Our allies at Pastors for Texas Chuldren fought courageously against the passage of voucher legislation but were ultimately defeated by Governor Abbott’s plan to oust moderate Republicans from the legislature.
Funded by Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass and Texas billionaires Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn, both of whom are Christian pastors and nationalists, Abbott managed to defeat the moderate Republicans who worked with Democrats to beat vouchers.
Now the Pastors have set their sights on minimizing the damage done to children by standardized testing. For many years, Texas legislators have been obsessed with test scores. They never consider the harms done by the tests to students, teachers, and the love of learning.
At Pastors for Texas Children, we believe every child is a precious gift of God, created with unique abilities and potential. Yet for decades, our public schools have been forced to rely on standardized testing as the primary measure of learning and progress. These tests were designed with good intentions, but in practice, they have done real harm to our children, our teachers, and our schools.
Standardized testing narrows the curriculum, reducing education to what can be measured on a multiple-choice exam. It discourages creativity, critical thinking, and the joy of learning. Instead of nurturing a child’s individual talents, testing forces them into a one-size-fits-all mold. For many students, especially those from vulnerable communities, these tests add unnecessary stress and stigma, often labeling children by a single score rather than recognizing their God-given worth.
Teachers, too, are burdened. Their ability to teach with passion and flexibility is restricted when their professional value is tied to test results. Entire classrooms are transformed into test-prep factories, rather than places of discovery, curiosity, and growth. Public schools—the foundation of our democracy—are weakened when accountability is reduced to a number on a page.
HB 8 purports to mitigate the damages of standardized testing and fails. The version advancing out of the Senate is even worse. There is still time to fix this bill, but the clock is ticking. Call your State Representative now and tell them to remove high stakes from these assessments and strip TEA of its authority to administer them.
Our faith calls us to see children as whole beings, not data points. We must move toward assessments that encourage true learning, affirm student progress, and honor the dedicated work of educators. Texas children deserve classrooms that inspire and equip them, not testing regimes that drain and demean them.
We urge you to join us in advocating for an end to the overreliance on standardized testing in Texas public schools. Let us stand together for education that celebrates the fullness of every child’s potential.
The Network for Public Education Action sent out the following alert. Please use the form to send a letter to your members of Congress.
Dear Friend of Public Schools.
They said they wouldn’t cut Title I. They lied.
Majority House leaders just dropped their FY26 education bill, slashing $12.1 billion (15%) in K-12 funding for public education. It guts the very programs that keep our public schools running — while boosting charter start-up/expansion to $500,000,000.
What they’re cutting:
Title I:–27% slashed — funding that provides targeted education services like remedial reading to students with maximum impact in high-poverty schools in cities and rural communities.
English Language Acquisition Grants: Gone.
Title II-A (teacher training & support): Eliminated.
“Despite outsized investment, America’s public schools continue to fail children and families.” That’s what they think of your neighborhood school.
Why this matters
Cuts of this magnitude will crowd classrooms, strip student supports, widen inequities, and push more schools into crisis — especially in rural and high-need communities.
Do these two things now
1) Email your Representative:
Use our action link to send a pre-written message in 15 seconds: Send your email now.
2) Call your Representative:
Find your member’s phone number here. Below is a script you can use right now: “Hello, I’m a constituent from [Representative’s name] district. I’m calling to urge the Representative to oppose the House education funding bill that cuts Title I by 27% and reduces K12 funding by 15%. These cuts will harm students and teachers in our district. Please vote NO and support full funding for public schools — not half-a-billion in funding for charter expansion while our classrooms are being cut. Thank you.”
Now spread the word
Forward this alert to friends, family, and colleagues.
Do not wait. Congress is back today (September 2). Let’s flood their inboxes and phone lines. The House’s education funding bill is a betrayal of America’s children.
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This is the most important post you will read today or this week, maybe this month, if you care about the future of American public schools. It’s about the importance of honest research; it’s about debunking false narratives. It’s about the media printing inaccurate stories without the necessity of fact-checking. It’s about irresponsible journalism.
The Washington Post published an article loaded with inflated claims by a British journalist, Ian Birrell, about the “miracle” in New Orleans that followed the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Five years later, Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan boldly said that the hurricane was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” Birrell agrees with him.
In 2018, Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education allocated $10 million to fund the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice at Tulane University (REACH). In 2023, two of the nation’s leading advocates of choice–the Walton Foundation and the City Fund–gave REACH $1 million “to jointly support a three-year research project on the system-level effects of charter schools at the national level. The goal is to learn how charter schools improve student outcomes and better understand the role of policy in fueling these changes.”
After Katrina, the state converted New Orleans into an (almost) all-charter district. All of the district’s teachers were fired, and their union dissolved. Charter chains and TFA poured into the district as did funding by the federal government and major foundations. About one-third of the students never returned after the hurricane.
Linda Darling-Hammond and her Stanford colleagues Frank Adamson and Channa Cook-Harvey studied the charterization of New Orleans in 2015. Unlike most other studies, they looked closely at student experiences as well as data. They concluded that the district was not only highly segregated by race and class, but was “one of the lowest-performing districts in one of the lowest-performing states in the nation,” not a model to be replicated.
Rutgers’ scholar Bruce Baker examined the advocates’ claims in 2019 and concluded that they overlooked or minimized two significant factors: one, demographic changes (a reduction in concentrated poverty), and two, a huge infusion of external funding.
But Birrell is not an education journalist so he seems not to have looked for views that countered the charter enthusiasts.
It has been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina wiped out the New Orleans schools system causing it to be replaced with all charter schools. And it has been over 15 years since former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, based on what he considered early evidence of the success of those charter schools that Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” And it has been also about 15 years since educational researchers have been continuously debunking the New Orleans educational miracle.
So I was quite surprised to see that The Washington Post just published an opinion piece with the headline “‘Never seen before’: How Katrina set off an education revolution — Twenty years after the hurricane, taking stock of the miracle in New Orleans Schools.”
Reading this Op Ed was a strange experience for me. Supposedly based on recent research, it basically trotted out all the old bogus claims that I hadn’t heard anyone claim in at least ten years. Since it was The Washington Post, I figured it had to be Jay Matthews who has been known to write puff pieces (and books) about KIPP and Michelle Rhee. But these talking points were so antiquated that it would have been odd even for him to use them. No, this anachronistic Op Ed was not from any of the usual suspects but from a name I had never seen before: Ian Birrell.
Reading up on the biography of Ian Birrell, things made a bit more sense. Ian Birrell is a British journalist who has mainly written about international affairs. I’m sure he is a very competent journalist but this is his first foray into education reporting. So he heard about the New Orleans ‘miracle’ for the first time, got a totally biased ‘research’ report from Doug Harris supporting the miracle and, not knowing that there has been an ongoing battle over education reform in this country where the ‘reformers’ have all kinds of tricks for misrepresenting data to advance their agenda. So, thinking he has discovered something incredible, of course he wants to write something about it. But what he writes is completely naive since he doesn’t know the right questions to explore to get to the truth. It’s kind of like if I decided to become a nature reporter and wrote a thing about Big Foot based on just photoshopped images and unreliable first hand accounts.
The New Orleans Miracle is pretty easy to debunk if you know the right questions to ask.
So the first thing to look at is the Louisiana AP scores. Even though AP tests and the way they are sometimes misused, are not the only thing that matters in looking at a state’s education quality, colleges do look at AP scores so it is a bit of a measure of ‘college readiness.’ From the College Board website, it can be seen that Louisiana has the third worst AP passing rate in the country.
In the Washington Post Op Ed, Birrell describes the interventions after Katrina as follows: “They fired all 7,000 teachers, sidelined unions, invited ambitious experts to run the schools and offered parents almost total freedom over where to send their children.”
If he knew the full history of this he would know that the “ambitious experts to run the schools” included KIPP, the famous charter chain created by two Teach For America alums. So to measure the size of the miracle twenty years later, just check to see how the KIPP Booker T. Washington High School students are doing academically. For this I went to the recent US News & World Report data.
So the gold standard charter network in the miracle city of New Orleans has an 11% Math proficiency, a 21% Reading proficiency, and a 10% Science proficiency.
As far as AP scores at the top charter chain in the miracle city of New Orleans, the exam pass rate is just 2%.
But maybe you think I am cherry picking a KIPP school that was never mentioned in the Op Ed. In it Birrell writes about a specific ambitious expert “Among those watching the horrific Katrina news footage 20 years ago was a former corporate financier with Boeing who was planning to move into education. Ben Kleban told me in a 2010 interview how, soon after the disaster, at age 26, he moved to the city from New York to set up a school, starting in a refurbished building with 120 pupils ages 11 to 15. His venture grew fast, took over a nearby failing school, improved proficiency tests and won a national medal for its successes. “For too long,” he said, “the public school system found excuses rather than being properly accountable to parents.” He explained how he relied on “basic business practices” with a daily flow of data on attendance, discipline and classroom performance.”
So I looked up Ben Kleban to see how his school was doing. It is a little confusing but it seems like the entire charter chain he created was shut down in 2018 except maybe one school which is called Walter L. Cohen High School. For them, there are no AP passing scores reported. For their test scores, they are a little better than KIPP for math and reading but lower on science.
So what evidence did Birrell see that convinced him that the New Orleans miracle was authentic? Doug Harris has some nice graphs that shows test scores in New Orleans scores now compared to test scores in New Orleans 20 years ago. But of course this is not the proper comparison to make. The way a scientific experiment works is that if you want to measure the impact of an effect, you try to take a group and split it in half and apply the impact to half of the subjects and make the rest the ‘control group.’ So in this situation, had they not made all the New Orleans schools into charter schools but instead randomly picked half the schools and made them charters and left the other half under local control, then you could compare the results of the two groups after 20 years and, as long as the groups continued to be randomly distributed, that could be a useful way to make a comparison.
But that is not what happened since unfortunately there is no control group to compare to. It is quite possible that the scores now are lower than they would have been had Katrina never happened and the New Orleans charter experiment had never happened. But even without anything to compare to, the data from that one gold standard KIPP is, in my opinion, pretty good evidence against the miracle. Just like the way you can check the temperature of a Thanksgiving turkey by putting a meat thermometer into one spot of the Turkey, looking at what is supposed to be the best charter school is a good measure of all the schools since the KIPP is surely better than the average school there.
I thought I’d never have to debunk the New Orleans miracle again, but I guess I’m going to have to every five or ten years for each milestone anniversary of “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”
My view: Gary Rubenstein is a national treasure. The major editorial boards should check with him before they publish stories about a “miracle” school or “miracle” district.
Concerned about RFK Jr.’s assault on vaccines, I called my local CVS pharmacist a few days ago to schedule every vaccine for which I was eligible. I got the flu vaccine and the RSV vaccine.
I asked for the COVID-19 vaccine, but was told that the latest version would not be available until mid-October. I’m in the eligible group (over 65), but no vaccine yet. When I got home, I learned that the vaccine is not available in certain states, including New York. I worry that RFK Jr. may decide to cancel the vaccine altogether.
In the United States, public health has long depended on institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For decades—through Republican and Democratic administrations alike—these agencies functioned under a shared goal: protecting Americans’ health through science, research, and expertise.
But in recent years, that foundation has begun to crack. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), an outspoken anti-vaccine activist with no medical training, to lead HHS has brought that crisis into sharp focus. His presence in the nation’s top public health office signals a seismic shift—one where politics trumps science, conspiracy theories replace research, and ideology threatens lives.
The Erosion of Trust in Science
During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than one million Americans died, while public health officials faced harassment, death threats, and relentless political attacks. Former CDC Director Anthony Fauci, who spent his career working to save lives, became a target of right-wing media and extremist groups.
Instead of rallying around experts, leaders like Donald Trump and his allies downplayed the severity of the pandemic, promoted misinformation about masks and vaccines, and openly mocked scientists. This politicization of science directly fueled vaccine hesitancy, prolonging the crisis and causing unnecessary deaths.
Now, five years after the peak of the pandemic, the United States faces a resurgence of diseases once thought to be under control—measles, polio, and other preventable illnesses—precisely because vaccination rates have dropped.
RFK Jr.: Conspiracies Over Credentials
RFK Jr.’s position is especially alarming given his history of promoting anti-vaccine propagandaand debunked eugenics myths. He has falsely claimed that autism and other health conditions are caused by vaccines and even suggested that COVID-19 was “targeted to spare Jews and Black people”—a statement widely condemned as antisemitic and racist.
Despite his lack of medical training, Kennedy insists he can “diagnose” children by sight, attributing health challenges to supposed “mitochondrial issues visible in their faces.” Licensed physicians, including those trained at Harvard and Mayo Clinic, have dismissed such claims as pseudoscience.
Yet under the Trump administration, this man now wields control over Medicare, Medicaid, the CDC, NIH, and national vaccine policy—institutions responsible for the health of over 330 million Americans.
The Resignations and Walkouts
The consequences are already unfolding. After Kennedy moved to push out CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez—a Trump appointee who nonetheless refused to abandon science—top scientists and health officials resigned in protest. Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis, a respected infectious disease expert, wrote in his resignation letter that serving under Kennedy was “untenable” because HHS leadership was no longer guided by science.
Soon after, CDC staff staged mass walkouts, warning the public that American lives are being endangered by unqualified leadership. These resignations leave critical gaps at the very moment the nation faces rising COVID variants, climate-driven disease risks, and growing vaccine hesitancy.
Cuts That Will Cost Lives
Beyond personnel, the Trump–Kennedy administration has overseen massive funding cuts:
$500 million slashed from vaccine research
$1 trillion cut to Medicaid, threatening to shutter rural hospitals and nursing homes
Reductions in NIH research funding
Cuts to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations, destabilizing global health security
These moves directly undermine America’s preparedness for the next pandemic. As climate change accelerates, experts warn that new infectious diseases are almost inevitable. Yet instead of strengthening systems, leaders are dismantling them.
The Bigger Picture: A Pro-Death Movement
This moment cannot be seen in isolation. It reflects a broader “pro-death” political movement that prizes ideology over evidence, power over public health, and partisan gain over human life. Whether it was Trump pushing “herd immunity” at the expense of vulnerable Americans, or Kennedy advancing conspiracy theories that endanger children, the pattern is clear: science is under attack.
The result? Americans are less safe, less protected, and less prepared for the crises ahead.
Why This Matters Now
The rise of unqualified, conspiracy-driven figures like RFK Jr. at the helm of America’s most critical health institutions is not just political theater—it is a direct threat to public safety. The decisions made today about vaccines, research funding, and disease response will determine whether millions live or die in the years ahead.
Public trust in science and medicine must be restored. That means demanding qualified leaders, protecting the integrity of institutions like the CDC and NIH, and pushing back against those who seek to weaponize public health for political gain.
Because as history has shown—from pandemics to polio eradication—science saves lives. Conspiracies cost them.
Dr. Jeremy Faust writes a very informative blog called Inside Medicine about federal public health policy and developments. Yesterday was a day filled with drama and chaos.
Robert F. Kennedy, a dedicated foe of vaccines, decided he could not work with the newly appointed Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Susan Monarez. She was sworn in on July 31.
Apparently they disagree over vaccine policy. Monarez recognizes that vaccines are safe and effective, but her boss RFK thinks they are dangerous and cause autism.
He ousted her. She refused to resign. In short order, RFK got Trump to fire her.
When it was clear that RFK had taken control of the CDC, its top leaders resigned. Dr. Faust posted their resignation letters on his Substack blog.
Previously, RFK had fired the expert advisory panel on vaccines and replaced them with a group that included well-known vaccine deniers. RFK announced yesterday that he would place restrictions on eligibility for the new COVID-19 vaccine (those over 65 can get it, but anyone younger has to prove they need it). RFK told Trump that he expects to release a paper on the causes of autism in September, and his critics expect more undermining of the safety of vaccines.
All in all, an ugly demonstration that RFK is utterly unqualified to be the nation’s leading public health official. Given his ignorance of science and his ideological rigidity, he is in fact the leading danger to public health.
Moments ago, Inside Medicine broke news that three top career CDC officials have resigned from the agency, hours after the Washington Post reported that newly-confirmed Director Dr. Susan Monarez has been ousted, having run afoul of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Here are the emails that each of the officials sent to their CDC colleagues by Dr. Deb Houry, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, and Dr. Daniel Jernigan.
Dr. Deb Houry, Deputy Director for Program and Science/Chief Medical Officer:
“Over the past decade, I have had the honor of working for six CDC directors, from both Republican and Democratic administrations. To me, these leaders and my colleagues were not “Red” or “Blue,” but red, white, and blue—united in the shared purpose of protecting health and saving lives in our beloved country and globally. I have served during this time in various leadership roles, including as CDC’s senior-most career leader and lead for the transition as the current administration assumed office.
I’ve always been proud to be part of an institution that is committed to using science and data to drive our life-saving work and inform our messaging. We have worked tirelessly to enhance openness through public-facing data dashboards, providing real-time access to trends for conditions such as mpox, H5N1, measles, and overdose deaths, allowing the public to make informed decisions. Additionally, I have witnessed the rapid translation of science into action, with some Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWRs) being published within a week of an outbreak.
For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations. Vaccines save lives—this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact. Informed consent and shared decision-making must focus not only on the risks but also on the true, life-saving benefits that vaccines provide to individuals and communities. It is, of course, important to question, analyze, and review research and surveillance, but this must be done by experts with the right skills and experience, without bias, and considering the full weight of scientific evidence. Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of U.S. measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency.
CDC must continue its work on all diseases, including noncommunicable health conditions, which include many of the leading causes of death in the US. I have seen the value of integrating these efforts with those of other CDC programs, as we did with the Zika virus. Integrating expertise from across the agency is critical to our effectiveness in addressing novel and emerging diseases. CDC has proven its value in addressing conditions like hypertension, diabetes, cancer, overdose, and mental health issues, as evidenced by the progress in reducing overdose deaths this year. However, proposed budget cuts and reorganization plans will negatively impact CDC’s ability to address these conditions, worsening the nation’s health.
I love this agency. Nevertheless, I have submitted my resignation today. I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency. This is a heartbreaking decision that I make with a heavy heart.
To the CDC staff, you are the reason I stayed and showed up each day during difficult times. I have done my best to provide support so that you can continue your critical work. Thank you for your continued commitment to our mission and the work you do every day.
As I move on to the next phase of my career, I will continue to advocate for the values that have always driven my work—science, data, and evidence-based solutions to public health challenges. I have been privileged to contribute to the CDC’s mission in many roles, including as Chief Medical Officer, and I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to serve alongside you.
Deb Houry, MD, MPH.”
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases:
“It has been a great pleasure to serve in the role of Director of NCIRD. I wish I could say more in person, but wanted to make sure that you all have heard from me directly that I have submitted my resignation. I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health. You are the best team I have ever worked with, and you continue to shine despite this dark cloud over the agency and our profession.
Please take care of yourself and your teams and make the right decisions for yourselves. I will send a longer email to our Center this evening or in the morning.
Demetre Daskalakis.”
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases:
Colleagues: I wanted to let you know directly that I have submitted my resignation as Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases effective tomorrow. This was a very difficult decision for me. I have had the incredible opportunity to serve the American people doing meaningful and impactful work for over 30 years.
Since 1994, I have worked at CDC with some of the most intelligent, driven, and compassionate people, working to detect, control, and prevent infectious diseases. These efforts have had significant impact mitigating illness, preventing deaths, and improving the lives of millions of people.
I believe strongly in the mission of public health and the leadership that CDC has given for almost 80 years; however, given the current context in the Department, I feel it is best for me to offer my resignation.
I am so grateful for being able to work with all of you and know that you will continue doing the highest level of science and public health.
Thanks
Dan.”
Analysis: The end of an era.
The news of these resignations set off a firestorm in public health circles. This is not normal. There had been speculation that this particular trio of leaders would resign depending on how the September meeting of Secretary Kennedy’s newly-installed CDC Advisory Commitee on Immunization Practices went. There has been mounting fear that Secretary Kennedy will attempt to link vaccines to autism in a forthcoming HHS report, and that ACIP will be expected to remove many of its recommendations, some decades old, that have protected American children from death and severe illness from preventable diseases. But news of Monarez’s ouster meant that the writing was on the wall, moving these resignations up by weeks.
Frankly, the very future of the CDC is unknown. Thousands of good scientists and other agency officials remain. But without these key leaders—non-partisan career officials widely respected both internally and beyond—the agency is genuinely at risk of losing its ability to carry out its core mission. That’s not because any three people, (regardless of how experienced or respected they may be) are irreplaceable, but, rather, for what their departures portend. Other leaders and career scientists may also soon exit or be forced out. At some point, core mission activities that keep us safe will be at risk of being unfulfilled.
When these losses will translate to decreased safety to Americans that is noticeable is an open question. But, we’re about to find out…
This article was written by William Burns, who retired after serving as CIA Director. It was addressed to other career officers who were abruptly fired by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The article is titled: “A Letter to America’s Discarded Public Servants: You all deserved better.”
Burns likened the mass dismissals to the McCarthy era when China experts were falsely accused of being Communists and ousted, leaving the U.S. without their years of knowledge and experience. He warned of the dangers of suppressing dissent.
For three and a half decades as a career diplomat, I walked across the lobby of the State Department countless times—inspired by the Stars and Stripes and humbled by the names of patriots etched into our memorial wall. It was heartbreaking to see so many of you crossing that same lobby in tears following the reduction in force in July, carrying cardboard boxes with family photos and the everyday remains of proud careers in public service. After years of hard jobs in hard places—defusing crises, tending alliances, opening markets, and helping Americans in distress—you deserved better.
The same is true for so many other public servants who have been fired or pushed out in recent months: the remarkable intelligence officers I was proud to lead as CIA director, the senior military officers I worked with every day, the development specialists I served alongside overseas, and too many others with whom we’ve served at home and abroad.
The work you all did was unknown to many Americans, rarely well understood or well appreciated. And under the guise of reform, you all got caught in the crossfire of a retribution campaign—of a war on public service and expertise.
Those of us who have served in public institutions understand that serious reforms are overdue. Of course we should remove bureaucratic hurdles that prevent agencies like the State Department from operating efficiently. But there is a smart way and a dumb way to tackle reform, a humane way and an intentionally traumatizing way.
If today’s process were truly about sensible reform, career officers—who typically rotate roles every few years—wouldn’t have been fired simply because their positions have fallen out of political favor…
And if this process were truly about sensible reform, you and your families wouldn’t have been treated with gleeful indignity. One of your colleagues, a career diplomat, was given just six hours to clear out his office. “When I was expelled from Russia,” he said, “at least Putin gave me six days to leave.”
No, this is not about reform. It is about retribution. It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government. It is about paralyzing public servants—making them apprehensive about what they say, how it might be interpreted, and who might report on them. It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power.
Gary Rubenstein is a blogger, a high school math teacher, and a relentless detective of inflated claims of “success” by schools that game the system.
In this post, he once again exposes a trick that KIPP in New York City pulled to get its high school onto the U.S. News list of the state’s “best high schools.” The list is weighted in favor of high schools where significant numbers of students get at least a 3 on AP exams.
Strangely, a different New York City KIPP High School is ranked 682nd.
How can there be such a discrepancy between the two KIPPs? How can one of their schools be so good while the other is so bad? It’s simple. I know because this is a scam that they have been pulling off and on for the past 8 years. And in 2017 they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for this meddling blogger. In 2023 they did get away with it despite this meddling blogger. Whether they get away with it this year, only time will tell.
Here’s the way it works: There is only one KIPP high school in New York City and it is called KIPP NYC College Prep. So what are these two schools, KIPP Academy and KIPP Infinity? Those are two middle schools. The main statistic US News uses to rank high schools is the percent of students at that school who passed at least one AP test with a 3. So what KIPP does is it takes all the students from KIPP College Prep who pass an AP test and say they are enrolled in the middle school called KIPP Academy. Then they take the majority of their students who don’t pass an AP test and say they are enrolled in KIPP Infinity. This way KIPP Academy middle school becomes a high school with 100% of their 50 students passing an AP while KIPP Infinity middle school becomes a high school where 0% of their 216 students passed an AP.
It’s actually pretty ingenious. As I mentioned, they got caught in 2017 and got disqualified that year. I haven’t checked every year but I also checked in 2023 and they were not disqualified that year. You can check out the links to those previous posts if you want more details.
Now I don’t know if KIPP is using this fraudulent data to get people to donate to them. I also don’t know if their teachers are even aware of this. But if anyone who works for KIPP NYC College Prep is aware of this (maybe by reading this right now) and you don’t speak up about this, you are teaching your students that it is OK to cheat and to lie, so try to think about that as you teach each day.
And if anyone knows of any way to report this fraud to US News & World Report, feel free to do so.
Free cash!! Free cash!! Open the Church of Satan K-12 Academy and watch the dollars roll in. No one cares how many students are enrolled or even if the list of students is a fake. Governor Abbott trusts you!
Governor Abbott knows that most of the vouchers will be claimed by students who are already enrolled in private schools. He doesn’t care. He knows that kids who leave public schools to attend a private school fall behind. He doesn’t care.
He wants the state to pay the tuition of all children, regardless of whether they attend a snake-charming religious school or the most elite private school in Dallas or Houston.
Governor Abbott wants YOU to step right up and claim your Free cash!!
ProPublica wrote this:
For about eight years, a Houston private school has followed a unique pattern when appointing members to its governing board: It has selected only married couples.
Over 200 miles away, two private schools in Dallas have awarded more than $7 million in combined contracts to their board members.
And at least seven private schools across Texas have issued personal loans, often reaching $100,000 or more, to their school leaders under terms that are often hidden from public view.
Such practices would typically violate laws governing public and charter schools. But private schools operate largely outside those rules because they haven’t historically received direct taxpayer dollars. Now, as the state moves to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on private education, lawmakers have imposed almost none of the accountability measures required of the public school system.
If held to the same standards, 27 private schools identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune through tax filings likely would have violated state law. The news organizations found, and three education law experts confirmed, more than 60 business transactions, board appointments and hiring decisions by those schools that would have run afoul of the state rules meant to prevent self-dealing and conflicts of interest if they were public.
“It’s frankly astonishing to me that anyone would propose the massive sort of spending that we’re talking about in these school voucher programs with, at best, minimal accountability,” said Mark Weber, a public school finance lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University who opposes vouchers. “If I were a taxpayer in Texas, I’d be asking, who’s going to be looking out for me?”
Texas has long stood as a holdout in the national push for voucher programs, even as other conservative states embraced them. Gov. Greg Abbott gave school voucher proponents a major win this year, signing into law one of the largest and costliest programs in the country. In doing so, Abbott’s office has argued that the state has “strict financial requirements,” saying that “Texas taxpayers expect their money to be spent efficiently and effectively on their behalf, both in private and traditional public schools.”
The law, however, imposes no restrictions to prevent the kinds of entanglements that the newsrooms found.
The contrast is sharp. Public or charter school officials who violate these rules could be subject to removal from office, fines or even state jail felony charges.
Private schools face none of those consequences.
Supporters of the voucher program argue that oversight of private schools should come not from the state, but from their boards and the marketplace.
“If you transform the private schools into public schools by applying the same rules and regulations and procedural requirements on them, then you take the private out of the private school,” said Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor at the University of Arkansas. Wolf, who supports vouchers, said that if parents are unhappy with the schools, they will hold them accountable by leaving and taking their tuition dollars with them.
Typically, neither parents nor the state’s taxpayers have access to information that shows precisely how private schools spend money. Only those that are organized as nonprofits are required to file public tax forms that offer limited information. Of the state’s more than 1,000 accredited private schools, many are exempt from submitting such filings because they are religious or for-profit institutions, leaving their business conduct opaque. It is unclear if private schools that participate in Texas’ voucher-like program will have to detail publicly how they use taxpayer dollars.
“The public system is not always perfect, but when it’s not perfect, we see it,” said Joy Baskin, associate executive director for policy and legal services at the Texas Association of School Boards, which represents public districts across the state. “That kind of transparency doesn’t exist in private schools.”
The Chinese Baptist Church in Houston, where Trinity Classical School has a campus (Danielle Villasana for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)
“Just Isn’t Right”
Conflicts of interest in education were on the minds of legislators this spring. At an education committee hearing in March, Texas state Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Republican from Rio Grande City, along the southern border with Mexico, introduced a bill that would bar businesses with close ties to board members from applying for school district contracts. Such deals were previously permitted as long as school leaders publicly disclosed conflicts and abstained from voting.
But Guillen, who did not respond to requests for comment, argued those rules were abused, pointing to recent scandals in two districts that led to state investigationsand, in one case, resulted in federal charges.
He described his bill as a “commonsense” proposal that would ensure “no one in a position of power can exploit the system for financial benefit.” The Legislature passed the bill, which was signed into law by Abbott.
Notably, the measure excluded private schools. In public testimony, no one brought them up, and there was no debate about them even as lawmakers advanced a proposal that would direct state money to them.
The newsrooms found at least six private schools that awarded contracts to companies with ties to their board members.
Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep, a Catholic high school serving primarily low-income students of color, awarded more than $5 million to a construction firm owned by one of its board members for “interior finish” work between 2017 and 2021, tax filings show. The school did not respond to questions about the payments. Raul Estrada, who was on the school board when his firm received the payments, said he recused himself from any votes or decisions related to the contract. He added that the company’s work provided “substantial savings” to the school but did not provide specific figures.
Just 30 miles north, board members at the Shelton School, which specializes in teaching students with learning differences such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments over the last decade. Tax records show one trustee was awarded over $465,000 for landscaping, and another collected more than $1.2 million for “printed education material.” The board members whose firms received the contracts did not respond to requests for comment. Suzanne Stell, the school’s executive director, said the board members who received contracts were not involved in the decisions. Stell also said that the contract for printed material included training for educators.
Our investigation also found dozens of instances of nepotism or relatives serving on boards together at private schools, some of which were started and are led by families.
Trinity Classical School in Houston, for example, has long maintained a family-led chain of governance on its school board exclusive to married couples, appointing a new pair each time one cycled off. The board deviated from that pattern only once, when it selected Neil Anderson, the school’s leader, according to tax filings. None of the current board members responded to interview requests, nor did Anderson or the school.
Such arrangements have been prohibited since 2012 in charter schools, which are restricted from appointing more than one family member to serve as a trustee at the same time. Anderson’s appointment would also not be allowed in traditional public schools, where employees are barred from serving on their school’s governing board.
At the elite Greenhill School in the Dallas area, where tuition can exceed $40,000 a year, the previous leader, Scott Griggs, hired his son to coach the boys’ volleyball team and teach middle school math. While allowed in private schools, state nepotism laws prevent public and charter schools from hiring close relatives of superintendents and trustees, with few exceptions. Griggs told the newsrooms that he’d already announced his retirement when he asked the board in 2017 to approve hiring his son, who did not respond to requests for comment.
The following year, the college prep academy provided a personal loan of nearly $100,000 to its current head of school, Lee Hark, for a down payment on a home. The school did not disclose the terms of the agreement in its tax filings, including whether it charged interest or what would happen should Hark default. Hark declined to comment.
Private schools are generally free to use money as they choose, but a 150-year-old provision of the Texas Constitution bars public schools from lending taxpayer dollars. The state does not require private schools to publicly disclose whether taxpayer money would be used for such arrangements under the voucher program.
In a written statement, a Greenhill spokesperson said the school operates with “sound financial principles” that meet or exceed “all standards of accountability for independent schools.” She said the school charged interest on the loan and it has since been paid off, but did not provide records.
Many of the private schools examined by the news organizations, including Greenhill, said that they are still deciding whether to participate in the voluntary voucher program.
The lack of accountability for private schools has sparked concern from public school parents like Sarah Powell, a mother of two near Dallas. She was among thousands who urged lawmakers to reject voucher legislation earlier this year.
“You’re either part of the system or you’re not,” Powell later told the newsrooms. “You can’t have the resources and not any of the regulations. It just isn’t right.”
The Greenhill School, where tuition can surpass $40,000 per student, in Addison, just outside of Dallas (Shelby Tauber for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)
Repeating History
State funds flowing to public and charter schools are monitored by the Texas Education Agency, which requires annual independent audits and assigns ratings that gauge each school’s fiscal health. Districts that repeatedly underperform risk sanctions, including forced closure.
“Looking back on it today, I think it was necessary,” Bob Schulman, a longtime education attorney, said about many of the reforms.
Even as oversight of charter schools has been strengthened, gaps remain. Earlier this year, a ProPublica and Tribune investigation found that a charter network with 1,000 students was paying its superintendent nearly $900,000 annually, making him among the highest-paid public school leaders in the nation. Yet the school did not disclose the superintendent’s full compensation to the state and later rebuffed calls to lower his salary from lawmakers and the advocacy group representing charters. The school board defended Cavazos’ salary, saying it was merited because of his duties and experience.
The state, however, will not directly regulate private schools under the new voucher program, which will begin next year. Instead, supervision will largely fall to one of 20 private organizations, which schools must pay to obtain and maintain the accreditation required to receive public funds.
A review by the newsrooms of these organizations’ standards found they are generally far less rigorous than the state’s. Most do not require annual financial audits, which some accreditation organizations say can be too costly and time-consuming, and many do not mandate policies to prevent nepotism and conflicts of interest.
If a private school loses accreditation from one group, it can simply apply to another.
That total, however, is likely an undercount even within the sample of schools the newsrooms reviewed. Reporters identified dozens more conflicts listed in tax forms, for example, but the schools provided sparse information about what they were. Because of that, there is no way to determine if the conduct would have violated state laws if it had occurred at a public or charter school. The newsrooms reached out to each school about the missing information, but none answered questions.ġ
Texas lawmakers laid the groundwork for publicly funded schools with limited state oversight when they authorized charter schools in the 1990s as an alternative to traditional public education. At the time, they exempted charter schools from many regulations, betting that greater flexibility would lead to innovation and stronger academic performance.
But over the past three decades, the state has steadily increased restrictions on charter schools in response to concerns about financial mismanagement and academic performance. Charter schools, for example, were initially exempt from the state’s nepotism and conflict-of-interest laws, but lawmakers gradually changed that after reports exposed leaders enriching themselves and their families. The state implemented another round of stricter rules after newspapers uncovered lavish spending on perks such as Spurs tickets and lucrative land deals.
Schulman, who has represented Texas charter schools for decades, said that some leaders abused the limited state oversight for years, making it more concerning that lawmakers launched a voucher program with even fewer regulations.
“I’m very disturbed,” Schulman said. “But I’m hopeful that it will be a quicker turnaround than it was for the charters.”
How We Reported This Story
For this story, reporters reviewed nonprofit tax filings for 90 of the 200 highest-enrollment private schools listed in the Texas Private Schools Accreditation Commission database. Those filings were not available for the other 110 schools, as for-profit schools or those tied to houses of worship are not typically required to make tax documents public. For the schools that filed these records, reporters reviewed available annual reports dating back to at least 2015.
Reporters identified more than 60 instances involving conflicts of interest, nepotism and financial transactions with related parties at 27 schools. Three education lawyers confirmed our findings.
Ukraine has been bravely resisting the Russian invaders for more than three years. Its cities and towns have been devastated by Russian bombardment. Ukraine wants to align with the West. Putin is determined to bring Ukraine back into the Soviet orbit, even if it requires murdering its people, destroying its historic monuments, obliterating its cultural centers, wiping out hospitals, schools, and homes.
Trump held a meeting with Putin, the aggressor, to discuss next steps. Trump pointedly excluded Zelensky and representatives of the European Union.
When Zelensky visited the White House, Trump and Vance humiliated him for his “lack of gratitude” to Trump. But when Putin–the international pariah– met Putin in Alaska, he rolled out a red carpet. He admires this thug, this mass murderer, this ruthless dictator.
Trump gave Putin all he wanted: no ceasefire, bombs away! “Peace” talks on Putin’s terms. Keep on killing innocent civilians. Keep raining drones on hospitals, shopping malls, apartment buildings, power grids, and schools.
We had no reason to expect a different outcome. Putin is a highly experienced KGB agent who has controlled Russia for many years, and Trump is a television personality. Trump has a schoolboy crush on Putin. When he sees Putin, he is starstruck. I suppose we should be glad that Trump didn’t offer to give Alaska back to Russia as a munificent gift.
Trump stabbed the people of Ukraine in the back. Also in the front. He betrayed our European allies.
What a disgrace is this miserable man. What an embarrassment to our nation.
Richard Haass, who was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations for 20 years, is a seasoned diplomat. Since he now speaks for himself, not an organization, he lays out his concerns about the trap that Trump has set for himself when he meets with Putin in Alaska. Putin is not allowed to travel in Europe, where he has been declared a war criminal, both for his invasion of Ukraine and for the systematic kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.
The big story this week is the highly anticipated meeting… between Presidents Trump and Putin in Alaska. That Friday’s meeting is taking place on U.S. soil is in itself a big win for Vladimir Putin, who has not set foot in this country since 2007. The invitation undermines international efforts to isolate him on account of Russian aggression and war crimes in Ukraine. That this meeting is with him alone and does not include Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also to Putin’s advantage. As they say, you’re either at the table or you’re on it.
The run-up to the meeting has been less than reassuring. The president and his envoy-to-everywhere Steve Witkoff have been talking about land swaps. There are several problems with them. Any swap that gives Russia anything rewards it for aggression. Second, land swaps might leave Ukraine worse off militarily if Putin (as is likely) treats any ceasefire as a pause rather than a prelude to a lasting treaty. This risk grows exponentially if swaps are not tied to meaningful security assurances to Ukraine. More generally, territory is the sort of issue that should be held in reserve for final status talks associated with a permanent peace. They are contentious and may be needed to craft a larger package. The focus now should be on bringing about a ceasefire, the simpler the better.
The vice president didn’t help matters by declaring that “We’re done with funding the Ukraine war business.” Only by continuing to do so is there an actual chance that Putin will conclude (however reluctantly) that more war will not deliver more of what he wants. Other pressure could come from imposing new sanctions on Russia and announcing U.S. support for giving Ukraine access to the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets. It is unclear whether the administration will exercise these options. I have my doubts.
My nightmare scenario as we approach Alaska is that President Trump and his envoy, who appear to be conducting diplomacy unencumbered by much in the way of either expertise or experts, will largely side with the Russian president, present a joint proposal to the Ukrainian president, and, when said proposal is rejected as it invariably would be, Trump will blame Zelenskyy for bursting his diplomatic bubble and cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine in response.
As much as I would like to see real progress toward a fair ceasefire and the United States doing all in its power to stand against territorial acquisition by force, I would think the best outcome at Alaska is no agreement, with Trump having learned (again) that his good friend Vlad places a higher priority on undermining Ukraine’s standing as an independent sovereign country than winning hearts and minds in this White House. It is thus somewhat reassuring that the White House spokesperson is walking back expectations, now casting the meeting as a “listening exercise.” If so, the president will have escaped from a trap of his own making, which would be a good thing. No deal is better than a bad one.
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