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The Courts Are Striking Down Trump’s Illegal Orders; What Will the Supreme Court Do?

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2025 //
2

Jay Kuo writes a delightful blog called The Status Kuo. He is a lawyer with a sense of humor, and he writes clearly for the public, not for other lawyers.

This post is important because Kuo shows that the courts are blocking Trump’s overreach and cautions us not to assume that the Supreme Court will act as Trump’s echo chamber.

He writes:

Trump’s losses in the federal courts continue to pile up, and this week saw a number of critical rulings go against him. Judges from D.C. to Texas to California rejected the Trump regime’s illegal overreach on tariffs, deportations, military law enforcement and even his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

Let’s do a legal lightning round to summarize these rulings, any one of which frankly is important enough to have warranted its own stand alone analysis. Today I’ll cover

  1. A major ruling from the Federal Circuit invalidating most of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs;
  2. A long weekend emergency ruling stopping planeloads of unaccompanied children from being deported to Guatemala;
  3. Trump’s big loss after a bench trial in California over his unlawful use of federal troops in that state; and
  4. The Fifth Circuit smackdown of Trump’s invocation of the “Alien Enemies Act” to justify summary deportation of alleged gang members.

Make no mistake: These are big losses that carry major implications for Trump’s plans to isolate the U.S., impose a police state, and conduct mass detentions and deportations.

And if you’re now thinking to yourself, “What does it matter, the Supreme Court will reverse these?” or “Great, but Trump will just disobey the orders,” I want to hit pause and do a reality check. As I’ll explain toward the end of this piece, these arguments, while common and understandable, simply don’t match the facts on the ground….

At this point, Kuo discusses each of the above decisions. You should subscribe to read these analyses.

But these rulings don’t matter! SCOTUS will overrule! Trump will defy!

There’s an understandable tendency to hear about a big court victory for the good guys but then cynically dismiss it, claiming either that the Supreme Court will overturn it, or that the Trump White House will simply ignore the courts’s orders.

I want to encourage readers to not fall into this trap. True, the Supreme Court has intervened in a few cases to lift a few injunctions imposed by lower courts, and that admittedly has been awful to see. But it hasn’t ruled substantively on much of anything yet. 

And that has allowed court victories by the good guys to produce some real progress.

For example, the Blue State Attorneys General group has been successful at using lawsuits to claw back huge sums impounded by the White House. This has occurred even while the red states, which failed to challenge the illegal withholdings, were left starved of funds. 

In his newsletter today, Robert Hubbell pointed to a chart with data from KFF Health News illustrating how successful lawsuits have spared the blue states from a great deal of the blow to public health infrastructure funding:

This helps show that the Supreme Court hasn’t been able to stop every lawsuit from succeeding. Indeed, many if not most have achieved their goals.

It’s also common to believe that the government is simply refusing to comply with every single court order. This misconception perhaps arose because so much attention was on a pair of lawsuits involving deportations, where the Justice Department and Homeland Security pretty much gave the finger to the courts.

But those are the only instances I’m aware of where court orders have been defied outright. And there are now major consequences for those involved with the plan to show open contempt. Judge Boasberg is now weighing bar disciplinary referrals for the lawyers involved.

In other cases, it is also true that the government has dragged its feet, delayed, deflected, misdirected and sought immediate appellate review of preliminary injunctions. But that is not the same as open defiance. And the courts have gotten much better at holding the government’s feet to the fire, as we just saw with Judge Sooknanan’s order followed by a demand for a series of status updates, all to keep the government on the straight and narrow.

The Department of Justice wants the American public to assume that none of the orders granted by federal judges are being heeded. They want us to believe that they, and not the judiciary, are in control. But this is simply not the case. As we saw this weekend, the Justice Department doesn’t have the appetite for another round of contempt proceedings, and it is even turning planes around when ordered to do so.

Zooming out a bit, we can understand why. The Justice Department is in disarray and demoralized, it has in some instances squandered the crucial “presumption of regularity” that is normally afforded to government functions, and the Trump regime is now losing the lion’s share of the most consequential lower court cases. 

Sure, the Supreme Court may eventually weigh in with a set of terrible decisions. But that won’t stop, and hasn’t stopped, resourceful civil rights lawyers from finding new and novel ways to attack the White House’s policies and orders. For example, when SCOTUS found that litigants could not obtain nationwide injunctions against White House directives, plaintiffs adjusted quickly, moving for class certification so that the nationwide part got built into the definition of the class.

And who knows? Maybe even this SCOTUS majority will draw the line somewhere—perhaps by protecting the bright line independence of the Federal Reserve or by telling Trump he can’t order federal troops anywhere he wants for whatever mission he wants. 

Until then, every win in the lower courts chips away at the MAGA fascist golem, and maybe with enough blows, we can take the entire monstrosity down.

Categories Accountability, Justice, Trump

Sacramento: How Could a Charter School Misuse $180 Million in Two Years?

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2025 //
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Diana Lambert of Edsource reported that Jonathan Raymond, the former Superintendent of the Sacramento School District, agreed to take over the leadership of a “troubled” charter school called Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools. The school enrolls adults, many formerly incarcerated or new immigrants.

Wow, was it ever troubled!

Good for Raymond for taking on the challenge of fixing the school! The first thing he did was to dismiss the entire board.

The school owes the state $180 million dollars for money it should not have received or misspent. Most of the teachers were unqualified or were hired because they were friends or family of board members.

And on and on, demonstrating the need for the Legislature to establish oversight and accountability for charter schools, which the California Charter Schools Association has opposed for years.

Lambert wrote:

Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools opened in Sacramento in 2014 with high ideals — to help adult students, many formerly incarcerated or new immigrants, to earn a diploma, improve English language skills, or learn a trade. 

Now, the school is one reason state legislators are considering increased charter school oversight.

The charter school has been the subject of investigations and critical news reports since shortly after it opened its first campus. But, instead of increased oversight, the school was allowed to expand to more than 50 sites with 13,700 students and a budget of $195 million.

WHAT THE AUDIT FOUND
  • Twin Rivers and other organizations did not provide adequate oversight.
  • Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools received more than $180 million in K-12 funds it was not eligible to collect and must now repay.
  • Graduation rates were so low they brought down the state’s graduation rate by half a percentage point.
  • Charter school leaders wasted taxpayer dollars on gifts and trips.
  • School leaders hired friends and family for jobs they weren’t qualified to hold.
  • Most teachers did not have the appropriate credentials to teach K-12 classes.

It wasn’t until the California State Auditor’s Office released a report in June, commissioned by state legislators, that the level of impropriety at the school became apparent.

The 80-page state audit found that the adult school received $180 million of K-12 funding for which it was not eligible, assigned teachers to classes they were not credentialed to teach, and avoided standardized testing by eliminating the 11th grade. 

The audit also found that school leaders spent $1.96 million on a three-day trip for staff to San Diego for professional development, $80,000 on a leadership conference in Maui, $33,000 a month to lease a semi-professional ballpark, and more than $145,000 on gifts for students.

“The Highlands audit has underscored for us the need for greater accountability on the part of charter authorizers of all sizes, to conduct more thorough oversight that is not solely reliant upon a charter school’s annual audit or a charter school’s assertions,” said Cassie Mancini, legislative advocate for the California School Employees Association at a state Senate hearing on Assembly Bill 84, a charter oversight bill, in July.

Legislators, charter school advocates and charter school authorizers have been working to revise two competing charter school bills with the goal of merging them into one. 

Adult charter gets K-12 funds

Many of the problems the audit found at Highlands Community Charter seem to stem from how the school leaders interpreted the rules around a unique federal program that allows adult charter schools, working in partnership with a Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act agency, to receive K-12 funding, which is significantly higher than adult education funding…

Highlands Community Charter had a graduation rate of 2.8% and its California Innovative Career Academy, or CICA, had a rate of 16.9%. Highlands opened CICA, an independent study school, in 2019…

A large number of underqualified teachers and large class sizes, averaging 51 students per teacher, may have contributed to the poor academic performance of the school’s students, according to the audit. The state has no limit on class sizes in charter high schools.

At the time of the audit, only 53 of the school’s 250 teachers had a K-12 credential, said Bill McGuire, who served as executive director of the school during the year of the audit. He blamed the lack of appropriately credentialed teachers on inaccurate information from credentialing officials.

The charter school owes $180 million to the state. It’s asking for some sort of write-off since the money is gone. The authorizer, Twin Rivers, collected $12.9 million in fees but didn’t seem to oversee much.

A scam? An error? A rip-off? Call it what you will. California and every other state needs to establish meaningful oversight and accountability for charter schools. A huge amount of money was spent since the school(s) opened in 2014, and very few people were educated.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, California, Charter Schools, Funding

Bernie Sanders: RFK Jr. Must Resign!

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2025 //
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Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an article for The New York Times calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign. Since Sanders was chairman of the Senate Committee overseeing HHS, he argues with facts, not just indignation.

He writes:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.

Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite.

This week, Mr. Kennedy pushed out the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after less than one month on the job because she refused to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies. Four leading officials at C.D.C. resigned the same week. One of those officials said Mr. Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” apparently to fit Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. This is not Making America Healthy Again.

Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts.

It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective. That, of course, is not just my view. Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the country’s largest professional association of pediatricians, representing over 67,000 doctors who treat our children every day, calls immunizations “one of the greatest public health achievements,” which prevents tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases of disease.

The American Medical Association, the largest professional association of physicians and medical students, representing over 270,000 doctors along with 79 leading medical societies, recently said that vaccines for flu, R.S.V. and Covid-19 are “the best tools to protect the public against these illnesses and their potentially serious complications.”

The World Health Organization, an agency with some of the most prominent medical experts around the globe, recently noted that over the past 50 years, vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives and reduced the infant deaths by 40 percent.

Against the overwhelming body of evidence within medicine and science, what are Secretary Kennedy’s views? He has claimed that autism is caused by vaccines, despite more than a dozen rigorous scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of children that have found no connection between vaccines and autism.

He has called the Covid-19 vaccines the “deadliest” ever made despite findings cited by the W.H.O. that Covid shots saved over 14 million lives throughout the world in 2021 alone.

He has ridiculously questioned whether the polio vaccine has killed more people than polio itself did even though scientists have found that the vaccine has saved 1.5 million lives and prevented around 20 million people from becoming paralyzed since 1988.

He has absurdly claimed that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”

Who supports Secretary Kennedy’s views? Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading “experts” that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it.

Many of his supporters are from Children’s Health Defense — the anti-vaccine group he founded and profited from — and a small circle of loyalists that have spread misinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories on vaccines for years.

The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of H.H.S., he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.

What will this mean for the health and well-being of the American people?

Short term, it will be harder for Americans to get lifesaving vaccines. Already, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor’s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs — if they can manage to get a vaccine at all.

Covid is just the beginning. Mr. Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, the list of recommended vaccines that children receive to protect them from diseases like measles, chickenpox and polio. The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm.

Two years ago, when I was the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I held a hearing with the major government officials responsible for protecting us from a new pandemic, including the head of the C.D.C. Without exception, every one of these agency heads said that, while they could not predict the exact date, there will be a future pandemic and we must be much better prepared for it than we are today.

Unfortunately, Secretary Kennedy’s actions are making a worrisome situation even worse by defunding the research that could help us prepare for the next pandemic. This month, he canceled nearly $500 million in research for the kinds of vaccines that helped us stop the Covid pandemic. At the same time, Mr. Kennedy is cutting funding to states to prepare and respond to future outbreaks of infectious diseases. This is unacceptable.

America’s health care system is already dysfunctional and wildly expensive, and yet the Trump administration will be throwing an estimated 15 million people off their health insurance through a cut of over $1 trillion to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. This cut is also expected to result in the closing of or the decline in services at hundreds of nursing homes, hospitals and community health centers. As a result of cuts to the Affordable Care Act, health insurance costs will soar for millions of Americans. That is not Making America Healthy Again.

Secretary Kennedy is putting Americans’ lives in danger, and he must resign. In his place, President Trump must listen to doctors and scientists and nominate a health secretary and a C.D.C. director who will protect the health and well-being of the American people, not carry out dangerous policies based on conspiracy theories.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Health, Lies, Medicine, Propaganda

DOJ Lawyer Accused Harvard of “Indifference to Anti-Semitism.” As an Undergraduate, He Wrote a Paper from Hitler’s View

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2025 //
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The Boston Globe reported a startling story. Michael Velchik, the lawyer leading the charge against Harvard University for alleged “anti-semitism,” wrote a paper from Hitler’s perspective when he was an undergraduate at Harvard.

Hilary Burns and Tal Koran wrote:

The cornerstone of the Trump administration’s justification for cracking down on Harvard University is that the Ivy League school has allegedly allowed antisemitism to fester on campus.

“The choice was made, let’s not give federal taxpayer dollars to institutions that exhibit a wanton indifference to antisemitism,” the lawyer defending the government’s case said in federal court in July.

Inside the war on Harvard

Yet that lawyer, Michael Velchik, when he was a senior at Harvard 14 years ago, submitted a paper for a Latin class written from the perspective of Adolf Hitler, according to three people studying in the department with knowledge of the incident. The assignment was to write from the perspective of a controversial figure, but Velchik’s choice of Hitler so unnerved the instructor that he was asked to redo the assignment.

And in an email to a peer about 18 months later, as he was preparing to enter law school, Velchik wrote that he‘d enjoyed Hitler’s autobiography and political manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” more than any other book he’d read recently during a year of travels, according to a copy of the correspondence obtained by The Boston Globe. He did not mention Hitler’s perpetration of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered. 

Velchik — who holds two degrees from Harvard, one from the college and one from the law school — was the sole lawyer arguing the case for the White House in July. The portrait that emerges from interviews with students who knew him at Harvard, colleagues, and friends, as well as from emails he sent to a peer in his early 20s, is of a young man who is extremely intelligent, at times provocative, and unapologetically confident in his intellectual prowess.

To finish the story, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Higher Education, Hypocrisy

Pastors for Texas Children Speak Out Against the Harm of Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2025 //
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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.

The Pastors did, and they issued this statement:

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.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Industry, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Real Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Texas, Vouchers

Congress Slashed Funding for Public Schools. They Lied! Protest!

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2025 //
1

The Network for Public Education Action sent out the following alert. Please use the form to send a letter to your members of Congress.

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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.
  • Full-Service Community Schools: Zeroed out.

SEND YOUR EMAIL NOW

And their justification?

“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

We Can’t Do What We Do Without Your Support…

Every email we send out with our action alerts costs hundreds of dollars in addition to our other operational expenses that keep us going. We need your help. Please click on the image below to make a one-time donation, or better yet, a recurring donation. Even ten dollars a month makes a huge difference for us. Thank you in advance for your generosity that will help preserve our public schools.

DONATE HERE

Thanks for all you do! You can share this email with this link: https://npeaction.org/act-now-k12-budget-slashed-by-the-house/

Carol Burris

Network for Public Education Action Executive Director

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Resistance

There Was No “Miracle” in New Orleans

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2025 //
7

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.

Gary Rubenstein, former member of TFA and career high school mathematics teacher, did the research that Birrell failed to do. He explained why there was no “miracle” in New Orleans:

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.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Louisiana, New Orleans

The GOP Death March, Led by RFK Jr.

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2025 //
13

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.

Wajahat Ali writes on his blog, The Left Hook, about RFK Jr.’s threat to public health:

In today’s Democracy-ish, Danielle and I spend the hour discussing the most dangerous horseman of Trump’s Apocalyptic cult: RFK Jr. 

Oh, you know, the scion of the Kennedy empire who was a heroin addict, suffered from brain worms, ate exotic animals, and was described as a predator by his own cousin.

That RFK Jr., who promotes reckless and dangerous anti-vaxx conspiracies, eugenics, and has no medical background or training. That’s the wealthy, mediocre, white man that Trump has elevated as the director of America’s Health and Human Services.

I mean, what could go wrong? 

Who needs vaccines during COVID or the rise of measles? Who needs Medicaid except 20% of Americans who depend on it for healthcare? Who needs the National Institute of Health or the CDC staffed by competent, qualified professionals who have spent their lives devoted to saving lives?

Not the United States, because we aren’t a bunch of woke, weak pansies who listen to so-called experts, damn it!

Welcome to Trump and MAGA’s pro-death march led, in part, by RFK Jr. and his broligarch friendswho are perfectly fine killing Americans to make a profit and advance their white supremacist agenda. 

We bring all the receipts. It’s depressing, but it’s worth hearing to ensure you stay informed, safe, and protected.

Here’s Danielle’s write-up at DAM DIGEST:

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.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Ignorance, Lies, Medicine, Trump

Resignation Letters of Top Officials at CDC, After Kennedy Ousts Their Leader

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2025 //
7

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.

Dr. Faust wrote:

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…

Categories Accountability, Medicine

A Letter to the Career Public Servants Tossed Out by DOGE

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2025 //
3

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.

The article appeared in The Atlantic. It is a gift article, meaning you can read it without a paywall.

Dear colleagues,

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.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Musk, Elon, Trump
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