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Big Donors to DeSantis Are Waiting to Give Money Until He Stops His Extremism

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2023 //
35

Some of the billionaires who have funded Ron DeSantis in the past are now withholding their millions because they think he is too extreme. Some don’t like his six-week abortion ban. Others are not pleased that he’s demonizing gays and drag queens. Haven’t they been paying attention? Mean is his brand. Also he looks like a loser.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE — GOP megadonors who invested in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as an alternative to Donald Trump for president are having serious second thoughts about continuing to back a candidate who political analysts say is looking like a bad bet.

Among them are: A Las Vegas aerospace business and hotel owner who has spent part of his fortune looking for proof of extraterrestrials. An NFL team owner and mall developer whose bribery conviction was pardoned by President Trump. An investment broker whose firm suffered fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank failure.

Those donors and others, including hedge fund managers, real estate developers and insurance executives, helped fuel the Never Back Down PAC that is providing the bulk of resources for the DeSantis campaign.

Six months ago, DeSantis’ fortunes looked bright. But since he announced his candidacy he has sunk in the polls, as Donald Trump’s numbers rise despite three federal indictments against him.

The moral of the story is that you can’t succeed by running to the right of Trump.

Gallup’s Mohamed Younis on Favorability of Presidential Candidates

Government and politics |

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Education Industry, Elections, Funding

Conservative Law Professors: Trump Cannot Run for President Because He is an Insurrectionist

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2023 //
39

Two conservative law professors, experts in constitutional law, maintain in a law review article that Trump is barred from running for president again because he participated in an insurrection. The article created a media sensation.

William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, both members of the Federalist Society, wrote an article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review in which they maintain that Trump violated Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment by engaging in an effort to overthrow the Constitution.

The New York Times wrote:

Two prominent conservative law professors have concluded that Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be president under a provision of the Constitution that bars people who have engaged in an insurrection from holding government office. The professors are active members of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, and proponents of originalism, the method of interpretation that seeks to determine the Constitution’s original meaning.

The professors — William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas — studied the question for more than a year and detailed their findings in a long articleto be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

“When we started out, neither of us was sure what the answer was,” Professor Baude said. “People were talking about this provision of the Constitution. We thought: ‘We’re constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what’s really going on here.’ And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add.”

He summarized the article’s conclusion: “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”

Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment says:

No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice- President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Trump

North Carolina: Voucher Schools Get Tax Dollars with No Rules or Accountability

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2023 //
3

Public Schools First North Carolina posted the following critique of the state’s newly expanded voucher program. Before it passed, the parent-led group projected that costs would soar to $550,000,000 annually, as a result of removing income limits. Instead of “saving poor kids from failing schools,” vouchers have become a way to subsidize the tuition of students from middle-income and upper-income families who never attended any public school.

Should teachers have some type of educational background or teaching license?

Should schools that receive public dollars provide transparency for how those dollars are spent?

Should North Carolinians expect to know how well students in schools funded by tax dollars are learning?

Should we have some assurance that our tax dollars are not being used to discriminate against groups of students and/or parents?

Should the governing body (i.e. school board) of each district be elected to represent the community it serves and held accountable by voters/taxpayers?

Whether your answer to these questions is yes or no, the degree to which schools actually have policies in place or are regulated in a way to address these questions depends entirely on whether they are traditional public schools, charter schools or private schools, even though all of them may be funded by our tax dollars.

With a massive NC private school voucher program expansion in the proposed House and Senate budgets, it is worth examining which policies apply to which schools and how much the public knows about the schools they’re funding. Although more than 70% of the U.S. population lives in households without a school-aged child, having a well-educated citizenry affects everyone, so accounting for how tax dollars are spent is important.

The NC Department of Administration Division of Non-Public Education registers and monitors both conventional private schools and homeschools. Each year, the division publishes a report containing the publicly available information on private schools. It’s a thin, three page report with minimal information: number of students by school, county, and year, number and percentage of school by type (i.e. independent or religious), and number and percentage of students by sex (i.e. male or female). Taxpayers funding school vouchers see no budget on how their money is being spent and there are no public meetings or ways to the public to give input on schools procedures or policies.

No information is provided by these private schools about student achievement or population subgroups such as special education, English learner, race, ethnicity, or family income status. Lacking any such data, it’s difficult for the public to know whether students are learning or if schools are discriminating against students or families.

In fact, although voucher-accepting private schools are required to administer an achievement test each year, they are allowed to select the test, be in charge of how it is administered and the results are not made publicly available. So the public is left with no objective measure of whether students are learning anything at all.

Traditional public schools and charter schools are required to follow the state standard course of study and show the assessment results, but voucher-receiving private schools have no curriculum guidelines at all. In fact, they could even operate under an “unschooling” philosophy while accepting public tax dollars.

In traditional public schools, 100% of the teaching staff must have a license or be working toward one to provide instruction to our children. In charter schools, the requirement if that just 50% of the teacher must be certified, and in private schools the requirement drops to 0%. Teachers do not to be certified nor do they have to even have a college degree.

Traditional public schools and charter schools must also provide a minimum of 185 days (or 1,025 hours) of instruction across at least nine months. Private schools have no minimum days or hours of instruction. They are simply required to provide some instruction across nine months in a given year. Private schools are also allowed to determine their own policies and procedures for handling excessive student absences, including the maximum number of days a student may be absent and remain enrolled. Compare this to the requirement we place on public schools for students attendance and related retention policies.

Although state law does prohibit private schools from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin, with no tracking mechanism in place to show that they comply or not making it a toothless requirement. And to date, state law does not require voucher-receiving private schools to follow other federal non-discrimination laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act or Title IX. (See our report for more information), yet they would receive public tax dollars.

In contrast to the absence of private school data, the NC Department of Public Instruction makes extensive and detailed data available about student achievement, demographics, and school finances for traditional public schools and some data about charter schools. The public can find out how many students achieved a passing score on state tests, what a school or district’s demographic make-up looks like and how it has changed over time, whether students fall into special needs categories, how many disciplinary actions occurred in a given year, how much money was spent on teachers and textbooks versus facilities, and answers to just about any other question one can ask about schools. There is full transparency for tax dollars at work with public schools. Annual public audits of the financial books is required by state law and available to the public.

Traditional public school leadership is also open to public scrutiny, as the past few years have highlighted. Traditional school boards must conduct some public meetings and provide an opportunity for public comment. Not so for charter and private schools – there is no public input required or allowed.

In addition, all traditional public school board members must live within their school district and have to be elected by registered voters. These elected board members represent the communities they serve where all citizens, whether parents or not, can vote in school board elections. However, only 50% of charter school board members must reside in North Carolina and elections are not required. There are no residency or election requirements for private school board members along with no requirement that their governing boards even be shown publicly.

All North Carolinians deserve to know whether their tax dollars are being spent responsibly to create a better community for everyone. Comparing requirements between traditional public schools and private schools reveals stark differences. When tax dollars are being spent to support private schools, the public needs accountability to prevent financial fraud and poor student outcomes.

More transparency for how voucher-receiving private schools use their public funds would also help legislators make more-informed budget and policy decisions and evaluate the value of the money spent. Transparency and meaningful data are important requirements when hard-earned public tax dollars are funneled to unaccountable private schools, the same information we expect from publicly funded public schools.

Isn’t it curious that many of the same people who demanded strict accountability for public schools insist on no accountability for voucher schools?

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state

Hechinger Report: State Takeovers of School Districts Have a Poor Track Record

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2023 //
5

Steven Yoder writes in the Hechinger Report about the state takeover of the Houston Independent School District and the dismal record of state takeovers.

Houstonians see the takeover as the vengeful punishment of a Democratic district by a mean-spirited Republican governor. Takeovers typically don’t improve academic performance. They stifle the democratic voices of Black and brown citizens. Given the research, it’s the silencing of democracy that is the purpose of takeovers.

Yoder writes:

On June 1, the TEA took over Houston’s school district, removing the superintendent and elected board. Critics say it’s an effort by a Republican governor to impose his preferred policies, including more charter schools, on the state’s largest city, whose mayor is a Democrat and whose population is two-thirds Black or Hispanic. In other districts where state-appointed boards have taken over, academic outcomes haven’t improved. Now red-state governors increasingly use the takeovers to undermine the political power of cities, particularly those governed by Black and Hispanic leaders, according to some education experts.

The state took over HISD because one school—Wheatley High School—had been failing for years. But before the takeover, Wheatley improved its test scores, and no school in HISD was failing. But the state took control of the state’s largest district anyway.

At least three studies have found that takeovers don’t increase academic achievement. The latest, a May 2021 working paper by researchers from Brown University and the University of Virginia, looked at all 35 state takeovers between 2011 and 2016. “On average, we find no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits,” the researchers concluded.

Takeovers are premised in part on the idea that improving school board governance improves test scores. But the 2021 paper concluded that may be wrong: “These results do not provide support for the theory that school board governance is the primary cause of low academic performance in struggling school districts,” the researchers wrote.

Why did Governor Abbott and State Commissioner insist on taking control of HISD? Because they could. Because they are vengeful and arrogant. Because they know nothing about research. Because it’s amusing for a hard-right conservative like Abbott to grind down a district that didn’t vote for him. Because Mike Morath was never an educator and knows nothing about how to improve schools.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Houston, Texas

Leonie Haimson: Reducing Class Size Is a Powerful Reform

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2023 //
18

Matthew Chingos and Ariella Meltzer of the Urban Institute published an essay predicting that New York City’s class-size reduction plan is likely to benefit white and Asian students most, thus adding to the inequities in the school system.

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, has been fighting for class size reduction for years. She responds here to the Chingos paper.

Haimson writes:

Comments on paper by Matthew Chingos and Ariella Meltzer, “New Class Size Mandate May Reduce Education Equity in New York City”

The primary claim made in this paper is that lowering class size would inequitably benefit white and Asian students rather than Black and Hispanic students, who tend to have lower class sizes already in NYC public schools.

However, several points appear to undermine that claim:

  1. As much research shows, Black and Hispanic students as well as students in poverty tend to gain twice the benefits in terms of increased learning and non-cognitive skills from smaller classes compared to their peers. Thus class size reduction is one of only a very few reforms that have been proven through rigorous research to narrow the achievement/opportunity gap and represents a key driver of education equity;
  2. Only 8% of high-poverty NYC schools already comply with the class size caps in the law, according to the Independent Budget Office;
  3. The estimates in this paper in Table A2 project that Black students would see their class sizes reduced on average to 16.7 students per class, the smallest class size of any group, with Hispanic, low-income, and students with disabilities second at 17.3, a highly equitable outcome. English language learners would come next at 17.4. In short, all high-needs groups would receive smaller classes than non-low income students ( t 17.6), White students (at 17.7) or Asian students (at 18 students per class).
  4. Finally, the paper’s findings also show that English language learners students at the elementary school level are more likely than non-ELLs to have large classes even now, and thus would likely gain substantial benefits from class size reduction as well.

There will be challenges for sure, to ensure that lowering class size doesn’t drain more experienced teachers from the neediest schools, but this could be avoided by targeting high-poverty schools first for class size reduction, as the law requires.

In addition, there are several studies that suggest that class size reduction may lower teacher attrition, especially at the highest-poverty schools, so that in the long run, the effort may lead to a more effective, stable, and experienced teaching force over time.

Our questions are these:

  1. Why cite the IBO cost estimates of 17,700 additional teachers needed, of $1.6 to $1.9 billion annually while relegating DOE’s far lower estimates of 9,000 new teachers at $1.3B to a footnote? Did the authors decide one estimate was more authoritative than the other, and if so why?
  2. The authors also cite an early School Construction Authority estimate of $30B-$35B for capital expenses, yet the SCA has admitted that this was “a back of the envelope” estimate and now has been omitted from the DOE’s July version of their draft class size plan, as compared to the earlier version submitted in May.

1. https://classsizematters.org/research-and-links/#opportunity

2. https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/how-would-the-new-limits-to-class-sizes-affect-new-york-city-schools-july-2023.pdf

3. See https://3zn338.a2cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/FAQ-7-myths-6.5.22-update.pdf and https://3zn338.a2cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Summary-of-Class-Size-Reduction-Research-NY-updated.pdf

4. May version posted here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gv9DZ6aENexWyzozVWV0SwhnlXLVVJ2a/view July version here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_BOYliiFZ5U7Q3q8gN6JRRIHgIf9j_Vp/view

Categories Accountability, Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, New York City

Harold Meyerson: Bidenenomics Is Working Faster Than Expected

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2023 //
13

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect writes that many people think that government works slowly and is outpaced by business efficiency. But, he writes, Biden’s infrastructure plans are starting at a fast clip.

America’s industrial renaissance is happening faster than almost anyone anticipated.

Meyerson writes:

It is a lie universally acknowledged as truth that the government is slow, that if you want something done quickly, you turn to the private sector.

Of course, there are a plethora of instances in which government is slow. Consider, for instance, the efforts of the National Labor Relations Board to compel companies to pay workers whom they’ve illegally fired for trying to unionize. Lawbreaking companies can drag this out for years. Of course, that’s because, beginning with the Taft-Hartley Act 75 years ago, companies and their handmaidens in Congress and the courts have stripped the NLRB of the power to enforce this law expeditiously. When the government is slow, that’s often because powerful private-sector actors have slowed it down to their own advantage.

But sometimes, government can be more swift and effective than its critics can even imagine, as the implementation of the three signature pieces of Biden administration/Democratic Congress legislation is now demonstrating. The Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act have spurred the economy, which grew by 2.4 percent in the last quarter, well beyond anything the private sector could have accomplished by itself, and in less time than establishment economists thought possible. America is building factories again: The spending on factory construction is up by 76 percentfrom last year. Business spending on all forms of infrastructure—not just factories but also transportation equipment, software, and the like—is up by 56 percent. Through the magic of Keynes’s multiplier effect, government subsidies and outlays of roughly $300 billion on such projects have led to an increase in business investment of an additional $500 billion. And bolstering all this investment is the consumer purchasing power that has resulted from Biden’s initial stimulus legislation, which ended the COVID recession much more quickly than any recession in American history and yielded near record-low unemployment and levels of labor force participation not seen in many years.

Biden has sometimes been compared to Franklin Roosevelt for his efforts to renew and expand the kind of social insurance and worker empowerment initiatives that FDR undertook. I’d argue that it’s the scope, speed, and success of his public investments that most resemble Roosevelt’s. Facing the actual prospect of mass starvation in the winter of 1933-1934, FDR’s public-works program managed to employ three million Americans—in a nation of 130 million—in just 60 days. The defense spending that began in 1940 in response to the very real threat of the fascist control of all Eurasia built an army that then ranked 39th in the world in size into one that was the world’s largest by 1944, at which time the nation’s production of planes, ships, and tanks exceeded the combined total of all other nations’.

Learning not just from Roosevelt’s successes but also from the failure of the Obama administration to highlight the projects that its stimulus spending had created, Biden and Democrats are now volubly touting the projects that their own stimulus programs have engendered, many of which are already springing up. Given the public’s skepticism about the effects and durability of this economic revival, and the Republicans’ insistence that no such revival exists, Biden & Company know they will have to keep making this case straight through November of next year.

That said, can we acknowledge that Bidenomics is not only successful but speedy? Yes, we can.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Accountability, Biden, Creativity, Democracy, Economy, Elections, Environment, Funding

Rather and Kirschner: Our Fragile Freedoms

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2023 //
37

Dan Rather and Eliot Kirschner write a blog on current events called “Steady.” We are reminded about how much we miss Dan Rather on the news. In this post, they write about Trump’s latest inductman.

They write:

In an era of unprecedented upheaval, it is difficult to find suitable context and perspective for the latest indictment of Donald Trump.

After all, this isn’t the first indictment he has faced, or even the first in federal court. It isn’t the first time we have had to grapple with his moral failings, the unleashing of political violence, or the degradation of our constitutional order.

Much of what is in the document made public on Tuesday we knew before. We saw it unfold on TV. We read the reporting of its aftermath. We heard the gripping public testimony in front of the bipartisan House Select Committee that investigated the insurrection of January 6.

It wasn’t even that the indictment was a surprise. For a long time, the investigation has been in the public consciousness. After Trump announced that he had been told he was a target, it was mostly a matter of when, not if.

It is important to keep in mind that this latest indictment does not charge Trump with arguably the gravest potential crimes, like insurrection or sedition, even though many who watched in horror the events leading up to and cresting on January 6 think it obvious he is guilty of both.

Randall Eliason, a former chief of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, argued in a New York Times opinion piece titled “What Makes Jack Smith’s New Trump Indictment So Smart” that the special counsel wisely chose to limit the scope of the case (and the number of defendants) to just Trump despite the six other unnamed but easily identifiable co-conspirators. Smith did this, the piece points out, in order to proceed quickly to trial and yield the best chance at conviction. “Although it might have been psychologically gratifying to see Mr. Trump charged with sedition, the name of the legal charge is less important than the facts that will make up the government’s case,” Eliason wrote.

In other words, Smith decided not to try to prove too much; keep the charges few and based on what facts he believes are most likely to convince a jury — and whatever part of the public may be open to persuasion.

Let us stop for a moment to ponder these facts and the narrative they tell. They are chilling, but we must remember the Department of Justice will have to prove them in a court of law. Trump is presumed not guilty until and unless he is proven otherwise. He has every right to mount a vigorous defense. It’s probably best for the country that his lawyers fight hard and smart. The more thoroughly this case is adjudicated, the more its conclusion is likely to be strengthened by the process.

But in reading the indictment, all who love and care for our precious republic and its democratic traditions should feel a deep shudder of fear that we were driven to such a precipice. The writing itself is not fancy — no stacking of dependent clauses or diving into a thesaurus in search of adjectives. Reading the introduction aloud, it almost has the syncopation of a children’s picture book, even if the story it tells is one of horror:

The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020.

The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.

Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power.

So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.

These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.

But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.

The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.

He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures.

His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.

Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election result.

What follows that in the indictment is a story we all saw unfold in real time, laid bare in a double-spaced legal document. There is also a lot to read between the lines. Even former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, who enabled many of Trump’s worst instincts and misled the American public about Trump’s fitness for office, told CNN he thinks prosecutors have more evidence than what they have shared thus far. He called the indictment “very spare” and added, “I think there’s a lot more to come and I think they have a lot more evidence as to President Trump’s state of mind.”

Be that as it may, these 45 pages comprise one of the most consequential pieces of writing in American history. It does not have the earth-shattering rhetoric of our Declaration of Independence, the poetry of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” or the urgent morality of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” But it is a clear statement at one of the most pivotal intersections in our nation’s narrative; that autocracy and the fomenting of political violence to subvert the peaceful transfer of presidential power is not only anathema to our values — it is illegal.

History is riddled with “what ifs.” We are left to ponder what the worst outcomes might have been if things had turned out differently, from our own revolution, to World War II, to the Cuban Missile Crisis. January 6 should be added to that list.

As bad as it was, it could have been (and came close to being) much worse. And that reality bursts forth from this indictment. According to what is written in the indictment, violence was expected by Trump and his co-conspirators. They understood that their schemes to steal an election would almost certainly plunge the nation into chaos. That was the plan.

In the end, their plot was unsuccessful, but the danger has not receded. Trump is running for president. At this point he is the favorite, by far, to win the Republican nomination. And that means he could win reelection. That result would likely usher in chaos, greater and deeper division than even what we now have. It could very well end the country as we know it.

That may sound to some to be hyperbole, but by any reasonable analysis, that is a lesson to be learned from this indictment. And that is what Jack Smith hopes to prove in federal court. One can make a credible argument that this is one of (if not THE) most consequential criminal cases in American history.

A former and potentially future president is accused of trying to destroy the United States. His own vice president is a key witness. You couldn’t make this up. But this is the reality of what we face. Democracy is always fragile and must be fought for to survive. A free people must constantly be on alert and working to preserve their liberty.

At the birth of our nation, Benjamin Franklin is said to have quipped that the Framers had produced “a republic, if you can keep it.” Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, spoke of how the Civil War was a “test” of whether a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … can long endure.” We, the people, can take nothing for granted.

This concept of the United States of America, still relatively new in human history, is impossible to maintain without the continual peaceful transfer of power at the top. That is what this new indictment is about.

In his first inaugural address as governor of California in 1967, Ronald Reagan spoke eloquently of this truth:

“We are participating in the orderly transfer of administrative authority by direction of the people. And this is the simple magic of the commonplace routine, which makes it a near miracle to many of the world’s inhabitants. This continuing fact that the people, by democratic process, can delegate power, and yet retain the custody of it. Perhaps you and I have lived too long with this miracle to properly be appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.”

This is what is at stake for the generations alive today. It is an epic battle that will now take place in federal court as well as at the ballot box.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom

Gary Rubinstein: The Disaster Facing Houston Under Mike Miles

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2023 //
8

Gary Rubinstein has been a teacher since 1991. Four of those years were spent teaching in Houston. Gary has been watching what’s happening since Mike Miles arrived and was taken aback when Miles imposed sweeping changes on the district without spending time getting to know it. Miles’ “reforms,” Gary predicts, are heading for trouble. Those reforms come out of the “corporate reform” playbook. Maybe Miles took a page or two from the Broad Academy guidelines, applicable in all situations.

Gary writes:

With around 200,000 students, Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the 8th largest school district in the United States. For years there was talk about the state possibly taking over the district and this finally happened on June 1, 2023. The board was fired and replaced by Texas Education Agency (TEA) appointees. Mike Miles, who founded a charter school network called Third Future Schools and was previously the head of Dallas Schools for three years, was hired as the new HISD superintendent. While most people new to a job like this would take some time to get the ‘lay of the land,’ Miles instantly proposed some radical, and in my estimation, terrible, reforms which I will outline in this post.

He identified the three lowest performing high schools in HISD: Wheatley, Kashmere, and North Forest. Those three schools together with the 26 middle and elementary schools that feed into those high schools were to become part of a new ‘New Education System’ known as NES. This NES is the latest ‘turnaround’ district. Over the past 20 years there have been several of these, the most prominent are the Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans, set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2003 and the Achievement School District (ASD) in Tennessee, created in 2011 with Race To The Top money. There was also Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA) in 2011 as well as a few more that have popped up around the country. To my knowledge, there has never been a successful takeover of this sort in the history of this country. The EAA has been shut down, the RSD has been merged back into the New Orleans school system and the ASD has floundered, never having any success at all in improving the test scores of the schools it took over. It is funny/sad to see this hopeful panel discussion by the leaders of these districtsbefore it was known how badly they would fail. (I’ve written a lot about the ASD, but here is something I wrote summarizing the history of these turnaround efforts.)

These turnaround efforts sometimes have school closures or staffs at schools having to reapply for their jobs and often have the schools converted into charters. For the HISD NES model, the schools are not getting taken over by charters but teachers do have to reapply for their jobs. Teachers at these schools will get raises and opportunities for bonuses with test score based merit pay. Other changes that will happen at these 29 schools are a restructuring of the teacher role where the teacher is like a ‘surgeon’ doing the most important part of the job while other tasks like grading, lesson planning, and discipline are done by others. Also, you may have read about elsewhere, libraries at these schools are converted into discipline centers where students are sent to watch a live streamed version of the lesson on a computer screen.

The reason that no turnaround effort like this has ever worked is that it is based on faulty assumptions about what the cause of the low test scores are at those schools so any solution based on those assumptions is doomed to fail. It is like trying to treat a broken leg by giving a patient a complete blood transfusion.

As someone who has been teaching since 1991 – and my first four years were in HISD actually, looking at the list of changes makes me shudder. Anyone who ever taught can see how most of these changes will make the schools worse but I want to summarize some of them here.

All teachers have to reapply for their jobs – When students come back and learn that many of their favorite teachers were not hired back, this can be very traumatic. There is no guarantee that the teachers who replace those who weren’t hired back, even if those teachers have been successful at a different school, will necessarily be a good fit at this school. This uncertain improvement coupled with guaranteed disruption is a pretty big risk. Why not first see how the current staff does with these new supports?

Please open the link to finish this important article.

Gary reviews the other major elements of Miles’s prepackaged plan and explains why they are unlikely to make a difference. They haven’t worked before, why will they work now? As Gary writes, takeovers typically fail because they are based on fake assumptions and prepackaged cures.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Houston, Parents, Teachers and Teaching, Texas

Florida: State Drops Charges Against “New College” Student Who Spit at Chris Rufo

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2023 //
30

Governor Ron DeSantis seized control of New College by installing half-a-dozen hard-right trustees and instructing them to turn the small progressive liberal arts college into the Hillsdale of the South. One of his appointees was Chris Rufo, the extremist who invented the furor over critical race theory.

At a recent campus event, a New College student spit on Rufo. He filed charges against her for her “attack” on him.

The State Attorney’s office dropped misdemeanor battery charges against a New College of Florida student who was accused of spitting on Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and one of the school’s trustees.

Libby Harrity, 20, was charged with misdemeanor battery on July 7 in connection with a Gov. Ron DeSantis bill signing at New College on May 15, when Harrity allegedly spat at Rufo. DeSantis’ visit to sign a bill banning state funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state universities drew vocal protest from students, who have organized against his reshaping of the college since January.

The governor has said he wants to turn New College into a “classical liberal” college akin to the Christian, conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Higher Education

ProPublica: Clarence Thomas’ 38 Luxury Vacations, Undisclosed Until Now

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2023 //
12

ProPublica published a new exposé of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ many luxury vacations, yacht trips, and private jet transportation. All provided free to him by very dear friends who happen to be Republican billionaires. How did this man who grew up in poverty in a tiny town in Georgia find so many generous billionaire friends? Why did he fail to disclose their generosity? Were any of them his friends before he joined the Supreme Court?

During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood.

Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.

Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented….”

The total value of the undisclosed trips they’ve given Thomas since 1991, the year he was appointed to the Supreme Court, is difficult to measure. But it’s likely in the millions.

Huizenga sent his personal 737 to pick Thomas up and bring him to South Florida at least twice, according to John Wener, a former flight attendant and chef on board the plane. If he were picked up in D.C., the five-hour round trip would have cost at least $130,000 each time had Thomas chartered the jet himself, according to estimates from jet charter companies. In February 2016, Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet from Washington to New Haven, Connecticut, before heading back on the jet just three hours later. ProPublica previously reported the flight, but newly obtained U.S. Marshals Service records reveal its purpose: Thomas met with several Yale Law School deans for a tour of the room where they planned to display a portrait of the justice. (Crow’s foundation also gave the school $105,000, earmarked for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.)

Don Fox, the former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the senior ethics official in the executive branch, said, “It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear the robes and live the lifestyle of a billionaire.” Taxpayers, he added, have the right to expect that Supreme Court justices are not living on the dime of others.

Fox, who worked under both Democrat and Republican administrations, said he advised every new political appointee the same thing: Your wealthy friends are the ones you had before you were appointed. “You don’t get to acquire any new ones,” he told them….

To track Thomas’ relationships and travel, ProPublica examined flight data, emails from airport and university officials, security detail records, tax court filings, meeting minutes and a trove of photographs from personal albums, including cards that Thomas’ wife, Ginni, sent to friends. In addition, reporters interviewed more than 100 eyewitnesses and other sources: jet and helicopter pilots, flight attendants, airport workers, yacht crew members, security guards, photographers, waitresses, caterers, chefs, drivers, river rafting guides and C-suite executives.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Ethics
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