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NPE Releases Bombshell Report on Latest CREDO Study!

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2023 //
117

The Network for Public Educatuon just released a careful analysis of the latest CREDO study, which claimed that charter schools get better results than public schools.

Not so fast, writes Carol Burris, executive director of NPE. Burris reviewed the data and methodology and found multiple problems with both. The statistical differences between the two sectors, she saw, were the same in 2023 as in CREDO’s first charter study in 2013, which were then described as insignificant.

Even more troubling, CREDO’s work is funded by pro-charter billionaires. How is this different from a study of nicotine safety funded by the tobacco industry? And yet mainstream media accepted the CREDO report without questioning its data, its methodology, or its funders.

Billionaires behind the bias: Unmasking CREDO’s agenda

The Network for Public Education released a response to CREDO’s third national report, revealing the true agenda of a research arm of the conservative Hoover Institution. In its report, CREDO uses cherry-picked charter management chains and flawed methodology that embellishes results and discredits public schools and “mom and pop” charter schools.

NEW YORK, NY — Today, the Network for Public Education released ‘In Fact or Fallacy? An In-Depth Critique of the CREDO 2023 National Report a well-researched response that traces the funders and the bias in CREDO’s data, reporting methods, and conclusions.

CREDO’s report is meant to compare test score growth in math and reading for students in charter versus public schools. But once the curtain is pulled back, the conclusions are dangerously misleading to the public as well as policymakers who depend on accurate research to make informed education-related decisions and policies.

Carol Burris, Executive Director of NPE and the report’s author, says: “CREDO is not a neutral academic institution. They are an education research arm of the pro-charter Hoover Institution, and it’s time they are treated as such. We call on policymakers, the general public, and parents to disregard the results of CREDO studies that take tiny results and blow them up using CREDO-invented “Days of Learning.” Their studies are becoming nothing more than propaganda for the charter industry.”

CREDO’s latest report identifies two nonprofits as underwriters of the latest study – The City Fund and The Walton Family – which gave CREDO nearly $3 million during the years of the study. The City Fund is bankrolled by pro-charter billionaires, including John Arnold, Reed Hastings, and Bill Gates. They have a well-established history of supporting the expansion of charter schools and funding agendas to break up school districts and turn them into a patchwork of “portfolio districts.” The goal of the City Fund is to transform 30-50% of city public schools into charter schools.

CREDO also masks its connections to the conservative think tank the Hoover Institution, but the CREDO report authors’ current biographies and resumes link the organizations. CREDO’s Director and the report’s first author is the Education Program Director for Hoover.

NPE says it is time for state agencies to end their research relationship with CREDO and offer detailed student data to credible and independent research organizations instead.

The NPE report takes an honest look at CREDO’s report with the following key sections:

  • A history of CREDO and its connection to the Hoover Institution.
  • Scholarly critiques of CREDO methodology.
  • Trivial differences exaggerated by the CREDO-created construct, ‘Days of Learning’
  • Bias in the “Virtual Twin” methodology.
  • Serious errors in the identification of schools run by Charter Management Organizations.

According to Diane Ravitch, the President of the Network for Public Education, “CREDO and the billionaires who fund them are trying to discredit public schools to persuade the public that public schools are inferior to privately-managed schools. How is this different from the tobacco industry funding research on cigarette safety?”

“It is clear the CREDO reports are now part of a long-game strategy to undermine, weaken, and defund public education. Why does CREDO consider differences that favor public schools in their first report as “meaningless” and “small” but characterize nearly identical differences favoring charters in its third report to be “remarkable”? Same outcomes. Different characterizations,” Ravitch said.

In light of our findings, The Network for Public Education asks CREDO the following question:

Does CREDO represent the interest of its funders and the pro-school choice Hoover Institution or the interests of the public, who deserve an unbiased look at real outcomes for our nation’s charter and public school students?

“Unless CREDO is held accountable, its reports will continue to move from “in fact” to misleading fallacies. And that does a disservice to the charter and public school sectors alike,” concludes the NPE report. 

The Network for Public Education is a national advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen public schools for current and future generations of students.

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Categories Accountability, Bias, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Data, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Research, Walton Foundation

ProPublica: Justice Alito accepted Luxury Fishing Trip from Billionaire with Cases Before Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
21

ProPublica broke a story today about Justice Samuel Alito’s breach of ethics. Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has no ethics code. Ethics codes are for the little people, to paraphrase businesswoman Leona Helmsley, who once said that “taxes are for the little people.”

Writers at ProPublica emailed questions to Justice Alito on Friday. Instead of answering, Justice Alito took the unusual step of responding in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, which took the unusual step of publishing it.

The ProPublica article begins:

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justicesto disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.

Justices are almost entirely left to police themselves on ethical issues, with few restrictions on what gifts they can accept. When a potential conflict arises, the sole arbiter of whether a justice should step away from a case is the justice him or herself.

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.

ProPublica’s examination of Alito’s and Scalia’s travel drew on trip planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with dozens of people including private jet pilots, fishing guides, former high-level employees of both Singer and the lodge owner, and other guests on the trips.

ProPublica sent Alito a list of detailed questions last week, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s head spokeswoman told ProPublica that Alito would not be commenting. Several hours later, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Alitoresponding to ProPublica’s questions about the trip.

Alito said that when Singer’s companies came before the court, the justice was unaware of the billionaire’s connection to the cases. He said he recalled speaking to Singer on “no more than a handful of occasions,” and they never discussed Singer’s business or issues before the court.

Alito said that he was invited to fly on Singer’s plane shortly before the trip and that the seat “would have otherwise been vacant.” He defended his failure to report the trip to the public, writing that justices “commonly interpreted” the disclosure requirements to not include “accommodations and transportation for social events.”

Categories Accountability, Bias, Billionaires, Cheating, Democracy, Ethics, Justice

Paul Bonner: The Magic Bullet in Education Is Not What You Think

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2023 //
41

Paul Bonner, retired career educator, debunks the “science of reading” prattle;

Then the New York Times published this…https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/us/science-of-reading-literacy-parents.html

Ignorance about the circumstances that hinder student learning is pervasive among the national media. They report again and again on failed “one size fits all” remedies without understanding that these fail because they do not address the root cause of public school challenges: Poverty.

Advocacy for “The science of reading”, Lucy Caulkins, or whole language all miss the point. Until we are willing to change the instructional delivery system that allows for K-12 class sizes of 20-30+ students per class, a teaching professional day that does not allow meaningful classroom preparation except beyond the school day, equal high quality resources and facilities for all students, and an understanding that this hyper focus on reading fluency actually demonstrates low expectations for our students.

Perhaps the greatest inaccuracy on the NYTimes report is that somehow schools have not been engaged in this “Science of reading” rabbit hole.

The two large districts I served in were all in with massive resources given to administrative and teacher professional development for the purpose of institutionalizing the practice. Yet, scores never moved despite efforts to show improvement through numerous changes in the standardized tests being implemented.

The confirmation bias so prevalent in this ongoing reporting has been troubling since the Clinton Administration introduced the “Standards Movement.” Any challenges to such bias continue to be ignored and often attacked.

The fact that Emily Hanford, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Margaret Spellings continue to act as “go to” interviews when their profession experience as practicing educators is woeful at best, demonstrates the little regard reporters have for the professionalism required to teach and administer instructional outcomes.

It is in fact these arbiters of “data” who use anecdotal reporting to misinform politicians and institutions such as the NAACP to continue this malpractice.

Perhaps the one method we have been reticent to use should be to support teaching, adequately resource school facilities everywhere, and get the hell out of the way for the educators who actually know their craft.

Categories Bias, Class size, Education Reform, Equity, Failure, Funding, Ignorance, Literacy, Research, Teachers

FOX vs. DeSantis on Libel Law

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2023 //
19

FOX “news” is battling a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which claims it suffered damage to its reputation and to the lives and safety of its employees because FOX repeatedly aired conspiracy theories about the election. These theories, repeated numerous times on FOX, asserted that the Dominion Voting machines were programmed to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Some who were interviewed numerous times on air by leading talk-show hosts claimed that Dominion machines originated in Venezuela, when left-wing tyrant Hugo Chavez was president.

Depositions of the talk-show hosts and of Rupert Murdoch showed that none of them believed that Trump won the election, yet they continued to feature election deniers. The talk-show hosts laughed at the claims of the election deniers, yet interviewed them repeatedly.

FOX’s defense is that it was reporting the news. Any judgment against FOX, its lawyers say, would restrict freedom of the press. Read the debate here on NPR.

FOX’s lawyers rely on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1964, New York Times v. Sullivan. The Times won the case, and the high court made it very difficult to sue a media outlet for defamation or libel.

As a result of that decision, the media and individuals can ridicule public officials without fear of being sued for libel or defamation.

Now, here is the irony: Conservatives don’t like the Sullivan decision. Trump railed against it. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch think it should be “reviewed,” presumably the way they reviewed Roe v. Wade.

Ron DeSantis has initiated legislation that would lower the bar for libel suits against public officials. He wants to be able to sue reporters and newspapers that criticize him.

If DeSantis had his way, FOX would undoubtedly lose its case. FOX now defends its lies by appealing to Sullivan. If DeSantis had his way, Dominion would win, and FOX would lose.

Haha.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Lies, Media

An Invitation to Learn About Ethnic-Racial Political Struggles in Texas

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2023 //
13

I received the following notice from Dr. Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas. She has written extensively about diversity, exclusion, inclusion, equity, and history. Her original letter was sent to executives at the American Educational Research Association. She shared it with me, and I am sharing it with you.

As I am sure everybody knows, we are in the throes of a major fight here in Texas over DEI, academic freedom, CRT in higher education, tenure, and so much more and these folks are loaded with hubris—like they can just roll right over us. That’s what DeSantis is demonstrating. So I and others have been working for close to a year now in trying to unite our communities. We are doing this through an organization we’ve named, Black Brown Dialogues on Policy and now, so that we don’t become Florida by uniting as black and brown humanity. Intersectional. Intergenerational. Civil rights, Gen Z inclusive, white allies—and all people of good conscience. This is the Beloved Community, El Pueblo Amado.I just love how it sounds in Spanish.

There’s more that unites than divides us. We’ll have the program up soon, as well, on our website.

Next Saturday, March 11, BBDP is organizing a Virtual Town Hall on DEI and Ethnic Studies and all are welcome to attend:

MEDIA ADVISORY: Black Brown Dialogues on Policy hosts Virtual Town Hall—Sat. March 11, 2023 from 10:00 AM—4:30PM CST

We get going at 10AM CST and you can view it and post questions from our Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/TeamBlackBrown

We hope to have the Virtual Town Hall program up on our website soon.

AERA luminaries Drs. Francesca Lopez, Christine Sleeter, Kevin Kumashiro and Stella Flores are part of the program. Texas legislators and two Gen Z panels, too.

Media industry professionals are producing it and we are using this Virtual Town Hall as an informational opportunity and organizing tool through which to, on the one hand, pass Ethnic Studies legislation (HB 45), and on the other, defeat terrible bills like those listed below.

HB 45 is about Ethnic Studies. It doesn’t make ES a requirement. Rather, it creates a pathway to a high school diploma through the taking of either Mexican American or African American Studies, courses that are currently electives in state policy at the high school level. Native American Studies and Asian American Studies were “passed,” along with the other two courses in 2018. I and so many others were involved in its passage. And the SBOE has waited for a more conservative board to get in to decide whether and when to align Native American Studies and Asian American Studies to state standards. They’re foot dragging. What we need is a law, or HB 45.

Check out these horrible bills.

The specific bills represent an attack on DEI in higher education: House Bill 1006, House Bill 1607, and House Bill 1046. I heard there was one more, too. We can’t keep up. But these are sufficiently draconian to be concerned.

House Bill 1006 seeks to “prohibit: (A) the funding, promotion, sponsorship, or support of: (i) any office of diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (ii) any office that funds, promotes, sponsors, or supports an initiative or formulation of diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond what is necessary to uphold the equal protection of the lawsunder the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

House Bill 1607 is the higher education analogue to Senate Bill 3 last legislative session that some have dubbed the “Texas anti-CRT” bill, House Bill 1006.

HB 1046 seeks to prohibit what they’re calling “political tests” in higher education utilized in hiring decisions or in student admissions as a condition of employment, promotion, or admission, to identify a commitment to or make a statement of personal belief supporting any specific partisan, political, or ideological set of beliefs, including an ideology or movement that promotes the differential treatment of any individual or group based on race or ethnicity.

It will really make a difference if folks from all over the country attend to convey solidarity with our cause. Public statements, letters to Governor Greg Abbott and the Lt. Governor Dan Patrick in defense of Ethnic Studies, CRT, and DEI are also much appreciated.

I’m sure I missed some folks, so apologies if I left you out. We have a lot on our plates at the moment.

Hasta pronto! Buenas noches. May all have a blessed week.

Peace / paz,

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Co-founder and convener

Black Brown Dialogues on Policy

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Courage, Creativity, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Extremism, Ignorance, Injustice, Texas

George F. Will: Is FOX News Entertainment or Journalism?

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2023 //
14

No major media outlet did more to spread the lie that Trump won the 2020 election than FOX NEWS. It gave a platform to election deniers, including those who baselessly claimed that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the vote to favor Biden. Dominion is suing FOX and some of the leading exponents of this view. The case will be heard in April.

We now know, after publication of the depositions, that no one at FOX believed Trump’s lies. They agreed to spread them to protect their ratings. We will be watching to see if FOX is held accountable for allowing liars to undermine our democracy.

George Will wrote about the case. He does not defend FOX.

Five days after the 2020 presidential election, Sidney Powell, the fabulist lawyer, appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show to say there has been “a massive and coordinated” effort to “delegitimize and destroy” Trump votes and “manufacture” Biden votes. Bartiromo asked her to elaborate. Powell obliged, talking about Dominion voting machines “flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.”


Four days later, Rudy Giuliani said on Fox Business’s Lou Dobbs program that the Dominion company’s owner was created “to fix elections” — to perform election fraud with sinister software. Dobbs: “It’s stunning.” And: “Rudy, we’re glad you’re on the case.”

On Dec. 10, 2020, Powell said on Dobbs’s program that a “controller module” in Dominion machines allows people to “manipulate the vote,” enabling “Dominion executives” to “sell elections to the highest bidder.” Dobbs lamented this “broadly coordinated effort” to defeat Trump.On Jan. 26, 2021, Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman and substantial advertiser on Fox News, said on Tucker Carlson’s program: “I have the evidence … I dare Dominion to sue me because then it will get out faster … they don’t want to talk about it.” Carlson: “No they don’t.”

Yes, they do. Come April, in the Superior Court of Delaware, the Dominion voting machine company will argue that it has suffered substantial injuries (it is seeking $1.6 billion in damages) because of defamatory statements about the 2020 presidential election that were made, repeatedly, on Fox News.

That the statements were false was obvious. That they were lies — known to be false by those who made them — cannot be reasonably doubted.

Among the difficult questions, however, are: What did Fox News know and when did it know it? (The Wall Street Journal, which like Fox News ultimately answers to Rupert Murdoch, was dismissive of the election fraud claims.) How did Fox News on-air personnel behave when the lies were spoken on the air? Did behavior by people purporting to be journalists constitute complicity in the lying?Dominion’s 139-page complaint alleges numerous examples, such as those above, of Fox News broadcasters being credulous when eliciting preposterous allegations from Donald Trump’s most unhinged devotees. The complaint says Fox “made,” “published,” “ratified,” “endorsed,” “adopted,” “amplified,” “promoted” and gave “a platform to” the lies. But those eight activities have different implications in litigation about defamatory journalism.

Dominion’s complaint argues that Fox News “gave life to” an election fraud story casting Dominion as “the villain.” Trump, enraged by Fox declaring Joe Biden the winner of Arizona and the presidency, successfully urged viewers to abandon Fox. To “lure viewers back” Fox News “endorsed, repeated, and broadcast” many “verifiably false yet devastating lies” about Dominion machines using “software and algorithms” to produce or erase votes, thereby assuring Biden’s victory. “Fox,” Dominion argues, “gave these fictions a prominence they otherwise would never have achieved.” It did this “because the lies were good for Fox’s business.”

Fox could argue, plausibly if uncomfortably, that some of its performers are entertainers lacking aptitudes, motives or incentives for making journalistic judgments about meretricious statements uttered on their programs. And that what might look like “reckless disregard” for the truth (a component of defamation) was merely indifference to it.

Was Fox malicious? Actual malice involves “knowledge that [a statement] was false” or “reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Fox could argue that its focus on Dominion was just show business — that Fox News performers were not preoccupied with accuracy. So, slovenly interviewing by Fox hosts pandering to fickle viewers could be presented as a defense against liability for defamation.

Dominion’s complaint alleges that repeated Fox appearances by Powell and Giuliani “gave Fox’s stamp of approval” to lies about Dominion. But the more Fox fanned the flames, the more it could say it was merely giving a platform to newsworthy arsonists.

In his essay “When Are Lies Constitutionally Protected?” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh says the Supreme Court has upheld punishment for, inter alia, lies constituting defamation, libel, perjury, false statements to government investigators and fraudulent charitable fundraising. Dominion must establish legally cognizable harm from lies not merely reported by, but aggressively disseminated by, a media entity that prospered by encouraging the liars.

That some Fox News personalities (Jeanine Pirro: “Sidney Powell, good luck on your mission”) behaved abominably is indisputable, as is the fact that Dominion was severely injured. The Delaware court’s challenge will be to deliver justice for Dominion without having a chilling effect on journalism. Not that this profession was clearly involved in Fox’s role in the nation’s post-election embarrassment.

In his deposition for the lawsuit, FOX entertainer Sean Hannity allegedly testified that he never believed “for a second” that Trump won, even though he hosted numerous guests who said he did. Rupert Mt Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, and other FOX on-air personalities admitted that they peddled lies.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Media

College Board Pushes Back Against Florida Narrative

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2023 //
6

Writing in the Tampa Bay Times, journalist Jeff Solochek reports that the College Board released a letter last night denouncing the Florida State Department of Education. The College Board says it was naive in trusting the latter agency, which wanted to score political points.

Taken aback by Florida’s attacks against its new AP African American studies course, the College Board late Saturday denounced the state Department of Education, saying it used the course to advance a politically motivated agenda.

The organization’s letter, published at 8 p.m. Saturday, came just two days after it released another statement that did not take such a harsh tone as it pushed back against the department’s claims that portions of the course are “historically fictional.”

“There continue to be conversations and misinformation, and we felt the urgency to set the record straight and not wait another day to do so,” a College Board spokesperson said. The College Board publishes AP courses and exams.

In its latest unsigned statement, the College Board said it is proud of its “historic” course, which has been crafted by renowned scholars. It acknowledged it made mistakes during the rollout and accused Florida of exploiting the situation.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has criticized the course and said Florida would not accept it without revisions. DeSantis has been using attacks against the way race is taught in schools, calling it “woke,” in many speeches amid wide speculation that he will use the issue as part of a presidential campaign.

Neither the governor’s office nor the Department of Education could be reached for comments late Saturday on the College Board’s statement.

Related: Florida claims about AP African American studies are false, College Board says

The College Board stated in its latest letter that it regrets not having denounced the Florida Department of Education’s “slander” that the course “lacks educational value.” The failure to speak up “betrayed Black scholars everywhere,” College Board wrote.

It said it also should have made more clear that the course outline did not include all the scholarly articles, lectures and other materials that will be part of the course. That led to the idea that some important thinkers were eliminated, it said — something Florida officials claimed credit for.

“The vitriol aimed at these scholars is repulsive and must stop,” the group wrote.

College Board made other defenses of the materials and the course preparation. Then it turned its sights on Florida’s interaction with the course.

It called the Department of Education’s claims that it had been in frequent dialogue with College Board over the course content “a false and politically motivated charge.”

Florida officials have claimed credit for changes made to the course outline.

“We had no negotiations about the content of this course with Florida or any other state, nor did we receive any requests, suggestions or feedback,” College Board wrote.

It said the organization was “naive” not to publicize Florida’s course rejection when it first came in September. It said the letter misspelled the word “African” and contained no explanation of the rejection.

The article continues with more detail. What it does not explain is why every objection raised by Florida was met by either a deletion of the name or topic, or a shift from “included” to optional.

Did the College Board cave to Florida or reject Florida’s demands? You decide.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bias, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, History, Race, Racism

Oklahoma: State Superintendent Fires Attorney Who Supported Trans Students

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2023 //
9

Nuria Martinez-Keel wrote in The Oklahoman about the ouster of a state attorney who defied the state superintendent by supporting transgender people, whose numbers in the state must be minuscule. Since Republicans have decided that transgender people are a threat to national security, Lori Murphy had to go.

An attorney known for her support of transgender people and objections to the state’s rulemaking on classroom race and gender discussions was fired last week from the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Assistant general counsel Lori Murphy worked at the agency for eight and a half years.

The Education Department terminated her employment “effective immediately” on Thursday, according to a letter to Murphy from the agency’s human resources office.

The letter did not cite a cause for her firing.

“I no longer speak for the agency (that’s what it means when you fire your lawyer), and I can’t speak to the reasoning for my termination,” Murphy wrote in a statement. “It was my honor to work my ass off on behalf of the students of Oklahoma from 2014 through January 26, 2023, a task I shared with hundreds of (Education Department) colleagues and thousands of school staff members across the state.”

New state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters is in the midst of orienting the Education Department toward his goals, one of which he said is ridding the agency and public schools of “liberal indoctrination.”

The department declined to explain the rationale for firing Murphy.

“The agency does not comment on the HR process or on personnel decisions,” spokesperson Matt Langston told The Oklahoman on Monday.

Four days after swearing in as state superintendent, Walters exempted Murphy’s position from a section of Oklahoma law that would have otherwise allowed her to file a complaint over termination, according to a human resources letter sent to Murphy on Jan. 13, which The Oklahoman also obtained.

Heads of state agencies are allowed to do so for no more than 5% of their employees.

“Just as public education serves everyone, public education builds from the truth that everyone can learn and grow when provided with the educational services and supports they need,” Murphy wrote in her statement. “From our 4-year-olds entering Oklahoma’s nationally recognized public preschool programs for the first time, to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.”

For more than two years, Murphy has worn masks that read “Trans Ally” or “Black Lives Matter” while attending monthly meetings of the Oklahoma State Board of Education. She wore a “Trans Ally” mask again at a state board meeting on Thursday.

Walters was a champion of legislation regulating transgender students’ use of school bathrooms by birth sex rather than by gender identity.

As the state Board of Education deliberated how to give teeth to House Bill 1775, Murphy objected to the board members’ handling of the process. She resigned from her role overseeing administrative rulemaking for the board, though she continued as an assistant general counsel for the state agency.

The state board ultimately approved rules that allowed it to demote a school district’s accreditation and suspend or revoke an educator’s certification over violations of HB 1775, a 2021 law that bans schools from teaching certain race and gender concepts, such as a person should feel guilt on account of their race or sex.

Although Murphy suggested rules that mostly restated the text of the law, the board opted for a rulemaking process she said operated “far outside the reach of previous emergency rule actions” and wrongly excluded public comment, according to internal emails The Oklahoman obtained at the time.

“Quite literally, I cannot sign my name to this action,” Murphy wrote to the board.

Although it did not collect public comment before approval of the temporary rules, the Education Department did so before the agency regulations became permanent.

Recently, Walters said he instructed his staff to investigate two teachers he accused of indoctrinating students. Both teachers have spoken against HB 1775.

Walters was referring to Tulsa Public Schools teacher Tyler Wrynn and former Norman High School teacher Summer Boismier. He has called for both of their teaching certificates to be revoked.

“I, as the state superintendent and the Department of Education, will do everything within our power to not allow our kids to be indoctrinated by far-left radicals and to hold those accountable who have done so,” Walters said in a video posted to social media.

Wrynn was captured in an edited video identifying himself as an anarchist who wants to “burn down the whole system,” beliefs he said he had to hide because of HB 1775.

Boismier made national news when she posted a QR code link in her classroom to the Brooklyn Public Library’s collection of banned books. She resigned from Norman Public Schools in opposition to HB 1775 and has since moved to New York to accept a position with the Brooklyn library.

“I feel like I cannot do my job and follow that law at the same time,” Boismier said in an August interview with The Oklahoman. “It puts teachers in an impossible position. It forces educators to commit educational malpractice in order to keep our jobs.”

 

Reporter Nuria Martinez-Keel covers K-12 and higher education throughout the state of Oklahoma.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bias, Censorship, Cruelty, Oklahoma

Charlie Sykes: The Nazis Are Back on Twitter

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2023 //
16

Charlie Sykes used to be a conservative Republican. Then Trump became President, and Sykes became a Never Trumper (maybe before the election, I’m not sure). Charlie and other Never Trumpers and their friends created a website called The Bulwark. It is consistently interesting. Charlie wrote the following post.

He wrote:

When Twitter banned neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes back in December 2021, the site’s Head of Safety and Integrity, Yoel Roth said, “Hateful conduct has no place here.”

But Roth is gone, Elon Musk is in charge, and the Nazis are back.

Fuentes, last seen here as Donald Trump’s dinner guest, was reinstated just hours after another actual Nazi, Andrew Anglin— who once described his approach as “Non-ironic Nazism masquerading as ironic Nazism” — asked Musk to bring his friend back on Twitter.

Anglin tweeted Musk that the Holocaust-denying, Jew-baiting Fuentes is “a very nice person and I can vouch that he’ll never say anything mean.”

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrathThe reinstatement of the Twitter account of Nick Fuentes came hours after Andrew Anglin—editor of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer—publicly asked Elon Musk to let Fuentes back on Twitter: 2:51 PM ∙ Jan 24, 202393Likes66Retweets

Musk, apparently took him at his word, and Fuentes made his triumphant return, with his usual restraint, dignity, and class.

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**

Who is this new Musk-whisperer?

Back in 2017, The Atlantic profiled Anglin: “The Making of An American Nazi.”

Anglin is an ideological descendant of men such as George Lincoln Rockwell, who created the American Nazi Party in the late 1950s, and William Luther Pierce, who founded the National Alliance, a powerful white-nationalist group, in the 1970s. Anglin admires these predecessors, who saw themselves as revolutionaries at the vanguard of a movement to take back the country. He dreams of a violent insurrection.

But where Rockwell and Pierce relied on pamphlets, the radio, newsletters, and in-person organizing to advance their aims, Anglin has the internet. His reach is exponentially greater, his ability to connect with like-minded young men unprecedented.

Since then, Anglin has tried to rebrand himself as just a garden-variety American Nationalist, but this is mostly eye-wash for clueless billionaires. Notes the Anti-Defamation League:

In an effort to validate their leap from neo-Nazis to flag-waving American patriots, he and his followers equate American nationalism to white nationalism by claiming America was founded on anti-Semitic and racist principles.

**

Anglin is also one of the most vicious trolls on the far-right. I wrote about him in my book, “How the Right Lost Its Mind,” describing the explosion of harassment aimed at Jewish critics of Donald Trump at the time.

Many of the worst instances of harassment were connected to a website known as the Daily Stormer and its founder, a neo-Nazi activist named Andrew Anglin.

I first became aware of the site when I received, via email, a photoshopped image of my picture inside a gas chamber. A smiling Donald Trump wearing a German military uniform is poised to press the red “gas” button. The photoshopping tool had been created by the website and was widely used to troll both Jewish and non-Jewish critics of the Trump campaign.

The site takes its name from the German Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer,which was notorious for the viciousness of its anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews. After World War II, Der Stürmer’s publisher, Julius Streicher, was executed for crimes against humanity.

Anglin created the site in 2013 as an updated version of his previous website, which he called Total Fascism. As of this writing, the new website features pictures of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump and the slogan “Daily Stormer— The World’s Most Goal-Oriented Republican Website.”

It is important to emphasize again that the Alt Right is a mansion with many rooms and some very real divisions. Anglin, for example, is not a fan of Milo Yiannopoulos, who is depicted on the Daily Stormer with a cartoon of the Jewish nose superimposed on his face and is referred to as “Filthy Rat Kike Milo.”

But Anglin is also interested in emphasizing the common ground among the various disparate groups and interests that make up the white nationalist movement. In his own guide to the Alt Right, Anglin notes that the movement included various factions, but that they had all been led “toward this center-point where we have all met. The campaign of Donald Trump is effectively the nexus of that centerpoint.”

Impressed by Trump’s rhetoric on illegal immigrants, Anglin endorsed Trump in 2015 and urged the readers of the Daily Stormer to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.”

After Trump called for barring Muslims from the country, the site declared: “Heil Donald Trump— The Ultimate Savior.” But Anglin’s greatest accomplishment was the creation of what he calls his “Troll Army,” which he uses to attack political opponents, deployed to great effect in early 2016.

After GQ magazine published a profile of Melania Trump by writer Julia Ioffe, the future First Lady took to Facebook to denounce the piece as “yet another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting.” Anglin quickly mobilized his Troll Army, posting an article headlined: “Empress Melania Attacked by Filthy Russian Kike Julia Ioffe in GQ!”

The post featured a picture of Ioffe wearing a Nazi-era yellow star with the word “Jude” and a call to action from Anglin:

“Please go ahead and send her a tweet and let her know what you think of her dirty kike trickery. Make sure to identify her as a Jew working against White interests, or send her the picture with the Jude star from the top of this article.”

The result was a torrent of abuse, including death threats against the journalist.

On Twitter, she was sent pictures of Jews being shot in the head and pictures of her wearing concentration camp stripes. When she answered her phone, a caller began playing a recording of a speech by Adolf Hitler.

“The irony of this is that today,” Ioffe told the British newspaper the Guardian, “I was reminded that 26 years ago today my family came to the US from Russia. We left Russia because we were fleeing antisemitism. It’s been a rude shock for everyone.”

The response from the GOP nominee was also troubling. When Trump was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the anti-Semitic attacks and death threats, the future president pointedly refused to condemn them, pleading ignorance and saying, “I don’t have a message to the fans. A woman wrote an article that was inaccurate.”

Trump’s refusal to denounce the Troll Army was greeted with delight by Anglin, who immediately posted: “Glorious Leader Donald Trump Refuses to Denounce Stormer Troll Army.” He exulted:

“Asked by the disgusting and evil Jewish parasite Wolf Blitzer to denounce the Stormer Troll Army, The Glorious Leader declined. The Jew Wolf was attempting to Stump the Trump, bringing up Stormer attacks on Jew terrorist Julia Ioffe. Trump responded to the request with “I have no message to the fans” which might as well have been “Hail Victory, Comrades!””

**

Fast-forward to 2023:

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Categories Accountability, Bias, Bigotry, Billionaires, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Media, Trump

The Phony “Culture Wars” Are Hurting Students, Teachers, and Schools

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2023 //
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Far-right extremists concocted a cascading series of so-called culture wars that have no basis in fact or reality. Their purpose is to undermine public trust in teachers and public schools, paving the way for divisive “school choice,” which defunds public schools.

Teachers are intimidated, fearful that they might violate the law by teaching factual history about race and racism. Students are deprived of honesty in their history and social studies classes. Schools are slandered by extremists. Needless divisions are created by the lies propagated by zealots whose goal is to privatize public funding for schools.

First came the furor over “critical race theory,” which is not taught in K-12 schools. CRT is a law school course of study that examines systemic racism. The claim that it permeates K-12 schools was created as a menace threatening the children of America by rightwing ideologue Chris Rufo, who shamelessly smeared the teachers of America as purveyors of race hatred that humiliated white children. Rufo made clear in a speech at Hillsdale College that the only path forward was school choice. The entire point of Rufo’s gambit was the destruction of public trust in public schools.

Then came a manufactured brouhaha over transgender students who wanted to use a bathroom aligned with their sexual identity. The number of transgender students is minuscule, probably 1%. And yet again there was a furor that could have easily been resolved with a gender-neutral bathroom. Ron DeSantis made a campaign ad with a female swimmer who complained that she competed against a trans woman. What she didn’t mention was that the trans woman was beaten, as was she, by three other female swimmers.

And then came the nutty claim that teachers were “grooming” students to be gay. Another smear. No evidence whatever. Reading books about gay characters would turn students gay, said the critics; but would reading about elephants make students want to be elephants?

Simultaneously, extremists raised loud alarms about books that introduced students to dangerous ideas about sexuality and racism. If they read books with gay characters, students would turn gay. If they read about racism, they would “hate America.” So school libraries had to be purged; even public libraries had to be purged. One almost expected public book burnings. So much power attributed to books, as if the Internet doesn’t exist, as if kids can’t watch porn of all kinds, as if public television does not regularly run shows about American’s shameful history of racism.

As citizens and parents, we must stand up for truth and sanity. We must defend our schools and teachers against libelous claims. We must oppose those who would ban books.

Of course, parents should meet with their children’s teachers. They should partner with them to help their children. They should ask questions about the curriculum. They should share their concerns. Learning benefits when parents, teachers, students, and communities work together.

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Fraud, Lies, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, School Choice
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