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Greg R. Flick: Now This Is a Valuable Role for Charter Schools! I Love It!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2023 //
18

The first charter school opened in 1991. Since then, charters have expanded exponentially. There are now more than 7,000 of them. Originally, charters had bipartisan support.

Bill Clinton loved the charter idea and created the federal Charter Schools Program to fund new charter schools, a modest expenditure of $6 million a year (that has since ballooned into $440 million a year, most of which has gone to grow big, wealthy charter chains).

President Barack Obama also loved charter schools , as did his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. When Congress pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy to stave off an economic collapse in 2009, it allocated $100 for schools. $95 billion went to public schools. $5 billion was set aside for the U.S. Department of Education to use as it wished for “education reform.”

Secretary Duncan, aided by helpers from the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, launched a competition among the states to win a share of $4.35 billion. But the states’ eligibility to participate in Race to the Top depended on their complying with certain demands: the states had to agree to open more charter schools, to evaluate their teachers by the test scores of their students, to restructure or close schools with low test scores, to adopt national standards (I.e., the Common Core, not yet finished, never tested).

Race to the Top gave a huge boost to charter schools.

But reality intruded. Large numbers of new charters opened. Large numbers of charters closed, replaced soon by others. Charter scandals proliferated. Get-rich-quick entrepreneurs opened charter schools; grifters opened charter schools. Some charter leaders paid themselves more than big-city superintendents. Highly successful (I.e. high test scores) charters carefully curated their students, rejecting or removing those who had low scores, excluding students with disabilities.

The charter sector began to act like an industry, with its own lobbyists in D.C. and in state capitols. Sometimes the charter lobbyists wrote state legislation to assure that there was little or no accountability or oversight or transparency Fort the public funds they received.

Of course, the charter lobby maintained a strong public relations presence, booking appearances for their paid spokespeople on national TV and in the press. When state legislatures met to vote in the budget, the charters hired buses to bring thousands of students and parents to demand more money and more charters. They were coached to use the right words about the success of charters.

Since charters have been around for more than 30 years, the research on them is consistent. Their test scores, on average, are about the same as regular schools, even though they have much more flexibility. Some get high scores (typically the ones with high attrition rates who got rid of the students they didn’t want), some got very low scores. Most were in the middle. The Cybercharters were the worst by every measure: low graduation rates, poor academics, high teacher turnover, expensive for the low quality but very profitable.

Were they innovative? No. Those considered “successful” operated with 19th century modes of strict discipline. Some substituted computers for teachers.

Charters fell under a cloud when Donald Trump became President and sooointed choice zealot Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. She plugged vouchers and charters and choice. Most Democrats in Congress began to open their eyes and understand that charters were a prelude to vouchers. DeVos’s strident advocacy for charters made most Democrats remember their party’s historic legacy as a champion of public schools, real public schools , not privately managed schools that were Public in Name Only.

So, where stands the charter idea now? Charters are admired and thriving (at least financially, if not academically) in red states. Most Democrats understand that the preservation and improvement of public schools is central to the party’s identity.

A reader of the blog came up with a sensible redefinition of the mission of charter schools. Since they have the freedom to try out new ideas, they should serve the neediest children. They should do whatever it takes—not to raise their test scores—but to educate the children who have struggled in regular schools. Let the charters innovate—their original mission—free of the burden of being labeled “failing” or “low performing.” Let them work their magic for the children who need it most, not for the high achievers who would succeed in any school.

Greg R. Flick, a reader of the blog and himself a blogger (“What’s Gneiss for Education”)) sent this perceptive comment about what charters should do to be truly useful to American education and to provide an exemplary service:

It seems that if we believe the narrative the charters push, we should flip the system on its ear. Let the charters be the default schools for the kids who can’t function in the public schools. Let’s have the public schools be able to cream their student populations, select only the students they want to have…the “easier” students, and have the charters be required to take those kids kicked out of the public schools.

Charters with their smaller classes and “freedom” to innovate will finally be able to help those kinds of kids. And since they are public schools (as they keep on telling us repeatedly) they can’t gripe about taking in the hard nuts, the Special ed kids, the ones with behavioral issues, etc.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Class size, Clinton, Creativity, Democracy, Democrats, Deregulation, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Freedom, Funding, Innovation, Obama, Reign of Error, Republicans, Special Education

Steve Nelson: Censorship Is Never Justifiable—Except Here

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2023 //
55

Steve Nelson is a retired educator who writes often against the regime of test-and-punish. Steve was headmaster of the progressive Calhoun School in Manhattan, and he practiced what he preaches. For a time, he was a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, and I appreciated his wise counsel.

In this essay on his blog, he argues against censorship. In general, I agree with him. I wrote a book about the open, blatant censorship of textbooks, tests, and literary works used in schools, called The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. The book described in detail the protocols that publishers use to exclude words, phrases, and illustrations that anyone might object to. Their exclusions are described in what are called “bias and sensitivity guidelines.” The book contains a list of nearly 1,000 words, phrases, etc. that are never to be mentioned because someone finds them offensive.

I came out strongly against censorship of literary works and textbooks and tests.

But, but, but…as readers of this blog are aware, I practice censorship on this blog. I delete comments that insult me. I treat the blog as my living room. We are here to discuss topics of my choosing. If one of my guests calls me a filthy whore or a lying bitch, I don’t post their comments. Believe me, some have called me even worse epithets, too vile to mention.

I don’t post demonstrably false conspiracy theories. For example, I received a video about the Sandy Hook massacre claiming to prove that it was a hoax, that no one died there, that it was staged by professional “crisis actors.” I refused to post it. I deleted it. I censored it. The principal of the Sandy Hook Elementary School followed my blog and my Twitter account. She died. So did five other staff members and 20 children, ages 5 and 6. The young man who did it killed his mother and himself. The perpetrator of this hoax, Alex Jones, has been ordered to pay over $1 billion to families in Newtown, Connecticut, who have been threatened and harmed because of his lies. Why should I repeat his lies?

I will not post racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic hate speech. But I oppose bowdlerizing books in which such language appears.

I oppose censoring Huckleberry Finn, the books Dr. Seuss published during World War 2, the books of Roald Dahl, the mural hanging in a San Francisco high school to which some students objected despite its artistic merit.

I support censorship of medical misinformation about COVID or other potentially fatal diseases. I support blocking quacks who advise sick people to drink bleach or swallow veterinary medicine. I read a blog written by a doctor titled “Misinformation Kills,” and I refuse to be complicit in spreading misinformation that kills. Elon Musk, on the other hand, a zillion times more powerful than me, has restored the COVID quacks, as well as Nazis and election deniers.

More controversially, I have blocked comments on the blog defending Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and his brutal destruction of that sovereign nation. To me, defending Putin is no different from defending Hitler. I know that the word “unprovoked” will bring in more comments objecting that Putin was provoked to send 200,000-300,000 troops into a sovereign nation because Ukraine belonged to Russia long ago, or NATO was encircling Russia, or the Ukrainians are Nazis, or whatever the excuse of the day is. Sorry, I feel strongly about supporting a nation struggling for its very existence and opposing a vicious tyrant.

So there you have it, Steve. I oppose censorship of art and literature. But I practice censorship here because there are some forms of speech that I do not tolerate. I look forward to hearing from you.

Steve Nelson wrote:

The complex issues of sensitivity, censorship, expression, art and history splashed down on the front page of the New York Times this week in a pair of articles.

One piece examined the legal case brought by Quebec artist Sam Kerson, formerly of Vermont.

In 1993, Kerson installed two murals titled “Vermont, The Underground Railroad” and “Vermont and the Fugitive Slave” at Vermont Law and Graduate School (VLGS) in South Royalton. I’ve written of this before as I have a special interest. I was an administrator at VLGS at the time and played an instrumental role in facilitating the project. After recent complaints from students, describing the depiction of slaves as crude caricatures, VLGS covered the murals. Kerson sued, VLGS prevailed, Kerson appealed, and the appeal was heard in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City on January 27th. The Times article describes the somewhat arcane law that Kerson cites in the appeal to protect his creation.

The second article reported the rewrites of several works by Roald Dahl. The Times reports that the rewrites were “. . . an effort to make them less offensive and more inclusive, according to a representative from the author’s estate.” Changes included such things as removing “fat” and using more inclusive terms for race, gender and parenting.

It is a humorous coincidence that the Puffin Foundation supported the murals, and Puffin Books sanitized the novels. The Puffins are not related, although Wikipedia says this about the Foundation. “The Puffin Foundation, with more than $14 million in assets split between two independent entities, was seeded with the fortune Perry Rosenstein made in the Allen screw business. He got into the fasteners industry as a salesman. As he made the rounds on his accounts, he found several buyers who wanted diversity in Allen screws.”

All these years later, “diversity” and “screwing” are flashpoints!

A critical distinction: Sam Kerson is a passionate anti-racist activist, and no person questions his motives, which were to remind us of both cruelty and heroism. Roald Dahl, by contrast, was known as a nasty anti-semite and anti-feminist.

Particularly in these contentious times, it is important to adhere to principles, whether one prefers the outcome or not. One ought not fiercely defend only the rights or expression that coincide with personal values or beliefs. We can neither understand nor learn from the past if we are constantly tinkering with its representation. That doesn’t mean that any literary or artistic product has total impunity. It is our right – our obligation – to interpret, to critique and to engage in debate. Without discomfort, growth is stunted.

In the Dahl instance, there seems little nuance. Editing books to cleanse them of discomfort is indefensible. Dahl’s language tells us about the era, the context, and the author’s implicit and explicit biases. We need all of it to understand the books and the man. No one is forced to read them. And, of course, any good teacher can use student discomfort to provide valuable lessons on social injustice, misogyny, bigotry and more. Even Puffin Books could reprint with a publisher’s note, citing the examples of language they find offensive and stimulating debate as to why.

I intend no false equivalence, but the outcry over actions like the Florida erasure of the truth of racial injustice rings hollow if rewriting Dahl’s books is easily accepted.

As to VLGS murals, it is important to recognize that they are not like framed paintings, where displays are often rotated and there is no presumption of permanence. The nature of a mural is to be fixed and ongoing. They are Kerson’s creations. The Times writes, “The case turns on language in the federal law that says artists can seek to prevent modification of their work if the change would harm their honor or reputation.’” Kerson claims, as seems self-evident, that removal or covering is a “modification,” and that his honor and reputation are at stake.

I also have sympathy for students and others who find the murals difficult. But like Dahl’s language, the murals can be a topic for critical analysis and rich debate. As a matter of principle, Kerson’s impeccable bona fides are not dispositive. But as a matter of context, his intent does matter.

I am in no position to obligate Kerson to anything, but my guess is that he might welcome a chance to go to VLGS and engage in discussion. Perhaps they could persuade his good heart to their viewpoint. Or perhaps not. But hiding or removing the murals just capitulates to a dangerous trend toward censoring discomfort.

A law school should be reluctant to be part of that trend, however emotionally powerful the concerns may be.

(This post first appeared in the 2/26 Valley News in New England)

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy

Washington Post: When Teachers Are Not Allowed to Teach the Truth

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2023 //
90

Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post wrote about the rapidly spreading censorship that is casting a pall over many classrooms. State legislatures in red states have passed scores of laws describing in vague terms what teachers are not allowed to teach, even if it is factually accurate. Imagine a teacher told he must not say that slavery was wrong. Teachers comply rather than be fired. Some quit. And people wonder why there are teacher shortages!

She writes:

Excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Passages from Christopher Columbus’s journal describing his brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples. A data set on the New York Police Department’s use of force, analyzed by race.

These are among the items teachers have nixed from their lesson plans this school year and last, as they face pressure from parents worried about political indoctrination and administrators wary of controversy, as well as a spate of new state laws restricting education on race, gender and LGBTQ issues.

“I felt very bleak,” said Lisa Childers, an Arkansas teacher who was forced by an assistant principal, for reasons never stated, into yanking Wollstonecraft’s famous 1792 polemic from her high school English class in 2021.

The quiet censorship comes as debates over whether and how to instruct children about race, racism, U.S. history, gender identity and sexuality inflame politics and consume the nation. These fights, which have already generated at least 64 state laws reshaping what children can learn and do at school, are likely to intensify ahead of the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, an ascendant parents’ rights movement born of the pandemic is seeking — and winning — greater control over how schools select, evaluate and offer children access to both classroom lessons and library books.

In response, teachers are changing how they teach.

A study published by the Rand Corp. in January found that nearly one-quarter of a nationally representative sample of 8,000 English, math and science teachers reported revising their instructional materials to limit or eliminate discussions of race and gender. Educators most commonly blamed parents and families for the shift, according to the Rand study.

The Washington Post asked teachers across the country about how and why they are changing the materials, concepts and lessons they use in the classroom, garnering responses from dozens of educators in 20 states.

Here are six things some teachers aren’t teaching anymore.

“Slavery Is Wrong”

Greg Wickenkamp began reevaluating how he teaches eighth-grade social studies in June 2021, when a new Iowa law barred educators from teaching “that the United States of America and the state of Iowa are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist.”

Wickenkamp did not understand what this legislation, which he felt was vaguely worded, meant for his pedagogy. Could he still use the youth edition of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”? Should he stay away from Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You,” especially as Kendi came under attack from conservative politicians?

That fall, Wickenkamp repeatedly sought clarification from the Fairfield Community School District about what he could say in class, according to emails obtained by The Post. He sent detailed lists of what he was teaching and what he planned to teach and asked for formal approval, drawing little response. At the same time, Wickenkamp was fielding unhappy emails and social media posts from parents who disliked his enforcement of the district’s masking policy and his use of Reynolds and Kendi’s text. A local politician alleged that Wickenkamp was teaching children critical race theory, an academic framework that explores systemic racism in the United States and a term that has become conservatives’ catchall for instruction on race they view as politically motivated.

Finally, on Feb. 8, 2022, at 4:05 p.m., Wickenkamp scored a Zoom meeting with Superintendent Laurie Noll. He asked the question he felt lay at the heart of critiques of his curriculum. “Knowing that I should stick to the facts, and knowing that to say ‘Slavery was wrong,’ that’s not a fact, that’s a stance,” Wickenkamp said, “is it acceptable for me to teach students that slavery was wrong?”

Noll nodded her head, affirming that saying “slavery was wrong” counts as a “stance.”

“We had people that were slaves within our state,” Noll said, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Post. “We’re not supposed to say to [students], ‘How does that make you feel?’ We can’t — or, ‘Does that make you feel bad?’ We’re not to do that part of it.”She continued: “To say ‘Is slavery wrong?’ — I really need to delve into it to see is that part of what we can or cannot say. And I don’t know that, Greg, because I just don’t have that. So I need to know more on that side.”

As Wickenkamp raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, she added, “I’m sorry, on that part.”Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

Contacted for comment, Noll wrote in a statement that “the district provided support to Greg with content through a neighboring school district social studies department head.” She did not answer a question asking whether she thinks teachers should be permitted to tell children that slavery was wrong.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Art, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History, Ignorance, Lies, Literature

Jim Jordan Issues Subpoenas for Former NSBA Officials

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2023 //
18

The Republican Party hopes to establish itself as the champion of “parental rights.” They have aligned themselves with “Moms for Liberty,” “Parents Defending Education,” and other well-funded (Koch, Walton) astroturf groups demanding book banning, censorship of courses about race and gender, and the “right” of parents to disrupt school board meetings, control the curriculum, and harass teachers.

At the worst points of the pandemic, these groups emerged to oppose masks and vaccinations. Their agenda grew from there to opposing critical race theory (even when they can’t define it), sex education, and anything that might make some children uncomfortable.

In September 2021, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Attorney General Merrick Garland seeking help and advice for school boards that were besieged and threatened by angry, organized demonstrations, by so-called Proud Boys, and assorted malingerers.

State school board associations in red states were outraged by the NSBA letter, and some canceled their membership in the nonpartisan NSBA (I don’t know whether they have since rejoined). The national group withdrew the letter, but the fight goes on.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the incendiary chair of the House Judisry Committee, has issued subpoenas to former NSBA officials as part of his investigation of “mistreatment” of parents protesting “woke” policies. I understand that he has the power to oversee government action, but I don’t understand how he can investigate the NSBA, a private organization concerned about threats of violence to its members.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans issued another series of subpoenas Monday as part of an ongoing investigation into what they contend is the mistreatment of parents who protested “woke” school board policies.

Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded documents and testimony from three individuals, including the former heads of the National School Boards Association, for “requesting federal law enforcement assistance to target parents voicing concerns at local school board meetings.”

The Ohio Republican is flexing his newly appointed subpoena power to probe a September 2021 letter that the nonprofit representing U.S. school boards sent to the Biden administration. The letter warned of rising threats against school board members over coronavirus restrictions and teaching around race.

The letter to the Justice Department, signed by Chip Slaven, then the interim executive director of the NSBA, and Viola Garcia, then the president of the NSBA, outlined more than 20 instances of threats, harassment, disruption and acts of intimidation in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states.

Jordan, who also chairs a new subcommittee dedicated to what Republicans assert is the “weaponization” of government, has said that as a result of the letter, the Justice Department designated “a specific threat tag” for school board-related threats and opened investigations “into parents simply for speaking out on behalf of their children.” Those allegation are outlined in a GOP report released in November.

The NSBA has repeatedly stated that the letter’s focus was on the issue of violence and threats, not protests from parents….

It is all part of the Republican Party’s larger effort to turn the issue of ”parents’ rights” into a rallying cry, harnessing the frustration with schools that reached a boiling point during the pandemic when educators grappled with masking requirements, closures and remote learning for children.

Jim Jordan is a fervent Trumper and a fervent election denier. He was the first chair of the House Freedom Caucus, its most rightwing members. He’s the guy who is seldom seen wearing a jacket. He can be counted on to weaponize his new power to harass his political enemies.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Disruption, Extremism, Freedom of Speech

Ohio: New NEPC Report Faults Fordham Institute for Cherry-picking Data

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2023 //
43

Josh Cowen, professor of education policy at Michigan State University, reviewed a new Ohio voucher report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank that has a very large influence over education policy in Ohio. People who already support vouchers will like it, but it won’t change minds, Cowen concludes. Fordham previously sponsored an independent review by David Figlio and colleagues that concluded that children who used vouchers in Ohio fell behind their peers in public schools.

Cowen’s summary:

A report considers the chief concerns associated with Ohio’s voucher program: the harm to public school student outcomes through competition, the affect on district financial resources, and increased racial segregation. Finding that Ohio vouchers have had few such harmful impacts, the report concludes that it has effectively dismissed the primary concerns of voucher critics. Yet, while the report is broadly methodologically sound for the narrow questions it poses, the questions it asks are out-of-date with respect to current issues raised by voucher critics, which focus on substantially decreased student achievement among students using vouchers. Thus, the report does little to assuage the primary concerns of those dedicated to serving children through community-based public education.

The overview:

BOULDER, CO (February 21, 2023)—A recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute considers the impacts of vouchers as related to competition in Ohio public schools, increased racial segregation, and local district financial resources. It presents these three issues as the chief concerns of voucher critics and finds few harmful impacts.

In Michigan State University professor Joshua Cowen’s review of The Ohio EdChoice Program’s Impact on School District Enrollments, Finances, and Academics, he finds that the questions it asks are far too limited. While the report is methodologically sound for the narrow questions it poses, Professor Cowen contends that they are outdated with respect to current concerns raised by voucher critics, which focus on substantially decreased student achievement among students using vouchers.

The report also relies on more permissive standards for statistical inference than peer-reviewed articles would typically allow. Moreover, the Foreword, written by Fordham staff, gives the clear impression that the report is merely an effort to provide new data for privatization advocates, rather than to respond to legitimate concerns raised by voucher critics. The Foreword dismisses criticisms as “Chicken Little” and “sky-is-falling” histrionics, and in doing so undermines the work of the authors it hired to write the study.

Ultimately, Professor Cowen concludes, those who are ideologically predisposed to embrace voucher policies will doubtless find much to appreciate in this report. It does little, however, to assuage the primary concerns of those dedicated to serving children through community-based public education, and thus has little value in the debate over the use of vouchers as a public policy tool to improve education.

Find the review, by Joshua Cowen, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/edchoice

Find The Ohio EdChoice Program’s Impact on School District Enrollments, Finances, and Academics, written by Stéphane Lavertu and John J. Gregg and published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, at:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/sites/default/files/publication/pdfs/edchoice-impact-report-12-14-22-web-final.pdf

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, National Education Policy Center, Ohio, Privatization, Research, Vouchers

Aaron Blake: Some Republicans Disagree with DeSantis’ Dictatorial Ways

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2023 //
20

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post points out that some Republicans don’t like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ intervention into everyone’s business to control them. Wyoming is a great example of a state that has refused to join DeFascist’s war against WOKE.

Blake wrote:

A potential flash point in the 2024 GOP presidential race: Conservatives are criticizing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other Republicans for going too farin using the heavy hand of government to combat so-called “woke” entities.

And in Wyoming, the tension between those two approaches has come to a head.

The nation’s least-populous state could be considered its most Republican. In both 2016 and 2020, it handed Donald Trump his largest margin of victory of any of the 50 states, going for Trump by more than 43 points. Republicans hold more than 90 percent of the seats in both of its state legislative chambers.

But recently, the state House has effectively shelved a number of bills resembling proposals that have sailed to passage elsewhere:

  • A school-choice bill that would create a scholarship fund for students to attend private instead of public schools.
  • A bill modeled on Florida’s education bill, dubbed “don’t say gay” by critics, that would ban the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
  • A bill that would ban state officials from contracting with businesses and investment funds that boycott fossil fuels or emphasize political or social-justice goals.
  • A bill called “Chloe’s Law” that would forbid doctors from providing hormone blockers and gender-affirming surgery to children.

All four have passed in the state Senate. But along the way, they lost GOP votes — a significant number of them, in the first three bills — and now the state House is holding them up.

A big reason? The state House speaker says he believes in “local control” and worries about the broader effects of state government dictating such issues.

Speaker Albert Sommers (R) has used a maneuver on the school-choice and education proposals known as keeping a bill in his “drawer.” In the former case, he noted that a similar measure already failed in the state House’s education committee. And on the latter, Florida-like bill, he argued for a limited role for state government.

“Fundamentally, I believe in local control,” Sommers told the Cowboy State Daily. “I’ve always fought, regardless of what really the issue is, against taking authority away from local school boards, town councils, county commissions. And in my view that’s what this bill does.”

He also argued that the bill was unconstitutional, because legislation in Wyoming must be focused on one topic. This bill would both restrict instruction on certain subjects and implement changes in how much control parents have over school boards. Sommers suggested such proposals “do not come from Wyoming but instead from another state, or they are templates from a national organization.” And he echoed some conservatives in arguing that it was a solution in search of a problem. “This type of teaching is not happening in Wyoming schools,” he said.ADVERTISEMENT

On “Chloe’s Law,” Sommers angered some conservatives by sending the bill to the appropriations committee rather than the labor and health committee. While the bill was being considered, some Republican legislators warned the bill would undercut counseling and mental health care for transgender youth and could create problems with the state’s federally regulated health insurance plans. The appropriations committee voted against the bill 5-2, tagging it with a “do not pass” designation.

Sommers also sent the fossil-fuels bill to the appropriations committee, and GOP lawmakers expressed worry that the bill would reduce investment in the state and force out large corporations and financial institutions.

These tensions come as some conservatives have warmed to the idea of using the government to crack down on so-called “woke” policies and practices in private businesses and in public education. That turn is perhaps best exemplified by DeSantis, who moved to prevent cruise lines from requiring covid vaccinations, prohibit social media companies from banning politicians and strip Disney of its special tax status after it criticized the so-called “don’t say gay” bill. He also has repeatedly involved the government in school curriculum decisions.

Such moves have earned significant criticism not just from some free-market and libertarian-oriented groups, but also from DeSantis’s potential rivals for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2024.

“The idea of going after [Disney’s] taxing authority — that was beyond the scope of what I as a conservative, a limited-government Republican, would be prepared to do,” former vice president Mike Pence said last week.

“For others out there that think that the government should be penalizing your business because they disagree with you politically, that isn’t very conservative,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu added in February. He has said that “if we’re trying to beat the Democrats at being big-government authoritarians, remember what’s going to happen.”

Last year, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan called DeSantis’s moves on Disney “crazy” and said, “DeSantis is always talking about he was not demanding that businesses do things, but he was telling the cruise lines what they had to do.”

Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, too, criticized DeSantis for his proposed changes to Disney’s special tax status (which have since been significantly watered down). In 2021, Hutchinson also took a relatively lonely stand in his state, against the legislature banning gender-affirming care for children.

“While in some instances the state must act to protect life, the state should not presume to jump into the middle of every medical, human and ethical issue,” he said at the time. “This would be — and is — a vast government overreach.”

Hutchinson’s veto was easily overridden by the state legislature. That, and DeSantis’s rise in the GOP, suggest which way the wind is blowing.

But as Wyoming shows — and the 2024 primary could demonstrate — that doesn’t mean the debate within the GOP about the scope of government is settled

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Competition, Corporate Reform, Courage, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, For-Profit, Freedom, Wyoming

D.C.: Two Educators Fired for Opposing “No Excuses” Approach

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2023 //
22

Two educators in the District of Columbia were fired because they refused to implement the harsh, no-excuses pedagogy of the so-called “Relay Graduate School of Education.”

One of the fired educators was a respected principal of an elementary school, Dr. Carolyn Jackson-King. She objected to the practice of barking out commands to students and demanding unquestioning compliance. She said it was racist. She and another school employee who agreed with her—Marlon Ray—were fired.

I was invited to write a deposition on behalf of the fired educators, and I did. The Relay “no excuses” pedagogy would never be acceptable to middle-class parents of any race. Children are not dogs. They should not be trained like dogs. Why is this harsh treatment reserved for low-income Black children?

Peter Greene wrote about the case, which is going to trial in a few weeks at Forbes, where is a senior contributor.

When Relay Graduate School of Education was brought in by D.C. Public Schools to do staff training, administrators Carolyn Jackson-King and Marlon Ray blew the whistle on the disciplinary methods they mandated. The two lost their jobs, in what they claim was retribution for speaking out. They sued the district; now that lawsuit is finally moving forward.

Carolyn Jackson-King spent almost two decades working in the District of Columbia Public School system, including seven years as principal of Lawrence E. Boone Elementary School.

Jackson-King started there is 2014, inheriting a school that was chaotic, with fighting, low morale, and weak academics. Jackson-King started there when the school was still named Orr Elementary, after Benjamin Orr, D.C.’s fourth mayor. When a student in the predominantly Black school discovered that Orr had been a slave owner, Jackson-King worked with the school community to have the name changed to honor the school’s first Black principal.

Jackson-King was respected in that community (they reportedly called her Dr. J-K or Principal JK). She told WAMU, “In order to have a culture like the one we have at Boone, we have to build relationships and that’s what we do best.” Boone’s rating went from 1 star to 3 star. Jackson-King appeared to be a successful, well-respected principal who had lifted up a struggling school in an underserved community. Then Relay Graduate School of Education came to town.

The defendants opposed the Relay methods and refused to comply.

Their argument is not that complicated: They stood up for the students against a program they saw as abusive and racist (a point on which many authorities agree, including charter schools that had previously implemented the model), and the district retaliated by taking their jobs…

What is Relay GSE?

Relay Graduate School of Education was launched in 2007 as Teacher U. It was set up by three founders of charter school chains as a way to beef up the teacher pipeline for their schools. The founders had little formal teacher training of their own. In 2011 they changed the name to better reflect their expansive new plans, expanding Relay’s operations across the country.

Relay is not a graduate school in any traditional sense of the word. As Lauren Anderson, chair of the Education Department at Connecticut College, once put it:

It is a charter-style network of independent teacher preparation programs created by the leaders of three prominent charter school chains (Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First), primarily as a means to bypass traditional teacher education.

Education historian Diane Ravitch wrote of Relay:

It has no scholars, no researchers, no faculty other than charter teachers. It is a trade school for teaching tricks of test-taking and how to control black and brown children and teach them to obey orders without questioning.

Please open the link and read the rest of this enlightening article.

If you have any personal experience with Relay and its pedagogy, please let me know or write a letter to the lawyer representing the two educators. The lawyer who represents them is Raymond C. Fay. He can be reached at: rfay@faylawdc.com

Frankly, it is shocking that a successful principal would be fired because she refused to bow to the demands of a pretend “graduate school” led by charter school teachers with far less experience than she has. Relay’s leaders undoubtedly attended prep schools and elite suburban public schools where they were never subjected to “no excuses” pedagogy.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Ethics, Injustice

Leonie Haimson: Success Academy Spends $13 Million a Year on Marketing and Recruitment

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2023 //
7

The pro-charter media, especially anything owned by Rupert Murdoch (e.g. The New York Post), continually boasts about the long waiting lists of students hoping to enroll in charter schools.

New York City’s Success Academy charter chain, which posts extraordinarily high test scores, supposedly has a long waiting list. The tale was first told in a movie called “The Lottery,” which showed hundreds of parents entering their child’s name in a lottery in hopes of winning a coveted seat in the school. The documentary was made by Madeline Sackler, yes, of the same billionaire family that marketed opioids to the nation and became insanely rich.

Leonie Haimson reveals in a recent blog post that Success Academy has an enormous operation to market its schools, augmented by a division whose job is recruitment of students.

She writes:

One of the political weapons that charter chains & their hypesters in the media like the NY Post repeat like a mantra to support the push to expand their schools and eliminate the NYC cap on charters is their dubious claim that there are thousands of kids on their waiting lists.

For many reasons one should doubt the reality and relevance of these claims. As Chalkbeat points out, 58% of NYC charter schools lost enrollment over the past three years; and 45% lost enrollment in the last year. This includes the most aggressively expansionist charter chain in NYC, Success Academy, whose enrollment has fallen by 7.7% in the last year.

Moreover, as our charter school presentation and draft resolution explain, the claims of high demand and long waiting lists at charter schools are unconfirmed by any independent audits and likely include many duplicates.

As to Success Academy, a research study revealed that only about 50 percent of the students who win the lottery to attend one of their schools choose to enroll, making the significance of what it means to be on one of their waiting lists even more dubious.

In addition, the network was still desperately urging more families to apply to their schools through October of the current school year, revealing a shortage of students. They also recruit students outside the city for their charter schools, suggesting a lack of demand in NYC.

Perhaps one of Success’ biggest problems in keeping their seats full is their high rates of attrition, with 75% of students leaving from Kindergarten on; and about 50% of those students who even make it to high school departing before graduation, according to analyses done by Gary Rubinstein.

In any case, in their determined effort to persuade as many families as possible to apply, whether or not they really intend to enroll, Success Academy has a whole team focused on recruitment. See this job posting for a “Scholar Recruiter” to join the “Scholar Recruitment Team,” managed by the “Lead of Scholar Recruitment” and “reporting to a Senior Scholar Recruiter”.:

…. the Scholar Recruiter will execute field outreach programs and promotional activities in individually assigned New York City regional markets. A Scholar Recruiter will often be the first touchpoint to Success Academy for prospective families, making this team a critical contributor toward reaching our enrollment goals.

One of the many responsibilities of this “Scholar Recruiter” is to ” Identify, initiate, and maintain relationships with community based organizations (CBO’s) to develop CBO-to-Success Academy pipelines, identify Success Academy as the premier educational choice in the community, and cement Success Academy as a member of the community.”

The following metrics will be used to evaluate their performance:

Scholar Recruiters will be measured against individual performance indicators including but not limited to:

  • Gross application volume generated among families who reside in their regional markets
  • Gross application volume generated to schools in their regional markets.
  • Yield of regional applicant pool that is converted to enrolled status.
  • Retention of enrolled families through the first 60 days of each academic year.
  • Volume of applicant leads generated in their market.
  • Number of new and continuing community-based contacts established and maintained, segmented by type (e.g. social service, faith-based, childcare, business, etc)
  • Conversion rate of event attendees into applicants or long-lead applicants.
  • Regular submission of performance and market data reporting.

Success Academy also spends millions on advertising and marketing efforts to lure more applicants onto their waiting lists, with ads running on TV, bus shelters, YouTube and Facebook concurrently. They send repeated mailings to families, sometimes as many as 10-12 times per year, after being given free access to DOE mailing lists despite vehement parent protests. (DOE is the only district in the nation to share this info voluntarily.)

As evidence of their huge marketing efforts, they also have an internal marketing firm, called the Success Academy Creative Agency:

The SA Creative Agency is a full service brand strategy, marketing, and creative division within Success Academy Charter Schools (SACS). Aligning business goals and creative and cultural trends, we partner with internal clients to define the value proposition, develop strategic insights and create marketing campaigns and other creative content to help redefine what’s possible in K-12 public education.

SA Creative Agency itself advertises many openings, including senior copywriter, creative director, and Leader of Growth Marketing, “responsible for the design and execution of integrated demand strategies across our paid and organic channels.”

According to her Linked in profile, the Success marketing office is headed by someone named Amanda Cabreira da Silva, who came from Revlon, and as of Success Academy’s 2017 IRS 990 was paid over $200,000 per year.

Open the link to continue reading.

Does this sound like a school or a consumer product?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Fake, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Students

Sara Stevenson: Texas Does Not Need Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2023 //
4

Sara Stevenson retired after many years as a teacher in a religious school and librarian in a public Austin middle school. She wrote the following article for the Fort Worth Telegram.

Every two years, some Texas legislators file bills to push for private-school vouchers, rebranded recently as educational savings accounts, or ESAs. Their purpose is to funnel taxpayer dollars from public schools to private and religious schools. Thanks to a coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans, who cherish their community public schools, these initiatives fail each legislative session. But with Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick prioritizing the issue, will this time be different?

ESAs are indeed repurposed vouchers. The only difference is that with ESAs, taxpayer dollars will go directly to parents to use toward a private school, individual tutoring or other education services. Voucher advocates usually begin by focusing on special education students or low-income students.

Adherents argue that these kids are unfairly “trapped” in low-performing schools and need to be rescued. Most voucher bills, including Senate Bill 176 filed this year, state that children who qualify for special education services must waive their rights to accommodations and supplemental services, rights which are guaranteed under federal law. How does this benefit special education students?

The Council for Exceptional Children, which advocates for both disabled and gifted children, opposes voucher-type programs for all youth. It argues that if children with disabilities are “off the books,” they will return to the shadows and not receive the deserved support they need to succeed.

On the other hand, advocates of ESAs argue that parents of poor children deserve the same freedom to choose a private school or other educational options that wealthy parents enjoy. They appeal to the siren song of equality and fairness as well as parent empowerment.

The unanswered questions are: which children, which parents, who is choosing, and at what cost?

While advocates stress the idea of parental choice, it is the private schools that do the choosing. The proposed $10,000 account would go directly to the parent and could be used toward many forms of education with little or no accountability. But private schools can still accept or reject any student for any reason. A local private school admissions director once told me, for instance, that the school did not accept children with discipline records.

In contrast, public schools are required to serve every child who comes through the door. Furthermore, most highly-rated private schools charge far more than $10,000 per year at the secondary level. Who will make up the difference?

And then there’s the state budget. If ESAs go to families whose students already attend private schools, they essentially become a tax break for private-school parents. It’s estimated that ESAs will cost at least $3 billion in the first year to reimburse the parents of current private school children in Texas.

Not only do ESAs create a new middle-class entitlement, but they drain public schools of needed funds.

Perhaps if public schools in Texas had enough money to meet the needs of all their students and to provide competitive salaries for teachers, the ESA position could be more persuasive. But as it stands, according to U.S. News, the state allotment for per-pupil spending in 2022 is less than all but seven other states. Only eight states pay teachers less than the average salary in Texas, according to the Comparable Wage Index, which accounts for cost of living variations across the country.

Most importantly, if we’re going to radically change the way we fund education in Texas when our state constitution obliges us to adequately fund our public schools, what do the data say? Do children receiving private-school vouchers or ESAs perform better on standardized testing, an objective measure? According to the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank in Washington: “Four recent rigorous studies — in the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio — used different research designs and reached the same result: On average, students that use vouchers to attend private schools do less well on tests than similar students that do not attend private schools.”

While using an ESA to put a child in a private school may please individual parents, it won’t translate into an objective improvement in learning outcomes for Texas children. So, it does not justify such a large transfer of taxpayer funds from public schools to parents’ pockets.

Sara Stevenson taught for 10 years in a Catholic high school and worked for 15 years as a public school librarian. She lives in Austin.

Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/article272626305.html#storylink=cpy

On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 6:46 AM Sara Stevenson <sarastevenson910@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/other-voices/article272626305.html

Best,

Sara

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Hoax, Injustice, Texas, Vouchers

New York Times: Fact-Checking Trump’s Lies

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2023 //
17

Trump spoke on Saturday night to an audience of wildly enthusiastic supporters. His 100-minute speech was chock-full of exaggerations and lies, and his audience loved it.

Before he spoke, he said that he would run even if he is indicted.

Linda Qiu of the New York Times did a fact-check, but it is not complete. For example, Biden withdrew from Afghanistan to fulfill a deal (the Doha Agreement) that the Trump administration made with the Taliban to withdraw American troops by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed the withdrawal back to August 30, 2021. It was a bipartisan disaster.

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump revived familiar falsehoods and returned to old themes in a speech Saturday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Here’s a fact check of some of his claims.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“Killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”

False. Murders declined in New York by about 11 percent from 488 homicides in 2021 to 433 homicides last year. It was the lowest level since 2019, according to the city’s Police Department. Murders continued to decrease this year to 30 in January(compared with 31 in January 2022) and to 26 in February (compared with 36 in February 2022).

Those numbers also pale in comparison to the height of crime in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, when Mr. Trump was a mainstay of the city and when it regularly recorded more than 1,500 murders annually. Homicides peaked in 1990 at 2,245.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“We lost $85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world.”

This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump was referring to, and overstating, the value of military equipment seized by the Taliban after the United States withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan last August.

According to quarterly Pentagon reports to Congress, the United States had provided $88.6 billion for security in Afghanistan from October 2001 to July 2021, and disbursed about $75 billion. That figure includes the amount spent on training, antidrug trafficking efforts and infrastructure, as well as $18 billion for equipment. Most of the $75 billion actually went toward “sustainment,” a category that includes salaries, communications and gas for vehicles.

CNN and other news outlets have reported that the United States left behind about $7 billion of military equipment.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“They want windmills all over the place that ruin our fields, kill our birds and are very unreliable and are the most expensive energy ever developed”

This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump has long been an ardent critic of wind turbines, but his complaints are overstated.

By one estimate, as many as 328,000 birds die each year flying into wind farms, but other things — inanimate and living — pose a far greater threat. Cats kill as many as four billion birds annually in the United States, fossil fuel power plants are responsible for 14.5 million and collisions with buildings as many as 988 million birds.

Wind power and other forms of renewable energy are becoming increasingly more affordable.

The Energy Information Administration estimated that onshore wind would cost about $30 per megawatt-hour by 2027, cheaper than the $52 for coal, $61 for nuclear, $41 for biomass and $47 for hydroelectric. It will remain more expensive than natural gas, solar and geothermal generation.

OTHER CLAIMS

Mr. Trump also repeated a number of other claims The New York Times had previously fact-checked:

  • Mr. Trump inaccurately claimed to have “shut down” unauthorized border crossings. (The number declined during the pandemic, but began to increase again in the final months of his presidency.)
  • He falsely claimed that “no other president had ever gotten anything from China, not even 10 cents.” (In the decade before Mr. Trump took office, the United States collected $8 billion to $14 billion per year from duties on Chinese imports.)
  • He misleadingly characterized members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as “delinquent” on payments. (All member nations pay their bills.)
  • He falsely said that “no one ever heard of” the Nord Stream 2 pipeline before he raised it as an issue and halted its construction. (His predecessors all opposed the project.)
  • He misleadingly claimed that the Obama administration had only supplied Ukraine with “blankets.” (It committed more than $600 million in security assistance to Ukraine.)
  • He falsely claimed to have “completed” building a wall along the southern border. (It has not been finished.)
  • He claimed to have presided over the “best economy in history.” (Average growth, even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the economy, was lower under Mr. Trump than under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.)

Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu

Categories Accountability, Elections, Lies, Trump
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