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Nancy Flanagan: Students Should Not Be Expected to Teach Themselves

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
24

On her blog called “Teacher in a Strange Land,” Nancy Flanagan describes the heartwarming story of a high school marching band that carried on after their teacher quit and explains why the story is not heartwarming after all.

She writes:

It’s a sad but kind of sweet story:a little rural school (282 students, total, K-12) in West Virginia has a small but mighty high school band, enthusiastically supporting the home team on Friday nights. Over the summer the band director leaves the district. First day of school, the principal shows up in the band room, offering the 38 band members the option of dropping out and taking another class. Ten of the students, however, decide to stay and teach themselves (with the principal’s permission, noting that he had already set money aside in the budget for a band program).

The rest of the story, in the Washington Post, praises the students for making their own rules, playing the fight song and chants at games, and generally keeping the ball rolling, with two bona fide teachers serving as advisors.

The story dedicates half a sentence– West Virginia is experiencing a certified teacher shortage like many states nationwide—to the real, underlying problem. The headline is particularly annoying: A high school band teacher quit. Now, the students teach, direct themselves.

Imagine a first-grade classroom, with a dozen adorable, willing children. Their teacher quits, in August. So the principal decides that a couple of adult wranglers can manage them, because she’s set aside money for new reading books and computers, and because they all learned their letters in kindergarten. Maybe a new teacher will turn up. In the meantime, they can be kept busy doing what they did last year.

Perhaps you’re thinking that the national shortage of teachers is limited to certain sub-specialties, or geographic regions, that no responsible school leader would leave a group of six-year-olds to “teach themselves.” If so, you ought to take a look at the percentages of students, especially in charter schools, with unqualified substitutes. There are uncertified subs everywhere, in all subjects, k-12, and unfilled jobs in prestigious private and suburban schools, two months after the start of the school year.

The loyal-to-band kids in West Virginia do not surprise me. Band students, in my thoroughly biased opinion, are THE BEST, and these kids appear to be like band kids everywhere—self-starters, and leaders. Good kids.There are, of course, good kids in all grades and disciplines, in every school, those who can be trusted to carry on when the chips are down.

But here’s the thing that doesn’t get mentioned in this feel-good story: the band kids in WV learned how to do the things they have done—writing rules, running rehearsals, playing tunes—from a teacher. By all indications, a pretty good teacher, someone who instilled a spirit of cooperation that led students to try to balance out the band sound by switching instruments.

Once football season is over, who will be moving their music education forward, teaching them the new skills and music they deserve? Who is preparing younger students there, who will take become the high school musicians when these amazing kids graduates? There is no building process, no pipeline of activities that lead to cycles of growth. Without a teacher, this program is headed toward a dead end.

Please open the link and finish the story.

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Creativity, Disruption, Students, Teacher Shortage, West Virginia

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters Is a Shameless Liar

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2023 //
3

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, is appalled by the spread of a culture of lying. The state’s superintendent of schools is a textbook example of a man who lies openly, repeatedly, and without shame.

As the New York Times’ Peter Wehner wrote, “The first hours of the Trump presidency began with a demonstrable lie, when Mr. Trump, his press secretary and his closest advisers lied about the size of his inaugural crowd, photographic evidence to the contrary be damned.” Since then, state and federal officeholders, as well as Trump voters have become shockingly comfortable with “alt facts,” but as cases are heading to multiple courts, brazen falsehoods which have been portrayed as political narratives that are legal, even when they are lies, will become violations of law. Oklahoma’s State School Superintendent Ryan Walters is likely to become one case study in such transitions.

Walters is facing federal lawsuits for wrongly firing Department of Education employees. Another 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.”

The Oklahoma Ethics Commission fined Walters $7,800 for filing late campaign reports 14 times. Most importantly, the state auditor alleged that $30 million of COVID-19 relief money was 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.”

Moreover, Walters’ promotion of lies (that presumably were not illegal) by Libs of TikTokand other rightwingers likely contributed to bomb threats to Tulsa-area public schools. As the top Democrat in the Oklahoma Senate said, she supports her House colleagues’ request for an impeachment investigation because, “These threats are a direct result of reckless rhetoric and must be addressed.”

Then, as KGOU reported, “Walters put TPS (Tulsa Public Schools) in the national spotlight for participating in the Chinese language program Confucius Classrooms, which has indirect ties to the Chinese government.

It’s hard to understand how anyone could believe Walter’s narratives, especially Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, who “is one of 18 members of the U.S. Senate who have called for an investigation into educational ‘funds from hostile foreign governments flowing into America’s K-12 schools.’” Lankford asserted “The CCP is the greatest threat to America’s security today,” and “The CCP’s involvement in the K-12 education system further demonstrates how far the Chinese government is willing go to expand its influence and promote its authoritarian agenda.”

But Walters’ recent stunt, testifying before Congress, should prove that he is willing to tell virtually any lie, defend it, and at least temporarily, convince some or many (or most?) Republican legislators to believe it. As the Oklahoman reports:

“Walters has often equated the nonprofit with the Chinese Communist Party and accused Confucius Classrooms of being part of a propaganda campaign by the party.

“He and the state Board of Education voted in August to require all Oklahoma school districts to report any foreign funding. Walters urged Congress and the state Legislature to prohibit schools from receiving funds from hostile foreign governments.”

Then, he testified to Congress, “We must protect our kids and not allow a hostile foreign government to indoctrinate them.”

In fact, as the Tulsa Public Schools replied:

All costs that related to the Confucius Classroom Coordination Office amounted to $6,240 over the 2022-23 school year. That included the price of the teacher’s training and travel, classroom supplies, cultural supplies and food for students.

The superintendent and founder of the Texas charter school which trained the Tulsa teacher, “Eddie Conger, drove to Oklahoma City to reiterate that to Walters and the Oklahoma State Board of Education during the board’s meeting Thursday. ‘I just want you to know that I’ve not sent any money to Tulsa Public Schools, not one dime,’ Conger said while speaking in public comment at the meeting. ‘I would have, but they said no.’”

Then, as reported by the Oklahoman, Walters testified to Congress on Sept. 19 that the ‘district maintains an active connection with the [Chinese government] through a program called the Confucius Classroom.’ But TPS says it ended its contract nearly a month before, on Aug. 25.”

It was reported by State Impact that according to:

Email correspondence obtained by State Impact between TPS and the State Department of Education, the district made the department aware of the contract termination the week before Walters testified otherwise, on Sept. 15. The department had asked for the information on Sept. 7.

Once upon a time we believed “A lie is a lie.” It’s been four decades since Ronald Reagan proclaimed, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Since then, the Rightwing has been extremely successful in undermining public services by telling big lies, arguing that what we now call “alt facts” may not be true but that’s just politics.

But as rightwingers ranging from hate mongers like Ryan Walters to Trump have been willing to speak any falsehood they want, they seem to be forgetting the legal danger of spinning their tales under oath. As long as they keep repeating false claims, it seems inevitable to me that their habits of repeating concrete and documented lies will backfire in court.

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

The Man Who Selected the Rightwing Supreme Court Justices

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2023 //
16

ProPublica researched the power of Leonard Leo, the man most responsible for the rightwing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and other levels of the federal judiciary. Few people know who he is. Now you are among them.

ProPublica writes:

The party guests who arrived on the evening of June 23, 2022, at the Tudor-style mansion on the coast of Maine were a special group in a special place enjoying a special time. The attendees included some two dozen federal and state judges — a gathering that required U.S. marshals with earpieces to stand watch while a Coast Guard boat idled in a nearby cove.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong friendship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Samuel Alito’s luxury travel with billionaire Paul Singer have raised questions about influence and ethics at the nation’s highest court.

Caterers served guests Pol Roger reserve, Winston Churchill’s favorite Champagne, a fitting choice for a group of conservative legal luminaries who had much to celebrate. The Supreme Court’s most recent term had delivered a series of huge victories with the possibility of a crowning one still to come. The decadeslong campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade, which a leaked draft opinion had said was “egregiously wrong from the start,” could come to fruition within days, if not hours.

Over dinner courses paired with wines chosen by the former food and beverage director of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the 70 or so attendees jockeyed for a word with the man who had done as much as anyone to make this moment possible: their host, Leonard Leo.

I can’t think of anybody who played a role the way he has.

– Richard Friedman, a law professor and historian at the University of Michigan

Short and thick-bodied, dressed in a bespoke suit and round, owlish glasses, Leo looked like a character from an Agatha Christie mystery. Unlike the judges in attendance, Leo had never served a day on the bench. Unlike the other lawyers, he had never argued a case in court. He had never held elected office or run a law school. On paper, he was less important than almost all of his guests.

If Americans had heard of Leo at all, it was for his role in building the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. He drew up the lists of potential justices that Donald Trump released during the 2016 campaign. He advised Trump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Before that, he’d helped pick or confirm the court’s three other conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But the guests who gathered that night under a tent in Leo’s backyard included key players in a less-understood effort, one aimed at transforming the entire judiciary.

Many could thank Leo for their advancement. Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled to loosen gun laws and overturn Obamacare’s birth-control mandate. Leo had put Hardiman on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist and helped confirm him to two earlier judgeships.

Kyle Duncan and Cory Wilson, both on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, both fiercely anti-abortion, were members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the network of conservative and libertarian lawyers that Leo had built into a political juggernaut. As was Florida federal Judge Wendy Berger, who would uphold that state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Within a year of the party, another attendee, Republican North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. (no relation), would write the opinion reinstating a controversial state law requiring voter identification.

Duncan, Wilson, Berger and Berger Jr. did not comment. Hardiman did not comment beyond confirming he attended the party.

The judges were in Maine for a weeklong, all-expenses-paid conference hosted by George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, a hub for steeping young lawyers, judges and state attorneys general in a free-market, anti-regulation agenda. The leaders of the law school were at the party, and they also were indebted to Leo. He had secured the Scalia family’s blessing and brokered $30 million in donations to rename the school. It is home to the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, named after the George H.W. Bush White House counsel who died this May. Gray was at Leo’s party, too.

A spokesperson for GMU confirmed the details of the week’s events.

The judges and the security detail, the law school leadership and the legal theorists — all of this was a vivid display not only of Leo’s power but of his vision. Decades ago, he’d realized it was not enough to have a majority of Supreme Court justices. To undo landmark rulings like Roe, his movement would need to make sure the court heard the right cases brought by the right people and heard by the right lower court judges.

Leo began building a machine to do just that. He didn’t just cultivate friendships with conservative Supreme Court justices, arranging private jet trips, joining them on vacation, brokering speaking engagements. He also drew on his network of contacts to place Federalist Society protégés in clerkships, judgeships and jobs in the White House and across the federal government.

He personally called state attorneys general to recommend hires for positions he presciently understood were key, like solicitors general, the unsung litigators who represent states before the U.S. Supreme Court. In states that elect jurists, groups close to him spent millions of dollars to place his allies on the bench. In states that appoint top judges, he maneuvered to play a role in their selection.

And he was capable of playing bare-knuckled politics. He once privately lobbied a Republican governor’s office to reject a potential judicial pick and, if the governor defied him, threatened “fury from the conservative base, the likes of which you and the Governor have never seen.”

To pay for all this, Leo became one of the most prolific fundraisers in American politics. Between 2014 and 2020, tax records show, groups in his orbit raised more than $600 million. His donors include hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, Texas real estate magnate Harlan Crow and the Koch family.

Leo grasped the stakes of these seemingly obscure races and appointments long before liberals and Democrats did. “The left, even though we are somewhat court worshippers, never understood the potency of the courts as a political machine. On the right, they did,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a visiting professor at Georgetown Law and a former president of the American Constitution Society, the left’s answer to the Federalist Society. “As much as I hate to say it, you’ve got to really admire what they achieved.” Belatedly, Leo’s opposition has galvanized, joining conservatives in an arms race that shows no sign of slowing down.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Civil Rights, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans

My Visit to a Transformed Germany, Which Faces Its Past with Truth

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2023 //
35

As a young person and a Jew, I swore I would never visit Germany. Growing up in Houston in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I occasionally met people who had a blue number tattooed on their arm, a legacy of their time in a Nazi concentration camp. I learned about the Holocaust at religious school, not public school. With my knowledge of the Holocaust, I was determined to avoid the nation that sought to eliminate the Jews of Europe. I was fortunate that my father’s parents came to America from Poland in the 19th century, and my mother arrived from Bessarabia after World War 1. Every member of their families who remained in Europe was slaughtered. Not one survived.

In 1984, I received an invitation from the State Department to visit West Germany and Yugoslavia to speak about education. I decided to go. It was a fascinating trip, and I overcame my phobia about visiting Germany.

Years later, after the Wall had come down, I went to Germany as a tourist with my partner and our Brooklyn neighbors. The wife, an emergency room nurse, was born in Germany, and is one of the kindest people I know. For the first time, I saw Germany as a vibrant and thriving nation. I visited the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and saw the honesty with which Germany was confronting its past. Every town we visited had its memorials to those who had perished because of Hitler’s genocide.

A few days ago, I was again in Berlin. Frankly, I fell in love with Berlin. The German people acknowledge the horrors of their past. They don’t sugar coat it. Their contrition is impossible to ignore. There are memorials scattered across the city to those who were unjustly murdered—Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others.

Right near our hotel was a field of 2,711 stelae of different sizes that looked like coffins. We stopped to view the site where Hitler’s bunker once existed. It’s now just blank ground with a large marker explaining what it was. It was where Hitler and Eva Braun married, knowing all was lost. She killed herself. Hitler killed himself. When the Soviets entered Berlin, they totally destroyed the bunker.

Several readers corrected my statement that Hermann Göring and his wife and children died in the bunker. They are right. It was Joseph Goebbels and his family who committed suicide in the bunker. Göring committed suicide in Nuremberg the night before he was to be executed by hanging.

As the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children joined Hitler in Berlin. They moved into the underground Vorbunker, part of Hitler’s underground bunker complex, on 22 April 1945. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitler’s will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany; he served one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after having poisoned their six children with a cyanide compound. (Wikipedia)

On our last day in Berlin, we intended to go to the museum of the Stasi, the secret police that monitored every East German’s life. But we decided instead to visit the memorial center of the German resistance.

The museum tells the story of Germans who opposed the rise of Hitler in the 1930s, who worked against him during the war years, who anticipated that he would destroy Germany’s struggling democracy, and who worked to end his brutal tyranny. There were stories of opposition to Hitler by trade unionists and Communists, by Jews and Catholics and Protestants. The museum identified religious leaders, scholars, scientists, educators, students, social workers, and others who worked against Hitler. Most were killed. It went into great detail about the failed assassination attempt by leading German officers on July 20, 1944. All of them were murdered.

My partner, a former teacher of history and social studies, wondered why Holocaust studies in the schools do not tell their stories. In some sick way, the constant focus on bodies and atrocities was not having its intended effect; it was desensitizing the students to cruelty and inhumanity.

Of course, the brutality must be shown and remembered. But why not make resistance to evil the centerpiece? Why not focus on courage and heroism in the face of overwhelming force? Why not tell the story of Georg Esler, the German carpenter who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1939? Or the story of the White Rose Society, the college students who bravely distributed flyers about Nazi atrocities in 1942-43, who were captured and executed? They should be celebrated for their courage and conviction.

Meanwhile, back home, our own nation is convulsed by battles about teaching the past. Some insist on whitewashing history because the truth might make young people “uncomfortable.”We see the rising influence of groups like “Moms for Liberty,” who demand censorship and oppose honest teaching of the past and the present. They have a right to speak, but they should not have the right to impose their bigotry and intolerance on others. Moms for Liberty should learn from Germany about the importance of teaching truth.

If you visit Berlin, don’t miss this tribute to the resistance.

Categories Accountability, Extremism, Fascism, History, International

Thom Hartmann: Did Hamas Get Israeli Security Secrets from Trump Leak to Russians?

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2023 //
33

Thom Hartmann is one of the most consistently interested and provocative bloggers on the internet. This is one of his most intriguing:

He wrote:

This past weekend, Hamas launched a brutal, horrific attack against civilians in Israel. While there is a very real history that has led up to this, there is no justification for it. Even in a state of war, civilians must be protected.

This horror raises a couple of important questions. 

First, did Hamas somehow get inside information about Israel’s defenses that helped them pull this off? 

Second, how might this play out, how might it be resolved, and how can America and the world avoid the mistakes from previous but similar situations? 

Pondering these questions, Sunday night just before I went to bed, I tweeted:

“Hamas apparently knew how to get around Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. They probably learned this from Iran. Iran almost certainly got the information from Russia. And who gave it to Russia? Sure looks like it was Donald Trump, at the request of Putin:”

At the end of the tweet I included a link to a 2017 Washington Post article titled “Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador,” although, because Musk has eliminated headlines from news stories, the article just looked like a picture of Trump with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister yucking it up.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I discovered that my little overnight speculative tweet had caused Republicans on Twitter/X to totally lose their minds. 

The tweet had been viewed several million times and produced thousands of responses, the vast majority calling me obscenities and claiming that Trump would never share classified information with anybody because he’s such a patriot and anybody who would wonder out loud about him passing out secrets isn’t.

The Washington Post article I included with my tweet was pretty unambiguous. Reporters Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe wrote:

“President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

“The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.”

While nobody knew then (and nobody but Trump and the Russians know now) exactly what top-secret information we got from Israel that was shared with the Russians in that meeting, it was clearly a shocking revelation that caught our and Israel’s intelligence communities by surprise. 

As noted in that Washington Post article:

“‘This is code-word information,’ said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump ‘revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.’”

The Post reporters also note that, before the door was closed, apparently a Trump staffer overheard him tell the Russians:

“I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day.”

Eight days before Trump was inaugurated as president, a Hebrew language Israeli newspaper with inside information from Israeli intelligence agencies was quoted by the Times of Israel:

“US intelligence officials have warned their Israeli counterparts that President-elect Donald Trump’s ties to Russia could pose a security threat, since information passed on to his administration may reach Moscow and from there be leaked to Iran, a Hebrew-language daily reported Thursday.

“During a recent meeting between US and Israeli intelligence staff, the Americans also assessed that Russia has some kind of leverage over Trump, but did not go into details, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper claimed, citing unidentified Israeli officials who were present at the session.”

So, whether Trump screwed Israel and the US because Putin told him to, or just to feed his own massively insecure ego, and whether it’s specifically led to this Hamas raid or simply did other damage to Israeli and American security, here we are. 

And, as we learned last week when it came out that Trump shared top-secret info about our submarine fleet with an Australian businessman, he has a history of doing exactly this sort of thing.

We also don’t know if that particular intel from 2017 had to do with Iron Dome or Israeli security (the article suggests it might have involved using a laptop to take down a plane) or not. 

It’s important to note, thought, that it was only one of literally dozens of secret, private meetings Trump had with Russian officials, Russian-aligned people at the White House and Mar-a-Largo, and at least 19 phone calls with Putin, for many of which there are no existing records.

Now Newsweek has published an article about this concern that Trump played a role in the Hamas attack as well, and I’ve been joined in my speculation by several others. The Newsweek article, headlined “Donald Trump’s Israel Intel Leak Under Scrutiny After Hamas Attack,” lays it out rather starkly:

“Donald Trump’s sharing of alleged classified intelligence to Russian officials in the White House has come under scrutiny amid a large-scale attack by the Hamas Islamist military group against Israel.

“In May 2017, the former president defended his actions after he was found to have discussed sensitive details about an alleged Islamic State (ISIS) plot with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office. Trump said he had an absolute right to do so. The intel was said to have been provided to the U.S. from Israel.

“It was suggested at the time that the former president’s handing over sensitive information from Israel could have damaged the relationship between the two countries. It also could have raised the possibility that the details could be passed from Russia to Iran, the Gulf nation that is a fierce adversary of Israel and has long supported Hamas.”

It goes on to quote me, Allison Gill (Mueller, She Wrote), Mike Jollett, and Meidas Touch. 

Even Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, tweeted: 

“This fucking maniac likely gave Putin (who gave Iran, who gave Hamas) Israel’s national security secrets… Plus, he divulged highly classified information about our nuclear subs to an Australian cardboard guy. Why is he still allowed to roam free?”

But, again, all this is speculation. What we do know for sure, though, is that on at least one occasion in the first months of his presidency Trump gave information to the Russians that would have landed any other American in prison. As the Post noted:

“For almost anyone in government, discussing such matters with an adversary would be illegal.”

And let there be no doubt that the Russians Trump shared that information with are allies of Hamas, even if that wasn’t the specific time and information that led to this attack.

A year ago last month, as the Times of Israel noted, the politburo chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, met with Trump’s Oval Office buddy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Joining them were the number two man in the Hamas Politburo, Saleh Al-Arouri, and Moussa Abu Marzouk and Maher Salah, the two most senior members of Hamas’s political wing.

That meeting was followed up this March with confirmation that Hamas has been regularly meeting with Russia. As Al-Monitor, a newspaper that covers Middle Eastern politics, noted:

“Hamas officials have made several visits to the Russian capital, most recently in September of last year.”

Whether any of this will end up sticking to Trump is anybody’s guess, but if the thousands of hysterical replies to my tweetare any indication, the GOP is truly freaked out about the possibility. This might turn out to be more politically deadly to him than rape, paying off porn stars, or stealing classified information by the box-load.

Republican politicians have even gone so far as to nakedly lie to the American people about the horrors in Israel, suggesting that the deal President Biden worked out with Iran was used to fund this attack. But it’s not true: of the $6 billion in oil money South Korea was to pay to Iran (but was frozen by international sanctions) not one single penny has yet to be distributed.

That hasn’t stopped the GOP from lying about it incessantly; it got so bad that a Fox “News” host had to intervene and correct a Republican politician, pointing out that no money has changed hands. DeSantis repeated the lie this morning on Morning Joe.

Given how frantically Republicans in the Senate are trying to pin liability for the massacre in Israel on Biden, it sure seems that somebody might be trying to cover something up. Could this have something to do with the secret documents that Donald Trump hand-delivered to Rand Paul, and he then personally transported to Moscow to give to Putin’s intelligence agents?

Jim Jordan and James Comer are fond of saying, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” This “smoke” demands an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, at the very least. And, hopefully, the FBI is all over it, particularly given the horror of these attacks.

But to circle back to the second question, media pundits and even the government of Israel have been using 9/11 as an analogy to the events of this past weekend.

Both were clearly major intelligence failures, but George W. Bush survived his because Democrats chose not to politicize it. 

After all, a full month earlier (on August 6th, 2001) the CIA was so alarmed that they flew an agent all the way down to Crawford, Texas in a private jet just to hand-deliver a memo to Bush that was titled:

“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

Bush’s response to the possibility of Washington DC being a target was to change his plans and take the longest vacation in the history of the presidency; he went from Crawford, Texas to Florida, a state run by his brother, where Jeb declared a state of emergency on August 24th. George stayed there, refusing to return to DC until after the attacks were over.

Press reports today suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received similar warnings from multiple countries in the region prior to the recent attacks and, like Bush, chose to ignore them. But Israeli politicians are often not as circumspect as America’s Democrats, so it’s possible that what rolled off Bush’s back will stick to Netanyahu. Keep an eye on this one.

While it’s a certainty that Netanyahu will be brutal and unsparing in his retaliation (“vengeance” was the word he used yesterday) against Hamas and Gaza, the situation was, in fact, both untenable and unsustainable and it didn’t take a prophet to predict there would be a blow-up one day.

There’s a huge difference in meaning, however, between the words “predictable” and “justified.” Nothing can justify the level of terror and brutality Hamas inflicted on Israeli citizens (and others) this weekend. 

And Hamas, with their commitment to destroying Israel and killing Jews, cannot be an honest broker for any sort of peace in that region; the organization and its leadership must be destroyed. They are not reformable, like, for example, the terrorist Irish Republican Army was back in the day. 

Similarly, Iran’s and Russia’s support for Hamas must be cut off. As Iran shows in its attacks on its own citizens, and Russia shows in the brutality of its daily terror attacks against Ukraine, neither are behaving like civilized members of the modern world.

Yet, here in America MAGA Republicans continue to do everything they can to support Iran’s (and, thus, Hamas’) number-one sponsor in the world: Russia.

— Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is blocking military promotions so we have no commander for our fleet in the region because he doesn’t want raped women serving in our military to get abortions; 
— Rand Paul (R-KY) has blocked the appointment of our ambassador to Israel because Covid, vaccine, conspiracy; 
— Josh Hawley (R-MO) is blocking has a hold on Dept. of Energy appointees; 
— Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has a hold on a nominee for the Dept. of Veterans Affairs; 
— JD Vance (R-OH) has a hold on Dept. of Justice nominees; 
— and the Putin caucus in the House is trying to shut down our government and thus cut aid to Ukraine, which will strengthen Russia and reward their help to Iran and Hamas. 

Our hearts break for the missing and captive Israelis, Americans, and others who are the victims of this medieval Hamas attack. It’s hard to imagine anything more horrific. 

The civilized world must stand united against terrorism, wherever it is practiced.

Categories Accountability, Scandal, Trump

Texas: State Commissioner Cracked Down on Houston While Ignoring Low-Performing Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2023 //
5

The Texas Tribune reports on the blatant hypocrisy of State Commissioner of Educatuon Mike Morath. He used a sledgehammer on the Houston Independent School District because of one low-rated school (whose rating improved before Morath acted). But he allows failing charter schools to expand with no corrective action. His heart belongs to Governor Greg Abbott and the charter industry. His hostility to public schools, attended by 90% of Texas students, is obvious. The takeover of HISD was vengeful and partisan, motivated by politics, not the well-being of students.

The story was written by Kiah Collier and Dan Keenahill on behalf of THE TEXAS TRIBUNE AND PROPUBLICA.

In June, Texas Commissioner of Education Mike embarked on the largest school takeover in recent history, firing the governing board and the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District after one of its more than 270 schools failed to meet state educational standards for seven consecutive years.

Though the state gave Houston’s Wheatley High School a passing score the last time it assigned ratings, Morath charged ahead, saying he had an obligation under the law to either close the campus or replace the board. He chose the latter.

Drastic intervention was required at Houston ISD not just because of chronic low performance, he said, but because of the state’s continued appointment of a conservator, a person who acts as a manager for troubled districts, to ensure academic improvements.

When it comes to charter school networks that don’t meet academic standards, however, Morath has been more generous.

Since taking office more than seven years ago, Morath has repeatedly given charters permission to expand, allowing them to serve thousands more students, even when they haven’t met academic performance requirements. On at least 17 occasions, Morath has waived expansion requirements for charter networks that had too many failing campuses to qualify, according to a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of state records. The state’s top education official also has approved five other waivers in cases where the charter had a combination of failing schools and campuses that were not rated because they either only served high-risk populations or had students too young to be tested.

Only three such performance waivers had been granted prior to Morath, who declined numerous requests for comment. They had all come from his immediate predecessor, according to the Texas Education Agency.

One campus that opened because of a waiver from Morath is Eastex-Jensen Neighborhood School, which is just 6 miles north of Wheatley High School. Opened in 2019, Eastex didn’t receive grades for its first two years because the state paused all school ratings due to the adverse impacts of the pandemic. In 2022, the last time the state scored schools, Eastex received a 48 out of 100, which is considered failing under the state’s accountability system. The state, however, spared campuses that received low grades from being penalized for poor performance that year.

“The hypocrisy here seems overwhelming,” said Kevin Welner, an education policy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “This is the same education commissioner who justified taking over the entire Houston school district based largely on one school’s old academic ratings.”

Open the link to read more about Mike Morath’s hypocrisy. Texas Republicans are determined to turn the state into a playground for edupreneurs. If only the parents of public school students voted against them, they would all be out of office. Governor Abbott and his appointees take instructions from the evangelical billionaires, Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Houston, Hypocrisy, Privatization, Texas

Philadelphia: Charter School Execs Are Very Well Paid

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2023 //
8

Charter school executives in Philadelphia are very well compensated indeed, write the leaders of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, Lisa Haver, Deborah Grill, and Lynda Rubin.

They write:

Three of the six most highly paid administrators identified in String Theory’s most recent tax information are members of the Corosanite family: Chief Executive Officer Angela Corosanite, Chief Information Officer Jason Corosanite, and Director of Facilities Thomas Corosanite. Their total salary and compensation, as listed in the charter management organization’s 2021 IRS 990, comes to almost $900,000. String Theory manages only two schools in the city, but the company has six administrators making over $100,000 in salary and compensation. In addition, each school has its own CEO. Why does a network of only two schools need so many highly-paid administrators?

There are no guidelines for charter compensation, that is, no schedule of salary steps as there is for district principals and administrators. Ad Prima charter, a small charter school with 600 students, has a CEO, a principal and a “site director” on staff, all paid over $100,000.00 in salary and compensation. Community Academy charter has a CEO, deputy CEO, a Chief Academic Officer and deputy CAO. Pan American, an elementary school with 750 students, lists eight administrators. Folk Arts Cultural Treasures (FACTS), on the other hand, has one administrator making over $100,000. Global Leadership Academy is a two-school network. Each school has its own CEO–one making more than the district’s superintendent, the other making slightly less. GLA’s principal made over $11,000 more than a district principal with seven years or more of principal experience.

The question is: What does a charter CEO do? In charter schools with a principal, school leader, several assistant principals and a cultural director, what duties are left for a CEO? One superintendent oversees the 217 public schools in the School District of Philadelphia, at a salary of $335,000. Based on most recent federal tax information, the total salary and compensation paid to the city’s charter CEOs is over $10 million. The individual boards of each charter school, or the board of a charter chain, decides on the salary of the CEO and other administrators. There is no uniform system that takes into account years of experience. Charter schools are publicly funded; all charter administrators are paid with tax dollars.

How can charter schools afford so many highly-paid administrators? A 2016 report by City Controller Alan Butkovitz showed that the district spends more of its per-pupil funding on classroom instruction than charters, who spend a higher percentage on administration.

Please open the link and read the rest of the report, which lists the compensation at every charter school in Philadelphia.

In what way is it efficient to pay so many executives?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Texas Observer: McCarthyism Rides High Again at Texas Universities

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2023 //
12

Gabriel Arans of the Texas Observer writes about the revival of McCathyism at universities in Texas. Republicans are intent on pushing out professors they think are too liberal.

Arana writes:

Texas A&M University’s disgraceful treatment of celebrated journalism professor Kathleen McElroy should terrify anyone who cares about academic freedom, education, and equality in Texas. The state’s Republican leaders, along with Governor Greg Abbott, have launched a radical, McCarthyite crusade to purge education of liberal bias.

Only in Texas or Florida would decades of experience at the country’s most prestigious newspaper and a track record of championing newsroom inclusivity disqualify someone for a job relaunching A&M’s defunct journalism program, which was shuttered in 2004 after 55 years.

McElroy’s ordeal is just the beginning.

At first, A&M officials seemed to realize how lucky they’d been to snag McElroy, a Black woman who served in various managerial positions at the New York Times for 20 years before completing a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she served as the director of the School of Journalism and Media and now teaches.

McElroy didn’t want to draw attention to herself, but A&M insisted on a public ceremony to celebrate her appointment as head of the university’s new journalism program. On June 13, she signed an offer accepting a tenured position in front of a crowd gathered at the school’s academic building, pending approval from the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents.

Over the next few weeks, the deal unraveled. After conservative activist site Texas Scorecard published a scare-mongering article about McElroy’s work on newsroom diversity, right-wing ideologues on the board of regents started scrutinizing her hire. Six or seven regents called and texted now-disgraced University President Katherine Banks to express concerns.

“I thought the purpose of us starting a journalism program was to get high-quality Aggie journalist [sic] with conservative values into the market,” regent Jay Graham texted Banks. “This won’t happen with someone like this leading the department.”

Another regent, Mike Hernandez, added that McElroy was “biased and progressive-leaning” and called giving her tenure a “difficult sell” for the board.

Members of a conservative alum group called the Rudder Association and other right-wing Aggies flooded Banks’ office with calls and emails.

Text messages show that Banks—who initially denied any involvement in McElroy’s bungled hiring, then was caught lying—was fully behind conservatives’ efforts to rein in liberal academia: “Kathy [Banks] told us multiple times the reason we were going to combine [the colleges of] arts and sciences together was to control the liberal nature that those professors brought to campus,” Graham wrote.

So Banks watered down the offer to McElroy. Still eager to return to her alma mater to train the next generation of journalists, she agreed to accept a revised five-year, nontenured teaching position, which would not require the regents’ approval.

“You’re a Black woman who worked at the New York Times,” José Luis Bermúdez, the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, warned McElroy. Her hire, he said, had been caught up in “DEI hysteria.”

But then, Banks diluted the offer further, offering McElroy a one-year, “at will” position. McElroy declined and spoke about how the university had treated her with the media.

“I’m being judged by race, maybe gender,” McElroy told the Texas Tribune. “I don’t think other folks would face the same bars or challenges.”

(Editor’s note: McElroy sits on the parent board of the Texas Observer. Because of our editorial independence policy, she has no say in our editorial decisions. Alongside this piece, today the Observerpublished a heartfelt essay from McElroy about her journalism journey and the irony of being the subject of media coverage rather than the one behind it. )

Over the summer, with the governor’s support, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 17 (SB 17), which requires institutions of higher education to do away with all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives by 2024. Already, the University of Houston has shut down its Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as well as disbanding its LGBTQ+ Resource Center (under pressure, however, it appeared to backtrack, but it is only a matter of time before the offices are officially closed). Public universities across the state have formed committees to implement the law and seek input from the academic community. It’s clear, however, that days are numbered for all the offices and programs that help students from different backgrounds.

While the ostensible goal of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts is to prioritize merit over race in higher education—and get rid of all the “divisive” diversity stuff that liberal academics champion—the real intent is to put radical, uppity queers, minorities, and liberals in their place. A key part of the plan is to strip liberal academics of the protections that allow them to pursue research and speak publicly without fear of reprisal; this past session, right-wing legislators tried to get rid of tenure but settled on more modest restrictions. The Senate also passed a ban on “critical race theory,” an academic theory that posits racism is embedded in society, but the House failed to pass the measure….

Anti-DEI hysteria will lead to a brain drain at Texas’ public universities. Academics at most institutions enjoy the freedom to conduct scholarship without interference. To ensure they can pursue ideas that may be unpopular to the public and pursue knowledge for its own sake, they are granted protection after demonstrating excellence in their field. The best scholars don’t want to work in a place where they have to worry that criticizing wingnut politicians will get them put on leave—as A&M did when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick complained to administrators about criticism levied against him by opioid expert Joy Alonzo—and the best students from around the country will choose institutions that value academic freedom, openness, and inclusion rather than those under siege by the radical right.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Disruption, Extremism, Higher Education, Republicans

Trump the Con Man: A True Story

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2023 //
16

The latest blow to Trump’s reputation came in a court in New York, when the judge ruled that Trump fraudulently overvalued his properties in order to get bank loans. Of course, his base won’t care.

I have a personal story that supports the judgement. Last fall, I drove with my partner to Saratoga Springs, New York, to visit a kayak maker. As we were driving up the Taconic State Parkway, we passed a sign that said “Donald J. Trump State Park.” I had never heard of such a park, so I googled and found a Wikipedia entry that explained.

Trump purchased the property in 1998 with plans to build a $10 million private golf course. Totalling $2.5 million, it was purchased in two sections: Indian Hill for $1.75 million and French Hill for $750,000.[1]The land contained significant wetlands and development faced strict environmental restrictions and permitting requirements.[2]He donated it in 2006[3][4] after he was unable to gain town approvals to develop the property.[2] At that time Trump claimed the parcel was worth $100 million.[1] He used the donation as a tax write-off.[5] The donation was praised by governor George Pataki. Trump said, “I hope that these 436 acres of property will turn into one of the most beautiful parks anywhere in the world.”[1]

The park is now abandoned. Trump paid $2.5 million for the land, which was not suitable for development. He claimed the land was worth $100 million and used that amount to reduce his taxes. Nice increase in value on land that that could not be developed.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Fraud, Trump

Joshua Benton: What You Never Knew about Elon Musk’s Grandfather

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2023 //
20

Joshua Benton wrote about Elon Musk’s grandfather in The Atlantic. Benton spent more time researching him than did Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson. It’s not a pretty picture but it might provide insight into Musk’s worldview. I hope not.

Benton wrote:

In Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, a mere page and a half is devoted to introducing Musk’s grandfather, a Canadian chiropractor named Joshua N. Haldeman. Isaacson describes him as a source of Musk’s great affection for danger—“a daredevil adventurer with strongly held opinions” and “quirky conservative populist views” who did rope tricks at rodeos and rode freight trains like a hobo. “He knew that real adventures involve risk,” Isaacson quotes Musk as having said. “Risk energized him.”

But in 1950, Haldeman’s “quirky” politics led him to make an unusual and dramatic choice: to leave Canada for South Africa. Haldeman had built a comfortable life for himself in Regina, Saskatchewan’s capital. His chiropractic practice was one of Canada’s largest and allowed him to possess his own airplane and a 20-room home he shared with his wife and four young children. He’d been active in politics, running for both the provincial and national parliaments and even becoming the national chairman of a minor political party. Meanwhile, he’d never even been to South Africa.

What would make a man undertake such a radical change? Isaacson writes that Haldeman had come “to believe that the Canadian government was usurping too much control over the lives of individuals and that the country had gone soft.” One of Haldeman’s sons has written that it may have simply been “his adventurous spirit and the desire for a more pleasant climate in which to raise his family.” But another factor was at play: his strong support for the brand-new apartheid regime.

An examination of Joshua Haldeman’s writings reveals a radical conspiracy theorist who expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and antidemocratic views repeatedly, and over the course of decades—a record I studied across hundreds of documents from the time, including newspaper clips, self-published manuscripts, university archives, and private correspondence. Haldeman believed that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead “White Christian Civilization” in its fight against the “International Conspiracy” of Jewish bankers and the “hordes of Coloured people” they controlled.

Benton writes that Haldeman wrote a self-published book, and there is only one copy in all of North America, at Michigan State University. Benton traveled there to read it. It’s title:

The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and the Menace to South Africa.

In this book, Haldeman expressed his hope that South Africa would become “the leader of White Christian Civilization as she is becoming more and more the focal point, the bulwark, and the subject of attack by anti-Christian, anti-White forces throughout the world.”

He was, quite simply, a vociferous racist and anti-Semite. Isaacson’s father was Jewish. It’s surprising that he paid so little attention to Musj’s lineage.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Racism
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