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Scott Maxwell: Purging Knowledge in Florida

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2023 //
36

The mainstream media has given ample coverage to the likelihood that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is likely to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in the next week. The stories about him treat him as a normal elected officials. They do not reference his multiple efforts to censor ideas and people he doesn’t like; to ban teaching ideas he doesn’t like; to ban textbooks that include ideas he disagrees with; to persecute drag queens and gay people. The American people need to know who he is. DeSantis’ regime of censorship is a pathetic attempt by pasty-faced cowards to dumb down the students of Florida. They can’t succeed because everyone has access to the Internet and television, where they will learn about the lies the state is teaching them.

Scott Maxwell is a regular columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. He is fearless. In this post, he writes about Governor Ron DeSantis’ purge of knowledge he doesn’t like.

The headlines are as abundant as they are dystopian:

“Florida rejects, amends many social studies textbooks”

“An Entire Florida School District Has Banned a Kids’ Book on Segregation”

“Florida bans more than 40% of math books after review”

“350+ Books Banned in Florida School Districts Since Last July”

A knowledge purge is underway in Florida. The targets: History lessons that politicians want hidden. Perspectives that make parents uncomfortable. Truths that ideologues find inconvenient.

Basically, we have people who want to control the narrative. And they think it’s easier to do that if kids don’t know all the facts.

Now, it’s hard to get your hands around both the scope and the specifics of this purge, because education officials are censoring so much and revealing so little.

In the latest salvo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education department rejected 35 different social studies books — more than a third of all they reviewed.
Florida rejects some social studies books, forces ‘Take a Knee’ out of one

But to justify their actions, they released snippets from only six of the books they shunned or ordered altered. So you don’t have much to go on.
But let’s look at one of those six examples. It’s from an elementary school textbook that teaches children about patriotism.

DeSantis staffers approved passages that instructed students to learn the Pledge of Allegiance and encouraged parents to stress the significance of the national anthem. But they did not want kids hearing why they might see some Americans, especially athletes on TV, take a knee during the anthem.

Specifically, the Florida Department of Education ordered the textbook to remove a section that suggested parents — not teachers, mind you — use that lesson on patriotic traditions “as an opportunity to talk about why some citizens are choosing to ‘Take a Knee’ to protest police brutality and racism.” DeSantis staffers ordered that suggestion stricken.

A popular talking point for people who dislike athletes taking a knee is to describe them as “anti-American,” “anti-cop” or “unpatriotic.” And it’s easier to peddle that narrative if students don’t hear why the players themselves say they’re doing what they are.

Personally, I think there’s valid debate over taking a knee. I can see why some players would. I can see why many people would dislike them doing so. It’s not really that hard to understand the divide — if you listen to what people on both sides are saying.
But the new Florida model of education doesn’t want to share all sides. The censors say kids aren’t ready for these discussions. Really, though, it’s the adults who are scared their kids might hear a different perspective. They’re the snowflakes.

The DeSantis censors also axed a section about Black Lives Matter from a middle school textbook that presented both pro and con perspectives on the social movement. The passage described the killing of George Floyd, explained that social media gave rise to civic activism and then gave a brief explanation of why some people supported Black Lives Matter and an even lengthier description of why others opposed it.DeSantis’ education staffers ordered the entire section removed.

At least one of the passages DeSantis staffers removed looks justifiably flagged. It’s a section from a middle-school book that attempts to teach students what a socialist form of government is.
The first part does a fine job explaining that, in a socialist society, the government controls much of the means of production, but then says: “It keeps things nice and even and without unnecessary waste.” Um, what? That seems more like a pom-pom for socialism — and a pretty skewed one at that — than a civics lesson. Yank it out.

But here’s the problem: DeSantis staffers shared a reworked version of the textbook that met their approval. It removed the word “socialism” altogether, replacing it with “planned economies.”
I’m no fan of socialism, but I’d sure like students to have a correct understanding of what it is. Why? Because the vast majority of adults who scream about socialism absolutely do not. They somehow believe anything government-funded is “socialism” … and then turn into Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel when you ask them if that means Medicare and highways are socialist as well.

I’d love to see students better informed than these adults. But that seems to be the last thing the grown-ups want.

Last year, before state officials were rejecting social studies textbooks, they were flagging math books for being allegedly too woke. A handful of people apparently believed liberal boogeymen had infiltrated the nation’s algebra-instructional complex. And the handful got their way.

Some of this censorship is silly, political theater. Some is a serious effort to indoctrinate.

One publisher, Penguin Randomhouse, sued the Escambia County school district last week over its book-banning. Other publishers agree to comply with whatever censorship orders they’re given as they’re more interested in selling textbooks than standing on any sort of educational principles.

Then there are all the school library books being banned in historic numbers, thanks to the Republican-led Legislature’s new book-banning bill — books about everything from the civil rights movement to nontraditional families.

School book challenges, already on rise, could escalate in Florida

The Lake County school district pulled a picture book about the true story of two male penguins in Central Park Zoo who raised a chick after the zookeeper gave them an egg. A Panhandle district removed a book about school segregation in the 1950s with the New Republic reporting the district concluded the subject matter was “difficult for elementary students to comprehend.”

I don’t think kids are the problem here. In fact, the local banning crusades are sometimes led by just one or two adults who not only want to shelter their own kids from ideas they find scary but want to keep books away from everyone else’s kids at school as well.

I thought of all this book-banning and history-censoring while attending a recent session on the rise of antisemitism at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida. One panelist said the best way to combat hatred, intolerance and ignorance is to ensure children hear unvarnished truths. He described it as “The criticality of giving truth to our kids.”

The leader of a Holocaust Center in South Florida made a similar point recently stressing: “The Holocaust, it didn’t start with guns and death camps. It started with words.”

Well, words are precisely what Florida is trying to ban, censor and distort. In unprecedented fashion.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Character, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Republicans

Why Everyone Pays for Public Schools, Not Private or Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2023 //
29

Let’s start at the beginning.

The Founding Fathers did not mention the word “education” in the Constitution. They left it as a state responsibility. However, the Founding Fathers did not ignore education. They drafted and approved the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787. These documents assured that new states would enter the United States on an equal footing with existing states. The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 declared that new towns would consist of 36 plots. One plot—#16, in the center of town—was to be set aside for a public school. Nothing was said about setting aside a plot for religious schools or private schools. Those were left to private discretion. (To learn more on this topic, read Derek Black’s Schoolhouse Burning; Black is a professor of law.)

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 forever banned slavery in the new states. And it included this provision: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Those today who seek to divert public funding to religious and private schools are repudiating the intentions of the Foundding Fathers.

The following tweets seem closer to understanding the wishes of the Founding Fathers than do the legislators of Arizona, Ohio, and other states that are using public funds to subsidize religious and private schools.

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, History, Religion, Stupid, Vouchers

Bob Shepherd: Are Trump and His Allies Fascists?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2023 //
101

Bob Shepherd is a polymath and a daily reader of the blog. He has been involved in every aspect of educational publishing, and most recently, he was a teacher in Florida. He graciously offered to help me with two of my books—The Language Police and Slaying Goliath—by carefully editing them before they were turned in to the publisher. And we have never met!

He wrote on his own blog:

A few years back, a friend, someone whom I respect, challenged me on Facebook, saying that Trump might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t an actual Fascist. Well, I beg to differ. If it steps like a goose, . . .

Here are a few of the clear signs that, yes, Fascist is precisely the term to describe Trump, his supporters, and those who wish to assume the orange mantle:

Alliance with other Fascists/Authoritarians. D.T. allied himself with violent, extremist authoritarian nationalists around the globe—with, of course, his handler, Vladimir Putin, but also with Rodrigo Duterte, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán and even, shockingly and weirdly, with Kim Jong-un. Hitler allied himself with extremist authoritarian nationalists around the globe—Mussolini of Italy, Hirohito of Japan, Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, Horthy of Hungary, Antonescu of Romania, Tiso of Slovakia, and Pavelić‘of Croatia (see the Tripartite Pact signed in September of 1940 and joined later by other members of the Axis Powers).

Use of Violent Citizens’ Militias. D.T. supported and employed on numerous occasions armed, right-wing citizens’ militias, notably

a) at the March on Charlottesville by neo-Nazis who chanted “Jews will not replace us” and murdered an antifascist protestor;
b) when a group of these self-appointed militiamen invaded the Michigan Capitol and Legislature, armed, and plotted to kidnap and murder Michigan’s governor; AND
c) when several groups of these, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, broke into and ransacked the U.S. Capital, beat police officers, caused injuries that led to deaths, called for hanging the Vice President, and tried to overthrow the incoming government of the United States by preventing its certification.

Trump approved of all these actions by Citizens’ Militias, saying in the first instance that there were “Good people on both sides”—the Nazis and those opposing them–and in the latter instances that these were “patriots.” And, of course, he planned and stoked the last–the January 6th insurrection. In addition, he called on his Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to violate the Posse Comitatus Act and send federal troops to attack BLM protestors, which Barr sort of went along with his little green men (Esper and Milley, to their eternal credit, declined). Hitler, of course, infamously used citizens’ militias, the Sturmabteilung (the SA, or brownshirts), to provide protection at rallies, to attack enemies, and, with the SS, to carry out the infamous attacks on Jews during Kristallnacht. When asked to denounce white supremacy in a debate, Trump responded by saying, “Proud Boys—stand back and stand by.”

Monumentalism. D.T. loved monuments and monumental architecture and got a lot of political mileage out of riling up supporters of continuing to have on display in the public sphere commemorative statues of genocidal maniacs and enemies of the United States (Columbus; slave-owning men who led forces of insurrection during the Civil War). He organized a Republican Convention that was replete with monumental architecture and iconography. To do this, he violated the law by using the White House and its grounds as a political campaign/convention set. He called for absurdly expensive military parades of the kinds one sees in Communist China, North Korea. and Putin’s Russia. Trump called for building a massive “patriotic” sculpture garden. He held monumentalist nationalist events like the 4th of July military airshow at Mount Rushmore. Hitler, of course, employed Albert Speer to build monumentalist fascist architecture and devoted a great deal of his time to this.

The Cult of Personality. D.T. constantly referred to himself as “the best” or “the greatest” this or that and plastered his name on everything, from massive amounts of merch (Trump steaks, Trump straws, Trump flags) to buildings to letters accompanying Covid relief checks. He turned every discussion of every issue into one about himself and how great he is, even events that were supposed to be to honor Gold Star families or present information about how not to die from a virulent pandemic. Like a mob boss or any other Fascist leader, he required loyalty oaths and fired people who didn’t make them. At every cabinet meeting, cabinet members were expected to preface their remarks with long exhortations about the greatness of Trump (for an abject lesson in human self-abasement, go listen to a recording of one of these delivered by Mike Pence, to whom, of course, Trump showed no corresponding loyalty). He literally described himself as “the only” person who could solve the country’s problems. Clearly, Trump suffers from malignant narcissistic personality disorder. Conjure in your mind, if you have the stomach for it, a typical Trump rally. Trump created a cult of personality, just as all Fascist strongmen have done—Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mao, Pinochet, the Kim Dynasty of North Korea, etc. The difference, of course, is that Trump was merely a WANNABE Fascist strongman.

The Myth of the Return to Racial and National Greatness. D.T. constantly referred to a mythical Golden Age to which he would return the country and even made this his official slogan (“Make America Great Again,” or MAGA). This was, of course, precisely what Hitler did, calling for a return to a time of Aryan and German greatness–the major theme of his propaganda and writing and speeches.

The Racial Supremacy Myth/Use of Racism to Mobilize the Masses. D.T. constantly issued racist dog-whistles, from his ad attacking the innocent members of the Central Park Five to his Obama birtherism to his calling asylum seekers “caravans” and “hordes” of “rapists and murders” to his references to “s—thole countries” to his “Good people on both sides” to his planning of rallies at sites of racist violence (near the Alamo, Tulsa, etc.) to his suggestions that China purposefully engineered and released SARS-COV-2, which Trump variously referred to, in his racist way, as the “China flu,” the “Wuhan flu,” and so on. And, of course, Trump built his whole campaign, initially, on the racist idea that America was being taken over by immigrants and that in order to “have a country,” we would need to keep out the brown-skinned hordes. In fact, this is why Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller chose Trump to run in 2015 to begin with. See the Frontline documentary about this, Zero Tolerance (2019). Trump called for the Border Patrol to SHOOT innocent asylum seekers and screamed at his Secretary of Homeland Security for saying that she couldn’t do that. Hitler baked anti-Semitism into the Nazi ideology. Both leaders ran concentration camps targeting members of particular ethnic groups. Both committed horrific Crimes against Humanity (Hitler’s genocides; Trump’s kidnapping of immigrant children and separation of these from their parents).

Scapegoating and Call for the Elimination of Enemies Within. D.T. constantly referred and continues to refer to “enemies within” that have to be eliminated “or you’re not going to have a country anymore.” These he refers to as Socialists, the “Radical Left,” “Antifa,’ and so on. One of Trump’s favorite and most often used slurs is Enemy of the People, a phrase that goes all the way back to Roman times and was famously the title of a great play by Ibsen. Calling for the elimination of enemies within is, of course, exactly what Hitler did, blaming Germany’s troubles, such as its loss of World War I and its hyperinflation on “enemies within”—Jews and Socialists and Communists—who had “stabbed the country in the back.” But it was, of course, the extreme left-wing Fascist leaders in Russia and East Germany, during the Stalin Era, who made Enemy of the People a standard catchphrase in the 20th Century, but Trump is too ignorant to know this, to know that every time he calls Biden or Fauci or whomever an “Enemy of the People,” he is sounding just like the murderous Joseph Stalin. (And yes, you can have Fascists who come to it from the left.) And even if Trump did know this, it probably wouldn’t bother him in the least bit. Trump has expressly said that he was unhappy with “his” generals because they didn’t show him the deference that Hitler’s generals showed to Hitler. Of course, Trump doesn’t know, because he is profoundly ignorant, a bear of very little brain, that a number of those very generals tried to assassinate Hitler several times. LOL. Be careful what you wish for, Donnie!

The Fascist Rally. D.T.’s main method of communication with his base was the large-scale rally—precisely the sort of method used by Hitler, with Goebbels and Speer as organizers and Leni Riefenstahl to film these.

Indoctrination of the Young. Trump called for the creation of an overtly exceptionalist, nationalist curriculum. Hitler did the same (see, for example, the Nazi textbook on Aryan supremacy, Rasse und Seele) and also created his Hitler Youth, his League of German Girls, and his Lebensborn Program.

The National Supremacy Myth. Trump’s American Exceptionalism, Hitler’s Übermenschen and Deutschland über alles. Same diseased thought.

Eugenics and Genetic Determinism. D.T. constantly referred to his “good genes” and what he called his “racehorse theory” of what constituted a fine woman–one who was properly bred. Despite the fact of his almost total scientific ignorance, he was and is committed to a myths of Eugenics and genetic determinism–one of the central myths, of course, of Nazi ideology. And this myth, of course, supports the racial and national superiority myths.

The Erasure of the Concept of a Nation of Laws and Totalitarian Insistence That His Will Is the Law. Trump insisted, “I have an Article 2 that says I can do anything I like as President.” He seems to think that he could just magically wave his hand and declassify documents and that, at any rate, rules about preservation and secrecy didn’t apply to him because NO RULES apply to him. Trump treated agencies and departments of the government as HIS, insisting, for example, that “His” generals and “His” DOJ and “His” everything else be absolutely subservient, and he fired or attempted to fire anyone who disagreed with him about anything. Barr went along with basically turning the DOJ into Trump’s private law firm. Hitler, of course, had the Enabling Act, making his will and the law identical. This the Fascists like Trump and Hitler share with Absolute Monarchists, the idea that L’état, c’est moi. Belief in the absolute authority of the Glorious Leader (Trump thought his image should be carved onto Mount Rushmore) is what puts the “total” in Totalitarianism.

The Portrayal of Himself as the Ultra-Masculine Leader, the Archetype of the Masculine, the Strongman. Trump loves to talk about how tough he is and constantly made threats via Tweet, yelled at staff, tore up briefs, and actually threw things when he got mad. And he constantly degraded women, speaking of grabbing them by the genitals, bragging about being able to get away with sexual assault, yelling at his female Secretary of Homeland Security and calling her “Honey,” making disgusting remarks about female celebrities and reporters. He actually ran a freaking old school beauty pageant. He bragged about walking in on the women while they were dressing because as owner, he could get away with it. He was a big pal of Jeffrey Epstein’s. Of course, Trump didn’t have the physique to portray himself as a male sex symbol, so he tweeted out pictures of his face Photoshopped onto the body of fictional boxer Rocky Balboa and actually sold this image on his website. Over twenty-five women have accused him of sexual assault. He paid off a porn star and a Playboy bunny to keep quiet about affairs with him. And in these respects, Trump was in the mold of other Fascist leaders who promulgated hyper-masculinized images of themselves (along with a big dose of hyper-sexism)–think Mussolini and Pinochet and Berlusconi and of Hitler’s military garb and Putin’s shirtless, horseback photoshoots.

One could go on and on. In Trump one had and has ALMOST the complete Fascist package. The one element that was missing was the competence to pull it off. Trump is far too ignorant and stupid to have effected a Fascist revolution in America. The next guy will have all Trump’s Fascist tendencies but be smarter and more knowledgeable.

P.S.: It is extraordinarily important to call Fascism out when it rears its monstrous head, to call it what it is. Why? Because silence is complicity. It’s letting it happen again. It’s making the same mistake that Germans made back in 1932-33, expecting that it’s not going to be all that bad. That experience is behind us all now. We are supposed to know better. It CAN get that bad, that quickly. Been there, done that. In the middle of the last century, we fought a war to end this shit. Here we are seeing it again, right here, on our soil. Who would have imagined that we would have slid so far backward? These must be more than just words: Never again.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Propaganda, Racism, Shame

Editorial: In Florida, It’s Best to Be Woke

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2023 //
31

The editorial boards of the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun Sentinel published this commentary on Governor DeSantis’ campaign to demonize being “woke.” What does it mean to be woke? It means being aware of systemic injustice. Did systemic injustices occur in the past? Yes. Do they occur now? Yes. Should we banish teaching or learning about systemic injustices, as DeSantis demands? No. That would mean teaching lies. Can we blame teachers or schools for the drop in scores on NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) when politicians like DeSantis require teachers to teach their students lies?

The editorial says it’s good to be woke:

Have you noticed? Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn’t smile enough. His brand is anger, especially at anything he can ridicule as “woke.”

Disney is “woke.” Diversity is “woke.” His obsession to cleanse Florida classrooms of discussions of racism was the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act.”

He took over New College of Florida because it was “woke.” He suspended Tampa State Attorney Andrew Warren because his policies were “woke.”
Florida “is where woke goes to die,” he says. This four-letter word has lost much of its punch, purely from overuse.

But it really doesn’t matter whether people have any idea of what “woke” means — just that it sounds bad.

But what does it mean, really?

‘Systemic injustices’

As good an answer as any came from DeSantis’ general counsel, under questioning from Warren’s attorney in federal court.

“The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” lawyer Ryan Newman replied, adding that DeSantis doesn’t share that belief.

He doesn’t? No society is without injustices. To pretend that ours is is ludicrous.

The term “woke” originated in Black culture almost a century ago. According to the Legal Defense Fund, it became an “in-group signal urging Black people to be aware of the systems that harm and otherwise put us at a disadvantage.”

Those are precisely the systems that DeSantis pretends don’t exist, and that he doesn’t want Florida schoolchildren and college students to learn anything about. His hijacking of the word “woke” is ironic, to say the least.

Obnoxious objectives

His objectives, like that of copycat Republican politicians, are threefold. One is to cater to bigoted and resentful white voters. Donald J. Trump taught them the effectiveness of that. No. 2: Breed a generation of future voters who will have learned nothing about racism’s history or continuing consequences.

The third objective, not quite so transparent but equally pernicious, is to desensitize the nation’s courts to systemic economic and political injustices, many of which afflict poor white people just as much as Black people. The Florida Supreme Court bought into this when it purged diversity guidelines from the Florida Bar’s continuing education criteria.

There hasn’t been such a cynical disinformation campaign since the Daughters of the Confederacy set out more than a century ago to reinvent the Civil War and Reconstruction. In that distorted looking glass, slavery had nothing to do with the war; it was the South fighting for freedom and the North fighting against it. That’s how children were to be taught.

Writing in The New York Times, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. described how the Daughters suppressed textbooks to the extent of rejecting any that described slaveholders as cruel. Slavery, wrote the Daughters’ historian, “was an education that taught the negro self-control, obedience and perseverance.”

“Undertaken by apologists for the former Confederacy with an energy and alacrity that was astonishing in its vehemence and reach, in an era defined by print culture, politicians and amateur historians joined forces to police the historical profession,” Gates wrote. “The so-called Lost Cause movement was, in effect, a take-no-prisoners social media war.”

The racism didn’t go away when the South lost the war and slaves were freed. It fostered sharecropping — slavery by another means. It rationalized Jim Crow laws, lynchings, inferior schools and a denial of the right to vote that persisted until 1965. It led to federal housing policies that confined Black people to urban ghettos. It was evident when Social Security initially excluded domestic and farm workers on the fiction that it would be too difficult to collect the taxes.

It remains glaring today in the statistic that Black Americans, who account for 13% of the population, are 27% of the people shot and killed by police. It was evident when the Tennessee House of Representatives expelled two Black members over a gun violence protest in their chamber, but not the Caucasian legislator who protested with them. It is apparent in the increasing re-segregation of public schools; profound racial disparities in income, health and mortality; and the persistence of fair housing and fair employment violations.

Exposure is essential

The remedy for injustice begins with exposure. It is essential. To conceal it is to be complicit in the injustice.

To teach American history through rose-colored glasses, as DeSantis intends, is to ignore the heroism and sacrifices that every generation has made toward fulfilling the belief that “all men are created equal.” That so many Americans have risen so often to that challenge speaks well of our nation, not poorly.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked one of DeSantis’ schemes — the law allowing educators and private businesses to be sued for making students and employees feel guilty about racism — but the destruction of the schools and universities goes on.

It’s up to the voters whether that continues. It’s better to be “woke” than silent any day.


The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie , Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.


© 2023 Orlando Sentinel

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Equity, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Gender, History, Hoax, Lies, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Shame

Chicago: Can Mayor Brandon Johnson Change National Democratic Education Policy?

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
22

Retired teacher Fred Klonsky points out the stark difference between national Democratic education policy and the views of Chicago’s new Mayor Brandon Johnson. He would love to see the party follow the lead of Mayor Johnson, who was a teacher in the public schools and an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union.

The national Democratic Party was once a strong champion of public schools, it once understood the importance of resources and funding for needy students and schools, it was once skeptical about the value of standardized testing.

All of that changed, however, after the Reagan report “A Nation at Risk.” (In a recent article, James Harvey explained how that very consequential report was distorted with cherry-picked data to smear the nation’s public schools.)

Democratic governors jumped aboard the standards-and-testing bandwagon, led by Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. When Clinton became president in 1993, his major education legislation was Goals 2000, which put the Democratic Party firmly into the standards-and-testing camp with Republicans. Clinton was a “third way” Democrat, and he also enthusiastically endorsed charter schools run by private entities. His Goals 2000 program included a small program to support charter start-ups. That little subsidy—$4-6 milllion—has grown to $440 million, which is a slush fund mainly for big charter chains that don’t need the money.

George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation was supported by Democrats; it encompassed their own party’s stance, but had teeth. Obama’s Race to the Top rolled two decades of accountability/choice policy into one package. By 2008-2020, there was no difference between the two national parties on education. From Clinton in 1992 (with his call for national standards and testing) to NCLB to Race to the Top, the policies of the two parties were the same: testing, accountability, closing schools, choice. And let us not forget the Common Core, which was supposed to lift test scores everywhere while closing achievement gaps. It didn’t.

Democrats nationally are adrift, unmoored, while Republicans have seized on vouchers for religious and private schools that are completely unregulated and unaccountable. Despite evidence (Google “Josh Cowen vouchers”) that most vouchers are used by students who never attended public schools and that their academic results are harmful for public school kids who transfer into low-cost, low-quality private schools, red states are endorsing them.

Mayor Johnson of Chicago represents the abandoned Democratic tradition of investing in students, teachers, communities, and schools.

Fred Klonsky writes:

In his speech yesterday, Mayor Johnson addressed the issue of schools and education, an issue that as a retired career school teacher, is near and dear to my heart.

“Let’s create a public education system that resources children based on need and not just on numbers,” Johnson said.

I hope so.

Some have predicted that the election of Brandon to be mayor of a city with the fourth largest school district in the country might represent a shift in Democratic Party education policy.

Chicago under Mayors Daley and Emanuel gave the country Arne Duncan and Paul Vallas who together were the personifications of the worst kinds of top-down, one-size-fits-all curriculum, reliance on standardized testing as accountability and union busting.

Corporate school reform groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children dominated the Democratic Party’s education agenda for two decades.

Joe Biden’s Department of Education has mostly been silent on these issues.

If Chicago’s election of Brandon Johnson does reflect a national shift, let alone a local one, it must do it in the face of a MAGA assault on free expression, historical truths and teacher rights.

None of this will be easy.

So, yes. I wish the Mayor the best and will do what I can to help.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Clinton, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Failure, Funding, Hope, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Republicans, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Supporting public schools, Turnaround Schools, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Commissioner Schwinn Resigns in Tennessee, Replaced by Reformer with No Classroom Experience

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
7

Mercedes Schneider employs her highly honed investigative skills to examine the background of Tennessee State Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn, who announced her resignation, as well as the “credentials” of her replacement Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds.

Schwinn started in Teach for America, then worked her way up to become chief deputy commissioner of academics for the Texas Education Agency. Such meteoric advances seem to happen only with TFA experience, especially in red states. Schwinn caused a bit of controversy after she handed out a $4.4 million no-bid contract to a newly-formed vendor who also had a TFA background. Strangely the whistle-blower was fired, while Schwinn rose yet again to be state commissioner of education in Tennessee.

In 2021, a Republican legislator introduced legislation calling for her resignation, due to the astronomical turnover rate in her department. But the proposal was withdrawn.

Then Schwinn audaciously awarded a multimillion dollar contract to TNTP (founded by Michelle Rhee) without disclosing that her husband worked for TNTP.

Schwinn’s successor, Reynolds, has no classroom experience. None. She rose through Ed deform organizations, largely connected to George W. Bush and Jeb Bush.

Schneider concludes:

Ed-reform makes for a tight and influential club.

For now, Schwinn is out, but with Reynolds replacing her, market-based ed reform will almost certainly not be taking a back seat in the Volunteer State.

Scandal might. But not corporate-styled ed reform.

If the people of Tennessee want a different approach to education, they will have to elect a new governor.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Teach for America, Tennessee

Michigan: Evangelical Extremists Take Control of County Government and Launch Chaos

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
12

This is one of the most disturbing articles I have read in recent memory. A prosperous county in Michigan elected a slate of evangelical rightwing fanatics to run their local government. The new majority replaced a conservative Republican board that was known for fiscal responsibility and moderate politics. The spark that lit the rebellion was a mask mandate for children during the pandemic.

The article was written by Greg Jaffe and Patrick Marley in the Washington Post:

WEST OLIVE, Mich. — The eight new members of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had run for office promising to “thwart tyranny” in their lakeside Michigan community of 300,000 people.


In this case the oppressive force they aimed to thwart was the county government they now ran. It was early January, their first day in charge. An American flag held down a spot at the front of the board’s windowless meeting room. Sea-foam green carpet covered the floor.


The new commissioners, all Republicans, swore their oaths of office on family Bibles. And then the firings began. Gone was the lawyer who had represented Ottawa County for 40 years. Gone was the county administrator who oversaw a staff of 1,800. To run the health department, they voted to install a service manager from a local HVAC company who had gained prominence as a critic of mask mandates.


As the session entered its fourth hour, Sylvia Rhodea, the board’s new vice chair, put forward a motion to change the motto that sat atop the county’s website and graced its official stationery. “Whereas the vision statement of ‘Where You Belong’ has been used to promote the divisive Marxist ideology of the race, equity movement,” Rhodea said.


And so began a new era for Ottawa County. Across America, county governments provided services so essential that they were often an afterthought. Their employees paved roads, built parks, collected taxes and maintained property records. In an era when Americans had never seemed more divided and distrustful, county governments, at their best, helped define what remains of the common good.

Ottawa County stood out for a different reason. It was becoming a case study in what happens when one of the building blocks of American democracy is consumed by ideological battles over race, religion and American history.


Rhodea’s resolution continued on for 20 “whereases,” connecting the current motto to a broader effort that she said aimed to “divide people by race,” reduce their “personal agency,” and teach them to “hate America and doubt the goodness of her people.”


Her proposed alternative, she said, sought to unite county residents around America’s “true history” as a “land of systemic opportunity built on the Constitution, Christianity and capitalism.’”


She flipped to her resolution’s final page and leaned closer to the mic. “Now, therefore, let it be resolved that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners establishes a new county vision statement and motto of ‘Where Freedom Rings.’”


The commission’s lone Democrat gazed out in disbelief. A few seats away, the commission’s new chair savored the moment. “There’s just some really beautiful language in this,” he said, before calling for a vote on the resolution. It passed easily.
A cheer went up in the room, which on this morning was about three-fourths full, but in the coming weeks it would be packed with so many angry people calling each other “fascists,” “communists,” “Christian nationalists” and “racists” that the county would have to open an overflow room down the hall.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Equity, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Freedom, Health, Michigan, Religion, Science, Trump

David Berliner Comments on Gloomy Report by Kane and Reardon About Learning Loss

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
28

The New York Times recently published an article by Thomas Kane of Harvard and Sean Reardon of Stanford lamenting that parents had no idea how much the pandemic had set back their children’s education. (“Parents Don’t Understand How Far Behind Their Kids Are in School”). Most parents, when asked, respond optimistically that they expect their children to bounce back from whatever academic losses they suffered.

Kane and Reardon think it’s time to dash their optimism. First, there are the NAEP scores showing setbacks in reading, math, and history. “By the spring of 2022, according to our calculations, the average student was half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading.”

Working with researchers from other institutions, they reviewed data from 7,800 communities in 41 states, where 26 million students are enrolled, about 80% of all students in public K-8 schools.

Their biggest conclusion: “The pandemic exacerbated economic and racial educational inequality.” Also: “test scores declined more in districts where schools were closed longer” but “Students fell behind even in places where schools closed very briefly…” However, “the educational impacts of the pandemic were not driven solely by what was happening (or not happening) in schools. The disruption in children’s lives outside of school also mattered: the constriction of their social lives, the stress their parents were feeling, the death of family members, the signals that the world was not safe and the very real fear that you or someone you love might get very sick and die.”

There is much more to read and ponder in the article.

I sent the article to my esteemed friend David Berliner, who is widely recognized as the nation’s pre-eminent education research expert.

Dr. Berliner kindly replied:

Dear Diane,

I am afraid that medical issues for both me and my wife will keep me from a formal response to the nonsense that was produced by two extraordinary researchers. Their credentials and analysis are perfect. I respect their analytic skills—but if you’ll excuse my Yiddish, they have no sechel. [Editor’s note: “sechel,” roughly translated, is common sense.] Let’s look at what they conclude.

 

 

  1. Kids who miss a lot of school do less well on tests of what they learned in school. DUH! I really think I could have predicted that!
  1. Parents who are with their kids many hours per week think their kids are recovering nicely, but these researchers, who never assess a real live kid, say the parents are wrong. That is not wise, if you ask me.

 

  1. Given the history of NAEP, it appears that the kids today will be back where kids were a few years back on tests like NAEP, and the loss probably extends to all the state tests and even PISA may show it. But,…. those kids who scored lower a few years ago, and whose todays’ kids match by their lower test scores, have helped the US economy remain one of the strongest in the world. Those lower test scoring kids of the previous decades helped make America hum. Why won’t today’s kids, with the same level of formal school knowledge, do the same?

Furthermore, we have the Flynn effect in IQ—today’s kids are well above their grandparents in IQ and their grandparent didn’t have nearly as much schooling as today’s kids. And still the economy hummed. American kids are “smarter” than ever if you believe that is what is measured with IQ tests.

Furthermore again, the wonderful 8-year study, which you know quite well, showed that kids who missed a lot of their traditional high school education not only did fine in college but excelled. The kids of many families, surely the better educated families, who missed a lot of formal schooling did not miss all of their education—they just got a different one, and it is not clear that they will be hampered forever because of that.

Among the authors speculations, is raised the question of a 13th high school year. But public schools are terribly underfunded now, so where the hell is there going to be money for a 13th year, or for an additional year of junior high, or more days of schooling per year, or summer school for all? More days of school means more expenditure of funds and I don’t think America has the money, or the will, to allocate such money.

And would colleges reject this generation of kids, as the authors worry about? Naw! The elites are always rejecting the talented but lower scoring kids as well as the kids whose families can’t make some part of the tuition. These two researchers are at Harvard and Stanford, and I seriously doubt if their freshman classes will be “less” smart. Getting full tuition out of parents, not just assessing student credentials, seems to have a lot more sway in the decisions of many higher education institutions than we want to admit. It is also quite noticeable that college enrollments have been falling dramatically over the last few years, so the way I see it is that if you take the time and put in the energy to apply to a college, you stand a really good chance of getting into some place reputable, even if your SATS or GRE’s are few points lower on average than the freshman class of, say, 2018.

Diane, you and I both remember when Ivan was going to wipe the economic floor with the progeny of Joe six-pack. Or when Akito in Japan was going to wipe the same economic floor with Joe’s progeny. Now its Li in China who will do so. But somehow, we Americans muddle through. I bet we will again.

Should we worry. Sure. But I just can’t get excited about this creative, well-done study, with zero policy options that make sense.

My conclusion is that American kids are behind where they were. OK. Attending school again will catch them up. No big deal.

The real issue is that many kids were already way behind, and they seem to almost all have a major character flaw…. they are poor! That’s Americas’ real problem, not a slightly lower score on a current state test whose predictive power of future achievements and earnings is quite limited.

Categories Accountability, Data, Disruption, Education Reform, Health, Inequality, Poverty, Research, Science, Standardized Testing

Thom Hartmann on the Durham Report

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2023 //
64

In May 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr asked John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut to investigate the origins of the FBI inquiry into Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016. In December 2020, Barr elevated Durham to Special Counsel so he could continue his inquiry into what Trump called a witch-hunt, the crime of the century. After four years, the Durham report was issued a few days ago.

Thom Hartmann reviewed the Durham report:

Imagine you’re in the FBI overseeing national security and a candidate for President for the United States hired to run his campaign a man who’d:

— taken $66 million from Russian intelligence services via Putin-friendly oligarchs,
— helped Russia install their own puppet government in Ukraine in 2010,
— was paid $1 million a year to help the corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) fight against democracy and maintain power,
— forced his party to remove references in their platform to defending Ukrainian democracy,
— gave a Russian intelligence agent top-secret insider campaign information about voters in 6 swing states so they could run an ultimately successful micro-targeted Facebook campaign to help the candidate,
— offered to run the campaign for free because he’d been well-compensated by Russian intelligence services,
— and then repeatedly lied to the FBI about his connections to Putin and Russia, leading to his being charged, convicted, and imprisoned until that candidate pardoned him.

Imagine that candidate had visited Moscow with his Soviet-citizen wife — whose father was a Soviet agent — and been groomed all the way back in 1987 by Russian intelligence (then Soviet intelligence, the KGB) to run for president.

— That he came back home from that 1987 trip to Moscow and spent $100,000 to run full-page ads in three major US newspapers urging America to abandon and leave defenseless its allies in Europe and Asia.
— That he then went to New Hampshire a month later and did a campaign rally to see if there was enough support for him to run for president.
— That US intelligence officers reported that the 1987 ad and campaign for president led toa champagne-laced celebration in Moscow, with Russian intelligence calling it one of their most successful infiltration/influence campaigns in decades.

Imagine if during his campaign for the White House that president — when only a candidate — had inked a secret deal with Russia to earn hundreds of millions of dollars by putting a hotel with his name on it in Moscow, and kept it concealed from the American public throughout the campaign.

Imagine that he made extensive use of his opponent’s emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence services, who then ran a Facebook operation hyping that same information that reached 26 million targeted Americans in 6 swing states, helping him win the Electoral College vote.

Imagine that during the 2016 campaign an insider with Russian connections learned that Russia had successfully hacked this candidate’s opponent’s emails on behalf of the candidate before the hack was revealed on Wikileaks during the Democratic National Convention where his opponent was nominated for president…and that information came to you via an informant.

Imagine that candidate became president 29 years after his first Moscow trip and in his first weeks in office, presumably as thanks for their help, invited the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister to a covert meeting in the Oval Office and gave them top-secret information on a spy about whom Russia had been concerned; that spy was then “burned.”

Imagine that this was nothing new for that president’s party: that two presidents before him had gained the White House by treasonous collaboration with openly hostile foreign powers (North Vietnam in 1968 and Iran in 1980). That congressional members of his own party would then go on to vote against compiling information about war crimes committed in Ukraine by Russia. That a senator from that party by the name of Rand Paul made a private trip to Russia to hand-deliver possibly stolen sealed “documents” to Putin’s intelligence service given him in confidence by that president.

Imagine that president had a series of nearly 20 secret telephone conversations with Putin (for which the records of what was said no longer exist) and then unilaterally — in defiance of both Congress and the law — blocked military aid to Ukraine while Russia was massing troops on its borders. And then followed those up with a years-long campaign to destroy NATO, which was Russia’s top military concern. And openly praised and deferred to Putin while trash-talking American intelligence services.

Imagine that the FBI worked with a special prosecutor named Mueller to determine the extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election and:

— Found that Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”
— Brought indictments against 37 individuals including six Trump advisers and 26 Russian nationals, secured seven guilty pleas or convictions, and found “compelling evidence” that the president himself had stonewalled or lied to investigators and “obstructed justice on multiple occasions.”
— Referred 14 criminal matters to the Justice Department, where the president’s hand-picked Attorney General — who’d helped President George HW Bush cover up the Iran/Contra Treason Scandal — ignored them and let them lapse.
— Uncovered five specific examples of the president criminally obstructing justice in ways that could easily have been prosecuted.

Imagine that when that president ran for re-election Russia again came to his aid by hacking his 2020 opponent’s family members, both looking for and trying to plant damaging information suggesting his opponent’s family was corrupt. That Russia then spread rumors across social media to that effect on the candidate’s behalf in the months before the election.

Imagine that when he nevertheless lost, Russian intelligence officers used social mediato amplify his claims the election was stolen, leading to an attempted coup conspiracy involving the assassination of the Vice President and Speaker of the House.

Imagine that the FBI — in part, during that president’s time in office — compiled material for a report concluding that:

“Throughout the [2020] election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud.”

So, if you were in the FBI and knew all that, how do you imagine you’d react?

Would you want to dig deeper, to determine if an agent of a hostile foreign power was trying to co-opt or even destroy America from within, a la The Manchurian Candidate?

Yesterday we learned that Trump-humper John Durham, a former federal prosecutor who should know better, can’t imagine any of this.

He issued a 306-page report on his well-paid four-year investigation in a futile effort to salvage his reputation (or burnish it with Trump) claiming that the FBI really had “no basis” to investigate the possibility that the 2016 Trump campaign might have been infiltrated or corrupted by Russian intelligence.

Durham wrote there was “a complete lack of information from the Intelligence Community that corroborated the hypothesis upon which the [2016] Crossfire Hurricane investigation [of Trump’s connections to Russia and Putin] was predicated.” (I have to admit, I almost spit out my coffee when reading that line.)

During the course of his $6.6 million “investigation,” Durham pressed chargesagainst two people, costing each a fortune in legal fees and damaging their reputations, and in both cases the individuals were exonerated by a jury of their peers.

Durham later claimed he was “misunderstood” by the media, and that he brought the charges not because he thought he could easily win the cases but because he was interested in defining “the narrative,” apparently in a way that would be favorable to Trump:

“[D]efense counsel has presumed the Government’s [Durham’s] bad faith and asserts that the Special Counsel’s [Durham’s] Office intentionally sought to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool,” Durham wrote last year. “That is simply not true. If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.”

When Bill Barr and John Durham took multiple taxpayer-funded luxury trips to Italy to interrogate that country’s government about possible FBI wrongdoing in the Hurricane Crossfire investigation of Trump and Russia, they instead discovered evidence of specific “financial crimes” committed by Trump himself that were so serious they aborted the trip and Barr authorized himself to dig deeper.

The details of those Trump crimes aren’t mentioned in yesterday’s Durham report, and there’s no explanation for their absence. Barr’s “digging” was, perhaps, simply another cover-up like he did with Iran-Contra back in the day.

Apparently Durham’s imagination couldn’t extend to the possibility that Trump has been a Russian asset for at least 30 years and continues to be one to this day. After all, there’s obviously no connection between him and Russia, right?

Thank you for reading The Hartmann Report. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, History, Republicans, Trump

Gavin Newsom Fires Back at DeSantis Insult

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2023 //
36

When Ron DeSantis held a press conference to celebrate his latest attacks on academic freedom, he sneeringly said, “If you want to study gender ideology, go to Berkeley,” because universities in Florida will focus on workforce preparation (which he thinks is a “classical education,” a sure sign that he never had one).

California Governor Gavin Newsom enjoys trading punches with DeSantis, and he sent out this reply:

Diane –

Ron DeSantis says if people want to study “niche subjects” they should go to Berkeley, but down in Florida they are going to focus on “the basics.”

His supporters chuckled. They thought it was a sick burn.

But some education is in order:

Six of the top ten public universities are located in California and the most popular majors at UC Berkeley are Cellular Biology, Computer Science, and Quantitative Economics.

That’s Math, Science and Technology.

It also probably explains why California outperforms Florida in all of those categories while having ten times the number of biotech companies as Florida and three times as many tech jobs as Florida.

But at least DeSantis got some laughs for his flailing presidential campaign…

Team Newsom

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, California, DeSantis, Florida, Higher Education, Ignorance, Lies
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