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Timothy Snyder on Trump’s Hitlerian Month

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2024 //
13

Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale University, expresses his alarm about Trump’s turn toward fascistic rhetoric in this post. Trump knows how to excite his base by repeating conspiracy theories and blaming the Jews if anything he wants goes wrong. Snyder does not invoke the reference to Hitler lightly. He knows European history.

He writes:

Trump just had quite a Hitlerian month.

But before broaching the subject of Trump and Hitler I have to say a with a word about the American taboo on “comparisons.” 

Anyone who refers to Trump’s Hitlerian moments will be condemned for “comparison.”  Somehow that “comparison” rather than Trump’s deeds becomes the problem.  The outrage one feels about the crimes of the 1930s and 1940s is transferred from the person who resembles the criminal to the person who points out the resemblance.  

This cynical position opposing “comparisons” exploits the emotional logic of exceptionalism.  Americans are innocent and good (we would like to believe).  We are not (we take for granted) like the Germans between the world wars.  We would never (we imagine) tolerate the stereotypes German Nazis invoked.  We have learned the lessons of the Holocaust. 

Since we are so innocent and good, since we know everything, it just cannot be true — so runs the emotional logic — that a leading American politician does Hitlerian things.  And since we are so pure and wise, we never have to specify what it was that we have learned from the past.  Indeed, our our goodness is so profound that we must express it by attacking the people who recall history. 

And so, in the name of our capacity to remember great evil, we make it impossible to actually remember great evil.  A taboo on “comparison” becomes a shield for the perpetrator.  Those who invoke the past are the true villains, the real source of the problem, or, as Trump says about journalists, the “enemy of the people.”  Indeed, the more Trump resembles Hitler, the safer the man is from criticism on this point.

I hope that the irony of all of this is clear: the idea that “comparison” is a sin rests on the notion of the inherent and unimpeachable virtue of the American Volk, who by definition do nothing wrong, and whose chosen Leader therefore must be beyond criticism.  In this strange way, outrage about “comparison” reinforces fascist ideas about purity and politics.  We should hate the dissenters.  We should ignore whatever casts doubt on our sense of national virtue.  We should never reflect.

Democracy, of course, depends on the ability to reflect, and that reflection is impossible without a sense of the past.  The past is our only mirror, which is why fascists want to shatter it.  In fascist Russia, for example, it is a criminal offense to say the wrong things about the Second World War.  The reason why we keep alive the memory of Nazi crimes is not because it could never happen here, but because something similar can always happen anywhere.  That memory has to include the details of history, or else we will not recognize the dangers. 

“Never again” is something that you work for, not something that you inherit.

Before we think about this past month, we also have to consider the past four years.  This entire election unfolds amidst a big lie.  It was Hitler’s advice to tell a lie so big that your followers would never believe that you would deceive them on such a scale.  Trump followed that advice in November 2020.  His claim that we actually won the election in a landslide is a fantasy that opens the way to other fantasies.  It is a conspiratorial claim that opens the way to conspiratorial thinking generally.  It prepares his followers for the idea that other Americans are enemies and that violence might be needed to install the correct leader.

This year we have seen that explicit Nazi ideas are tolerated in the Trump milieu.  The vice-presidential candidate shares a platform with Holocaust deniers, and defends Holocaust denial as free speech.  This is a fallacy people should see through: yes, the First Amendment allows Nazis to speak, but it does not ennoble Nazi speech.  The fact that people say fascist things in a country with freedom of speech is how we know that they are fascists — and that, if they themselves comes to power, they will end freedom of speech and all other freedoms.

Which brings us to North Carolina and to the gubernatorial candidate Trump once called the country’s hottest politician.  No one is denying that Mark Robinson has the right under the First Amendment to call himself a Nazi or to praise Mein Kampf.  The question is what we do about this.  Trump will not intervene here because he believes that Robinson is more likely to win than a substitute candidate would be.  Consider that for a moment: for Trump, the reason not to distance himself a self-avowed Nazi is that he hopes that the self-avowed Nazi will win an election, take office, and hold power. 

This is not surprising.  Trump and Vance are running a fascist campaign.  Its main theme in September was inspired by a lady in Springfield, Ohio, who lost her cat and then found it again.  For J.D. Vance, who knew what happened, this became the basis for the lie that Haitian immigrants were eating domestic animals.  For Donald Trump, that became a reason to promise that Haitians in Springfield would be deported.  He had found people who were both Blacks and immigrants, who could serve as the “them” in his politics of us-and-them.

It is fascist to start a political campaign from the choice of an enemy (this is the definition of politics by the most talented Nazi thinker, Carl Schmitt).  It is fascist to replace reason with emotion, to tell big lies (“create stories,” as Vance says) that appeal to a sense of vulnerability and exploit a feeling of difference.  The fantasy of barbarians in our cities violating basic social norms serves to gird the Trump-Vance story that legal, constitutional government is helpless and that only an angry mob backed by a new regime could get things done. 

It is worth knowing, in this connection, that the first major action of Hitler’s SS was the forced deportation of migrants.  About 17,000 people were deported, which generated the social instability that the Nazi government the used as justification for further oppression.  Trump and Vance plan to deport about a thousand times as many people….

In international politics, the key moment concerns Ukraine and its head of state.  Since February 2022, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelens’kyi, has been rightly understood and admired as a symbol of physical and political courage.  When Russia began its full-scale invasion that month, the American consensus was the Ukraine would crack within days and that Zelens’kyi would (and should) flee.  Instead, he stayed in Kyiv despite the approach of Russian assassins and the Russian army, rallied his people, and oversaw the successful defense of his country.  He has since visited the front every few weeks. 

This is how Trump characterized Zelens’kyi in September, echoing comments that he has made before: “Every time he came to our country, he’d walk away with $100 billion. He’s probably the greatest salesman on Earth.”  Trump seems threatened by Zelens’kyi.  As Trump has made clear numerous times, his first and only impulse is to give Putin what Putin wants.  The idea of taking risks to defend freedom from the Russian dictator is well beyond the pinprick-sized black hole that is Trump’s moral universe. 

And of course the claim itself is false.  The number is too big.  And the money does not go to Zelens’kyi himself, obviously.  That Zelens’kyi does personally profit is a favorite idea of Vance, who repeats Russian propaganda to this effect.  The money does not even, for the most part, go to the Ukrainian government.  Most of the military aid does to American companies who build new weapons for American stockpiles.  We then send old weapons to Ukraine, to which we assign a dollar value.

The essential thing, though, is the antisemitic trope Trump chose to express himself.  It goes like this.  Jews are cowards.  Jews never fight wars.  Jews stay away from the front.  Jews only cause wars that make other people suffer.  And then Jews make vast amounts of money from those wars.  Volodymyr Zelens’kyi, the Ukrainian president, is Jewish.  And thus “the greatest salesman on earth” for Trump.  And the corrupt owner of “yachts” for Vance.  A war profiteer, as in the antisemitic stereotype, not a courageous commander, as in reality. 

Indeed, most of what Trump says about Zelens’kyi, Ukraine, and and the war itself makes sense only within the antisemitic stereotype.  Trump never speaks about the Russian invasion itself.  He never recalls Russian war crimes.  He never mentions that Ukrainians are defending themselves or their basic ideas of what is right.  He certainly never admits that Zelens’kyi is the democratically-elected president of a country under vicious attack and who has comported himself with courage.  The war, for Trump, is just a scam — a Jewish scam. 

And that, of course, is why he thinks he can end it right away: he thinks he can just shoulder the Jew aside and deal with his fascist “friend” Putin, who for him is the “genius” in this situation, and who must be allowed to win.  Despite the evidence, Trump says that Russia always wins wars, dismissing both history (regular Russian losses such as the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, the Polish-Bolshevik War, the Afghan War) and the actual events of the ongoing Russian invasion, in which Ukraine has taken back half the territory it lost and driven the Russian fleet from the Black Sea.  Russia is counting on Trump.  They need him in power to win their war, and they know it. 

It need hardly be said that if Trump throws American power on the Russian side, the “deal” that follows will not end the war.  It will only mean that Russia is able to kill more Ukrainians faster.  Trump will then claim that the deal itself was beautiful and perfect — and try to change the subject from the slaughter he brought about through his antisemitic hubris and admiration of Russian fascism.

And, of course, Snyder explains, Trump has warned Jewish groups that if he loses, it will be the fault of Jews. Anti-Semitism will be Trump’s legacy.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, History, Lies, Trump

Massachusetts: Voters Likely to Oppose State Test as Graduation Requirement

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2024 //
20

Massachusetts voters will have a chance to vote on whether the state academic test–MCAS–should continue to be a high school graduation requirement.

The Boston Globe reports:

Roughly 58 percent of Massachusetts voters said they would support eliminating a requirement that students pass the MCAS examination to graduate high school, far outpacing the 37 percent who said they would vote to keep the mandate in place.

The measure, known as Question 2, is one of the most consequential on the ballot in Massachusetts, which by some measures boasts the best public school systems in the country. Despite that success, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and its leaders are leading the biggest revolt over testing in two decades, arguing the mandate puts too much focus on subjects tested by MCAS and creates too much anxiety and retesting of students.

The question speaks to the frustrations of many parents, including Felicia Torres, a 39-year-old Haverhill resident and mother of three. Her 9-year-old is smart, loves hockey, and enjoys math, but he “dreads and hates school” because he chafes at being taught “whatever they’re forced to learn,” she said.

“I honestly don’t think that a standardized test depicts how well a child will do,” said Torres, a nurse. “I just don’t think it’s accurate.”

The bid to eliminate the MCAS graduation requirement is riding huge advantages among female voters, with 64 percent saying they plan to vote “yes.” Perhaps most notably, 60 percent of independent voters also say they want to eliminate the mandate.

“That tells me it has an excellent chance of passing,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

Typically, he said, those who are undecided about a ballot question ultimately vote against it if they are confused by it or are unsure about its impact, effectively siding with the status quo. In the case of Question 2, only about 4 percent of voters said they were undecided.

The question has split Democratic leaders, with Governor Maura Healey, House Speaker Ron Mariano, and Senate President Karen E. Spilka each opposed to eliminating the requirement while some members of Congress and state lawmakers joined the Massachusetts Teachers Union. But its support isn’t universal among teachers, either.

“You need some sort of tool and measurement stick in terms of how the school is performing,” said Luke, a 37-year-old Wakefield resident and eighth-grade social studies teacher who told pollsters he is voting against the question. He spoke to the Globe on the condition his full name not be used. “If you’re going to still carry out the MCAS, how do you think students are going to take it seriously when you’re saying it doesn’t need to be a requirement?”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Elections, High School Graduation, Massachusetts, Standardized Testing

Rick Hess: Don’t Worry So Much About Trump 2.0 and Education

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2024 //
15

Rick Hess is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in D.C. that is underwritten in part by the billionaire DeVos family. I have always had very pleasant and rewarding exchanges with Rick, who is a very amiable guy. He often tries to stake out a middle ground on controversial issues, as he does here. He argues that he doesn’t know what Trump will do on education, if re-elected, and neither does anyone else. But he concludes that Trump is unikely to do anything radical in the way of defunding education programs or dismantling the Department. So, don’t believe what he says and disregard Project 2025.

Somehow I’m not assuaged.

Hess writes in Education Next:

This summer, musing on the Republican National Convention, I noted that the GOP has been fundamentally remade since 2016—a point deemed self-evident by right-leaning pundits (MAGA and Never-Trump alike) but that seems insufficiently appreciated by a whole lot of other observers.

This has yielded a lot of certainty in education circles as to what would happen under a Trump 2.0, much of which I find pretty dubious. I’ve done interviews with reporters who seem to take it as given that Trump would slash Title I, IDEA, and Pell Grants. One write-up after another has emphatically declared that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook is the blueprint for Trump 2.0. There’s a remarkable confidence that Trump’s administration would embrace budget-cutting, small-government, Mike Pence–Betsy DeVos conservatism, only far more aggressively than the last go-round.

Now, might they be right? Sure. But it’s not the way to bet. I want to take a moment to explain why.

For starters, keep in mind that Trump has never been a conservative in any traditional sense. He’s a showman, reality TV star, and longtime Democrat who stumbled into the presidency. In 2016, as the newbie in a party dominated by Tea Party and Reaganite conservatives, he was obligated to name Mike Pence VP and issue a list of Federalist Society–vetted Supreme Court nominees. Today, Trump is no longer so constrained: he is the Republican Party. Traditional conservatives—from Dick Cheney to Mitt Romney to Paul Ryan—have been purged. Trump’s VP pick is now J.D. Vance, a former Never-Trumper who subsequently bent the knee. Trump has thrown the pro-life wing of the GOP coalition under the bus, torn up a half-century of Republican foreign policy, and dumped those who advised him on judges last time.

The shift is only partly about Trump being unfettered. It’s also about the remaking of the Republican coalition. Republicans have bled socially moderate, fiscally conservative college grads while gaining working-class voters who kind of like New Deal/Great Society-type spending. Pence was a Reaganite, a small-government conservative who wanted to cut programs and reduce spending. Vance is a NatCon, an economic populist who greeted the news that Liz Cheney would be voting for Harris by denouncing the former member of the House Republican leadership as someone who gets “rich when America’s sons and daughters go off to die.” Where Reaganite conservatives talked about the need to reform Social Security and Medicare, Trump has promised he won’t touch them. This is decidedly not the Romney-Ryan Republican Party.

So, while it seems to elude much of the education commentariat, it should be regarded as an open question as to whether Trump 2.0 would actually commit to much budget-cutting or shrinking of the bureaucracy when it comes to education. Indeed, when asked about child care, Trump recently offered a word salad suggesting that his proposed tariffs would help fund a major expansion of federal programs. Last year, he pitched a federally-funded “American Academy,” which would open new vistas for Washington’s role in providing higher education. Trump has obviously promised aggressive action on key cultural hot points—from defunding anti-Semitic colleges to busting the higher-ed accreditation cartel—and such moves, while obviously right-leaning, imply a need for a robust federal presence.

As National Review’s Andy McCarthy observed in his debate postmortem last week, “Because he’s an opportunist with some conservative leanings, rather than a conservative in search of opportunities to advance the cause, Trump often can’t decide whether to deride Harris’s cynical policy shifts or try to get to her left.” Even in Trump’s first term, when he had an experienced team of small-government true believers, there was little cutting and a whole lot of deficit spending. Recall that it was Trump who supported the first big tranche of unconditional pandemic aid for schools, initiated the hugely expensive student loan pause, and spent his first term watching spending climb on programs he’d promised to cut.

Now, some readers may protest: “Yeah, but Trump told Elon Musk we should abolish the Department of Education, and Heritage’s Project 2025 calls for cutting education spending!” Fair points. Trump has made a slew of contradictory promises, and neither the GOP platform nor his track record offer much clarity as to what should be believed. After all, even as Trump was saying he’d like to abolish the Department, he was emphatically denouncing Project 2025 (written by first-term staff who may not be welcome back in a Trump 2.0) and insisting he hasn’t read it.

What’s the bottom line? The truth is that no one really knows how a Trump 2.0 would go. I’ll keep this simple: anyone who claims to know . . . doesn’t. It’s not clear who is advising Trump on education, who (other than his kids) would inhabit his inner circle, how much sway Vance will have, or who would make key calls on staffing. That said, it seems to me that there are three scenarios for a Trump 2.0 when it comes to education. Here they are, from least likely to most likely.

Trump Drains the Swamp. Trump governs as a Beltway-draining, government-cutting conservative, even after aggressively disavowing Heritage’s Project 2025, promising not to touch entitlements, and failing to downsize the federal education footprint in his first term. He goes after Title I, IDEA, and Pell, and he leans on Congress to dismantle the Department of Education. It’s doubtful he could convince centrist GOP senators like Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski to go along with it, though, meaning Republicans would need a stunningly good election night in the Senate contests to put any of this in play.

Trump Seeks Retribution. Trump devotes his energy to waging his war of “retribution” on his “enemies”—going after the press, Democrats, and any RINOs who’ve earned his ire. His White House spends its time seeking to pull the U.S. out of our international commitments and launching a federally organized deportation effort as part of an aggressive immigration strategy. Amidst the maelstrom, education gets left to the White House’s domestic policy team and whoever winds up staffing the Department of Education—but little happens because of the energy consumed by the tumult and its aftermath.

Trump Puts Trump First. Trump approaches education through the same Trump-first lens as most issues. Because Trump likes things that are popular, he’ll slam colleges, gesture towards school choice, and bark at wokeness but won’t put any meaningful effort into cutting education spending or downsizing the Department. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he emulates Biden-Harris by treating education as a pandering piñata. Rather than tough-minded budget cuts, I think he’s more likely to endorse universalizing free school lunch, tripling federal spending on IDEA (for “our very beautiful children with special needs”), or making college loans interest-free à la Sen. Rubio’s new bill.

Look, I’ll be the first to concede I could well be wrong. Trump’s an impulsive creature and, should he win, it’s a guessing game who’d wind up calling the shots on education in Trump 2.0. But if I had to bet, given what we know today, I strongly suspect the feverish talk of defunding and dismantling federal education will prove little more than a fever dream.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Elections, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Trump Describes His Plans for Education

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2024 //
12

When Donald Trump appeared recently in Milwaukee, he described his plan for the future of the Department of Education. It’s not quite the same as the scenario in Project 2025, which envisions the total elimination of the U.S. Department of Education. Trump imagines it as a “department” with only two employees: A Cabinet Secretary and a secretary.

The severely shrunken Department would focus solely on the three Rs and would somehow mysteriously have the power and personnel to prevent public schools across the nation from teaching anything connected to “woke.” That is, anything related to race, gender, or social justice. How this fictional Department would impose bans on curriculum when federal law prohibits any federal interference in curriculum is not explained. Actually, it’s nonsense.

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling writes in The New Republic about Trump’s vision for the federal role in education:

Donald Trump has fleshed out his Project 2025–inspired Department of Education plan, and it involves handing the reins and lofty responsibilities of public school administration over to a group of people with all the time in the world: parents.

“I figure we’ll have like one person plus a secretary,” the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd in Milwaukee Tuesday night. “You’ll have a secretary to a secretary. We’ll have one person plus a secretary, and all the person has to do is, ‘Are you teaching English? Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing, and arithmetic. And are you not teaching woke?’

“Not teaching woke is a big factor,” Trump continued. “We’ll have a very small staff. We can occupy that staff right in this room, actually I think this room is too large. And all they’re going to do is they’re going to see that the basics are taken care of. You know, we don’t want someone to get crazy and start teaching a language that we don’t want them to teach.”

Not only do parents already have enough on their plates without trying to run the public school system, it’s likely that Trump has a specific group of parents in mind to direct education policy.

The goals he lays out are startlingly akin to the policy points of the far-right “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty, who hosted Trump as the keynote speaker at their annual conference in September. Moms for Liberty has recently ingratiated itself significantly into national politics and was listed as a member of Project 2025’s advisory board.

In the same speech, Trump also drew attention to the amount of real estate occupied in D.C. by Department of Education buildings, plotting that the dissolution of the federal agency would allow “somebody else to move in.”

“They’re run by the state, and run by the parents, because in Washington—you know half of the buildings, such a large number, every building you pass in Washington says Department of Education,” Trump said. “You’re gonna have a lot of vacant space. Now we can have maybe somebody else move in.” 

Trump’s proposal to dismantle the Department of Education wholesale is nearly identical to Project 2025, despite his campaign spending months trying to distance itself from the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto.

Fact check: Trump exaggerated the size and physical space occupied by ED. The U.S. Department of Education is smaller than any other Cabinet department; it has 4,400 employees. It occupies a building at 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, DC. It rents space at 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW. it does not occupy all or most or many buildings in DC.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Arizona: Is the State Education Chief Incompetent…Or Worse?

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2024 //
4

EJ Montini of the Arizona Republic thinks something is not quite right with Arizona’s State Superintendent of Education Tom Horne. He rejects federal funding for poor kids and promotes rightwing groups and theories. He explains:

I’m not yet prepared to call Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne incompetent, though I’d have to admit, he’s recently made a very good case for himself.

The Arizona Republic’s Nick Sullivan outlined in a blow-by-blow article the misrepresentations Horne made while trying to explain to state lawmakers what could have been the loss of millions of Title I federal dollars meant for schools that serve low-income households.

For example, Horne told lawmakers that a deadline for allocating the money had expired. The U.S. Department of Education said such a deadline does not exist.

His administration said there was no possibility of receiving a deadline waiver. The Republic contacted the feds, who, in turn, told Horne’s people it was not too late, and a waiver was subsequently granted.

It goes on. One bumbling bit of misinformation after the next.

All of which would be easy – and even logical – to write off as incompetence, were it not for some of the other things Horne has done.

A lawsuit on accountability Horne wants the state to lose

Most recently, for example, his department was sued by The Goldwater Institute after Attorney General Kris Mayes cracked down on ridiculous purchases being made by people collecting Empowerment Scholarship Account money.

Taxpayer money. Your money.

ESA recipients were buying stuff like $1,000-plus Lego sets, pianos, luxury car driving lessons, ski resort passes and much more.

Given that, new rules came into play requiring school voucher recipients to actually justify their expenses.

The parents suing with Goldwater’s help called such demands “bureaucratic hoops” and “arbitrary paperwork,” instead of, you know, common sense.

Meantime, Horne said he wants the state to lose the lawsuit. Really.

A nonprofit that teaches kids the ‘softer side’ of slavery

You might also recall how, a while back, Horne opened up the education department’s website to lessons from PragerU, an kooky, extremist nonprofit claiming to be an alternative to “dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media and education.”

About this Horne said, “It’s alright for teachers to teach controversial views as long as both sides are presented, and the problem we’ve had is in some classes, only the extreme left side has been presented, so these present an alternative.”

An alternative? One PragerU video shows an animated Christopher Columbus presenting the softer side of slavery, saying, “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”

Neither does Horne. Which is a problem.

A group that promotes book bans and quoted Hitler

Just as it was a problem when Horne spoke before a group of East Valley supporters of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing operation out of Florida that believes “liberty” involves book banning, victimizing LGBTQ children, suppressing accurate American history and more.

The group has as one of its goals filling school boards with like-minded individuals and Horne pledged to join them in their effort, saying, “That’s going to be my main occupation for 2024.”

A pledge he made even after the group got national attention when the leader of a chapter in Indiana published a newsletter for members that prominently displayed a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler: “He alone who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.”

Horne is an intelligent man. His official government profile proudly notes that he “graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College and with honors from Harvard Law School.” And that he is a “classical pianist who has soloed with local orchestras” and has “taught legal writing at ASU Law School.”

All of that argues against the notion that Horne is incompetent. In fact, it seems to suggest just the opposite. Something much worse.

He does this stuff on purpose.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Arizona, Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Funding

Colorado: Parents Push Back Against Right-Wing Social-Studies Standards

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2024 //
4

The following article was written by Beckie Mostello. Beckie Mostello is a public education parent and a former school teacher in Jefferson County Public Schools, Colorado.  She has advocated for supportive public education policy for several years and has volunteered with several campaigns to support public education.  She currently sits on the advisory board for Advocates for Public Education Policy based in Colorado. 

She writes:

On September 12, 2024, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute published an article about Philanthropy Roundtable’s Civics Playbook supported by Denver, Colorado-based Daniels Fund. The Philanthropy roundtable is a non-profit organization that advises conservative philanthropists and advocates for philanthropic freedom and donor privacy. 

Two key takeaways from the Fordham Article…

“I’m a huge fan of the Daniels Fund under the leadership of Hanna Skandera, the more so since the national part of their giving has grasped the nettle of civics education. And we at Fordham were longtime members of the Philanthropy Roundtable. (For a time, I served on its board.) So it was great to see funder and Roundtable recently teaming up to develop an online “playbook” for philanthropists wanting to “enhance” civics education around the country.”

“As for what is included, it’s no secret that the Roundtable leans right—amusing when you picture a leaning round table—and that ideology sometimes influences its choices. That’s not the case with most of the groups found in the current Playbook, though the National Association of Scholars’ “Civics Alliance,” which produced a useful draft of state social studies standards, is somewhat tarnished by its executive director’s propensity to engage in cultural warfare against other organizations (the Fordham Institute included).”

Over the past few years, Civics Alliance’s American Birthright Social Studies Standards has been a controversial topic at school board meetings in Colorado. In 2022, the Colorado State Board of Education rejected Civics Alliance’s American Birthright Standards; however, because Colorado has extreme local control regarding education, the Woodland Park conservative School Board majority adopted American Birthright Social Studies Standards. Since adopting these standards and passing other extreme board policies, the Woodland Park, Colorado, community has become divided. 

At this time, Woodland Park School District is the only Colorado school District that has adopted American Birthright Social Studies Standards; however, a second school district, Garfield Re-2 came close to adopting American Birthright Social Studies Standards. In 2023, the Garfield Re-2 School Board President proposed that the Garfield Re-2 School Board should also adopt American Birthright standards. The Garfield Re-2 School Board did not adopt American Birthright standards and as a result of the American Birthright proposal, the Garfield Re-2 School Board President, who suggested that Garfield Re-2 School Board adopt American Birthright Standards, was recalled. 

It is clear that Civics Alliance’s American Birthright Social Studies standards are not widely implemented in Colorado, and evidence from the Garfield Re-2 School community shows that American Birthright standards are unpopular in Colorado.  Therefore, it is concerning that the Philanthropy Roundtable and Denver-based Daniels Fund have listed Civics Alliance in the Civics Playbook, neither of these organizations is fully aware of the pushback against Civics Alliance’s Social Studies Standards, curriculum and policies. 

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Education Industry, Elections

Jan Resseger: Two Decades of Tax-Cutting in Ohio Have Helped the Rich and Harmed Public Services

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2024 //
4

Jan Resseger writes here about Ohio’s passion for cutting taxes, which benefits the wealthiest Ohioans and diminishes public services.

She writes:

As we head toward the November election, Policy Matters Ohio’s Bailey Williams exposes recent history that has been little reported.  In The Great Ohio Tax Shift, Williams explores simply and clearly the data showing that Ohio’s new billion dollar private school tuition voucher expansion is not the only factor that has threatened public school funding.  For two decades now, legislators have been cutting taxes and reducing investment in public services, including public schools. And Ohio’s legislature has increased the tax burden on Ohio’s poorest citizens and made life easier for our state’s wealthiest citizens.

Even though Ohioans have watched the legislature toss a tax cut into budget after budget instead of funding needed services, the cumulative effects Baily presents in the new report are astounding:

  • “Ohio families with the least resources—those making less than $24,000—pay more annual taxes on average today than they did before 2005.
  • The average household among the top 1 of Ohio earners, with incomes above $647,000, now contribute over $52,000 per year less than they once did.
  • The result is a loss of about $12.8 billion a year in revenue….
  • Ohioans of color are significantly more likely to pay a higher share of their incomes in taxes… while white Ohioans are more likely to have benefited….
  • 71% of the total value of personal income tax cuts has gone to the richest 20% of households….
  • Changes to sales taxes, excise taxes, and business taxes have, on average, increased taxes for the bottom 99% of Ohio’s households.
  • Changes to sales taxes, excise taxes, and business taxes have, on average, allowed the richest 1% of Ohio tax filers to pay nearly $600 per year less than they did before 2005.”

Bailey reminds us why we pay taxes and explains what has been sacrificed in Ohio: “Through the state tax system, Ohio can ensure every child gets a world-class education, every community is vibrant and healthy, and every Ohioan, of every race and gender, has a secure economic foundation on which to build our futures. But for a generation, lawmakers have instead used tax policy to create loopholes for the wealthy and influential, and provide special treatment for powerful corporations… The politicians who write state tax policy often justify their decisions with promises that when billionaires’ pockets overflow with profits, the benefits will trickle down to working families. Year after year—now decade after decade—the consequences have been clear: The people with the lowest incomes are paying a little more, the wealthy are paying much less, and Ohio has too few resources to serve its purpose: creating a state where everyone has what they need to live a good life.”

Ohio’s legislature has reduced progressive taxation as it has reduced dependence on income taxes and increased regressive sales, excise and business taxes: “Ohio policymakers have made significant changes to personal income taxes over the two decades, lowering rates and making our tax structure more regressive. Since 2005, almost every biennial budget passed by the Ohio state general assembly has included some form of reduction to the personal income tax, generally through broad tax rate cuts and elimination of top tax brackets.  Some changes have benefited low-paid Ohioans: Increasing the threshold at which households begin to pay taxes means households with income below $26,050 don’t pay state income tax…. The creation of a 30% Earned Income Tax Credit has helped low-paid Ohioans.” However, “Other regressive changes in the tax code have completely erased the meager benefits of income tax cuts for the lowest-paid Ohioans. In fact, the lowest-income 20% now pay more on average in taxes than they did before the legislature began its tax cutting spree in 2005. Sales, excise, and business taxes now cost that group more each year on average—more than cancelling out the annual average $122 in income tax cuts this group benefits from….”

Most Ohioans are not prepared to gather and analyze this kind of technical information. Thanks to Bailey Williams and Policy Matters Ohio for this technical analysis. We have spent this year learning about the fiscal implications of the Legislature’s voucher expansion in the current biennial budget; now we are better prepared to understand why, in addition to perpetual voucher expansion, it has been such a struggle to press the Legislature to enact Ohio’s new public school funding formula, the Fair School Funding Plan, to rectify years of inadequate and inequitably distributed public school funding. Legislators have insisted on a slow, three-budget phase-in of the new formula and even now have been unwilling to commit to completing the full launch of the new plan in the budget they will begin negotiating in January.  Many of us have realized that the Fair School Funding Plan’s delayed rollout has derived from perennial tax cutting in addition to the enactment of what’s turning out to be an annual billion dollar voucher explosion. Williams’ analysis, released last week, provides information essential to our grasping the complex fiscal realities that will be part of the upcoming state budget debate.

Please open the link to get the full picture of the tax-cutting that has helped the richest Ohioans, hurt the poorest, and undermined public services.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Health, Inequity, Injustice, Ohio

Dan Rather: Trump Threatens Democracy, More Than Ever

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2024 //
14

Dan Rather always has a wise perspective on national politics. Here he warns that Trump is more dangerous than ever.

Dan Rather and his team at Steady write about the crisis that stares us in our faces.

He writes:

We need to be talking more, not less, about the threat Donald Trump poses to our democracy. The former president and his understudy, JD Vance, have been trying to convince voters, with no evidence and a head-spinning level of hypocrisy, that violence against the former president was caused by rhetoric from Democrats. 

Trump has upended the political script, saying, “[The Democrats’] rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country.” Followed closely by JD Vance’s incendiary quip: “The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence. The left needs to tone down the rhetoric. It needs to cut this crap out.”

And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Among the media and the campaigns, the “threat to democracy” line has apparently become old hat. When he was running for reelection, President Joe Biden often used it in an effort to differentiate himself. Unfortunately, this idea apparently doesn’t poll all that well. While it is true and terrifying, it is also a bit abstract — and for some, hard to believe. Lowering the price of milk is concrete and plausible.

So the Harris campaign hasn’t been talking about democracy much, instead concentrating on tangible policies to help the middle class. While this makes sense politically — and I hope it works — I’m here to say we cannot lose sight of the fact that a second Trump presidency would threaten our way of government and our way of life. 

Trump’s term as president was just a precursor to what we can expect the second time around, but it bears repeating to remind us what he is capable of. In case anyone has forgotten, here is a partial list of how he has jeopardized democracy:

  • Attempted to overturn a free and fair election, a number of times in a number of ways. 
  • Tried to block the peaceful transfer of power by inciting a mob to attack the United States Capitol. 
  • Undermined the independence of the Justice Department, while claiming our legal system was rigged. 
  • Botched the federal government’s response to the pandemic, resulting in a massive loss of life, because he doesn’t believe in inconvenient truths. 
  • Cozied up to dictators and autocrats, even asking one to investigate a baseless claim against his political rival. 
  • Selected Supreme Court justices who curtailed reproductive rights, to the point where women are being denied care and dying. 
  • Lied. All the time. The leader of the free world must be credible.
  • Is sowing seeds of doubt that the 2024 election will be legitimate.

There is every indication that a second Trump trip to the White House would be even more harmful than the first. 

This time around he is angrier and thirstier for vengeful retribution. He has said he will weaponize the Justice Department against his enemies. Full stop.

His loyal cronies have had more time to plan. We know they are vetting and training a legion of sycophants to displace career bureaucrats across the executive branch. The guardrails we had last time, whistleblowers and “adults in the room,” will be gone.

After nine years of Trump at the top of the Republican Party, his cult-like reach has created an army of MAGA-elected officials at the state and local levels who are more than happy to do his bidding, even if it’s illegal. 

He is more gullible than ever — wanting, needing to believe his own hype. Believing his own bluster has had dangerous consequences. See: January 6, 2021. He spends his time searching social media for confirmation of his over-inflated self-importance. He surrounds himself with yes-men and women falling all over themselves to prove their fealty. No one will tell him the truth, for fear of retribution. It is a modern spin on the children’s fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes” — only this horror story would be titled, “The Politician’s Stupefying Greatness.” 

The coup de grace is that Trump has carte blanche to do whatever he wants. That terrifying reality is brought to you by none other than the Supreme Court with its ruling in Trump v. United States. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee following that decision, representatives from 75 legal organizations said it “poses a significant threat to our democracy by effectively providing the president with sweeping legal immunity for criminal acts.”

We tend to memorialize significant dates in our nation’s history. In my lifetime, there was Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. More recently, September 11, 2001, and January 6, 2021, have been etched into our psyche. But I would argue November 5, 2024, could be as or even more significant. It will test the strength of our country’s democratic infrastructure. That infrastructure and the American voter can save democracy by sending Kamala Harris to the Oval Office. 

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Harris, Kamala, Trump

The New Republic: Vance Lied about the GOP Position on Abortion in the Debate

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2024 //
14

Let’s be clear about one thing: JD Vance lied about every important issue during his debate with Tim Walz. He lied about Obamacare (Trump did not save it, he repeatedly tried to kill it). He lied about Trump’s refusal to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election. He lied about January 6. And he lied about abortion, expressing his sorrow that Amber Thurman died of a botched abortion in Georgia because the state ban made it impossible for her to get the care she needed. I tweeted this yesterday: “JD Vance is sorry that Amber Thurman died but happy that Roe v. Wade was overturned, which led to Georgia’s ban on abortion care, which caused Amber’s death.” So much for contrition.

Melissa Girardi Grant wrote in The New Republic about Vance and Trump’s efforts to confuse voters about their opposition to abortion:

She wrote:

During the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, former President Trump tried to bail his running mate out of an abortion question with a series of half-truths and lies. “EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT,” Trump posted to social media, “BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!).”

This is a nonsensical sentence for many reasons. Among them: No one is saying that Congress would pass a new federal ban and hand it Trump to sign or veto. What Trump might do—what his allies want him to do—is enact a ban by enforcing the 1873 Comstock Act, which can’t be vetoed since it’s already on the books. Trump’s misdirection distracts from his consistent anti-abortion record while in office, what the Republican Party platform states, and the very public plans of his former staffers detailed in Project 2025, which Trump also pretends he has nothing to do with. That is part of the Trump-Vance campaign’s plan on abortion: to do whatever they can not to talk about that plan, or at least to confuse the public about what that plan is.

The questions moderators posed to vice presidential candidates Governor Tim Walz and Senator JD Vance on Tuesday night did little to clear matters up. They were not about abortion or abortion rights; they were questions about whether the candidates were lying about abortion.

The question one moderator asked Walz reinforced anti-abortion misinformation spread by Trump. “After Roe v. Wade was overturned, you signed a bill into law that made Minnesota one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion. Former President Trump said in the last debate that you believe abortion ‘in the ninth month is absolutely fine.’ Yes or no? Is that what you support?” asked Norah O’Donnell of CBS News. “I’ll give you two minutes.”

O’Donnell’s own news organization debunked this same “ninth month abortion” point after the last debate. “Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed during Tuesday night’s presidential debate that Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, supports the ‘execution’ of babies after they are born, repeating earlier false assertions that Democrats support killing babies,” CBS News fact-checker Laura Doan wrote way back on September 11.

Walz answered the question posed to him about Minnesota’s abortion law very, very briefly—“That’s not what the bill says”—before pointing out the simple truth that, via his appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump helped end the federal right to an abortion in this country. “He brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v. Wade, 52 years of personal autonomy.”

Trump typically responds to this kind of argument by talking about “the will of the people,” as he did in his all-caps post. But when voters have been asked directly about abortion through ballot measures, they affirm the right to abortion. Trump is going to have his say as one of these voters: As a Florida resident, he will be able to vote on the Florida ballot measure that would repeal Florida’s post-Dobbs six-week abortion ban. He has said he would vote “no.” The Republican Party’s platform advances the idea that a fetus is a legal person with rights under the Fourteenth Amendment—which, should the courts agree, would effectively make abortion a crime in every state. Failing that, Trump’s former head of Health and Human Services, Roger Severino, argues that a national abortion ban already exists, in his section of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership.” This argument that the Comstock Act of 1873 could be enforced today to ban abortion is legally dubious at best, but it enjoys the support of 145 Republican members of Congress and has already been entertained at the Supreme Court by Justices Thomas and Alito.

The first abortion question moderators posed JD Vance was about whether he and Trump would create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency. “No, Norah, certainly we won’t,” he said, before launching into a lengthy digression about how the Republican Party needs to win back Americans’ trust on “this issue.” But having affirmed the importance of trust, in subsequent questions, he went on to lie spectacularly on two fronts: First, by saying “I never supported a national ban” (in 2022 he said he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and backed Lindsey Graham’s proposal for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks), and later, by making an utterly bizarre claim about Minnesota abortion law. “The Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law,” Vance said to Walz, “it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.”

“The idea of abortion being performed after birth is sometimes used to stigmatize abortion care received later in pregnancy,” as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists write in a fact sheet responding to such misinformation. Talking points like Trump’s also distort perinatal palliative care, ACOG points out, which is given to reduce the discomfort of sick or disabled newborns whose conditions cause them to die shortly after birth. “At no point in the course of delivering a newborn with life-limiting conditions and subsequently providing palliative care does the obstetrician–gynecologist end the life of the newborn receiving palliative care.”

Walz tried to push back again, to say this isn’t what the law said. Vance adopted a know-it-all debate club stance: “What was I wrong about? Governor, please tell me. What was I wrong about?”

In this way, the debate became more about competing claims of what the other person said than about clarifying the candidates’ actual positions. If this sounds tedious to you and impossible to follow, well, you’re not alone. The meta-debate about abortion is boring and exhausting. But you can see why Trump and Vance would prefer to stay there, in the meta-debate. So long as the campaign sows confusion and rewrites reality around a policy position that is wildly unpopular—restricting abortion access—it helps Trump.

Democrats should take every opportunity to argue for what they want and reassert reality, as Walz tried to do. But there’s still a lot further to go: According to a May 2024 Times/Siena poll, around 17 percent of registered voters in swing states said that Biden is more responsible “for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion” than Trump. Twelve percent of Democrats in those states said the same thing. What more proof do Democrats need that they have more and better storytelling to do?

Yes. However, I would say that Democrats need more truth-telling to their voters. Leave the storytelling to JD.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Gender, Georgia, Health, Lies, Vance, J.D.

Tom Ultican: “The Science of Learning” is Another Hoax

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2024 //
48

The world of education is continually susceptible to hoaxes, frauds, and panaceas. The media pounces on miracle schools, miraculous teachers, and methods that turn every student into a genius.

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced math in California, cannot tolerate scams and overblown claims.

His latest commentary is about “the science of learning,” which comes with the usual fanfare.

He writes:

On September 24, The 74 headline read, “What Happens When a 48K-Student District Commits to the ‘Science of Learning’ – In Frederick County, Maryland, test scores rose, achievement gaps shrank and even veteran educators slowly embraced the decidedly not-faddish fix.” This statement is mostly baloney used to sell the “science of learning.”

The article opens with a new first grade teacher discussing her next day’s math lesson with the school’s principal, Tracy Poquette. The third paragraph says,

“Poquette recommended the whiteboards. ‘You’re going to ask them to hold them up,’ Poquette coached Able, miming holding a whiteboard in the air. Then you can see their answers, and how they got to that. Every student is responding.”’

This seems fine but it is hardly innovative. This technique comes from the 20th century or maybe even the 19th century. The next paragraph states, “The sessions are meant to accelerate student learning and take some of the guesswork out of becoming an effective teacher, part of a larger district plan to incorporate research from the fields of neuroscience, educational psychology and cognitive science — often referred together broadly as the ‘science of learning.’”

They are selling baseless malarkey. Neuroscience and cognitive science still do not provide much usable insight into how students learn or what the best teaching methods are.

The claim of rising test scores is deliberately misleading. The scores may have risen a little but this is a case in which the cause is pretty clear. In statistics, the r-value correlation has a value between o and 1 for determining the effects of different inputs on education testing results. An r = 0 means there in no relationship and an r = 1 means the input is 100% determinative. Inputs like teacher, curriculum design, class size, etc. can be evaluated. The only input ever found with more than o.3 r-value is family wealth at a 0.9 r-value. Between 2021 and 2022, Frederick County, Maryland had “the largest net positive change in total income in the state.” As indicated by statistical analysis, of course test scores raised some.

These fraudulent claims about the “science of learning” are being financed by wealthy people wanting to implement competency based education (CBE). With its concentration on developing mastery of small discrete information bites, CBE makes kids learning at screens more possible. Since 2010, the annual GSV+ASU conference, which is a big deal with tech billionaires, has been striving toward this goal. At their 2023 conference in San Diego, Carnegie and ETS announced a new partnership to create functional testing for competency based education (CBE).

GSV appears to have convinced Tim Knowles and the Carnegie Foundation to abandon the Carnegie Unit to open the way for CBE based testing and badges.

The Claims and Propaganda

Trish Jha, a research fellow at the Center for Independent Studies in Australia, just published a more than 15,000 word essay explaining why the “science of learning” is needed. She claims:

The proponents of the “science of learning” claim that Pestalozzi, Herbart and Dewey, the fathers of progressive education, were wrong. They tell us that “problem based education” is counterproductive and that discovery approaches are harming children. They claim that direct instruction and drilling small bits of information to mastery are what children need.

“Australian education needs to position the science of learning as the foundation for policy and practice.”

“Unfortunately, key pillars of Australian education policy do not reflect the science of learning, due to the far-reaching impacts of progressive educational beliefs dating back to the 18th century.

These beliefs include that:

  • Students learn best when they themselves guide their learning and it aligns with their interest;
  • Rote learning is harmful;
  • Learning should be based on projects or experiences, and that doing this will result in critical and creative thinkers.

But these beliefs are contradicted by the science of learning.”

Ms. Jha asserts, “The teaching approach best supported by the evidence is explicit instruction of a well-sequenced, knowledge-focused curriculum.” She sites E. D. Hirsh as one of her experts supporting this thinking.

It is part of a worldwide effort by wealthy people to digitized education under the cover of “science of learning”. In 2018, the Center for American Progress (CAP) wrote:

“This brief builds on the growing momentum for both the science of learning and school redesign. Last month, for instance, the XQ Institute released a policy guide for states on how best to redesign their schools. The document argued, among other things, that students should be able to learn at their own pace, progressing as they demonstrate mastery of key concepts.

And CAP went on to quote XQ:

“[Competency-based education] isn’t about replacing what goes on in the classroom with less-demanding experiences outside of it. This is about integrating innovative approaches to teaching in the classroom with opportunities for students to develop practical, concrete skills in real world settings. And it’s about awarding credit for learning—demonstrated learning—no matter where or when the learning takes place.”

The XQ institute is the creation of noted anti-public school and teacher-disparaging billionaire, Laurene Powell Jobs.

For 50 years, mastery-based education now called CBE has been a major flop. Established on the mind-numbing drill and skill approach, CBE undermines authentic learning. It has never worked.

Deans for Impact a Billionaire Created Example

The Deans for Impact Supporters Page

Teach for America (TFA) is viewed by many people as the billionaires’ army for school privatization and the New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF) is the Swiss army knife of public school privatization. Deans for Impact (DFI) was created in 2015 with personnel from TFA and NSVF.

DFI founder, Benjamin Riley, was a policy director at NSVF. Riley stepped down as executive director of DFI in August 2022 and was replaced by another NSVF alumnus, Valarie Sakimura. Francesca Forzani, the current board president, spent 4 years as a TFA teacher in Greenville, Mississippi. The list of people from public school privatization promoting organizations who have served on the DFI board of directors is extensive:

Supporters of DFI have been very generous since the founding in 2015. The last year for which tax records are available was 2022. Federal tax forms 990-PF show:

  • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (TIN: 56-2618866)  $3,482,504
  • Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation (TIN: 73-1312965)  $2,135,000
  • Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (TIN: 36-4336415)  $2,375,000
  • The Joyce Foundation (TIN: 36-6079185)  $2,400,000
  • Carnegie Corporation of New York (TIN: 13-1628151) $875,000

These are huge sums of money but not for billionaires. 

The Carnegie Corporation did not contribute to DFI until Timothy Knowles became president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2021; probably not a coincidence.

Deans for Impact states:

“DFI believes all teacher-candidates should know the cognitive-science principles explored in The Science of Learning. And all educators, including new teachers, should be able to connect those principles to their practical implications for the classroom.”

Of course cognitive scientists do not agree on these principles and the neuroscience pitch is fantasy, but DFI is coming through with its deliverables.

Deans for Impact is just one small example of the many organizations billionaires have created to do their bidding.

Please open the link to read Tom Ultican’s conclusion.

Categories Accountability, Curriculum, Education Industry, Fake
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