the pandemic, no one knew for sure whether it was better to keep schools open or closed. A superintendent in Florida—Rocky Hanna of Leon County— was threatened with loss of his license after he closed the schools, following the death of a third-grader from COVID. Teachers died of COVID. Some children lived with elderly grandparents at risk of getting COVID. Which matters most: lives or test scores?

Whatever was lost can be regained if students have good instruction and stability.

It is not surprising that test scores went down after a once-in-a-century pandemic.

This is not a “Sputnik moment.”

The Washington Post reported, under a ridiculous scare headline “National test scores plunge, with still no sign of pandemic recovery” (Patience needed!):

National test scores plummeted for 13-year-olds, according to new data that shows the single largest drop in math in 50 years and no signs of academic recovery following the disruptions of the pandemic.

Student scores plunged nine points in math and four points in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often regarded as the nation’s report card. The release Wednesday reflected testing in fall 2022, comparing it to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic began.

“These results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers the tests. The new data, she said, “reinforces the fact that recovery is going to take some time.”

The average math score is now the same as it was in 1990, while the average reading score is the same as it was in 2004.

Hardest hit were the lowest-performing students. In math, their scores showed declines of 12 to 14 points, while their highest-performing peers fell just six points. The pattern for reading was similar, with lowest performers seeing twice the decline of the highest ones.

Students from all regions of the country and of all races and ethnicities lost ground in math. Reading was more split. Scores dropped for Black, multiracial and White students. But Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native students were described as “not measurably different.”

Most of those tested were 10 years old, in fourth or fifth grade, at the onset of the pandemic. They were in seventh or eighth grade as they took the tests.

Will politicians whip up a panicked response and demand more of what is already failing, like charter schools, vouchers, high-stakes testing, and Cybercharters? or will they invest in reduced class sizes and higher teacher pay?

Categories Education Reform, Health, Hope, NAEP, Science, Standardized Testing

Josh Cowen: To a Reformer Who Supports Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
15

Josh Cowen is a Professor if Educatuon Policy at Michigan State University who spent nearly two decades involved in studying the effects of vouchers. In this post, published here for the first time, he responds to a school choice advocate, Chad Aldeman, who recently made his case for his views.

Josh Cowen writes:

Can’t we all just get along?

That’s the question underlying a new column by education reform specialist Chad Aldeman.

Although he avoids saying so directly, he’s talking about the latest rush to expand school vouchers in state legislatures during the current lawmaking cycle. It’s mostly happening in red states, and supporters have broader names including the all-encompassing “school choice,” which Aldeman uses, to the more jingoist “education freedom.”

It’s worth reading and considering. I’ve done so in part because, as Peter Greene has pointed out, Aldeman is among the more serious thinkers on education reform issues and because he hints at questions I get myself a lot from journalists covering reform: what would it take to get me to support voucher programs today?

Aldeman lays out what he calls the “progressive vision” for these programs. And by merging vouchers in that vision with charters and inter-district choice, he makes it difficult to distinguish meaningful differences between each in both origin, intent, and policy result.

But if you read my own stuff, most recently in Time Magazine,you know I’m concerned above all right now with vouchers—much as I have other critiques too, such as the increased Christian Nationalism of the charter school movement that Carol Burris and others have recently noted.

The focus of Aldeman’s vision is the idea that a.) public schools aren’t so strong on academic outcomes, or in their history of discrimination and that b.) it’s possible to acknowledge that while backing reasonable restraints on voucher-like programs to prohibit discrimination with public funds and to safeguard educational quality.

There are two overarching blindspots in that vision. Active discrimination against children is fundamental to the voucher movement. Today it’s LGBTQ children, but 60 years ago it was against Black children as vouchers popped up in places like Texas to avoid desegregation orders. Now, tens of millions of dollars already go to private schools that exclude gay families. And a recent report from Wisconsin carefully details how voucher schools work the system to avoid what anti-discrimination rules do exist, not just for LGBTQ kids but students with disabilities too. In short: they admit all students (as Aldeman recommends) but then expel them, because legal protections are much stronger on the front end than the back end.

Most current legislation protects schools’ right to maintain their “creed” (do a word search on whatever state code you want, you’re likely to find it). That’s an all-encompassing word that allows schools to hide behind religious beliefs when it comes to excluding certain kids. Removing that word, as Aldeman’scolumn rightly implies would have to be done for an equitable voucher system, is politically impossible.

And that gets to the second blindspot in Aldeman’s vision. The education freedom movement, with school vouchers at its core, has been a Right-wing political operation for 30 years. It’s more than Betsy DeVos. It’s Charles Koch. It’s the Bradley Foundation, which has funded nearly every academic study to find positive school voucher effects, funds groups like the Heritage Foundation’s education arm, and helped fund election denial in the post-2020 months.

Kenneth Starr, of Clinton/Lewinsky fame, was actually the lead counsel defending vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the original Supreme Court case that ruled vouchers constitutional way back in 2002. Vouchers are that ingrained in Republican Party politics—both the old guard establishment that Starr came from, and the MAGA wing today that’s carrying on the legacy.

Aldeman’s case would have progressives simply ignore the political realities of the voucher movement. In essence, in the spirit of compromise, we’re to ignore decades of efforts to divert tax dollars toward unregulated markets, fundamentalist religious organizations, and anti-labor movements in the interest of moving education policy forward.

(The last point itself ignores substantial evidence that vouchers fail on academic terms in the first place).

But so-called “educational freedom” is too existential a question. Not for nothing, but this latest push comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s removal of reproductive freedom among our constitutional protections. In my state, the same political operatives fighting to pass school vouchers in 2022 were also fighting to keep reproductive rights off the ballot. That’s not an accident.

On the voucher-backing Bradley Foundation’s board of directors is a lawyer named Cleta Mitchell. Mitchell was on the phone with Donald Trump during his infamous Georgia phone call, and all over the January 6th report. More recently she suggested that young citizens should lose the vote, and has been active in other voter suppression efforts. Speaking of January 6th, a vice president at Hillsdale College—the same Hillsdale so active in education freedom and Christian Nationalism more broadly—was partly behind the Michigan chapter of the fake electors scheme. Again: not an accident.

So when Aldeman suggests that progressives are being a bit overdramatic by worrying about threats to democracy, he’s either ignoring this evidence or he’s asking us to engage in a thought experiment that pretends that evidence doesn’t exist.

Here’s my own thought experiment: in a world in which none of us is perfect, and all of us are wrong some of the time, how would you rather be wrong?

For my part, I’d rather be too worried about LGBTQ exclusion, too worried about the loss of reproductive freedom, too worried about the ties between voucher backers and voter suppression. If I’m wrong, the worst that would happen is a few extra people already in private school would have to keep paying for it on their own.

But if the danger is real, then the erosion of civil liberties, of human rights, and—yes—democracy will have happened not just because of MAGA Republicans or Charles Koch or Betsy DeVos. It’ll happen because the progressive vision, as Alderman calls it, was either blinded or simply asleep at its post.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Wisconsin: Governor Evers Betrays His Public School Supporters

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
8

Tony Evers ran for Governor of Wisconsin on a pro-public education platform. He had been the State Commissioner of Education, and he pledged to reverse the damage done by Republicans to the state’s once-eminent public schools. After years of Republican governors who supported privatization, Evers portrayed himself as a champion of public schools.

The Network for Public Education did not support him. One of our allies in Wisconsin warned that he was two-faced. When we did not support him, other Wisconsin friends were shocked and told us we were wrong about Evers. They said he would be a great friend to public schools.

Sadly, Governor Evers turned out to be a traitor. He just signed a bill giving more funding to voucher schools than to the state’s woefully underfunded public schools.

He betrayed his campaign promises and his supporters. Shame on Tony Evers!

The Wisconsin Public Education Network sent out the following bulletin:

Dear friends of Wisconsin students and their public schools,

You have likely heard the news that Gov. Evers signed into law today both the shared revenue bill and SB330/AB305, a bill that gives a bump to spending authority for low revenue districts while dramatically expanding state funding to private schools and independent charters. Combined with a gap-widening budget omnibus proposal that provides woefully inadequate and inequitable resources to public schools, the move is part of a larger deal that fails to meet any of the priority needs of students in Wisconsin’s public schools, marking 16 YEARS of preK-12 budgets that fail to keep pace with inflation. 

All day, our phones have been buzzing with messages of outrage, frustration, and betrayal.

Earlier today, our board of directors issued a public plea to the governor to reject this deal. The excerpts below sum up their concerns and what the passage of these bills means to Wisconsin kids.

From the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools board of directors:

The action taken by the Joint Committee on Finance falls well short of the state’s constitutional responsibilities in the area of K-12 education and must be dramatically improved by the state legislature. If not, the budget must be vetoed by the governor and recrafted in order to pass Constitutional muster.

Our chief concerns with this budget deal: 

  • Public school students have been defunded relative to inflation for fourteen years and the per pupil adjustments proposed by the Joint Committee on Finance will extend that defunding streak to 16 years.
  • During that period of time, funding for students with disabilities was frozen for a decade and the promised, but not guaranteed, 33% reimbursement rate for special education will continue to keep Wisconsin near the very bottom of all states in that category.
  • Local property tax payers will be forced to cover the costs of a massive expansion of the unaccountable voucher program.
  • Private schools will be provided more direct aid from the state than most public schools are even allowed to spend (see fiscal memo here).
  • Shared revenue deal usurps the authority of the MPS board by requiring reinstatement of police officers on school property.

We call on the state legislature to fix this budget bill by restoring special education reimbursement to a minimum of 60%, providing an inflationary increase in spendable aid to all students in public schools, and removing irresponsible provisions to expand spending on private education. We urge Governor Evers to veto any bill that arrives at his desk that fails to meet these critical needs of Wisconsin students.

Unfortunately, 15 minutes after our board of directors issued their statement on these fast-tracked proposals, we learned Gov. Evers had already signed into law the largest stand-alone voucher aid expansion in state history and a shared revenue bill that undermines Milwaukee Public Schools, so we issued this response. We hope you will share it widely, as it details some of the most harmful and gap-widening provisions of the “compromise”:

  • This deal will provide private voucher schools more guaranteed state aid than the average public school is even allowed to spend per student,
  • while public schools will see a less-than-inflationary increase to state aid and a less than 2% increase to special education, cementing funding discrimination for kids with disabilities.
  • Raising the low revenue limit ceiling by $1000 is a nice gesture, but it doesn’t even bring those districts up to the state average in spending authority.
  • Public school students and local property taxpayers will pay the price, while private schools that can legally discriminate and pick and choose their students get a blank check from the state.
  • With voucher enrollment caps set to come off entirely in 2 years, this is the most reckless and irresponsible thing Wisconsin could do with its massive surplus, especially when we consider that the nearly 80% of students participating in the statewide voucher program never attended a public school.

The three top concerns of the public at all four of the budget hearings (preK-12 public schools, higher ed, and childcare) were all put on the chopping block to reach this “compromise” and nearly $2 BILLION of Gov. Evers’ original budget proposal for public schools was exchanged for this massive, unconscionable, unconstitutional voucher expansion. The state is already not meeting its obligation to its children, and this budget demonstrates a refusal to use the biggest surplus we’ve ever seen to make a meaningful start toward doing so. It’s time to hold Wisconsin accountable for doing better.

The good news: it’s not too late to fix this.

CALL ON LAWMAKERS TO FIX THIS BUDGET SO THAT PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS’ NEEDS ARE MET BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE, AND CALL ON GOV. EVERS TO VETO THE ENTIRE BUDGET BILL IF IT DOESN’T. 

And let them know: we are watching every single vote that betrays Wisconsin students. 

Find your lawmakers here or call 800-362-9472 for the Wisconsin legislature hotline. Contact Gov. Evers at (608) 266-1212 or online here. 

Every single lawmaker has a vote on this bill, and needs to hear from us. Don’t assume you know how they’ll vote – let them know what local kids need!

We know Governor Evers has pledged to do what’s best for kids, and it’s not too late for him to back out of a deal that has gone way too far in selling out students in the public schools we are morally and constitutionally responsible to support. He needs to hear from you!

We continue to advocate for the following to meet the needs our kids have now: 

  • no less than $1,510/per pupil in new spendable funds to their districts to catch up with inflation; 
  • 60% reimbursement of special education costs to begin closing the gap between the state’s special ed. support for public and private schools;
  • prioritizing funds where needs are greatest; 
  • and putting a moratorium on the use of public dollars on unaccountable private and privately-operated schools.

It’s not too late to deliver a budget that meets these needs.  Our kids are counting on us to do it.

Stay tuned for additional action steps and details on how you can get involved, and please continue to follow WisconsinNetwork.org/budget for updates!

– Your friends at Team Public

LOCAL LEVEL ACTION. STATEWIDE IMPACT. Wisconsin Public Education Network is a project of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public education advocacy organization. To support our work, donate here!

Categories Education Industry, Lies, Privatization, Shame, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Why Did the Wall Street Journal Publish Alito’s Response Before ProPublica Printed Its Article about Him?

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
265

The New York Times posted a story about the editorial ethics of the Wall Street Journal. It asked why the WSJ ran Alito’s response to ProPublica before the latter had published its article. Worse, the Times said, the WSJ said that the article in ProPublica was “misleading” even though no one at the WSJ had read it. How can anyone honestly say that an unpublished article is “misleading”?

It sounds like the WSJ is out to protect Alito without knowing or caring about all the facts.

The Times wrote:

The Wall Street Journal faced criticism on Wednesday after its highly unusual decision to let Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. pre-empt another media organization’s article about him by publishing his response in its opinion pages.

The essay by Justice Alito in The Journal’s opinion section, which operates independently of its newsroom, ran onlineon Tuesday evening with the headline “Justice Samuel Alito: ProPublica Misleads Its Readers.”

An editor’s note at the top of the essay said two ProPublica reporters, Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan, had emailed questions to Justice Alito on Friday and had asked him to respond by noon Tuesday. “Here is Justice Alito’s response,” the editor’s note said.

ProPublica published its investigation into Justice Alito several hours later on Tuesday, revealing that he took a luxury fishing trip in 2008 as the guest of Paul Singer, a billionaire Republican donor, and had not disclosed the trip nor recused himself from cases since then that involved Mr. Singer’s hedge fund.

Stephen Engelberg, the editor in chief of ProPublica, said in a statement on Wednesday that ProPublica always invited people mentioned in articles to offer a response before publication. ProPublica has run several articles in recent months about possible conflicts of interests among some Supreme Court justices.

“We were surprised to see Justice Alito’s answers appear to our questions in an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal, but we’re happy to get a response in any form,” he said.

“We’re curious to know whether The Journal fact-checked the essay before publication,” he added. “We strongly reject the headline’s assertion that ‘ProPublica Misleads Its Readers,’ which the piece declared without anyone having read the article and without asking for our comment…”

Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, said that while essays on opinion pages usually got some form of fact-checking, The Journal would have been unable to do so in this case because the ProPublica investigation had not yet been published…

Rod Hicks, the director of ethics and diversity for the Society of Professional Journalists, said that “it’s quite uncommon for a news outlet to allow an official to use its platform to respond to questions from a different outlet.”

“And it’s totally unheard-of to post that response before the other outlet even publishes its story,” he added. “If not ethics, professional courtesy should have restrained The Journal.”

It seems that we are in an era when ethical standards are crumbling. The Supreme Court ignores conflicts of interest, rationalizes them, overlooks lavish gifts and doesn’t care whether they are disclosed.

And a major publishing outlet disregards ethical norms.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Lies, Media

ProPublica: Justice Alito accepted Luxury Fishing Trip from Billionaire with Cases Before Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
21

ProPublica broke a story today about Justice Samuel Alito’s breach of ethics. Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has no ethics code. Ethics codes are for the little people, to paraphrase businesswoman Leona Helmsley, who once said that “taxes are for the little people.”

Writers at ProPublica emailed questions to Justice Alito on Friday. Instead of answering, Justice Alito took the unusual step of responding in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, which took the unusual step of publishing it.

The ProPublica article begins:

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justicesto disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.

Justices are almost entirely left to police themselves on ethical issues, with few restrictions on what gifts they can accept. When a potential conflict arises, the sole arbiter of whether a justice should step away from a case is the justice him or herself.

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.

ProPublica’s examination of Alito’s and Scalia’s travel drew on trip planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with dozens of people including private jet pilots, fishing guides, former high-level employees of both Singer and the lodge owner, and other guests on the trips.

ProPublica sent Alito a list of detailed questions last week, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s head spokeswoman told ProPublica that Alito would not be commenting. Several hours later, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Alitoresponding to ProPublica’s questions about the trip.

Alito said that when Singer’s companies came before the court, the justice was unaware of the billionaire’s connection to the cases. He said he recalled speaking to Singer on “no more than a handful of occasions,” and they never discussed Singer’s business or issues before the court.

Alito said that he was invited to fly on Singer’s plane shortly before the trip and that the seat “would have otherwise been vacant.” He defended his failure to report the trip to the public, writing that justices “commonly interpreted” the disclosure requirements to not include “accommodations and transportation for social events.”

Categories Accountability, Bias, Billionaires, Cheating, Democracy, Ethics, Justice

Heather Cox Richardson: The Case Against Hunter Biden

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
52

Heather Cox Richardson hits it out of the park with this column. Republicans are screaming that Hunter Biden got a slap on the wrist for his crimes, and that the Justice Department went easy on him. But Richardson points out that President Biden left the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware in place, and he prosecuted the case. For those upset about Hunter Biden, when will they demand to know why the Saudis gave Jared Kushner $2 billion six months after he left office?

She writes:

After years of accusations and rumors swirling around Hunter Biden, the 53-year-old son of President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice has reached a tentative deal with the younger Biden: He will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to file income tax returns for 2017 and 2018 by the filing date, for which he owed more than $100,000 each year. Biden’s representatives say he has since paid the Internal Revenue Service what he owed. Prosecutors will ask for two years’ probation.

Biden will also admit to the fact that he possessed a firearm as an addict, for which he and prosecutors have agreed he will enter a pretrial diversion agreement that will require that he stay clean for two more years, after which the charge will be removed from his record.

Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, promptly accused “the Bidens” of “corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery” and called the deal “a slap on the wrist.” Throughout the day, right-wing figures have insisted that the deal is proof that President Biden is using the Justice Department to shield his family and to persecute his enemies.

In fact, Biden worked hard to reestablish the independence of the Justice Department after Trump had used it for personal ends. Trump broke the tradition that FBI directors should serve out their ten-year term—a term chosen to emphasize that the position should not be political—by firing FBI director James Comey when Comey refused to stop the bureau’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russian operatives; Biden tried to reestablish the guardrails around the position when he declined to replace FBI director Christopher Wray, appointed by Trump.

Biden also left in place the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware—the person overseeing the investigation into Hunter Biden that began in 2018—to make the independence of the investigation clear. That Trump appointee, U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss, is responsible for the deal. Georgetown University policy professor Don Moynihan pointed out that Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for five years and “[b]est they could do is tax charges which rarely get this level of attention. If Comer has anything real, the prosecutor would have used it.”

Indeed, rather than going easy on Hunter Biden, there are signs that prosecutors treated him more harshly than is typical for similar crimes. Roger Sollenberger, a senior political writer for the Daily Beast, explained that “Roger Stone and his wife settled a $2 million unpaid taxes civil case with DOJ last year—they weren’t charged criminally, unlike Hunter Biden, so they didn’t even get probation.” Justice reporter for NBC News Ryan Reilly noted that it is very rare for prosecutors to bring the addict in possession of a weapon charge they used against Biden. In the past it has been used to find a charge that will stick or alongside charges concerning violent crime.

As right-wing leaders, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), nonetheless attacked the Justice Department for what they claimed was a “two-tiered justice system” that went easy on Biden, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post noted, “The right doesn’t seem to care about the legal process—they care about the results. Their aim is the destruction of the independence of federal law enforcement in favor of a weaponized justice system, and they will keep creating new pretexts until they get it.”

Trump had his own reaction to the Biden charges, calling them “a massive INTERFERENCE COVERUP & FULL SCALE ELECTION ‘SCAM’ THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE. A ‘TRAFFIC TICKET,’ & JOE IS ALL CLEANED UP & READY TO GO INTO THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – AND THIS AS CROOKED DOJ, STATE, & CITY PROSECUTORS, MARXISTS & COMMUNISTS ALL, HIT ME FROM ALL SIDES & ANGELS WITH BULL….! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” [sic]

Eric Lipton of the New York Times reported today on the Trump family’s ties to a multibillion-dollar project in Oman. The resort project is backed by the Omani government, which has put up the land for the project and is investing up to a billion dollars to upgrade the infrastructure near the project and to fund the project’s initial phase. It will also take a cut of the profits. A Saudi real estate firm closely allied with the Saudi government brought Trump into the deal. The Trump family will not put any money into the project, but the Omani government has paid the Trump Organization at least $5 million for the use of his name and will pay the Trump Organization to manage a hotel, golf course, and golf club for the next 30 years.

“There is a big wealth concentration in the world, which means that those people will more and more demand more exclusive products and more exclusive projects,” the chief executive of the London-based DarGlobal subsidiary of the Saudi real estate firm said earlier this year. The project is being constructed by migrants paid as little as $340 a month for ten hours a day of grueling work in heat above 100°F, or 38°C.

Tonight news broke that on Friday, Owen Shroyer, who worked alongside Alex Jones at the right-wing conspiracy media site InfoWars, will change his plea for charges associated with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to “guilty,” which might signal that he has flipped.

Shroyer was at the so-called “War Room” on January 5 with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, advisors Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, General Michael Flynn, and Christina Bobb, the lawyer who later signed off on Trump’s statement that he had returned all the classified documents in his possession (he had not). Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly expressed interest to his aide Cassidy Hutchinson in joining the people in that command center, but in the end was talked into calling the group rather than going over.

Shroyer was also part of the 47-member “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group that organized in 2019 to support Trump in the upcoming election and then to keep him in office after he lost in 2020. If Shroyer has, indeed, flipped, he could provide an important window into the upper levels of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Posthave recently reported that several months ago, officials in the Biden administration began indirect talks with Iran in hopes of stopping Iran’s proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, bringing home three Iranian American business executives being held on charges the U.S. considers false—Emad Shargi (detained 2018), Morad Tahbaz (detained 2018), and Siamak Namazi (detained 2015)—and reining in that country’s nuclear weapons development program. In 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran that limited Iran’s nuclear research and development. Tehran quickly restarted its uranium enrichment, research and development of advanced centrifuges, and expansion of its stockpile of nuclear fuel. According to Colum Lynch of Foreign Policy, this cut in half the time Iran would need to produce enough weapons-grade fuel to build a nuclear weapon.

Biden yesterday announced a $600 million investment in addressing climate change, with that investment focused on coastal areas and communities around the Great Lakes. Funding for projects, including modernizing electrical grids to make them resilient to extreme weather events, national disasters, and wildfires, comes from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

—

Notes:

To read the footnotes, please open the article.

Twitter links:

SollenbergerRC/status/1671180412498878464

donmoyn/status/1671163439333650436

MuellerSheWrote/status/1671262234352451589

ThePlumLineGS/status/1671226546676170787

SykesCharlie/status/1671230641831129088

harrylitman/status/1671179022313865220

harrylitman/status/1671157442921791488

ryanjreilly/status/1671157209735237633

Categories Biden, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Florida: Ban Child Beauty Pageants to Protect Children!

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
9

We have heard a lot from Ron DeSantis and his friends about their wish to protect children from “grooming.” They say that sexual predators are trying to “sexualize” children.

Instead of attacking hardworking teachers, the governor should ban child beauty pageants.

Florida is the epicenter of these child-exploitation events.

Look at the children in the photos: they are being groomed to be sex objects! They are being groomed to satisfy the lust of pedophiles!

How can DeSantis rant about grooming and WOKEness while ignoring an industry devoted to the sexualization of little girls?

Hypocrite!

Categories Accountability, Childhood, DeSantis, Florida, For-Profit, Gender, Hypocrisy

The Backstory of the Clinton Socks Drawer Tapes

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
23

The day after Trump was arraigned in federal court in Miami on 37 counts, mostly involving the Espionage Act, he attended a campaign rally in New Jersey. At that rally, he dismissed the charges against him, which were based on his refusal to return documents to the National Archices, including some that were classified and top-secret. Trump ridiculed the case against him, asserting that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take with him any documents he wanted. The ruling precedent, he claimed, was the “Clinton socks case,” which was dismissed by a judge.

“Under the Presidential Records Act — which is civil, not criminal — I had every right to have these documents,” Trump said, incorrectly describing the law that has no enforcement mechanism, and which is separate from the federal statutes Trump is actually charged under. “The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on this subject, known as the Clinton socks case.”

What was the Clinton socks case? I had never heard of it.

The Washington Post explained it a few days later.

First, the story pointed out, Trump’s reference to the Presidebtial Records Act as exculpatory for his actions was wrong. Did his lawyers tell him to say so or did he misinterpret what they told him?

Even before he pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, Trump and his legal team have argued that the Presidential Records Act gives the president the right to take any record upon leaving office and declare it personal. In reality, the 1981 law requiring White House documents to be preserved as property of the U.S. government was established, in part, so that presidents could not declare every record to be personal.

Second, his insistence on refusing to return classified documents bore no relation to the Clinton socks case.

When Clinton was elected, he reached out to a college classmate and friend who was a respected historian, Taylor Branch, and invited him to come to the White House periodically and tape record Clinton’s reflections on his presidency. Branch visited 79 times over the eight years of the Clinton presidency and taped their conversations as a running record of the Clinton presidency. He recorded their conversations on two cassette recorders. Clinton kept one set of the tapes, which he kept in his sock drawer.

In 2009, Taylor Branch published The Clinton Tapes, and he told the story of the socks drawer. The conservative organization Judicial Watch sued in 2010 to seek access to the tapes and to have them declared presidential records. A federal judge ruled in 2012 that the tapes were personal and were not presidential records.

A senior official at Jusicial Watch argued in an article in the Wall Street Journal that the Clinton tapes and Trump’s retention of government secrets were analogous.

Taylor Branch scoffed at the claim.

“Judicial Watch lost the case, and it was not a close case,” Branch said. Branch said “it’s amazing” that Trump’s team would cite the “failed case as a precedent for excusing Trump and how he handled classified government documents.”

Trump did not have the right to take classified documents home when he left the presidency. He did not have the power to declassify some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. He did have the right to refuse to return them when asked to do so or when ordered to do so. Nor did he have the right to hide them from his lawyers and the FBI. By taking home those documents, where they were not secure, he put at risk the lives of America’s troops and national security.

It’s quite a stretch to compare the tapes in Clinton’s socks drawer to the nondisclosure of classified documents.

Categories Accountability, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »