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John Thompson: Oklahoma Careens Toward Chaos

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2023 //
18

Historian and retired teacher John Thompson describes the confusion and chaos generated in Oklahoma as MAGA Governor Kevin Stitt and the bumbling State Superintendent Ryan Walters continue on their path of privatization and religiosity.

Thompson writes:

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and his ally, State School Superintendent Ryan Walters, have histories of double-barreled shotgun-style assaults on both public education and other state government agencies. For instance, Stitt previously pushed out “three highly-regarded leaders” of the Corrections, the Health Care Authority, and the Transportation departments. Recently, as Arnold Hamilton of the Oklahoma Observer protests, “Stitt took aim at another experienced state leader, trying to stampede longtime higher education Chancellor Glen Johnson into retirement. And he hasn’t backed off from his other barrel – demeaning rhetoric to advance privatization.

Similarly, Walters has pushed out many of his staff who administer competitive federal grants. The Oklahoman reported that the lead grant writer, Terri Grissom, who had “secured more than $101.5 million in competitive grants over five years,” resigned and “blew the whistle that Walters’ administration had brought the process of competitive grant applications to a halt. These funds supported a variety of initiatives, but many focused on student mental health and behavioral services.”

Grissom said Walters “blocked her from applying to a student wellness grant,” and Matt Langston, his chief policy advisor “forbade her from seeking any programs with elements of diversity and inclusion, LGBTQ initiatives, social-emotional learning or trauma-informed practices.” Moreover, Oklahoma Watch reported, “Langston emailed employees of the agency, threatening any employee ‘found leaking information to the press’ with immediate termination.” Two other managers were fired and filed lawsuits against Walters and Langston.

In May and June, as Walters’ rhetoric and behavior became even more unhinged, I was told that many Republicans decided to not push back against him because his antics drew attention to him, and away from more silent Republicans. But as Grissom, and Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd, revealed the losses of tens of millions of federal funds for schools and Covid responses (for which the governor shared responsibility,) and as school system leaders voiced concerns about not receiving timely notification about larger amounts of federal funding, it seemed more likely (or not impossible) that more Republican legislators would listen to their adult Republican colleagues and hold Walters accountable.

For instance, Auditor and Inspector Byrd, a Republican, “released an audit of how the state handled federal pandemic relief money, specifically expenditures made during fiscal year 2021.” The audit found $12.2 million in CARES costs and about $29 million in the state’s spending of federal COVID-19 relief funds were questionable. And Republican Attorney General Gentnor Drummond is investigating Walters and, perhaps, the Stitt administration regarding misspent federal money.

In response, however, Walters has doubled down on both his assaults on public education services and extremist rhetoric. As the Tulsa World reported, “Walters has been critical of federal funding opportunities that come with strings attached and directed the State Department of Education to pass on grant opportunities that don’t align with ‘Oklahoma values.’” Then, speaking to the Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia, Walters proclaimed, “You are the most patriotic, pro-American group in the country right now.”

And chaos has increased. Shouting and physical contact involving Moms for Liberty and other rightwingers have disrupted district school board and State board meetings, resulting in charges being filed.

Walters has continued to weaponize his calls for censoring curriculum and educators. For instance, the Tulsa Public Schools “was penalized for an August 2021 professional development session on implicit bias for teachers — not students — offered through a third-party vendor.” A year later, its “state accreditation was downgraded in July 2022 over an allegation that it violated a state law commonly referred to as House Bill 1775, which limits classroom discussion on race and gender.”

And as the World now reports, Walters’ latest attack on the Tulsa schools for “assaults” on religious liberty, became a shouting match where Walters pledged to further investigate Tulsa’s accreditation.

This controversy started when a board member, E’Lena Ashley, spoke at a high school graduation ceremony, and asked the audience to join her in prayer:

I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that each one of you would walk forward from this moment in the excellence and love of God, that he would guide you, direct you and draw you to your ultimate goal. In the name of Jesus.

The schools’ students and staff “voiced their concerns [about Ashley] during the citizens’ comment portions” at two Tulsa school board meetings. The Tulsa Board and Superintendent Deborah Gist sent an email “saying that the prayer Ashley made is not allowed under the U.S. Constitution and rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Walters replied that the email “fundamentally misunderstands religious liberty and religious freedom and attack a duly elected board member for saying a prayer. … It’s outrageous, and we’re not going to stand for that.” And World reported that he “vowed to make an issue of the matter when the school district’s accreditation is up for renewal next week by the Oklahoma State Board of Education.”

Who knows if these extremists’ rhetoric will lead to greater chaos, vituperation and, perhaps, serious violence? Who knows whether such behavior will undermine Walters politically to the point where enough Republicans take action. It must be remembered, however, that Walters’ and Stitt’s words and actions are parts of a national campaign to undermine our governmental institutions. And, most likely, it will take public servants, legal actions, and the public to defend our democracy.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans

Alan Singer: DeSantis’s Effort to Whitewash Florida’s African American History

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2023 //
8

Florida has a sordid history of racism but Governor DeSantis wants that history to be literally whitewashed so that no white students feels “uncomfortable” learning the truth. DeSantis opposes “woke” history that others call telling the truth.

Alan Singer of Hostra University explains here why it is so hard to sanitize Florida’s history of racism.

He writes:

On Twitter, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted that “In Florida, we require the truth about American history to be taught in our classrooms. We will not allow schools to twist history to align with an ideological agenda.”

As part of Florida’s campaign against undefined “wokeness,” the Department of Education banned the teaching of a new African American Studies Advanced Placement course. It rejected the course as lacking “educational value and historical accuracy” and for violating Florida law.

Last week, the Florida State Board of Education unanimously approved new standards for how Black history should be taught in the state. The standards are designed to define “anti-woke” education. In its response, the Florida Education Association (FEA) branded the standards “a disservice to Florida’s students” and “a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.” Eleven Florida civil rights and education organizations including the FEA and the NAACP sent a letter to Florida Board of Education that it ignored. The letter charged that “these standards purposely omit or rewrite key historical facts about the Black experience.” Vice-President Kamala Harris called the Florida standards “an attempt to gaslight us.”

Two of the most controversial clarifications in the social studies standards include a statement in the 6-8 grade guidelines that “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” and that instruction in high school on events like the 1920 Ocoee Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre that occurred in Florida should include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans,” acts of violence by African Americans that did not occur.

The major problems here are that Africans in Africa were agrarian people who had skills that were robbed from them when they were enslaved, and that enslaved Africans were considered property and any benefit from their skills accrued to their supposed owners. The Ocoee riots and murders occurred when African Americans attempted to vote in the Presidential election. In Rosewood, a mob of hundreds of whites murdered Black people they randomly caught and burned the town.

I found other statements and missing statements in the Florida social studies standards equally disturbing. The two places that refer to the Confederate states and the Civil War don’t mention which side Florida was on and which side African Americans fought for. Segregation is mentioned three times and the Klan is mentioned four times, but student do not learn what role they played in Florida.

But for me as a historian and a teacher the most disturbing part of the standards is the way slavery, and the slave trade are explained. It is intended to take responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery off the European countries that conquered and settled the Americas. “Instruction includes how slavery was utilized in Asian, European and African cultures,” “how trading in slaves developed in African lands (e.g., Benin, Dahomey),” and “how slavery among indigenous peoples of the Americas was utilized prior to and after European colonization.” Students “[e]xamine the condition of slavery as it existed in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe prior to 1619.”

The lesson being taught in the Florida standards is that everybody had slavery and it was the same all over the world. But it wasn’t. Only the European colonies in the Americas and the new countries including the United States had race-based chattel slavery where enslaved people were no longer considered human, and their status was inherited by their children. Even after slavery ended as a result of the Civil War, Florida and the other states in the former Confederacy instituted laws to keep African Americans in virtual bondage and white Southerners enforced those laws through vigilante groups like the Klan.

Florida has many reasons to want to bury its sordid racial history. In the first have of the 19th century white settlers massacred and expelled Florida’s Native Americans.  Between 1870 and 1950, 311 African Americans were lynched in Florida. Three Florida counties, Lafayette, Taylor, and Baker were especially notorious. Florida had some of the strictest Jim Crow segregation laws. In 1881, it banned interracial marriage and in 1885 it mandated racially segregated schools. The interracial marriage ban was added to the Florida State Constitution in 1944. Starting in 1927, it was a criminal offense for a teacher to teach someone of a different race. At least 50 African Americans were murdered in Ocoee, Florida on November 2, 1920, after local Blacks attempted to vote. On January 1, 1923, white rioters stormed through the African American community of Rosewood, Florida, burning the town to the ground, killing six people, and driving the rest of the population into the forest and swamps to escape.  On August 27, 1960, peaceful Black students conducting a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter in Jacksonville were attacked by a mob of over 200 whites armed with baseball bats and ax handles. No African American student was permitted to earn a bachelor’s degree from the formerly segregated University of Florida until 1965.

Solomon Northup was a free Black man living in New York State who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. Northup’s memoir, published after he escaped from slavery, was made into movies in 1984 and 2013. There is a scene in the 1984 PBS version of Solomon Northup’s Odyssey where Master Epps and friends are sitting on the veranda arguing with a Canadian carpenter named Bass about the legitimacy of slavery. Northup is near by trimming hedges and overhears the debate. Bass tells the story of a runaway who was captured and brought to court. The judge is puzzled why the enslaved African attempted to escape when he was fed and not beaten. The African replied “That job’s still there if you want to go ask for it.”

Maybe, with his Presidential campaign flailing, Ron DeSantis should apply for a job like that and get some skills.

Alan Singer, Director, Secondary Education Social Studies
Teaching Learning Technology
284 Hagedorn Hall / 119 Hofstra University / Hempstead, NY 11549
(P) 516-463-5853 (F) 516-463-6196

Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present my views and not those of Hofstra University.

“Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?” W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Fraud, History, Injustice, Lies, Racism

The Stanford Freshman Who Brought Down the President of Stanford

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2023 //
24

The president of Stanford University announced he was stepping down after acknowledging serious issues with his research. The Los Angeles Times reports that the exposé of the president’s work was conducted by a freshman.

Rumors of altered images in some of the research papers published by Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne had circulated since 2015. But the allegations involving the neuroscientist got little attention beyond the niche scientific forum where they first appeared — until Stanford freshman Theo Baker decided to take a closer look.

Baker, a journalist for the Stanford Daily, published his first story on problems surrounding Tessier-Lavigne’s research in November. His dogged reporting kicked off a chain of events that culminated this week with the president’s announcement that he would step down from his post at the end of August.

Tessier-Lavigne acted Wednesday after an expert scientific panel convened by the university determined that he failed on multiple occasions to correct errors in his published research on Alzheimer’s disease and related topics, and that he managed labs that at times produced sloppy or even manipulated data.

Of course, Baker covered that too.

In February, the 18-year-old from the Washington, D.C., area became the youngest-ever recipient of journalism’s prestigious George Polk Award for his work on the investigation. Journalism runs in the family: Baker is the son of the New York Times’ chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, and New Yorker columnist Susan B. Glasser.

The story includes an interview with Baker in which he explained how he contacted experts, then resisted university pressures to back down. Any threat was grounds for another story. He carefully sourced everything he wrote about.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Higher Education

Jennifer Rubin: Florida Is the State Where Kindness and Decency Go to Die

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2023 //
47

Jennifer Rubin is a super-smart journalist-lawyer who became a regular columnist for The Washington Post, where she was supposed to express conservative views. However, the election of Trump changed her political outlook. Here, she writes about how Ron DeSantis’ hate policies are hurting the state of Florida.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and his obedient Republican legislature have made bullying and attacking the vulnerable the hallmarks of their governance. Whether it is “don’t say gay” legislation (and retribution against Disney for supporting inclusion), denying medical care to transgender youths, muzzling teachers and professors who address systemic racism in the United States, firing a county prosecutor who dared object to DeSantis’s refusal to protect women’s bodily autonomy, or shipping unwary immigrants to other states, Florida has become not where “woke” died but rather where empathy, decency and kindness go to die.


DeSantis’s stunts frequently fail in court and cost taxpayers money. But his MAGA war on diversity and tolerance might be negatively impacting the state in other ways.


DeSantis likes to brag that more people are moving to Florida than ever. Not so fast. “An estimated 674,740 people reported that their permanent address changed from Florida to another state in 2021. That’s more than any other state, including New York or California, the two states that have received the most attention for outbound migration during the pandemic,” according to the American Community Survey released in June tracking state-by-state migration.

Moreover, Florida already is one of the states with the oldest average populations, and the MAGA culture wars risk alienating young people and the diverse workforce the state needs. In February, USA Today reported, “Florida may be the most moved to state in the country, but not when it comes to Gen Z. They are the only generation that chose to exit Florida, with an outflux of 8,000 young adults, while every other generation moved in.”

In addition, evidence points to a brain drain from Florida universities and colleges, although data is hard to come by. Records show “an upward tick in staff departures at some of Florida’s largest universities. … Across the State University System, the murmurs are getting louder: Some Florida schools are having trouble filling positions,” the Orlando Sentinel reported. “At the University of Florida, 1,087 employees resigned in 2022 — the only time in the last five years that the number exceeded 1,000.” Record numbers of faculty are not returning to University of Central Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida. This is hardly surprising, given DeSantis’s assault on academic independence and his suggestion that students go out of state if they want to study topics such as African American studies.

In addition, some businesses might be getting cold feet about spending convention dollars in the Sunshine State. The Sun Sentinel reported, “Broward County has lost more than a half-dozen conventions as their organizers cite the divisive political climate as their reason to stay out of Florida.” If the trend continues, the significant share of jobs and state revenue attributable to convention business could shrink. DeSantis and his supporters counter that tourism is still booming. They insist low taxes will continue to attract the wealthy and businesses.

There is little sign that the rest of the country is enamored of censorship, book bans or anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. The question remains whether DeSantis’s act wears thin at home.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Higher Education, History, Injustice

Florida: Orange County Removes Classics from Schools

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2023 //
116

Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel reports that the Orange County school district has removed classic literature in its efforts to comply with state laws.

She writes:

The classic novels “A Room With a View” and “Madame Bovary” and the epic poem “Paradise Lost” — published in England more than 350 years ago — have been at least temporarily rejected by Orange County Public Schools for sexual content that educators fear runs afoul of a new Florida law.

Novels that in past years were frequently taught in OCPS high school classes, such as “The Color Purple,” “Catch-22,” “Brave New World,” and “The Kite Runner” have been put on the rejected lists, too, as have novels by Toni Morrison and Ayn Rand and popular, turned-into-movies books like “Into the Wild,” and “The Fault in Our Stars.”

The lists of books rejected and approved for OCPS classrooms are not finalized yet as district media specialists continue their summer work of reviewing all books in classroom libraries, said several people familiar with the process.

Some books rejected earlier this summer, among them “The Scarlet Letter” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” have since been approved, according to the lists shared with the Orlando Sentinel by a district teacher and by an advocacy group that obtained a rejection list through a public records request. Other books have been approved but only for certain grades.

Four plays by William Shakespeare, including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” are currently listed as approved for grades 10 through 12 only, as is Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the lists show.

For many of the books, the reason for at least a temporary rejection is sex. “Depicts or describes sexual conduct (not allowed per HB 1069-2023,” reads the explanation, referencing a new state law passed by the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The new law makes book challenges easier and, if the concern is sexual content, requires the books to be removed from the shelves within five days and remain inaccessible to students while being reviewed. Republican lawmakers said they passed it to make sure pornography and books that depict sexual activity are kept from children.

But critics say the effort has wrongly labeled many books pornographic, when state law says, in part, that books with sexual content or nudity are considered pornography only if they are “without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

This could be a clever plot to entice teens to read forbidden books. (“Come over to my house, I have ‘Paradise Lost!’”) But Florida’s legislators and state education officials are not clever. They are narrow minded bigots.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Gender, Libraries, Literature

Gavin Newsom: Where Freedom Reigns in the USA

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
48

Gavin Newsom sent out July 4 greetings with a question: Where do people have true freedom?

Newsom writes:

Happy 4th of July from the Freedom State of California.

Freedom.

While Republicans cry freedom, they dictate the choices that people are allowed to make. Fanning the flames of these exhausting culture wars. Banning abortion, banning books and banning free speech in the classroom and in the boardroom.

But the truth is, true freedom means being able to love the person you love without fear or discrimination.

True freedom means you can afford to get the health care you need without going bankrupt.

True freedom means you can go to a movie, a parade, a church or an elementary school without fear of getting shot.

True freedom is a woman and her doctor making the health care decisions she needs.

True freedom means you don’t have to choose between covering the cost of your utilities or the medicine you need to live.

True freedom means living life without fear that large portions of the planet will be uninhabitable for future generations.

More than any people, in any place, California has bridged the historic expanse between freedom for some, and freedom for all.

Freedom is our essence, our brand name – the abiding idea that right here, anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.

So with that, I want to wish you and your family a safe, happy and healthy 4th of July from the Freedom State of California.

Thank you,

Gavin Newsom

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, California, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Gender

Texas: Christian Nationalist Charter Applies for Approval

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2023 //
149

Only days ago, the Network for Public Education released a report on the growth of Christian nationalist charter schools. It is titled “A Sharp Turn Right: A New Breed of Charter Schools Delivers the Conservative Agenda.” Many of these charters are affiliated with the far-right Hillsdale College, and call themselves classical academies. Their goal is to indoctrinate their students into extremist political views and to teach a rose-colored version of American history.

In Texas, a charter of this stripe is applying to the State Board of Education for the fourth time, hoping that new conservative members of the board will grant them a charter.

Edward McKinley of the Houston Chronicle reports:

Last summer, the Texas State Board of Education denied for the third time an application from Heritage Classical Academy to start a charter school in Northwest Houston. Heritage will try again next week, and although very little has changed about its application, its chances of success are now much higher.

Classical charter schools, like Heritage, have been on the rise nationwide and in Texas as parents seek an alternative to “woke” lessons and themes in public schools, namely the promotion of diversity and inclusion, viewing America’s history through a more critical lens, and discussion of LGBTQ topics in classrooms. And earlier this year, the Texas Legislature advanced several bills to bring more Christianity into public schools, part of a related national movement.

Heritage Academy is pitched as a return to an old-school type of education, involving training in rhetoric and public speaking, learning Greek or Latin and reading foundational texts.

Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath has already approved Heritage, as he did the preceding three years. But before the school can open, the State Board of Education is allowed an opportunity to veto it. Next week state board members will interview officials from Heritage on Wednesday before a planned Friday vote.

Heritage is affiliated with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian university that refuses federal assistance so that it doesn’t have to comply with Title IX or other federal regulations, through its Barney Charter School Initiative.

The program provides curricula and assistance to help launch classical charter schools around the country. Its “1776 Curriculum” teaches that America is morally exceptional to other countries and offers lessons on American history through a conservative bent, including descriptions of the New Deal as bad public policy and of affirmative action as “counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.”

The school was voted-down initially in 2020 for including books on its curriculum for primary grades that some board members criticized as containing racist themes. Aicha Davis, a Democrat from Dallas who serves on the state board, last year described Heritage as “extreme” and “one of the most controversial applicants that we’ve had because of the curriculum and ideas they wanted to push.”

The academy’s board president and main financial backer is Stuart Saunders, a wealthy Houston lawyer and banker. Saunders has complained of Critical Race Theory and inappropriate sexual content in public schools, including at his son’s school, which he said inspired him to found Heritage. He has pledged $1 million from his foundation to the school, if approved.

After the state board denied the school for the second time, Saunders and his family donated more than $250,000 to a political action committee called Texans for Educational Freedom. That PAC then donated more than $500,000 to local school board races and other candidates who have promoted conservative themes in the schools.

The group donated in four State Board of Education races, including well over $100,000 total in successful bids to unseat state board members Sue Melton Malone and Jay Johnson, Republicans who voted with Democrats in opposition to Heritage. Board members questioned Saunders about this during a public hearing last year.

“Whereas that’s undoubtedly legal, it really appears to be unethical. It appears like you’re trying to remake this board after last summer when you were denied this charter school for the second time,” former board member Matt Robinson, R-Friendswood, said during last year’s board meeting.

Last year, Heritage’s lobbying efforts backfired and became a factor in the board’s decision to reject the charter, although Saunders told state board members he didn’t know Texans for Educational Freedom would donate to state board races.

This year the story could be different.

Robinson is now gone from the state board, as his home was drawn-out of his district by the Legislature. So are Melton Malone and Johnson. All three have been replaced by more Republicans who are thought to be more friendly to charter schools.

Each of the new members campaigned on fighting Critical Race Theory in classrooms, and they are known to be friendlier to “school choice” policies. Their presence on the state board already led to a flip-flop earlier this year on the board’s position on private school vouchers….

Texans for Educational Freedom then reported spending nearly $200,000 to support the campaign of Republican LJ Francis last year, a massive amount for a state board race.

Francis won his race by 1,665 votes, or 0.4 percent of the total, flipping his board seat from blue to red and putting yet another charter-friendly face on the board. Francis joined Gov. Greg Abbott at a speaking event at a San Antonio private school to promote the governor’s school voucher plan. Francis did not respond to a request for comment.

Heritage said in this year’s application to the Texas Education Agency, which was approved by Commissioner Mike Morath, that it expects to serve 1,056 students at capacity, primarily nonwhite students. Its goal is to bring classical education, including “instruction in moral virtues” to “the most disadvantaged students of Northwest Houston.”

A recent analysis from the Network for Public Education found classical schools nationwide are disproportionately wealthy and white, with just 17 percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch.

Board members have also questioned Heritage’s connection with Hillsdale College, which doesn’t fund or govern schools directly, but provides curriculum and consulting.

Hillsdale has a long history of cozy relationships with the political right. For instance, Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — who reportedly lobbied to overturn the 2020 presidential election — is a former vice president at the college.

With the four new state board members installed, Heritage’s plan to provide a conservative curriculum that dovetails neatly with an understanding of the United States as a fundamentally Christian nation could be a selling point, rather than a bug.

Texas Republicans have promoted policies introducing more Christianity into public schools, whether it be through more prayer, displaying the Ten Commandments in each classroom or allowing chaplains to serve as school counselors. This is part of a nationwide trend spurred on by a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year weakening the legal case against it.

Texas operates under the theory that if students always have the Ten Commandments in their classrooms, have ample opportunity to pray during the school day, and read the Bible as often as possible, that will cure the social ills of the state: no more murders, no more suicides, no more abortions, no more adultery, no more rapes, no more crime. You get the picture. Meanwhile the state has removed all gun control. Gun buyers don’t need a permit and they can carry their weapon in public. More of that all-time religion will fix things.

If not, the people of Texas should throw these self-aggrandizing frauds out on their ears.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas

College Board Refuses Florida Demand to Remove Gender Identity and LGBT Content from AP Psychology Course

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2023 //
15

Florida education officials demanded that the College Board remove questions about gender identity and LGBT content from its AP Psychology course, because state law bans teaching these subjects. The College Board refused to comply because these topics are included in college-level psychology courses.

Governor Ron DeSantis, a candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2024, opposes any teaching about these issues. At DeSantis’ behest, the Florida legislature passed a law widely known as “Don’t Say Gay.” Originally intended for K-3, its application has been extended by the State Board of Education to apply to all grades.

Ironically, Florida has one of the nation’s most vibrant gay populations, centered in South Florida, in Miami, Key West, Fort Lauderdale, and also Orlando, which just memorialized the June 12, 2016, massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub called The Pulse. DeSantis wants everyone to pretend that gays don’t exist.

Thought control is a feature of both fascism and Communism.

The Washington Post and many other publications reported on the controversy.

The College Board, which oversees AP nationwide, told Florida officials Thursday it stands by a sequence in the psychology course that covers gender and sexual orientation in a unit on developmental psychology.

“Please know that we will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the organization said in a letter to the state education department. “Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for success in the discipline.”

The letter responded to a recent inquiry the Florida department made after the state enacted new restrictions on teaching gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools. The department told the College Board on May 19 that it is developing an “assurance document” for the College Board to indicate that its courses comply with Florida’s new rules. It also said state officials “implore” the organization to review its courses and identify those that might need to be modified.

“Some courses might contain content or topics prohibited by State Board of Education rule and Florida law,” the department’s letter said.

“[The] College Board is responsible for ensuring that their submitted materials comply with Florida law,” said Cassie Palelis, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education.

The College Board was embarrassed by its earlier efforts to placate Florida’s demands to censor the AP Black Studies course and wanted to avoid a similar debacle.

Now the College Board is taking a harder line as it defends the psychology course.


“We don’t know if the state of Florida will ban this course,” the organization said in a statement Thursday to the AP community. “To AP teachers in Florida, we are heartbroken by the possibility of Florida students being denied the opportunity to participate in this or any other AP course. To AP teachers everywhere, please know we will not modify any of the 40 AP courses — from art to history to science — in response to regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness.”

“We have learned from our mistakes in the recent rollout of AP African American Studies and know that we must be clear from the outset where we stand,” the College Board said.

Last year, 28,600 Florida students took the AP Psychology exam, about 10% of the number who took the test nationally.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Gender

Indiana Republicans Say That School Libraries Are “Loaded” with Pornography

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2023 //
73

One of our readers in Indiana noted the paradox that Illinois has banned the banning of books while Indiana Republicans are welcoming any parent or ne’er-do-well to complain about a book and get it removed from school libraries.

Indiana’s Republican-controlled General Assembly decreed this year in House Enrolled Act 1447 that every public school board and charter school governing body must establish a procedure for the parent of any student, or any person residing in the school district, to request the removal of library materials deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors.”

The procedure may provide for an intermediate response by school personnel to a request to remove a library book, but it must include the school board reviewing, and possibly implementing, each removal request at its next public meeting.

The new law followed claims by Hoosier Republicans that Indiana school libraries are secretly loaded with books containing pornography and other content inappropriate for children.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom to Read, Indiana, Injustice, Lies, Literacy, Literature

Florida: DeSantis Appoints Another Political Crony to Lead State College

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2023 //
39

Governor Ron DeSantis is filling every empty college presidency available with political cronies who have no experience or qualifications.

Fred Hawkins, a state legislator, was named as the president of South Florida State College, where he was the sole finalist in the search.

Hawkins served from 2008 to 2020 on the Osceola County Commission. But Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended him in July 2020 after Hawkins was charged with impersonating a law-enforcement officer. Hawkins went on to get elected to the House in November 2020.

During a special legislative session this year, Hawkins sponsored a high-profile bill that was a priority of DeSantis. The bill gave DeSantis authority to appoint the board of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District, which also was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The change came amid a festering feud between DeSantis and The Walt Disney Co., which had long benefited from the Reedy Creek district.

Hawkins earned a BS in political science at the University of Akron. He has no experience in higher education.

After DeSantis took control of the board of New College, his board fired the president and replaced her with DeSantis crony Richard Corcoran, a hard-right ideologue who had served as state commissioner of education but had no experience in higher education.

Taking control of the state’s higher education is integral to DeSantis’s war on academic freedom. With politicians in charge who are loyal to him, DeSantis can oust anyone who dares to teach about racism or gender.

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