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Two of Baton Rouge’s Largest Charters Closing as IDEA Chain Fails and Quits

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
2

IDEA is a major charter chain in Texas that has gone through some ugly financial scandals about spending on luxury items (season box seats at a basketball arena, a foiled plan to lease a private jet, other executive perks). It expanded to Louisiana, thanks to a multi-million grant from the federal Charter Schools Program.

Things did not go well in Baton Rouge, as we learn from this report by Charles Lussier in The Advocate, a New Orleans newspaper.

IDEA Bridge and IDEA Innovation, two of the
largest charter schools in Baton Rouge, are
closing their doors in May, the last schools in
the state operated by Texas-based IDEA
Public Schools.

It’s the end of a 7-year foray into Louisiana by
the IDEA organization, which came in with
great fanfare as a “proven operator” with
schools in Texas that were ranked among the
best in the nation and graduates who
routinely continued onto college.

IDEA Bridge educates about 1,100 students
and IDEA innovation has about 750 students.
They both opened in 2018.

IDEA schools, however, slipped badly
academically during the COVID pandemic and
did not recover enough to lose their negative
ratings. Both IDEA Bridge and IDEA
Innovation have received F letter grades or
low Ds since the state began rating its public
schools again in 2022.

Both currently have Fs.

Parents received a letter Tuesday from the
charter school management organization that
the organization had made the “difficult
decision” to close the two schools when the
current school year ends. They follow the
closure of IDEA’s two other Louisiana schools,
IDEA Dunn in New Orleans in 2022 and IDEA
University in Baton Rouge in May.

“While we are proud of the determination and
grit of our students, the trust and patience of
our families, and the dedication and
commitment of our teachers and staff, we
have not delivered the academic results our
students deserve, and believe that now is the
time to bring in new options and
opportunities for our scholars and their
families,” according to the letter to parents.

School leaders say they are working with the
East Baton Rouge Parish school system and
the influential nonprofit, New Schools for
Baton Rouge, to identify new school
operators this fall for both the Bridge and
Innovation campuses.

In a statement Wednesday, Taylor Gast, a
spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge
Parish school system, said district staff are in
the process of developing alternatives for the
affected families and plans to have options for
the parish School Board to consider next
week.

“Our foremost objective continues to be
guaranteeing that every student in East Baton
Rouge Parish has access to outstanding,
tuition-free educational opportunities,” Gast
said. “We are prepared to assist IDEA families
and address their needs to the greatest
extent possible.”

The decision to close the two schools was
made Monday night at a special meeting of
the board of directors for IDEA Public Schools
Louisiana. Alicia Myers, an IDEA
spokeswoman, said that school performance
scores released in November — both IDEA
schools earned Fs — prompted “deeper
discussions about the future of IDEA
Louisiana,” leading to Monday’s vote.
“We believe this is the best decision for our
students and families,” Myers said.

IDEA Bridge and Innovation were the original
IDEA schools in Louisiana. Both opened in
newly constructed facilities at 1500 N. Airway
Drive and 7800 Innovation Drive, respectively.
Bridge served students in north Baton Rouge
while Innovation served students in south
Baton Rouge.

Enrollment for IDEA schools in Louisiana
peaked in fall 2021 at more than 3,000
students. It has dropped over the past three
years by about 1,100 students, a 37% decline.
Both IDEA Bridge and IDEA Innovation earned
three-year renewals of their charters in early
2023, extending their operations through
summer 2026. School system leaders,
however, warned that getting renewed again
would be difficult unless test scores
substantially improved.

Tuesday’s announcement comes seven
months after IDEA’s other Baton Rouge
school, IDEA University Prep, closed its
doors.

It was the newest school in the IDEA network
in Louisiana. When it opened in 2021, it took
over operations of a low-performing charter
school called University Prep, or UP
Elementary, and expanded into middle school
grades. It grew to more than 600 students,
but then began losing enrollment. Its facility
on Plank Road near the Metro Airport was
purchased in June by another charter school.
Helix Aviation Academy.

IDEA is the largest charter chain in Texas. It was once hailed as an outstanding charter chain. But a year ago, the state put it in conservatorship due to financial problems. IDEA’s leaders have a taste for luxury.

Texas’ largest charter school network has been placed under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools.

The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.

It was revealed that IDEA officials used public dollars to purchase luxury driver services as well as $15 million to lease a private jet, just two weeks after promising TEA it would be “strictly enforcing” new fiscal responsibility policies put in place in response to ongoing investigations, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.

The revelations led the district to conduct an internal investigation, resulting in the firing of JoAnn Gama, former superintendent and co-founder of IDEA. Gama later filed a lawsuit against IDEA claiming wrongful termination. IDEA came to a $475,000 settlement with Gama in January. This followed co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson’s departure in 2020; he was given a $900,000 severance package.

The charter school district serves about 80,000 students in K-12. The schools are independently run but publicly funded with state dollars, having received about $821 million in state funding in 2023-2024 school year.

Among its many luxury expenses, IDEA kept a private pilot on its payroll.

IDEA originally planned to buy a Beechcraft King Air plane, according to the former senior executive. After discussing the plan, however, the board decided to lease a Cessna Citation jet instead.

The board approved an eight-year lease agreement for the Cessna jet in December 2019.

IDEA agreed to pay $57,000 per month for the jet, which didn’t include the cost of fuel or paying the pilot. The board also voted to buy a hangar at the Weslaco airport for about $528,000.

During the board meeting, an executive assured the board that all costs would be covered by private funds.

News that a charter school planned to buy a jet, however, caused an uproar. IDEA abandoned the plan.

The U.S. Department of Education believed that IDEA would be a huge success. In 2016, when John King was Secretary of Education, the Department gave $12 million to IDEA to expand into Louisiana. IDEA opened four charter schools. All four have closed.

IDEA was Betsy DeVos’s favorite charter chain. She awarded it $260 million to expand while she was Secretary.

O, how the mighty are fallen!

.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Louisiana, Privatization

Jeff Tiedrich: The Nasty Pete Hegseth Clown Show

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
30

Jeff Tiedrich writes a funny, scatologial post about the Pete Hegseth hearings. As he says, it’s going to be a long four years. You should subscribe to his blog so he can continue to write. In the last line of his post, not included here:

Donny Convict is what would happen if Dunning and Kruger had a baby, and then dropped it on its head. he’s too fucking stupid to know just how fucking stupid he is. he has these moronic ideas, and then blurts them out like he’s the biggest genius who ever lived. and the MAGA yokels are right there to gobble it all down. yay, Donny! yay, External Revenue Service

Wikipedia: The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their abilities in a specific area, particularly when they have low ability in that task. 

Jeff writes:

the Confederacy of Sewer Clowns Big Top Confirmation Circus rolled into DC yesterday, and the first jester to summersault into the ring was Pete Hegseth.

Pete is, of course, the ahem allegedly publicly drunk, ahem allegedly sexual-abusing goon who Donny saw on Fox News and then picked to head the Department of Defense.

here are a few things we learned about ahem allegedly Piss-Drunk Pete.

Pete is catastrophically unprepared and unqualified for the job.

Senator Duckworth: “…you’re unqualified to do that. you can’t do the acquisition and cross-servicing agreements, which essentially are security agreements. you can’t even mention that. you’ve done none of those. you talked about the Indo-Pacific a little bit, and I’m glad that you mentioned it. can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations, and how many nations re in ASEAN, by the way.”

Hegseth: “I couldn’t tell you.”

Senator Duckworth: “no, you couldn’t, because you couldn’t bother to—”

Hegseth: “I know we have allies in South Korea, Japan and Australia.”

Senator Duckworth: “none of those countries are in ASEAN. I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations.”

this is the crux of the matter. take away Pete’s ahem alleged predatory behavior towards women. take away the ahem alleged public drunkenness. Pete Hegesth utterly lacks the skills and knowledge required to head the Department of Defense — a massive bureaucracy that employs over 2.91 million people. 

as a member of the Minnesota National Guard, Pete rose to the rank of Major. after that, he became a Fox News morning chat-show bobblehead. there’s a reason that Defense Secretaries are almost always lifetime military officers: it takes a lifetime of experience to acquire the skills necessary to do the job. Pete has none of that.

Pete’s only real qualification for the job — the only qualification that matters to Dear Leader — is that he’ll willingly carry out any order. for instance, Pete seems totally cool with shooting American civilians.

Senator Hirono: “in 2020, then-President Trump directed former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protestors in the legs in downtown DC — an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with. would you carry out such an order from President Trump to shoot protesters in the legs?”

Hegseth: [dodges the question]

Senator Hirono: “that sounds to me that you would comply with such an order. you will shoot protesters in the legs.”

Hegseth: [silence]

Subscribed

Pete believes the Geneva Conventions are an intrusive annoyance.

Senator King: “I want to be clear. are we going to abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture or are we not?”

Hegseth: “what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives to international bodies.”

oh, that’s lovely. we’re going to ignore a decades-old human rights agreement that almost every other nation on the planet abides by, because AMURRIKKKA FIRST. does Piss-Drunk Pete not realize that the Geneva Conventions also protects American soldiers and civilians? treaties only work when all countries abide by them. Pete should have learned this working well with others crap in kindergarten.

Pete seems totally cool with invading our allies’ territory.

Senator Hirono: “would you carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark, by force?” 

Hegesth: “President Trump received 77 million votes—”

Senator Hirono: “we’re not talking about the election. my questions is, would you use our military to take over Greenland, an ally of Denmark?”

Hegesth: [refuses to answer the question]

Senator Hirono: “that sounds to me like you would contemplate carrying out such an order.”

Pete has a real problem with women in the military, and is also a willing firehose of right-wing propaganda.

Hegseth: “commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted. and that disparages those women—”

Senator Gillibrand: “commanders do not have to meet quotas for the infantry. commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. that does not exist. It does not exist. and your statements are creating the impression that these exist. because they do not. there are not quotas.”

Pete absolutely does not want women serving in the combat. he wrote a book about it. he thinks women serving in the military is just more DEI crap that the commie Democrats cooked up to make America weak. and Pete’s willing to lie and claim that female combat soldiers are being forced upon commanders.

this ‘women can’t do a man’s job’ nonsense is the same misogynistic bullshit we’re hearing from the screech monkeys, about how Los Angeles is burning to the ground because the LA fire chief is a lesbian.

in Donny Convict’s America, only white men should be in positions of authority.

now let’s ask a Republican why he’s on Team Piss-Drunk Pete.

Senator Rounds: “he wants to bring lethality back in.”

here’s the dictionary definition of lethality: the capacity to cause great harm, destruction, or death — basically, what the United States Military already has.

so, why is Senator Rounds so excited to have the military “restored” to its current state? because MAGA Republicans have been brainwashed into believing that commie-marxist Democrats have turned the US armed forces into a bunch of emasculated sissiex who can’t fight. it’s why Esteemed Senator Fidel Cancun practically orgasmed over Russian army propaganda — because he believes this shit, too.

Donny Convict buys into this nonsense as well. he claims that when he took office in 2017, the army didn’t have any bullets.

it’s a lie so patently dumb that only a MAGA would believe it — but it’s why Republicans are so hot to have Pete come in. he’s going to bring back lethality — and brutality — against our allies, against American protesters, against anyone Dear Leader tells him to.

what could possibly go wrong?

Categories Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Jay Kuo Reports on Pete Hegseth’s Refusal to Answer Questions at His Hearings

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
3

Jay Kuo, lawyer, humorist and political consultant, watched the confirmation hearings of Pete Hegseth for the position of Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is notoriously unqualified. His Republican defenders treated his lack of experience and knowledge as a plus, a breath of fresh air. To charges of drunkenness, adultery, and womanizing, the Republican attitude was “Yawn. Everyone does it.”

Kuo writes:

Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, is many things: a serial adulterer, an accused rapist, a right-wing crusader and an often out-of-control drunk.

What he is not is qualified in any way to lead the Defense Department.

But apparently none of that posed any bar to the GOP senators on the Armed Services Committee, who appear ready to send Hegseth through to a full floor vote, which is now expected to go his way along a party line or near-party line vote.

Still, even assuming Hegseth’s confirmation is now assured, Democrats did a good job of laying the groundwork for resistance to and criticism of Hegseth’s leadership. They pulled no punches and demonstrated that it still matters to stand firm on the question of job qualifications, obeying the rule of law, and disqualifying questions of character.

No qualifications? Even better!

Republican senators spent much of yesterday’s confirmation hearing twisting Hegseth’s vices into virtues and his negatives into notches. For example, even though Hegseth has never led an organization of more than 200 people or a department with a budget of hundreds of millions let alone billions of dollars, this was somehow a plus.

As the New York Times noted,

Mr. Hegseth and his Republican allies on the panel made the case that his lack of experience compared with previous defense secretaries would be a plus.

Mr. Hegseth said: “As President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the right credentials, whether they’re retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives. And where has it gotten us?”

His utter inexperience was even “a breath of fresh air” per Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, with Hegseth being an outsider rather than from “the same cocktail parties that permeate Washington.”

In his opening statement, Hegseth even argued that he didn’t have a similar biography to Defense Secretaries of the last 30 years” but that “it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”

This may have made for a good sound bite, but it is disrespectfully false and misleading. It completely whitewashes the fact that his predecessor, Gen. Lloyd Austin, whom Hegseth has implied was a DEI hire, literally ran a war in a desert. Sen. Chuck Hagel, who served as Defense Secretary under President Obama, still has shrapnel in him from his service in Vietnam.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) drove home the point that Hegseth simply isn’t qualified for the job when she asked him to name just one country within ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), yet Hegseth began talking about South Korea, Japan and Australia.

“Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN,” responded Sen. Duckworth, who is a combat veteran who lost both legs and mobility in her right arm when her Blackhawk helicopter went down during the Iraq War from hostile fire. “I suggest you do a little homework,” she said.

As reporter Jordan Weissmann remarked, “This might seem like a small, embarrassing gotcha, but ASEAN is an acronym you encounter a lot if you do even very basic reading about the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China.”

The Trump “yes” man

Given that Hegseth’s senate confirmation is more or less in the bag, questions around whether he would be an independent check upon Trump’s excessive executive power have grown in importance.

For example, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked Hegseth whether the U.S. would abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture. Rather than state that we would, Hegseth responded, “What an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield.”

In a similar vein, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) had this exchange with Hegseth that highlighted the danger of having a puppet heading the Pentagon, with loyalty to Trump over the U.S. Constitution:

Sen. Slotkin: “As the Secretary of Defense, you will be the one man standing in the breach should President Trump give an illegal order, right? I’m not saying he will. But if he does, you are going to be the guy that he calls to implement this order. Do you agree that there are some orders that can be given by the Commander-in-Chief that would violate the US Constitution?”

Hegseth: “Senator, thank you for your service, but I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders.”

Sen. Slotkin then pressed Hegseth on this, giving real-world, not hypothetical, instances where his predecessor, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, apologized for deploying forces in D.C. to put down protests and convinced President Trump not to deploy the 82nd Airborne. Hegseth resisted responding with yes or no answers and refused generally to second-guess or get ahead of conversations that he would have with the president, only grudgingly admitting by the end of the line of questioning that there are “laws and processes under our Constitution that would be followed” (using the passive voice, I should add).

During Sen. Slotkin’s questioning, Hegseth also appeared to confirm that he would use active duty U.S. forces to staff things like detention camps for migrants, which Sen. Slotkin noted the military is not trained to do as it is more of a policing function.

A disqualifying past history

When Democrats had opportunities to question Hegseth about his troublesome history, they scored blows over his alleged sexual assaults, public intoxication, mismanagement of nonprofits and opposition to women in combat.

The most notable exchange occurred between Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Hegseth, when Kaine sought to clarify whether any of the behavior of which Hegseth is accused (including allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and spousal abuse) would be disqualifying for a nominee, at least in his opinion, were it proven to be true.

Hegseth repeatedly refused to address Kaine’s questions, claiming again and again that the allegations against him were from anonymous sources and that they were false. Kaine caught Hegseth in a bit of a trap, however, when he laid out the series of instances of adultery that included the incident he claimed as a consensual encounter. Even were that true, it still happened, Kaine pointed out, months after the birth of his daughter by the woman who would become his second wife after he had cheated on his first.

Sen. Kaine pointed out that it was Hegseth’s judgment that concerned him. The exchange is worth viewing in its entirety:

Sen. Kaine later went on MSNBC to underscore how evasive Hegseth had been. “Should committing a sexual assault be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should spousal abuse be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should drunkenness on the job be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. He wouldn’t answer any of them. And that was very telling to me.”

On the question of Hegseth’s alcohol consumption, one GOP committee member, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), rose to defend the nominee. He accused Democrats of hypocrisy, asking whether they had ever demanded senators who showed up drunk to step down from their positions.

This defense was awkward in three respects. First, it seemed to confirm that Hegseth indeed has a drinking problem, just one that is shared by some of Mullin’s Senate colleagues. Second, it completely ignores history because a prior nominee for Secretary of Defense, Sen. John Tower, was denied confirmation precisely because of issues over his excessive drinking and womanizing. And third, as Kaitlan Collins of CNN later pointed out to Mullins during an interview, how is the bad behavior of a senator a defense of someone who wants to run the Pentagon? 

Gaming the system

By the time Hegseth even set foot in the committee room, the game was already rigged in his favor.

The main holdout in the GOP has always been Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is a sexual assault survivor and a combat veteran. Ernst has brought attention to the plight of female service members and has pressed for changes to how the Pentagon deals with cases of sexual assault. Because she sits on the Armed Services Committee, a no vote from her likely would have doomed Hegseth, whose nomination might never have even gotten out of committee.

Sen. Ernst had been lukewarm to Hegseth before the MAGA bullying began. As the New York Times reported,

Ms. Ernst initially appeared hostile to [Hegseth], telling reporters that he would “have his work cut out for him.” After a private meeting with Mr. Hegseth, she said on Fox News that she was not yet a “yes” on his confirmation.

Her confession prompted an immediate backlash from outside groups affiliated with Mr. Trump, who targeted her with ads and social media posts, while prominent Iowa Republicans threatened to mount primary challenges against her in 2026. 

Within days, Ms. Ernst met with Mr. Hegseth again, and announced that she had been heartened by his promises to audit the Pentagon and appoint a senior official to deter sexual assaults in the military and ensure that female service members would be considered for combat roles if they could meet the requirements.

Sen. Ernst’s political capitulation went beyond merely bowing to GOP pressure. Per reporting by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Sen. Ernst, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), even declined an offer to meet with Hegseth’s accuser—the woman who filed a complaint with the police claiming Hegseth had raped her after a GOP conference in Monterey, California.

So much for supporting victims of sexual assault.

The FBI background check on Hegseth was already woefully deficient because its investigators interviewed none of Hegseth’s accusers or former spouses. This is contrary to standard protocol, which advises interviews of all current and former spouses of nominees. When the FBI background check finally came back, it came with instructions not to share it with any of the Committee members beyond the chair and the ranking Democratic member.

Finally, to hamstring the vetting process even further, the GOP only permitted only one round of questioning of Hegseth, which completed after just four hours yesterday. Seven minutes for each senator to question the nominee, who largely refused to answer the question asked, produced the desired result: It barely scratched the surface of what the public is entitled to know.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Texas: Moderate Republican Wins as Speaker of the House with Democratic Votes

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
11

The top elected leaders of Texas are far-right extremists–Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Abbott is passionate about school vouchers, despite the fact they would harm rural public schools. He called multiple special sessions of the legislature last year specifically to pass vouchers, but failing each time.

Gov. Abbott got more than $10 million from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass to oust the moderate Republicans who blocked vouchers. He won most of those races, defeating conservatives who prioritized their constituents over the wishes of the Governor, Jeff Yass, Betsy DeVos and the Texas oil and gas billionaires Wilks and Dunn, devout evangelical supports of vouchers.

A new session of the legislature opened. The hard right backed Rep. David Cook to be Speaker of the House. Rep. Dustin Burrows ran against him. Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton supported Cook. Burrows won. Burrows received more Democratic votes than Republican votes.

The Texas Tribune has the story.

Burrows won the speaker’s race after two rounds of voting, edging out Cook by a vote of 85-55. During the first round, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez-Ramos, a Richardson Democrat, received 23 votes from fellow Democratic members — enough to keep Burrows and Cook from reaching the majority threshold of 76.

In the ensuing runoff round, twelve Democrats who had voted for Rodríguez-Ramos switched to Burrows. He also netted two more GOP votes from members who defected from Cook. Nine members marked themselves present without voting for either option, and one member, Yvonne Davis of Dallas, was marked as absent.

Burrows’ winning coalition was made up of 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans, drawing instant backlash from hardline members and activists who vowed revenge in next year’s primaries.

The Abbott wing of the party–more MAGA than Trump–is furious.

The question is: Does this mean that Abbott’s voucher plan will lose again?

A time for watchful waiting.

Categories Billionaires, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Republicans, Texas, Vouchers

The Nation: Linda McMahon’s Very Important Rightwing Think Tank

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
2

Trump selected Linda McMahon to be the next Secretary of Education. She is well known for making it rich in the world of wrestling entertainment, in partnership with her husband. Less well known is her role as Chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Trump is close to AFPI, which promotes school choice and the “parental rights” movement, which promotes censorship of books and curriculum about racism and LGBT topics. They oppose any teaching that might make students “uncomfortable,” like learning about the history of racism, or that might teach students that LGBT exist.

The Nation published an article by Christopher Lewis and Jacob Plaza. The article tells the story of the think tank McMahon leads. It was launched after Trump’s loss in 2020 and its policy agenda defines Trump’s plans. To understand what Trump intends to do, learn more about AFPI.

Lewis and Plaza write:

Amid the incoming Trump administration’s flurry of unqualified, corrupt, and/or vengeance-driven cabinet nominees, it’s been easy to overlook Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to head the US Department of Education. McMahon is best known for her role in running World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband the longtime Trump crony Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon’s background in education is exceedingly thin; she served on the Connecticut Board of Education more than a decade ago, thanks to an appointment from another politically connected friend, then–Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. McMahon has a teaching certificate but has never actually taught. Indeed, she was forced to resign her spot on the Connecticut board when the Hartford Courant reported that she’d lied on her résumé about having an education degree. Add in the alleged role of the WWE and its parent company in a sexual-abuse scandal involving “ring boys” for the wrestling league, and McMahon’s nomination, in any sanely administered political order, would be dead in the water. (McMahon and her husband both deny the abuse allegations in the pending WWE suit.)

Yet McMahon possesses one key credential for the next Trump administration—in addition, that is, to a proven track record to personal fealty to the president-elect, and a long string of Fox News appearances: She’s the former head of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the policy nerve center for MAGA governance. For all the attention focused on the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 policy agenda, AFPI has been Trumpworld’s principal policy network, serving as a haven for former Trump appointees during the Biden years. AFPI hands assembled a detailed blueprint for Trump’s return to power, including plans to make the Trump tax cuts permanent and purge the federal workforce of civil service workers deemed insufficiently MAGA. In addition to McMahon, Trump has tapped several senior AFPI figures for cabinet posts, including EPA nominee Lee Zeldin, Agriculture nominee Brooke Rollins (the think tank’s president and CEO), and its Georgia chapter chair, Doug Collins, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veteran’s Affair

As education secretary, McMahon would be charged with administering a uniquely destructive suite of policies, even by the usual standards of Trump governance. That’s because the Department of Education has been a bête noire of the American right ever since Jimmy Carter founded the agency in 1979. By creating a layer of federal oversight over locally run schools, the DOE has, in the overheated imaginings of right-wing policy mavens, arrogated deep-state sovereignty over the rights of parents to preside over the best educational options and life chances for their children. And as the Education Department has sought to clarify and standardize anti-discrimination policy for LGBTQ+ students, it’s become a pet target for anti-trans culture warriors on the right.

McMahon probably won’t heed the growing chorus of conservative calls to abolish the DOE outright, but she can be counted on to aggressively pursue other key MAGA objectives in education policy. In line with her work at AFPI, McMahon will likely continue to promote the use of privately backed charter schools to defund public education—the most fundamental plank of right-wing education policy. In addition, she’ll probably resume her predecessor Betty DeVos’s campaign to deny basic Title IX protections to LGBTQ+ students. And it’s a safe bet that she’ll also re-up plans to promote Trump’s 1776 commission—MAGA’s agitprop answer to the 1619 Project, promoting a “patriotic” national curriculum to downplay and discourage honest discussion of America’s racial history in the schools.

Following the lead of billionaire right-wing donors, AFPI enthusiastically champions the charter-schools movement, while seeking to undermine the government’s role in providing quality public education. McMahon’s think tank has erected a whole policy infrastructure to promote charter schools, including direct public subsidies to them, the creation of education saving accounts (ESAs) for parents to enroll kids in charters, and proposals to weaken teachers’ unions in conjunction with the rise of open-shop charters. This agenda does more than harness the long-standing animus to government-backed education on the right—it advances the creation of a parallel education system for right-wing partisans. In this regard, as well as in its aggressive model of privatized education funding, the AFPI plan recalls the original role that neoliberal economics played in supporting the new ad hoc network of “segregation academies” launched in the American South after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate the nation’s schools. The same basic dictum holds for today’s American right as it did then: If you can’t segregate with law, segregate with economics.

AFPI claims that charter school students have higher scores on standardized tests. In reality, the findings here follow what holds for better-funded public schools: namely, that well-funded charter schools tend to produce better test scores, while less well-off charters fare a bit worse, with some regional variations. Students in the competitive DC charter school system’s Opportunity Scholarships program, often cited as the gold standard by charter school advocates, actually performed worse on reading tests than those who did not attend the program.

School choice and voucher programs are a drain on the public’s coffers. For hard-right ideologues like the advisers at AFPI, that’s the whole point. Privatized education is part of the broader right-wing campaign to block the public sector’s ability to finance anything, especially if it would further racial equality. The National Education Association notes that voucher programs redirect scarce public funds toward unaccountable private school programs, and found zero evidence that these programs—which increase school segregation—improve students’ performance. In some cases, there are negative impacts.

What’s more, private management naturally leads to a focus on profit, financial self-sustainability, and expansion—mandates that typically lead to steep budget cuts in the schools, even if students suffer. According to the Network for Public Education, for-profit management companies run nearly one in seven charter schools.

AFPI has also endorsed federal legislation to create national education savings accounts. Like charter schools, ESAs seek to redirect public resources to market-driven gimmicks under the broad rubric of consumer choice. When parents open an ESA, they withdraw their children from the school district and receive a deposit of public funds in a savings account authorized by the government. Parents are then allowed to spend from that account on a range of educational expenses, including tutoring, therapy, or school supplies.

ESA plans create an obvious bind by forcing parents to navigate the education industry all on their own. The ESA scheme affords no safeguards for students whose parents made poor spending choices with the funds in their account. A report in Forbes recounted the story of a family using up its entire account before paying for a single English or math class. And like the broader charter model it upholds, the savings-account system reinforces, rather than weakens, the core inequalities of the US education system; it ensures that wealthier parents will be able to afford to send their children to the best schools.

For a bracing illustration of how charter and for-profit education schemes pillage publicly funded schools, consider Chicago’s experience. In 2013, the city closed 48 public schools to cover widening budget shortfalls. And Chicago’s public schools were going broke in no small part due to the rapid expansion of a parallel charter systemcaptained by ardent school privatizers. Since the insurgent charter schools operated outside traditional governance and accountability, they accumulated millions in debt while draining desperately needed funding away from public schools. Ultimately, 17,000 students were displaced, and Chicago was left with a more unequal and racially segmented school system than it had at the outset of the city’s charter-school fiasco.

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

“Democracy”: Billionaire Bezos Abjectly Kisses Trump’s Ring

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
14

Our reader who calls him/herself “Democracy” writes here about Jeff Bezos’ shameless betrayal of the founding principles of The Washington Post, as well as its recent motto “Democracy dies in darkness.” He not only canceled the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (to avoid taking sides), but he (or David Shipley, editor of the editorial page), canceled a cartoon critical of billionaires (including Bezos) who rushed to pay court to the new, felonious president.

Why would a titan with assets of more than $200 billion bend his knee and kiss the ring of a convicted felon? Why would Mark Zuckerberg, also with assets of more than $200 billion, immediately made his peace with Trump by eliminating content moderation from Facebook, welcoming the return to FB of Nazis, conspiracy theorists, racists, and other malefactors. Are they fearful of losing a few billions? Are they worried about being left out of dinners at Mar-a-Lago?

Bear in mind that The Washington Post led the way in discrediting Joseph McCarthy (those who were alive then will never forget Herblock’s cartoons, portraying him as a thug) and exposing the Watergate Scandal, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Bezos’s cowardice is causing the loss of excellent journalists, readership, revenue–and most important–reputation.

“Democracy” wrote, as a comment on this blog:

When Eugene Meyer bought The Washington Post in 1933 he established seven “guiding principles” for the newspaper. At the very top was this:

“The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.”

Some of the other principles were these:

*  “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”

*  “The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”

*  “In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.”

*  “The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs.”

Given what has happened to The Post in the last couple of years under Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, Eugene Meyer must be spinning in his grave.

Prior to the election, The Fiscal Times reported this:

“23 Nobel Prize-winning economists expressed support for the policies proposed by Kamala Harris, warning that the policies of her opponent would be ‘counterproductive.’…The 23 Nobel laureates — more than half of all living recipients of the economics award — said that the Harris agenda focused on the middle class and entrepreneurship would ‘improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness.’…By comparison, Trump’s agenda of high tariffs and regressive tax cuts would ‘lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.’ In addition, in their view Trump represents a threat to the rule of law and political stability, necessary components of a thriving economy.”

The New York Times reported this:

“More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president…The letter praises Ms. Harris for understanding that ‘the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.’ Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, would ‘jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,’ the letter said.”

And yet, Jeff Bezos SPIKED a Post endorsement of Harris, and then lied about it in a column that was shameful, dishonest, and disreputable to The Post and the quality journalists who work there, or who used to, because a number of them have already quit or are planning on exiting.

Bezos had a relatively simple choice.

Honor The Post’s masthead logo — “Democracy Dies in Darkness — AND the principles established by Eugene Meyer, OR not.

Bezos chose racism and misogyny and sedition, and fascism.

The Atlantic published a piece three days ago by historian Timothy Ryback on Adolf Hitler.Here’s an overview:

“Monday, he swore an oath to uphold the constitution, went across the street for lunch, then returned to the Reich Chancellery and outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists and  turned to his main agenda: an empowering law that would give him the authority to make good on his promises to revive the economy…withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners, and exact revenge on political opponents. ‘Heads will roll,’ Hitler vowed…

“When Hitler wondered whether the army could be used to crush any public unrest, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg dismissed the idea out of hand, observing ‘that a soldier was trained to see an external enemy as his only potential opponent.’…Blomberg could not imagine German soldiers being ordered to shoot German citizens on German streets in defense of Hitler’s government…Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the “parliamentarian swamp”—den parlamentarischen Sumpf—only to find himself now foundering in a quagmire of partisan politics and banging up against constitutional guardrails. He responded as he invariably did when confronted with dissenting opinions or inconvenient truths: He ignored them and doubled down.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/

Sound familiar? 

You’d think that Jeff Bezos might be aware of all of this. He likely is. But he’s chosen to collude with Trump, presumably because it helps his bank account – as if he needs that. Bezos gave $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund, which presumably Trump will pocket, and he coughed up $40 million to produce a “documentary”on Melania Trump, set to air later this year. A. Documentary. On. Melania. Trump.

Honestly, given her “accomplishments,” couldn’t a suitable “documentary” be produced for about $40?

As someone who used to deliver The Post, and who has been a reader for more than 50 years, I think it only appropriate to tell Jeff Bezos from the bottom of my heart that he can Kiss My Ass.

The American democratic republic deserves better.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Hypocrisy, Media, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Media Discovers that Bidenomics Works!

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
16

This was one of Jennifer Rubin’s last columns for The Washington Post. She resigned on January 13 to start The Contrarian, to be free of the whims of billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos wants to be Trump’s ally. Rubin wants to be an independent journalist.

She writes here about the mainstream media’s newfound appreciation for Biden’s economic policies. The latest jobs report showed a healthy increase of 256,000 new jobs, which stunned economists. During the Biden administration, new jobs were created in every quarter for four years. This is an enviable record.

Currently, Trump and Vance are saying on social media that they are inheriting “a dumpster fire.” It won’t take long until they claim credit for the vibrant economy they are inheriting from Joe Biden.

She writes:

The New York Times wrote a few days ago, “President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.” Just how good are things? Here’s how the Times described the state of the economy:

For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.

The Financial Times reported last week on “why America’s economy is soaring ahead of its rivals.” Time published an essay in November that said, “President-elect [Donald] Trump is receiving the strongest economy in modern history which is the envy of the world.”

Gosh, you are not alone if you are wondering where such upbeat reporting has been for the past few years. After all, “The economy had a strong 2024: robust growth, low unemployment and inflation descending to 3%,” former car czar Steve Rattner told us. Moreover, he has said, “All told, Biden has added 693,000 factory jobs while Trump added just 425,000 before Covid hit.7 … The rate of grocery inflation — particularly troubling for everyday Americans ­— has subsided to less than 1.6%.” Real median incomes are higher than when Trump left office, border crossings are lower.

Overall, the Biden record is impressive, especially in light of the recession and pandemic he inherited. Researchers at the University of Chicago told us: “Under the Biden administration, real GDP rose 12.6 percent, rightly cheered … as ‘a historically robust expansion’ that repeatedly defied forecasts. Since the pandemic, economic growth in the US has far outpaced that of our peer nations. Business investment is up; unemployment is low.”

There are several explanations for why we did not have coverage commensurate with the success President Joe Biden enjoyed. The news media’s fixation on polls showing what voters thought about the state of the economy and its negative news bias (which I have written about) that refused to give proper weight to Biden’s successes failed to give voters an accurate picture of Biden’s achievements. And yet now, somehow, with the election over, the media widely acknowledges that Biden’s record is strong, something they downplayed during the election.

We should not discount the disproportionate impact of rising costs (again, echoed without sufficient context in political coverage) on the public perception of the economy (which in turn got amplified to the exclusion of “good news” by the media). “Inflation in the United States reached 9% in 2022, meaning that the average cost of goods and services went up by that amount,” Johns Hopkins University’s David Steinberg explained. “That is the highest rate of inflation that this country has experienced in over 40 years.” While inflation has now dropped close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent benchmark, “the price level today is more than 20% higher than it was four years ago. As a result, many Americans cannot afford to buy as many things as they otherwise would.”

There is something else at work as well. Utilizing 89 years’ worth of data, University of Chicago researchers found, very simply, “It is not enough to say that a strong economy favors the incumbent. … A strong economy favors Republicans, and a weak economy favors Democrats, regardless of the incumbent.” They postulate that “when the economy is weak, Americans become more risk averse, and that’s why they favor the party that promises redistribution and social insurance — Democrats. During booms, by contrast, voters are more willing to take risks and therefore more likely to elect Republicans, who favor lower taxes.”

Democrats, including Biden and former president Barack Obama, like to point out that Democrats routinely inherit recessions from Republicans, clean up the mess and yet get no credit for it. (“In finance, there’s a phenomenon known as the ‘presidential puzzle’ — stock returns have been higher under Democratic administrations than Republican ones,” the research showed. “Between 1927 and 2015, the period analyzed in our study, the average excess market return was nearly 11 percent per year higher under Democrats than Republicans.”)

And yet this does not explain why, after inheriting great economies, Republicans manage to mess things up, ushering in the conditions for Democrats to return. Let me suggest the most simple explanation: The sugar-high from the only consistent economic policy Republicans favor (supply-side economics) quickly wears off, leaving the country with higher debt, more economic inequality and underinvestment in critical areas (e.g., education, infrastructure). Coupled with reckless deregulation that often results in financial crisis (as in 2008), Republicans’ policies leave Americans reeling, ready to bring back the only party of responsible governance: the Democratic Party.

Democrats should extract several lessons from this pattern. First, the media cannot be relied on to tell the success story. Republicans have a reliable propaganda machine in right-wing media; Democrats enjoy no such luxury. (One need only look at the economic coverage during Biden’s term to see this is true.) Second, it follows that Democrats must do a much better job touting their own successes and communicating with low- and no-information voters. Biden joked he should have put his name on the stimulus checks; he was right.

And finally, before Democrats change their philosophy or dump capable leaders, they might simply run a 24/7 hard-hitting critique of the Trump economic agenda. That will set the stage for the midterms.

We already have hints what Trump will do: run up big deficits, cut taxes for the super rich, slash entitlements, enact inflationary tariffs that provoke trade wars, undertake mass deportations that prove economically disastrous and do corporation’s bidding in enacting reckless deregulation.

Voters may not have long memories (amnesia about Trump’s first term pervaded the campaign) but, fortunately for Democrats, Trump’s failures and scandals will be fresh in the minds of voters when they go to the polls in 2026

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Fake News, Lies, Media

Guess Who Will Attend Trump’s Inauguration and Sit on the Platform?

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
7

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg will not only attend Trump’s Inauguration, they will be seated together on the platform.

Trump will show them off like house pets. Which they are. Trump brought out Musk’s inner Nazi. He intimidated Zuckerberg by threatening to put him in jail. He humbled Bezos, leading him to censor his journalists, who are fleeing the Washington Post.

Will they heel, sit and stay on command?

Sad.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Will Purge Those Who Are Not Loyal to Him

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
16

Heather Cox Richardson reports on the preparations for Trump’s return to the White House. At the top of the priority list is removing all those officials who are not loyal to Trump. Forget the fact that those who took an oath of office pledged their loyalty to the Constitution. The higher loyalty in 2025 is to Trump personally.

She writes:

The incoming Trump administration is working to put its agenda into place.

Ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) warned that the loyalty purge “threatens our national security and our ability to respond quickly and effectively to the ongoing and very real global threats in a dangerous world.”

Although experts on the National Security Council usually carry over from one administration to the next, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller of the Associated Press today reported that incoming officials for the Trump administration are interviewing career senior officials on the National Security Council about their political contributions, how they voted in 2024, and whether they are loyal to Trump. Most of them are on loan from the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency and, understanding that they are about to be fired, have packed up their desks to head back to their home agencies.

The National Security Council is the main forum for the president to hash out decisions in national security and foreign policy, and the people on it are picked for their expertise. But Trump’s expected pick to become his national security advisor—his primary advisor on all national security issues—Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) told right-wing Breitbart News that he wants to staff the NSC with people who are “100 percent aligned with the president’s agenda.”

But during Trump’s first term, it was Alexander Vindman, who was detailed to the NSC, and his twin Eugene Vindman, who was serving the NSC as an ethics lawyer, who reported concerns about Trump’s July 2019 call to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to their superiors. This launched the investigation that became Trump’s first impeachment, and Trump appears anxious to make sure future NSC members will be fiercely loyal to him.

With extraordinarily slim majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans are talking about pushing through their entire agenda through Congress as a single bill in the process known as budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation, which deals with matters related to spending, revenue, and the debt limit, is one of the few things that cannot be filibustered, meaning that Republicans could get a reconciliation bill through the Senate with just 50 votes. If they can hold their conference together, they could get the package through despite Democratic opposition.

House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leaders have said that the House intends to pass a reconciliation bill that covers border security, defense spending, the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, spending cuts to social welfare programs, energy deregulation, and an increase in the national debt limit.

But Li Zhou of Vox points out that it’s not quite as simple as it sounds to get everything at once, because budget reconciliation measures are not supposed to include anything that doesn’t relate to the budget, and the Senate parliamentarian will advise stripping those things out. In addition, the budget cuts Republicans are circulating include cuts to popular programs like Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (more commonly known as Obamacare), the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment in combating climate change, and the supplemental nutrition programs formerly known as food stamps.

Still, a lot can be done under budget reconciliation. Democrats under Biden passed the 2021 American Rescue Plan and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under reconciliation, and Republicans under Trump passed the 2017 Trump tax cuts the same way.

A wrinkle in those plans is the Republicans’ hope to raise the national debt limit. As soon as they take control of Congress and the White House, Republicans will have to deal immediately with the treasury running up against the debt limit, a holdover from World War I that sets a limit on how much the country can borrow. Although he has complained bitterly about spending under Biden, Trump has demanded that Congress either raise or abandon the debt ceiling because the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax cuts he wants to extend will add $4.6 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years, and cost estimates for his deportation plans range from $88 billion to $315 billion a year.

Republicans are backing away from adding a debt increase to the budget reconciliation package out of concern that members of the far-right Freedom Caucus will kill the entire bill if they do. Those members want no part of raising the national debt and have demanded $2 trillion in budget cuts before they will consider it. Tonight, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told Jordain Carney of Politico that Senate Republicans expect the debt limit to be stripped out of the budget reconciliation measure.

So Republicans are currently exploring the idea of leveraging aid to California for the deadly fires in order to get Democrats to sign on to raising the debt ceiling. Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Trump met with a group of influential House Republicans over dinner Sunday night at Mar-a-Lago to discuss tying aid for the wildfires to raising the debt ceiling. Today, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) confirmed to reporter Hill that this plan is under discussion.

Indeed, Republicans have been in the media suggesting that disaster aid to Democratic states should be tied to their adopting Republican policies. The Los Angeles fires have now claimed at least 24 lives. More than 15,000 firefighters are working to extinguish the wildfires, which have been driven by Santa Ana winds of up to 98 miles (158 km) an hour over ground scorched by high temperatures and low rainfall since last May, conditions caused by climate change.

On the Fox News Channel today, Representative Zach Nunn (R-IA) said: “We will certainly help those thousands of homes and families who have been devastated, but we also expect you to change bad behavior. We should look at the same for these blue states who have run away with a broken tax policy…. Those governors need to change their tune now.” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) blamed Democrats for the fires and said of federal disaster relief: “I certainly wouldn’t vote for anything unless we see a dramatic change in how they’re gonna be handling these things in the future.”

Aside from the morality of demanding concessions for disaster aid after President Joe Biden responded with full and unconditional support for regions hit by Hurricane Helene (although Tennessee governor Bill Lee is still lying that Biden delayed aid to his state, when in fact he delayed in asking for it, as required by law), there is a financial problem with this argument. As economist Paul Krugman noted today in his Krugman Wonks Out, California “is literally subsidizing the rest of the United States, red states in particular, through the federal budget.”

In 2022, the most recent year for which information is available, California paid $83 billion more to the federal government than it got back. Washington state also subsidized the rest of the country, as did most of the Northeast. That money flowed to Republican-dominated states, which contributed far less to the federal government than they received in return.

Krugman noted that “if West Virginia were a country, it would in effect be receiving foreign aid equal to more than 20 percent of its G[ross] D[omestic] P[roduct].” Krugman refers to the federal government as “an insurance company with an army,” and he notes that there is “nothing either the city or the state could have done to prevent” the wildfires. “If the United States of America doesn’t take care of its own citizens, wherever they live and whatever their politics, we should drop “United” from our name,” he writes. “As it happens, however, California—a major driver of U.S. prosperity and power—definitely has earned the right to receive help during a crisis.”

Today, Biden announced student loan forgiveness for another 150,000 borrowers, bringing the total number of people relieved of student debt to more than 5 million borrowers, who have received $183.6 billion in relief. This has been achieved through making sure existing debt relief programs were followed, as they had not been in the past.

Establishment Republicans continue to fight MAGA Republicans, and MAGA fights among itself: former Trump ally Steve Bannon yesterday called Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk “truly evil” and vowed to “take this guy down.” But even as their enablers in the legacy media are normalizing Republican behavior, a reality-based media is stepping up to counter the disinformation.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Trump

Jan Resseger: Voucher Leader in Ohio Legislature Says Public Schools Cost Too Much

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
9

Jan Resseger writes today about Matt Huffman, Speaker of the House in Ohio and his determination to undermine the funding of the state’s public schools. If you read the previous post about the voucher movement in Ohio, you will recall that Huffman led the battle to enact vouchers for all families, including affluent families.

He is Catholic, he graduated from Catholic schools, and he has long been determined to get public funds to subsidize religious school tuition.

After the state was ordered to enact a plan to fund its schools fairly, relying less on property taxes, the legislature enacted the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan in 2021, which was supposed to be phased in over six years. Huffman recently declared that the plan was “unsustainable.”

Ohio has 1.75 million students in public schools. There are 173,156 students in the state’s non-public schools.

Using public dollars to pay the tuition of rich students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools is “sustainable” for the religious zealots in the legislature.

Ohio’s commitment to fair funding for public schools has been undermined by two Republican priorities:

  1. The universal voucher program now costs $1 billion a year.
  2. Republicans are determined to cut taxes and to reduce funding for public schools.

Those are Matt Huffman’s priorities, not adequate and fair funding for public schools.

Categories Accountability, Catholic Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers
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