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John Thompson: Will Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Schools Finally Tell the Truth?

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2023 //
2

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, wonders whether Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of schools, will at last tell the truth when he is in court? He’s been telling so many lies lately that it’s hard to know if he is aware of the difference between truth and lies.

Thompson writes:

In Oklahoma and across the nation, hate mongers like Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters have been willing to speak any falsehood they want, portraying them as political narratives, which are legal, even when they are lies. But if Walters repeats false claims when testifying in court, his lies could backfire.

Walters is facing lawsuits for wrongly firing Department of Education employees. One employee, the director of grant development, disproved Walters’ claim that, ‘We have applied for millions and millions of grants since I took office.’” She explained, “We have not applied for one single grant. That was a blatant lie.”

Moreover, State Auditor Cindy Byrd alleged that millions of COVID-19 relief money were misspent by Walters’ department, and the “Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he won’t rule out criminal charges against some state leaders after a report alleged misspending of COVID-19 relief money.” A.G. Drummond also has “described what was found as a pervasive culture of waste, mismanagement and apparent fraud. What concerned him the most was the mishandling of money that had been allocated for education expense accounts and tuition assistance programs.”

Walters also used state money to fund an inflammatory anti-union video which he called a “public awareness campaign” about teachers’ unions (which he labels as a “terrorist organization.”) As these investigations continue, Walters has doubled down on falsehoods such as testifying to Congress that the Tulsa Public Schools “maintains an active connection with the [Chinese government] through a program called the Confucius Classroom.”

But what is Walters doing now?

This week’s breaking news includes echoes of past lies. For instance, the Oklahoma Voice reports that the newly appointed Education Secretary Katherine Curry “said she resigned from her position after three months because the state superintendent’s administration limited her oversight of his agency.” Curry “said she repeatedly asked for financial documents showing how the agency budgeted and spent money, but the Oklahoma State Department of Education never provided them.” Curry said Walters’ refusal to respond was “‘100%’ the reason for her resignation.”

Second, two of the five state and federal suits by dismissed employees have gone to court. It is possible that he will be found accountable for both, his official role, and actions as an individual. 

Third, as the Oklahoman reports, after being fined for 14 cases of failure to report campaign donations, Walters now faces a possible fine for failure to report a donation from the 1776 Project PAC. The donor “says on its website it is ‘committed to abolishing critical race theory … from the public school curriculum.’” And his “amended pre-general election report still lists more than a dozen donors with an “x” before the last names, a mistake that prevents accurate searches of his contributions.”

The week’s fourth story may help explain Walters’ continuing lies and allegedly fraudulent behavior. He announced: 

“I fully stand behind President Trump, and I am excited to see him dismantle the Department of Education,”

“President Trump will be able to end radical indoctrination in our schools,” Walters said. “This woke ideology will be driven out of our schools. This cancer that is the teachers union will be driven out of our schools, and parents will be put in charge of their kids’ education.”

Finally, Jennifer Palmer reports that “the state Education Department is looking to hire someone to manage national media appearances, raising concerns the agency would be boosting Superintendent Ryan Walters’ national profile at taxpayer expense.” She adds:

A firm is being sought to provide print and digital op-eds to national outlets, coordinate national events and appearances for executive staff, write speeches and handle some communications. Records show the department wants a minimum of three op-eds, two speeches and 10 media bookings per month. 

Palmer explains that some Oklahomans have responded that “the public shouldn’t have to pay for Walters’ political ambitions.” But we shouldn’t overlook the costs to people across the U.S. They may have to deal with a new level of Walters’ propaganda.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Character, Lies, Oklahoma

MSNBC: The Theocrat Who Is Speaker of the House

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2023 //
41

Sarah Posner, a columnist for MSNBC, summarizes what has been learned about the theocratic vision of Mike Johnson, the recently elected Speaker of the House. Johnson was, of course, a prominent and active election denier. In addition, his views are radically fundamentalist. Whenever possible, he cites the Bible—not the Constitution—as the source of his ideology. Those who do not share his religious views may rightly wonder how someone so deeply indoctrinated in his faith can lead without alienating the majority of his fellow citizens. We know already that he is deeply antagonistic to abortion rights and to those who are LGBT+. In time we will learn what other prejudices he holds and how he will deal with them.

Posner wrote:

The sudden elevation of Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La.,to House speaker pushed his record’s vetting to after his election. So it was only once he became second in line to the presidency that most people learned Johnson played a key role in the House’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is virulently anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ Americans, and has promoted teaching the Bible as a history book in public schools.

Now Johnson and his allies are hitting back against his critics. Remarkably, their response to the exposure of Johnson’s turbocharged theo-politics is not to argue that media reports exaggerate or misapprehend his record as a lawyer or legislator, or his intentions as speaker. Instead, Johnson’s closest allies are amplifying his extreme views, and recasting them as mainstream “truths” that are beyond challenge.

This week Johnson gave an interview to the Daily Signal, the news site of the Heritage Foundation, an agenda-setting hub for the right, and particularly the religious right. Johnson was able to “open up,” as the Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan put it, about how his Christian faith “informs his politics.” While he’s hardly been tight-lipped about that topic, this fresh clarification of his central political philosophy makes his rapid, uninterrogated ascension even more worrisome.

“It’s a central premise of the Bible that God invented civil government,” Johnson told Olohan, who added that, “like many Americans of faith, Johnson sees government as a ‘design of God’ and ‘a gift to mankind in a fallen society.’” If those jarring statements do not comport with your own understanding of the Bible, or of the constitutional separation of church and state, you are not alone.

The Washington Stand, the news site of the Family Research Council, whose president Tony Perkins is a longtime friend of the new speaker, similarly assailed Johnson’s critics. In an article entitled “Johnson Critics Mistake Christianity, American Principles for ‘Theocracy,’” the Stand senior writer Joshua Arnold turned to the director of FRC’s own Center for Biblical Worldview, David Closson. (The Center for Biblical Worldview, according to its website, says that “a person exhibits a biblical worldview when their beliefs and actions are aligned with the Bible, acknowledging its truth and applicability to every area of life.”)

Closson defended Johnson’s beliefs as “just basic Christian belief coming right out of the Bible.” That “basic Christian belief,” argued Closson, includes that “God is the one that ordains authority. God is the one that gives delegated authority to human beings to wield it on his behalf.” Closson went on to suggest that Johnson’s critics are biblical illiterates who lack any understanding of Christianity. He described them as “folks who don’t have any reference to what the Bible teaches, trying to scare millions of Americans, when so many of us would just be saying ‘Amen.’”

If anything has come into sharper focus over the past week or so, it’s that Johnson has spent his legal and political career immersed in an insular world where everyone around him believes there are certain “truths,” like regressive gender roles, or creationism, or that separation of church and state is a “myth.” Or, as Johnson stated this week without equivocation, “God invented civil government.”

While these views are commonplace on the Christian right, they are far from commonplace among Christians more broadly. “Most Christians wouldn’t say that this is a ‘central premise’ of the Bible, but Johnson’s focus on authority, as well as the way he distinguishes ‘civil government’ from other forms of government, tracks with the language of Christian reconstructionism,” Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies professor at the University of North Florida and author of “Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction,” told me. As Ingersoll’s work has illuminated, reconstructionism, a movement developed in the 1970s, teaches that God ordained separate “spheres” of governmental authority — the family, the church and “civil government.” In the reconstructionist view, “civil government” should not do anything that interferes with (conservative Christian) families or churches or what they consider to be their inviolable right to impose their religious beliefs in the public square.

There is virtually no one in today’s religious right who would claim the label “Christian reconstructionist,” largely because they do not want to be tied to the positions of its founder R.J. Rushdoony, who cited supposed “biblical law” to support slavery and the death penalty for homosexuality. But the broad contours of Rushdoony’s framework, as Ingersoll has documented, has left an indelible mark on the modern religious right. The insistence that a “biblical worldview” should bear on every government decision shapes right-wing Christians’ positions on a range of issues. Their objections to abortion and marriage equality, for example, is based on their claim that civil government lacks the God-ordained authority to create laws that (they say) conflict with the Bible. They also consider public education to be an improper, unbiblical exercise of government authority. Because of that, they have undermined public schools, created their own Christian schools, and advocated for and shaped the Christian homeschooling movement.

These kinds of crude dismissals of Johnson’s critics serve two purposes: they reassure the GOP base that their “biblical worldview” is the only correct way to view both the Bible and the government, and that any critiques of it evince a lack of “understanding of just basic Christian tenets,” as Closson put it. Second, and more crucially, they aim to bully reporters and political opponents into retreating from examining Johnson’s record and drawing attention to the ways it threatens pluralism, democracy and the rights of others. By repeating the lie that Johnson’s beliefs are “basic” Christianity, and accusing anyone who fails to understand that of ignorance, the Christian right, and the Republican Party it controls, want scrutiny of Johnson to evaporate. We can only hope their efforts will backfire, as millions of Americans wake up to what it really means to have a top government official proudly tout his supposedly “biblical worldview.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Religion, Republicans

Peter Greene: Fordham Institute Debunks “Study” of Charter School Innovation

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2023 //
8

Peter Greene writes faster than most people can read, and what he writes is always worth reading. In this article, he describes a remarkable occurrence: the pro-charter Thomas B. Fordham Institute debunked a study by charter advocates claiming that deregulation spurs innovation in the charter sector.

In his latest article, Greene writes:

It’s an ordinary day when a pair of charter school boosters conclude that charters work best when mean old government doesn’t make them follow a bunch of rules and stuff. It is an ordinary day when someone points out they’re full of regular non-innovative baloney. It is a less ordinary day when the baloney is being called out by a piece in the house organ of the Thomas Fordham Institute.

So let’s pretend for a moment that the question of regulations vs. charter innovation is a real question. David Griffith, the Fordham Associate Director of Research, frames this as the old tension between autonomy and accountability, which makes more sense than talking about charter school innovation, because after a few decades of charter proliferation, the amount of innovation they have produced is somewhere between jack and squat. Despite being billed as “laboratories of innovation,” charter schools haven’t come up with much of anything that public schools were not already well aware of.

The study argues for less regulation of charters. Greene responds:

The more regulation, the less innovatiness in charter schools. For charter fans, it’s simple–more options means they can move more product, and while I get their point, it is also true that we would have far more innovation in the food industry without all those government regulations about poison and stuff.

The study was thoroughly demolished by David Griffith, Fordham’s associate director of research.

Greene writes:

Griffith makes a similar observation. Their technique of quantifying “innovation” gives the charter points for being unusual, and that’s problematic:

From a purely normative perspective, an obvious problem with the authors’ approach is that it is content neutral. So, for example, a school that was grounded in Satan Worship would count as highly innovative (provided it didn’t start a movement), as would one that imparted no knowledge whatsoever (as seems to be the case for many virtual schools).

And he doesn’t think “innovation” means what they think it means either, noting that many of their “innovations” aren’t particularly new but instead include “longstanding programs such as Core Knowledge (est. 1986), Waldorf (1919), and Montessori (1907), not to mention “single-sex” education (Harvard, circa 1636) and “project-based” learning (the Pleistocene).” (That is Griffith’s snark there, not mine).

Kudos to David Griffith and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Deregulation, Education Industry, Fake News, Research

Jeannie Kaplan, a Hero of Public Education in Denver, Has Died

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2023 //
8

Jeanne Kaplan was a tireless champion of public schools in Denver. She was elected to two terms on the Denver school board. She fought for better, more equitable, fully funded schools. She opposed charter schools because they drained funding from public schools. She was a long-time crusader for civil rights, and she appalled by the takeover of the Denver schools by charter interests, who flew a false flag, pretending to care about equity.

Jeannie learned that she had lung cancer last April. Her medical treatment did not slow the disease. She died yesterday. She was 78.

I met Jeannie in Denver in 2010 as I was traveling the country to promote my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. When I met her, we became fast friends. We were on the same page, and she told me about the damage that charter schools were doing to Denver’s public schools. Candidates for the Denver school board were funded by Dark Money, privatizers, and out-of-state billionaires. It was almost impossible for a parent to raise the money to be competitive with the corporate reform candidates.

Jeannie was a warm and caring person who inspired others to get involved, despite the odds crested by Big Money. She started her own blog called “Kaplan for Kids,” and I reposted some of them here.

I think the best way to honor her memory here is to post what seems to be her last commentary, which overflows with wisdom, candor, experience, and common sense. I humbly add her name to the honor roll of the blog.

Jeannie Kaplan wrote:

CHARTERS, CHOICE, and COMPETITION = CLOSURES, CHAOS, and CHURN Principles of Privatization

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Jeannie Kaplan

Reap what you sow and the chickens come home to roost. The elephant in the room.  Aphorisms appropriate to describe what is happening in public education in Denver. 

After 20 years,  more than 5  superintendents, and 11 different school boards, the results of education reform in Denver have become clear, and they aren’t pretty. After opening 72 charters in the last 20 years, 22 of which have closed, the declining enrollments in neighborhood schools have forced the prospect of school closures.  Who knew opening 26 privately run elementary charter schools in competition with district-run schools would ultimately force the district to make some hard financial decisions?  And who knew that ignoring its own 2007 data showing stagnant population growth would lead to less demand for elementary school seats in the 2020s?  Apparently, not those with the power for the last 20 years.  And, as an ironic aside, many of the same people who were the decision-makers in the past and who were unable to make substantive change then, have now decided they will somehow make these previously unattainable changes from their outside “oversight” committee, EDUCATE Denver. In fact one of the co-chairs, Rosemary Rodriguez, was a DPS board member when on March 16, 2017, a Strengthening Neighborhoods Resolution passed, stating:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a citywide committee be formed to review changing demographics and housing patterns in our city and the effect on our schools and to make recommendations on our policies around boundaries, choice, enrollment and academic programs in order to drive greater socio-economic integration in our schools.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that in the face of the sharp decline in the number of school-aged children in gentrifying neighborhoods, the committee is also charged with how to think about school choice and school consolidation to ensure that our schools are able to offer high-quality, sustainable programs for our kids.

These former school board members and former and current civic leaders have formed a “shadow school board” to evaluate and oversee the current superintendent and school board.  Why?  It appears they don’t like what they are seeing being proposed by the current superintendent. What don’t they like?  It appears they have determined the current superintendent is not committed enough to their reform agenda.  You know – the one that has been in place when they were in power, the one that has produced the biggest gaps in the nation, more segregation, and more resource inequity.

As school closures have risen to the fore this week Chalkbeat disclosed these statistics:

“Over the past 20 years, Denver Public Schools has added a lot of schools. It has added students, too — but at a much slower rate.

  • The number of public schools in Denver grew 55% between the 2001-02 and 2021-22 school years, while the number of students grew just 12%.
  • Denver went from having 132 schools serving about 72,000 students in 2001-02 to 204 schools serving nearly 89,000 students in 2021-22.
  • The number of elementary schools in Denver grew 23% over the past 20 years, while the number of students grew just 4%.”

Through expensive marketing and often false narratives, charter schools have had free reign to prey on susceptible families resulting in DPS losing 7400 elementary school students who would have otherwise most likely attended a neighborhood school. Then add in:

  • a state law that prohibits a district from shutting down low enrollment charters, 
  • a district that has ignored demographic information predicting declining enrollment, 
  • a district that employs “attendance zones” and a secretive CHOICE system to often force place students into heavily marketed, often unwanted CHARTER SCHOOLS, and 
  • a competitive financial model called Student Based Budgeting (SBB – money follows the kid) to fund schools, depending on student needs, the goal of which is to close the achievement and resource gaps.  The 2010 Denver Plan/ Strategic Vision and Action Plan describes SBB this way:  
  • Established student-based budget formulas that increase dollars for middle and high school students, special education, English language learners, gifted and talented programs, and students living in poverty. Resource distribution is now more closely aligned with the costs of serving these students. p. 51
  • Refine Student-Based Budgeting formulas to ensure they are best meeting the needs of all of the district’s students. Continue to evaluate and adjust student-based budgeting formulas to 1) meet student needs, 2) make progress on closing the achievement gap, and 3) grow the number of high school graduates and college-ready students. p. 53

No one should be surprised the DPS superintendent is saying schools must be closed (new word is UNIFIED but it still means CLOSURE), given the quagmire he entered.  What would you expect to happen when 72 new charter schools are opened in a landscape of stagnant or declining population growth? Who should be held responsible for the chaos and churn caused by this over-expansion of new charter schools? 

I know, I know. One isn’t supposed to talk about charters any more. But it is the elephant in the room. Education “reformers” want you to believe charters are an irrevocable fact of life in public education, stare decisis if you will. But as we have recently witnessed, that precedent is non-binding. So let’s use it to the advantage of neighborhood school advocates. Let us not assume charters are inevitable, especially given the chaos and poor academic outcomes charters are producing. Denver isn’t the only place experiencing the madness of so many charters. Just this week lifelong educator Arthur Camins wrote:

It is time for Democrats–voters and the politicians who represent them–to abandon charter schools as a strategy for education improvement or to advance equity. Charter schools, whether for- or non-profit, drain funds from public schools that serve all students, increase segregation, and by design only serve the few.

It is worth repeating that in 20 years, DPS has added 72 charter schools, 22 of which have closed.  As students of public education repeatedly attest to, charters have been particularly harmful to neighborhood schools for they gut these schools of resources. Charters have also been disruptive to communities and have contributed to increasing inequity and segregation in our schools. It is not possible to have an honest conversation without addressing that elephant in the room.  Charter schools along with their partners – choice and competition – have had their chance in Denver and their biggest accomplishment has been to pressure neighborhood schools to close.

Let us not overlook the demographic projections DPS has been aware of since the mid 2000’s. 

“It’s really simple, we’ve seen a slow down in births,” said Elizabeth Garner, demographer for the state. “Starting back in 2007, that was our peak birth year, we’ve seen a slowing in births ever since. So with fewer kiddos, that means lower school enrollment.”

Let us not overlook who was supporting and approving this unchecked expansion.  DPS had strong indicators from as early as 2007 onward the population of the city and the number of school-age children was flattening, and yet the district with the strong support of many of the aforementioned  “oversight committee”, EDUCATE Denver, pushed for this proliferation of new charter schools without giving demographics its proper due.

Loss of students = loss of funding (SBB) = loss of programming and supports = closure

Superintendent Alex Marerro has been charged with improving student outcomes and reducing gaps by implementing his strategic plan.  School unifications are one way he has chosen to start this process.  He inherited a district suffering from years of “feel good” oversight from boards and the nonprofit world determined to paint a rosy picture of reform education success, a district more focused on good public relations stories than actual educational outcomes. Now he has to try to provide solutions to problems that have not been dealt with honestly for years. And yes, “unification” has raised as many questions as it has provided answers such as how transportation and language services will be provided and what will be done with these empty buildings. And there is the elephant in the room – again.  Charter schools. Why are they not included in his recommendations? Again, he has no authority to recommend closing them, even though several are also suffering from declining enrollment.  Given this reality, it will be interesting to see how he chooses to address this issue. In the end, how can the board fairly evaluate him according to measures both they and he just agreed on, if it rejects his operational ideas?

As for what neighborhoods these closures would most heavily affect – What would one expect to happen when new charters are opened in neighborhoods heavily populated by families of color and families struggling economically?  Why is there any surprise that most of the schools on the “unification” list affect these neighborhoods?  How could it be otherwise when these are the sites of uncontrolled, privately run options to public schools.  Sadly, it only makes sense that these are the neighborhoods that would suffer the highest impact of school closures.

Few like to close schools.  It is a heart-wrenching, disruptive, negative process. But given the lack of thoughtful planning and oversight for 20 years, what is the better option? Keeping schools open without the financial ability to provide necessary services and supports, or providing unified schools with the money to provide language support,  art, music, nurses, librarians, psychologists, speech therapists?  

Imagine a great school district that had paid attention to population warnings and  hadn’t opened so many charter schools over the last 20 years. Imagine all those charter school children filling those neighborhood schools.

The chickens have come home to roost.

Jeannie and I in Denver, 2013.
Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Denver, Education Reform, Honor Roll

Florida: After DeSantis Takeover, Disastrous Mismanagement of Disney District

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2023 //
9

When Governor Ron DeSantis declared war on “woke,” the Disney Corporation spoke out, objecting to DeSantis’ hostility towards gays. DeSantis lashed out at Disney, dissolved its self-governing district, and placed the district under the control of a new board, whose members were selected by DeSantis.

Scott Maxwell, a regular opinion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, reports that the DeSantis board has serious issues caused by its incompetence and cronyism.

He writes:

If you look at the headlines coming out of Ron DeSantis’ new governor-controlled Disney district, you might think that Central Florida’s newest attraction is Mickey’s Wide World of Governmental Dumpster Fires.

New reports show veteran employees and managers are fleeing, saying incompetent management is in charge.

Spending on road maintenance is down while $795-an-hour checks to politically connected lawyers are increasing.

And now we’ve learned that the district awarded a $240,000 no-bid contract to yet another political insider — a member of the state’s now-infamous ethics commission who used to serve alongside the district’s ethically embattled new director, Glen Gilzean. That contract was canceled Monday after media raised questions.

Gee, who could’ve ever imagined that asking political cronies to mount a politically motivated takeover of a private business would lead to trouble?

Let’s start with the staff exodus. The Florida watchdog website, Seeking Rents, reported over the weekend that more than 30 district employees — including nearly half the senior leadership team — have resigned amid claims of mismanagement.

The numbers were significant, representing more than 350 years of combined experience and about a tenth of the district’s workforce resigning over the course of nine months. But just as significant were the reasonsthey gave for leaving.

One departing department director called the new leadership “unqualified and incompetent,” saying in an exit survey obtained via public-records requests that: “With the departure of more than 3 dozen employees, the district is no longer functional.”

A departing accountant described “a toxic workplace right now.” A former manager with more than 30 years of experience said the new political appointees “show a severe lack of trust for employees.”

And a departing executive assistant said the new leaders “could care less about the work that needs to be done for the taxpayers.”

Then there’s the no-bid contract that the new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District recently awarded to another political crony — DeSantis ally Freddie Figgers (whose name actually sounds like a Disney character).

As WFTV reported last week, the district awarded Figgers a contract to help provide 911 services without giving other Florida companies the chance to bid on the gig.

Now, the district’s procurement policy states that contracts worth more than $100,000 should be competitively bid. And this contract was worth $242,500. Even Tweedledum knows that second number is bigger than the first.

But the district said that — gosh, darn it — it just didn’t have time to competitively bid this job out and that their policies allow “emergency” contracts to be issued without bids.

That sounds like a lot of Bibbidi Bobbidi bunk — especially since the contract ended up going to another DeSantis appointee.

Yes, these guys want you to believe that in a state of 22 million people, the only company capable of doing this emergency-communications work happens to be run by another gubernatorial appointee who serves on this state’s joke of an ethics commission.

It’s truly a small world, after all.

After local media asked questions, Figgers sent a letter to the district Monday agreeing to cancel his no-bid contract to “err on the side of caution,” saying: “We welcome the opportunity for an open bidding process …” Good for him. That’s how it should’ve been all along.

Speaking of the ethics commission, I still don’t understand how anyone thinks it’s proper for Gilzean to be pulling down this $400,000-a-year paycheck after the ethics commission’s own attorney said he was violating state statutes earlier this year by trying to serve as both an ethics commissioner and a paid public employee. Gilzean was forced to give up his ethics post, but this governor has yanked duly elected public officials out of office who have broken no rules while he leaves this statute-violating guy in a cushy job.

Meanwhile, the district is racking up legal bills. The district’s budget shows spending on “professional services … due to legal fees” has skyrocketed from $4.2 million to $11.1 million with some of that money going to $795-an-hour law firms, including one whose partners include DeSantis’ former roommate and campaign supporter.

At the same time, the amount budgeted for road repairs and maintenance — you know, the kind of work the district is actually supposed to be doing — has been cut by several million dollars, even though the park is growing and costs are rising.

So, cronies are cashing in while services suffer under this gubernatorial board whose members include a Moms for Liberty member and a pastor who made headlines for suggesting that contaminated tap water was turning people gay. The Mad Hatter would be proud…

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Failure, Florida

Politico: House Republicans Want Deep Cuts to Food Stamp Program

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2023 //
11

Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reports that House Republicans are itching to cut the food stamp program, but running into opposition from Democrats and farm-state Republicans.

Mike Johnson‘s new role as House speaker heightens the chances of a major political clash next year over one of the nation’s largest welfare programs and the government’s preeminent aid package for farmers and rural America.

The fallout is likely to reverberate in countless congressional races, not to mention President Joe Biden’s attempts to win back rural votersin the 2024 presidential race.

Johnson, more so than previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is a proponent of more hardline GOP efforts to overhaul the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country’s largest anti-hunger program that serves 41 million low-income Americans. As a senior member of the conservative-leaning Republican Study Committee, Johnson backed proposals to roll back food aid expansions under Biden and block states from exempting some work requirements for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. In 2018, Johnson referred to SNAP as “our nation’s most broken and bloated welfare program.”

Now, the RSC, Freedom Caucus hardliners and other Republicans are pressing to include similar measures in the next farm bill. Such a move would upend the fragile bipartisan coalition needed to pass the legislation — a blow to House Republicans who represent the majority of rural and farm districts, including Johnson, as well as more centrist GOP members who will be fighting for their political lives in 2024.

Open the link to read more.

Didn’t Jesus say something about feeding the hungry and clothing the needy? Why do these people rattle on about Christianity but ignore the words of its leader?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Health, Republicans

Texas Clergy Speak Out Against Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2023 //
4

Texas clergy spoke out against Governor Gregg Abbott’s plan to promote voucher legislation. Governor Abbott has vowed to keep convening special sessions of the legislature until he wins vouchers, which will benefit students already in private and religious schools. Abbott has campaigned for vouchers by visiting private schools, which stand to benefit from his plan. Meanwhile the state has a budget surplus of nearly $33 billion. The governor has blocked any increase in teachers’ salaries until he gets vouchers. To date, rural Republicans have stood strong against vouchers, which would hurt their communities and turn off the “Friday night lights” (the football games).

The Network for Public Educatuon distributed their statement. In addition to the three who wrote the statement, it was co-signed by more than 100 other members of the clergy.

Texas Clergy: Texas schools don’t need vouchers.

Three Texas religious leaders say that Abbot’s voucher plan is not what schools need. Dr. Michael Evans, Re. Dr. Mary Spradlin, and Rabbi Brian Zimmerman wrote this op-ed for the Star-Telegram, and over 100 other clergy signaled their agreement.

We are Fort Worth- area clergy and advocates for public education, driven by our faith to support the well-being of our state’s children. Our belief in community responsibility to provide the best possible education for every child is unwavering. The sad truth, however, is that we are falling short of this commitment.

Across Texas, our schools grapple with underfunding, overcrowded classrooms and overworked teachers. Educators face numerous challenges, including the disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most are disheartened by the increasingly politicized environment that undermines their abilities and integrity without a factual basis.

Some argue that the main issue in public education is teachers promoting controversial ideologies, undermining traditional values and neglecting core subjects such as reading and math.

This is a false narrative. As pastors, many of us regularly convene with school leaders to assess students’ progress. Our teachers are driven to improve education for their kids in the classroom. Elementary teachers aim to help early readers move toward goals set by people with little understanding of the life of families who, for example, may have already had to move many times in their young child’s life.

The claim that “public schools are failing” is overly simplistic and diverts attention from our collective responsibility. We fail our kids when we buy into this hysteria — part of a national playbook determined to undermine public education. We fail our kids when we have a historic $32.7 billion state budget surplus but refuse to raise the basic allotment to fund schools.

We fail our kids when we blame school districts and teachers for campus ratings without speaking against a system that prioritizes one STAAR test score. We fail our kids when we refuse to acknowledge the correlation between poverty and school performance. We fail our kids when we buy into the claim that the best thing to do is to “pull kids out” of public schools.

Some argue that vouchers or education savings accounts, known as ESAs, would provide options for all students, but the numbers reveal otherwise. Texas has more than 347,000 kids in private schools and more than 5.5 million in public schools. An ESA allotment of $8,000 for a child from the projected $500 million the Legislature is considering would help only 57,500 students after administrative costs. The cost/benefit analysis of this plan doesn’t add up.

Read the full op-ed here. 

You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/texas-clergy-texas-schools-dont-need-vouchers/

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Thom Hartmann: How the “Citizens United” Decision Corrupted Our Democracy

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2023 //
49

Thom Hartmann writes here about the most consequential Supreme Court decision of our time: Citizens United. That decision unleashed the power of big money to control our politics. It’s consequences have diminished our ability as a nation to take action on pressing issues. It has allowed the Uber-rich to buy politicians. That always existed to some extent. Citizens United established the practice as business as usual.

Hartmann writes:

According to Talkers Magazine, the “Bible of the Talk Radio Industry,” I talk with around 6 million people every week on my nationally syndicated call-in radio/TV show. What I’m hearing, increasingly (I’ve been doing this program for 20 years now), is frustration bordering on despair about the inability of America to get basic, necessary things done.

Why is it, people ask, that we can’t do anything about guns amidst all these mass shootings? Or homelessness? Or affordable healthcare and education? Why are we moving so slowly on climate change? How did social media get excused from responsibility for its own content and then become overrun by Putin bots and Nazis?

And why do we let the billionaires who own social media (along with all the other billionaires) get away with only paying an average 3.2% income tax when the rest of us are making up for it by paying through the nose? Why can’t Congress pass a simple budget or raise taxes enough to stop running deficits?

What happened, people ask, that caused America’s politicians — in the years after JFK — to stop listening to the people who elect them? Why is it that (other than tax cuts), when Republicans have power or the ability to block Democrats efforts, nothing gets done?

The simple and tragic answer to all these questions comes back to a single root cause: money in politics. Or, to be more specific, Republicans on the Supreme Court having legalized political bribery (and, thus, functional ownership) of judges and legislators, both federal and state.

In 1976, in response to an appeal by uber-rich New York Republican Senator James Buckley, the Court ruled that wealthy people in politics couldn’t be restrained from using their own money to overwhelm their political opponents. They then went a step farther and struck down other limitations on billionaires using their own money to “independently” promote the campaigns of politicians they like.

Their rationale was that restrictions on rich people buying political office “necessarily reduce the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of the exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money.”

In other words, for morbidly rich people to have “free speech,” they must be able to spend as much money on politicking as they want. If you don’t have millions or billions, your free speech is pretty much limited to how loud you can yell: this was a decision almost entirely of, by, and for the morbidly rich.

Two years later, in 1978, four Republicans on the Court went along with a decision written by Republican Lewis Powell himself in declaring that corporations are “persons” entitled to human rights under the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution), including the First Amendment right of free speech.

And free speech, as they’d established two years earlier, meant the ability to shovel money into political campaigns. Effective in April of 1978, elections could go to whoever spent the most money.

Democrats largely ignored the rulings (until 1992). They hadn’t been the party of the rich since the 1920s, and, with a third of American workers in a union, those unions provided plenty of money for political campaigns.

But Republicans — specifically, the 1980 Reagan campaign — jumped forward with both hands out for all the cash they could grab. The gift they offered wealthy people who supported them? Tax cuts, even if they drove the deficit sky high.

There were still quite a few campaign restrictions in place in 2010, when five Republicans on the Supreme Court did it again, striking down literally hundreds of state and federal laws and regulations by doubling-down on their assertion that “money is free speech” and “corporations are persons with human rights.”

Thus, we can track many of the worst aspects of America’s political dysfunction to these three corrupt Supreme Court decisions, as I detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.

Prior to the Court’s Citizens United decision, for example, there was a bipartisan consensus in Congress that climate change was caused by burning fossil fuels and that we should do something about it, as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse so eloquently documents.

John McCain campaigned for president on a platform of doing something about climate change: he was the lead cosponsor of the Climate Stewardship Act, which had multiple other Republican cosponsors. At the time, he said:

“While we cannot say with 100 percent confidence what will happen in the future, we do know the emission of greenhouse gases is not healthy for the environment. As many of the top scientists through the world have stated, the sooner we start to reduce these emissions, the better off we will be in the future.”

The Clean Air Planning Act was supported by Republican Senators Lamar Alexander, Lindsay Graham, and Susan Collins. Republican Senator Olympia Snow was the lead cosponsor of the Global Warming Reduction Act of 2007. Multiple Republicans supported the Low Carbon Economy Act and the Clean Air/Climate Change Act.

In 2009, Republicans supported the Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act and the Waxman-Markey carbon cap-and-trade proposal. Maine Republican Susan Collins was the lead cosponsor of the Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal Act, a bill that would have imposed a fee on burning fossil fuels. At the time, she said:

“In the United States alone, emissions of the primary greenhouse gas carbon dioxide have risen more than 20 percent since 1990. Clearly climate change is a daunting environmental challenge…”

And then, in 2010, everything changed.

Clarence Thomas, actively groomed for decades by fossil fuel and other billionaires, became the deciding vote in Citizens United, legalizing not only his own corruption but that of every Republican in Congress.

Once the fossil fuel industry could pour unlimited money into either supporting — or, perhaps more importantly, destroying — the candidacy of any Republican politician, every Republican in the House and Senate began to say, “What climate change?”

As Senator Whitehouse said on the floor of the Senate:

“I believe we lost the ability to address climate change in a bipartisan way because of the evils of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Our present failure to address climate change is a symptom of things gone awry in our democracy due to Citizens United. That decision did not enhance speech in our democracy; it has allowed bullying, wealthy special interests to suppress real debate.”

When Poppy Bush was president, the world confronted a crisis with acid rain destroying monuments and buildings; Democrats and Republicans came together and put into law a sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade “free market solution” that largely solved the problem.

Why can’t we do the same with a cap-and-trade system for carbon pollution from fossil fuels like the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea have already done? Citizens United.

Similarly, why can’t America get our gun crisis under control? We’re the only country in the world where schoolchildren are subjected to the monthly terror of active shooter drills.

Bullets are the leading cause of death among our nation’s children. But no Republican will take on the issue because they know the firearms industry and its front groups will destroy them with a waterfall of money for their inevitable opponent in the next election. Citizens United.

Our public schools are crumbling as the charter and private school industries pour millions into politicians’ coffers. Instead of fixing our schools and raising our educational standards, the private school industry has gotten Republican governors in several states to offer vouchers to every student in the state.

It’s busting the budgets of states (once the public schools are dead, they’ll cut back on the generosity of the vouchers), but making literally billions in profits for the private school industry — money that’s then, in part, recycled back to the politicians promoting their interests. Citizens United.

Please, please, please open the link and read the rest of this brilliant article.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Politics

Paul Thomas: Our Perpetual “Crisis in Education” Is Fueled by Unreliable, Invalid Test Scores

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2023 //
10

Paul Thomas of Furman University is a clear-sighted analyst of education policy. He is fearless when it comes to calling out frauds. This post is a good example.

He writes:

“The administrations in charge,” write Gilles Deleuze in Postscript on the Societies of Control, “never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons” (p. 4).

Deleuze’s generalization about “supposedly necessary reforms” serves as an important entry point into the perpetual education crisis in the US. Since A Nation at Risk, public education has experienced several cycles of crisis that fuel ever-new and ever-different sets of standards and high-stakes testing.

Even more disturbing is that for at least a century, “the administrations in charge” have shouted that US children cannot read—with the current reading crisis also including the gobsmacking additional crisis that teachers of reading do not know how to teach reading.

The gasoline that is routinely tossed on the perpetual fire of education crisis is test scores—state accountability tests, NAEP, SAT, ACT, etc.

While all that test data itself may or may not be valuable information for both how well students are learning and how to better serve those students through reform, ultimately all that testing has almost nothing to do with either of those goals; in fact, test data in the US are primarily fuel for that perpetual state of crisis.

Here is the most recent example—2023 ACT scores:

I have noted that reactions and overreactions to NAEP in recent years follow a similar set of problems found in reactions/overreactions to the SAT for many decades; the lessons from those reactions include:

  • Lesson: Populations being tested impact data drawn from tests.
  • Lesson: Ranking by test data must account for population differences among students tested.
  • Lesson: Conclusions drawn from test data must acknowledge purpose of test being used (see Gerald Bracey).

The social media and traditional media responses to 2023 ACT data expose a few more concerns about media, public, and political misunderstanding of test data as well as how “the administrations in charge” depend on manipulating test data to insure the perpetual education crisis.

Many people have confronted the distorting ways in which the ACT data are being displayed; certainly the mainstream graph from Axios above suggests “crisis”; however, by simply modifying the X/Y axes, that same data appear at least less dramatic and possibly not even significant if the issues I list above are carefully considered….

This crisis-of-the-day about the ACT parallels the central problem with NAEP, a test that seems designed to mislead and not inform since NAEP’s “Proficient” feeds a false narrative that a majority of students are not on grade level as readers.

The ACT crisis graph being pushed by mainstream media is less a marker of declining educational quality in the US and more further proof that “the administrations in charge” want and need testing data to justify “supposedly necessary reforms,” testing as gas for the perpetual education crisis fire.

Please open the link to read this excellent analysis in full.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Hoax, Lies, Literacy, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Houston: Teachers of Special Ed and Bilingual Ed Object to Standardized Curriculum

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2023 //
15

In Houston, the backlash against the authoritarianism of state-imposed superintendent Mike Miles continues to grow. Teachers of special education and bilingual education don’t like the standardized curriculum.

If I’m focused on what’s happening in Houston, there are two reasons:

1. I’m a graduate of the Houston Independent School District, and I don’t like to see it under siege by a know-nothing Governor and his puppet state superintendent.

2. This state takeover demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of state takeovers. It was concocted out of whole cloth, on the claim that one school in the entire district was “failing.” Before the takeover, that school—Wheatley High School—received a higher score (based on state tests) and was no longer “failing,” but the state took over the entire district anyway. So Houston is a national example of the vapidness of “education reform,” meaning non-educators like Miles, Governor Abbott, and State Chief Mike Morath telling professional educators how to do their jobs.

Anna Bauman of The Houston Chronicle writes:

A cornerstone of the New Education System introduced by Superintendent Mike Miles is a highly specific and rigorous instructional model.

As many students and teachers know by now, the system includes a standardized curriculum provided by the district, frequent classroom observations and grade level materials. Each day, teachers in core classes provide direct instruction for 45 minutes, give students a timed quiz and then split the children into groups based on their understanding of the lesson, with struggling learners getting more help from their teacher.

Miles says the model is meant to improve academic achievement, especially among student populations whose standardized test scores often lag behind their peers, and has disputed any claims that the system fails to accommodate the diverse needs of students.

In conversations over recent weeks, however, seven teachers at five different schools told me they are struggling to meet the needs of children with disabilities or emergent bilingual studentsbecause the model is too rigid, fast-paced and inflexible to provide accommodations for these learners.

For example, one teacher at an NES-aligned campus told me she cannot realistically give students extra time, a common accommodation for special education students, on the timed Demonstration of Learning. If she lags behind schedule, administrators will enter her classroom and demand: “Why aren’t we where we’re supposed to be?”

A teacher at Las Americas Newcomer School, home to many refugee and immigrant students, said district officials instructed educators to remove alphabet posters from their classrooms and limit the use of dictionaries, which many non-native English speakers rely on during class.

“Many of them, it’s their first year being in school. They don’t know the language. I have a classroom with at times four different languages spoken. And we’re forced to do the same slides and the same work as a regular, general education school,” the teacher said.

Only time will tell whether the new system will boost academic achievement as Miles intends, but for now, teachers are speaking out because they are concerned about doing what is right for their most vulnerable students.

“When I go home at night, I want to know when I put my head down on my pillow that I did the best I could by my kids,” said Brian Tucker, a special education teacher at Sugar Grove Academy.

You can read more in-depth about these issues in separate stories published this week about special education students and English language learners.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, English Language Learners, Extremism, Failure, Houston, Special Education, Stupid, Teachers, Texas
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