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Peter Greene: What Vouchers Will Do to West Virginia

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2023 //
4

Peter Greene looks into the Koch-funded voucher lobby in West Virginia and finds a fairly accurate portrayal of the dystopian future that lies ahead.

First, he details the background of the leaders of the voucher lobby. All have long-time connections to rightwing causes. Most were hired to push West Virginia’s expansive voucher plan, which passed in 2021.

If ever there was a state that needs a strong public school system, it’s West Virginia. But with big Koch money, the Koch puppets will make that impossible.

Instead of good public schools, West Virginians will have the “freedom” to find a good education on their own!

After identifying the staff and board, Greene writes:

So we’ve got the picture now– Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy (which belongs to the State Policy Network) is a Koch organization.

Cardinal Institute is all for the usual Koch version of liberty. They are pushing a West Virginia Miracle, and the four pillars are “Economic Freedom, Labor Freedom, Education Freedom, and Montani Semper Liberi – a culture of freedom.” They would like to promote “limited government, economic freedom, and personal responsibility.” They’ve got a podcast– “Forgotten America.” And they promise a “new paradigm”–

An “island” of poverty in the wealthiest country the world, West Virginia’s brighter future depends on a new paradigm – a new way of looking at the world with new ideas and a philosophy built on innovation, human flourishing, and a recognition that freedom is the greatest alleviator of poverty the world has ever seen. Ours is a philosophy built on the entrepreneur, the tinkerer in the garage, and the idea that small government means more room for people to create and build their own futures.

It’s a curious pitch in a state that is not exactly known for government overreach. West Virginia is a state with a history of labor struggles and a history of state government that exerts its power mostly to aid guys like Charles Koch. Regular people have always had plenty of room in this state that is renowned for its poverty— worst health, worst education levels, worst employment, and geography that makes it hard for basic infrastructure like roads and water and electricity and internet to reach some citizens. (And at least one community gutted by the departure of its WVU college campus–but hey, they’re free now.) It’s hard to imagine that any of these problems would be solved by less government, but libertarians gotta libertarian.

So what does Ballangee say about Mount Everest?

In his Education Next piece, Ballangee comes close to honesty about the larger goals of his particular arm of the school voucher movement. 

There is a common misconception among education reform advocates that passing universal choice legislation is akin to summiting Mount Everest. Upon universal choice’s enactment into law, it is done. Time to exhale and pop the champagne, for the mountain has been scaled.

In other words, voucher laws are not the end game. Simply making a voucher program available is not enough.

Next, the program has to be pushed and promoted. There will be a urge, then a steady growth “as families become aware of the program and hear from neighbors, fellow church attendees, and other connections about their new options” (just in case you had doubts about voucher ties to religion). Nut awareness must be built and PR must be provided to popularize the program.

Failure for an education choice program does not often come in the form of mistakes, fraud, or incompetence. More frequently, the problems are apathy and ignorance.

I don’t know. There’s an awful lot of fraud and incompetence in the school choice world. Nor am I sure how the lack of interest in a choice program is not the same thing as a lack of market demand. But of course modern marketing means creating a demand for your product. So, Ballangee asserts, somebody will need to work on that.

Someone will also need to build/attract a supply of educational “providers.” “Help private schools sign up,” he says, skipping over the question of why a successful private school would want to sign up. Somebody has to reach out to edupreneurs and get them signed up, too. Basically, be an education broker.

Now that choicers need to spend less time lobbying legislators, “the nexus of a successful program [he means a privatizing program, not an educational program] will shift somewhat from legislative considerations, lobbying, and bill design towards family outreach and relationship cultivation, specific government agency relationships, and broad marketing campaigns.”

Also, you’ll have to prepare for those “legions of entities” looking to “besmirch” the program (public education establishment, unions, union-friendly media). 

And this–

You have to figure out how – not if – to help the families about to embark on this journey for the first time…

You must figure out how to manage each “case” not only for the sake of the family and child but also for the overall health of the program.

There will be grandparents who have never used a computer now asked to upload a birth certificate on their grandchild’s behalf. There will be parents with limited education who know only one thing when it comes to navigating this fresh bureaucratic concoction: “my child needs something different.” Be sympathetic, but, more importantly, develop competence.

Learn the law and accompanying statutes backwards and forwards or find someone who does. You must have a path or contact for families to use. “I don’t know the answer, but I know someone who might” will become one of the most useful phrases in your reform handbook.

In short, Ballengee is outlining all the new business opportunities available on the mountaintop voucher peak. The only one he left out was the booming business in K-12 education loans for all those parents for whom state’s voucher won’t cover the cost of their education provider. Not only will government stop providing public education, but there are many opportunities to make a buck or ten in the newly free and unregulated marketplace of education stuff.

The Koch mountaintop

Because here’s what “freedom” means on Koch mountain– you are free to try to get to the top if you can, and I am free to ignore any of your problems (unless you pay me to help you), because the dream remains a world in which I have no responsibility to my fellow travelers on the earth (and certainly don’t have to pay taxes to provide services for Those People). 

Ballangee isn’t going to have any discussion of how well vouchers work as far as education goes (hint: not very well). But that’s okay, because, as he says, “education choice is good and a moral necessity.” I’m of the opinion that guaranteeing each child a decent education is the moral necessity, and, as always, I question the assumption that “education choice” must somehow involve the free market, one of the great unexamined assumptions of the modern choicer movement. Are choice and freedom important values in life? Damn right they are–which is why we as a society bear a responsibility for getting every child an education that will help them freely access more choices.

In the end, Ballengee’s mountain is one that Ayn Rand would probably approve of.

Though the last few steps up the mountain are the steepest and most difficult, they are also closest to what we are looking for when we embark on our journey: helping children find their own path to their own personal summit.

In other words, I’ve got my summit, Jack. Go find your own. 

“Helping” I suppose could mean choice advocates just helping out of the goodness of their hearts (though their hearts, bless them, don’t know much about actual education). But I suspect that help will be provided, for a price (or a cut of your voucher), to those who can find it and access it while navigating a sprawling unregulated complicated marketplace. It’s funny, because another thing we could do is collect all the experts in delivering education under one roof, where they’d be easy to find. And we could pay them with public tax dollars, and recruit and hire them with the understanding that they are there to help students climb their own personal mountain. But then some of us would have to pay taxes to fund it, and they might not be willing to make it all about christianist ideas. 

So instead, Koch-trained folks imagine a mountain, an Everest. By the way, do you know what Everest looks like these days? It’s a crowded mess of wealthy, resource-rich tourists who are hiring someone else to guide them. Well, that’s Everest.

The peak of the school voucher mountain looks a lot like wealthy, well-resourced folks looking down at the folks struggling on the slopes of other mountains and saying, “Well, don’t they look free. I wonder if they’ll make it.”

Categories Billionaires, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Poverty, Privatization, Propaganda, West Virginia

Tom Ultican: “The Right to Read” is Horse Manure

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2023 //
25

Tom Ultican was a computer scientist before he became a high school teacher of advanced mathematics and science in California. Now that he is retired, he is a scholar of the corporate reform movement, whose goal is to privatize public schools.

In this illuminating post, Ultican analyzes a documentary called “The Right to Read,” which he compares to the propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.” Behind the film, he writes, is the whole apparatus of the corporate reform movement, armed with derogatory claims about public schools and a simplistic cure for literacy.

He begins:

The new 80-minute video “The Right to Read”was created in the spirit of “Waiting for Superman.” It uses false data interpretations to make phony claims about a non-existent reading crisis. Oakland’s NAACP 2nd Vice President Kareem Weaver narrates the film. Weaver is a full throated advocate for the Science of Reading (SoR) and has many connections with oligarch financed education agendas. The video which released February 11, 2023 was made by Jenny Mackenzie and produced by LeVar (Kunta Kinte) Burton.

Since 2007, Jenny Mackenzie has been the executive director of Jenny Mackenzie Films in Salt Lake City. Neither Mackenzie nor Burton has experience or training as educators. However, Burton did star on the PBS series “Reading Rainbow.” He worked on the show as an actor not a teacher.

One of the first media interviews about “The Right to Read” appeared on KTVX channel 4 in Salt Lake City. Ben Heuston from the Waterford Institute answered questions about the new film and the supposed “reading crisis” in American public schools. Heuston who has a PhD in psychology from Brigham Young University claimed that two-thirds of primary grade students in America read below grade level. That is a lie. He is conflating proficiency in reading on the National Assessment of Education Performance (NAEP) with grade level and should know better.

Ultican shows the graphs of NAEP scores over the past thirty years: reading scores have been unchanged for 30 years. The rhetoric about “the crisis in reading” is a hoax.

Misinterpreting the data shown above is the basis for the specious crisis in reading claims. It is known that students develop at different rates and in the lower grades the differences can be dramatic. That explains some of the low scoring. All but a very small percentage of these fourth grader will be reading adequately when they get to high school.

America’s leading authorities on teaching reading are frustrated. Their voices are being drowned out by forces who want to monetize reading education and privatize it.

Ultican names names and identifies corporate sponsors. Somebody expects to make a heap of money from this latest manufactured crisis.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Fake, For-Profit, Lies, Literacy, Media, Oakland, Privatization

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

Texas: Why Rural Republicans Oppose Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
7

Joe Holley, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle writes here about why rural Republicans in Texas vote against vouchers. The public schools in their home districts are in deep financial trouble. They can’t pay enough to attract teachers. They lack the funding for physical improvements. The public schools are the heart of their communities. Most rural districts don’t have any private schools. Those that do don’t want to lose their funding to pay for kids to go to private schools.

Holley writes:

MARATHON – One afternoon not long after Laura and I bought The Wee House, our home away from home in this small, unincorporated community west of the Pecos, I decided to go run the bleachers at the high school football field a block up the street. I didn’t know it at the time, but the long-abandoned field, dry grass giving way to patches of hard dirt and scraggly weeds, had been home in years past to arguably the most formidable six-man football dynasty in Texas history.

Between 1967 and 1976, the Mustangs compiled a record of 100-6, including a 42-game winning streak that stretched from October 1968 until November 1971. Fans from all over the trans-Pecos made the long drive to Marathon on Friday nights to watch the mighty Mustangs beat up on both six- and 11-man teams. The Mustangs were twice state champions.

It quickly became obvious that my ambitious exercise regimen was foolhardy. The spindly-looking bleachers were only eight rows high, the rows so far apart I almost had to climb from one to the next. I decided instead to investigate the rusted sheet-metal press box perched on the top row, so small that maybe three Howard Cosell-wannabes, no more, could squeeze in. I thought I might find an old program, a yellowed memento from the Mustangs’ glory days. Opening the squeaky door into the dark interior, I set off a clamorous tumult. Then came a whoosh. Powerful wings grazed the top of my head and almost sent me tumbling backward down the steps. I had disturbed a great horned owl.

Marathon’s Friday-night lights were extinguished in 2007, but as in every small Texas town I know, the school remains the heart of the community. The school is where town kids and ranch kids get to know each other. It’s where the well-off and the not-so-well-off mix and mingle; where Hispanic kids and Black kids and white kids work out their differences and discover their similarities; where members of the Parent Teacher Organization man the concession stand for basketball games in the venerable gym.

Money is a perennial problem. With a total K-12 enrollment of 53 in the school year that just ended, consolidation with nearby Alpine or Fort Stockton is always a possibility. If that happened, though — if the stately rust-colored brick high school and the low-slung elementary school across the street were left to the great horned owls — Marathon would not be Marathon.

That fact of small-town Texas life is something Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and voucher-peddling legislators either don’t understand or refuse to admit. This legislative session, while they toyed like Scrooge McDuck with a mountainous pile of cash — an unprecedented $33 billion budget surplus — they left rural school districts across the state to grapple with ever-increasing operating costs, deteriorating facilities, teacher shortages, and an unfair funding system. New requirements for security upgrades are only partially funded.

HB 100, the Legislature’s primary education bill, would have raised the state’s basic allotment, but even a modest increase — not to mention the $900 needed to match inflation — was held hostage to getting vouchers passed. The governor promises that education will be the focus of another special session later this summer, but so far, rural schools have received next to nothing. Meanwhile, administrators for schools large and small are trying to craft a budget for the coming school year without knowing what the Legislature has in store.

Instead of dipping into that enormous budget surplus to ease the hardships of small-town schools, Abbott, Patrick and friends are distracted by a different mountain of money. They covet an Everest of campaign cash from a trio of West Texas oil and fracking billionaires — people who had just as soon put public schools out of business in favor of private schools funded, at least in part, by taxpayer money.

Because Texas public schools get by on a complicated system of local tax revenue and state dollars — with state money distributed on a per-student basis — private-school vouchers are a threat to already precarious districts such as Marathon’s. If local students take their vouchers and leave, those districts would lose funds. (Some voucher plans would compensate rural districts for these lost students, but only temporarily.) Despite Abbott’s and Patrick’s assurances, one way or another, state funds could be diverted to cover private and home-schooling expenses. That would leave less per-student funding for every district, large or small.

Small-town Texans, most of whom cannot even imagine voting for a Democrat, know that vouchers are a threat. That’s why their lawmakers, even the most conservative, have fought the voucher ambitions of the GOP leadership with the ferocity of yesteryear’s Marathon Mustangs. Marathon, Alpine, Fort Davis and Marfa — the little West Texas towns I know best — need every resource the state can provide, as do their counterparts across Texas. Rural lawmakers beat back Abbott and vouchers yet again during the regular session, but the governor, like a wily old boxer, keeps probing round after round for weak spots….

Alpine is 30 miles west of Marathon. Home to Sul Ross State University, the attractive little town is much larger than Marathon, but not so big that it manages to avoid lawmaker neglect. The Legislature’s inaction during the regular session was “a dereliction of duties,” Michelle Rinehart, superintendent of Alpine ISD, told the Big Bend Sentinel.

This year, Rinehart told me a few days ago, should have been our chance to boost Texas education funding — to move the state from 42nd in per-pupil spending to something like the national average. “We were expecting at least modest pay raises for teachers,” she said.

New teachers in oil-blessed Midland start at $60,500, while her new teachers start at $33,000. But instead of helping Alpine with salaries, maintenance and other basic needs, the state’s arcane and inequitable funding formulas end up taking money away. Rinehart has to finish her budget for the next school year by July 1. Unless the Legislature changes something in the special session, the deficit will grow from $300,000 to $1 million….

Rinehart has ample reason to be frustrated. Public education spending is lower now than when Abbott took office in 2015. Given a $321.3 billion budget, our lawmakers — so far, anyway — are starving one of the basic building blocks of a self-governing nation.

Abbott doesn’t listen to educators or the people in rural districts. He listens to the billionaires who fund him.

Abbott listens to the likes of oilmen Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers, Farris and Dan, who insist that government and education should be guided by fundamentalist Christian principles.

Dunn, a lay preacher at the Midland mega-church he and his family attend, has given more than $18 million to Abbott, Patrick, all 18 GOP state senators, now-suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and assorted ultra-conservative political action committees. He also serves on the board of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a powerful voucher champion.

Farris Wilks, a native of Cisco, near Abilene, has given more than $11 million to GOP candidates and officeholders. He’s also a minister with the Cisco church his father founded, the Assembly of Yahweh 7th Day.

The superintendent of the Marathon public schools is Ivonne Durant. Holley interviewed her. She was upset that the state hasn’t increased teacher pay.

As superintendent of a rural school, Durant is constantly in touch with parents about their children’s well-being, in touch as only a small-school educator can be. They sit together at church, run into each other at the grocery store in Alpine. She teaches the Spanish class and tutors kids on Saturday morning. (One in particular: If that girl fails a class, the five-person junior high basketball team will have to disband.) Durant makes sure her seniors have definite plans — college, the military or a good job — before they graduate.

“I love my children,” she said. “They know, and their parents know, that everybody here cares. They know we’re going to be there for them.”

If only Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature could say the same.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding, Injustice, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Nancy Bailey: Why Do Corporate Reformers Love “The Science of Reading”?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2023 //
72

I apologize in advance. I am habitually skeptical of fads and movements. When a hot new idea sweeps through education, it’s a safe bet that it will fall flat in the fullness of time. If there is one consistent theme that runs through everything I have written for the past half century, it is this: beware of the latest thing. Be skeptical.

The latest thing is the “Science of Reading.” I have always been a proponent of phonics, so I won’t tolerate being pilloried by the phonics above all crowd. If you read my 2000 book, you will see that I was a critic of Balanced Literacy, which was then the fad du jour.

Yet it turns my stomach to see Educatuon journalist and mainstream dailies beating the drums for SOR. As you know, I reacted with nausea when New York Times’ columnist Nick Kristof said that the SOR was so powerful that it made new spending unnecessary, made desegregation unnecessary, made class size reduction unnecessary. A dream come true for those in search of a cheap miracle!

Veteran teacher Nancy Bailey, like me, is not persuaded by the hype. She wrote a column demonstrating that the corporate reform world—billionaires and politicians—are swooning for the Science of Reading.

She writes:

Many of the same individuals who favor charter schools, private schools, and online instruction, including corporate reformers, use the so-called Science of Reading (SoR) to make public school teachers look like they’ve failed at teaching reading.

Politicians and corporations have had a past and current influence on reading instruction to privatize public schools with online programs. This has been going on for years, so why aren’t reading scores soaring? The SoR involves primarily online programs, but it’s often unclear whether they work.

The Corporate Connection to the SoR

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation fund numerous nonprofits to end public education. The National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ), started by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation backed by Gates and other corporations, an astroturf organization, promotes the SoR.

SoR promoters ignore the failure of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), embedded in most online programs, like iReady and Amplify. CCSS, influenced by the Gates Foundation, has been around for years.

Also, despite its documented failure ($335 million), the Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching, a past reform initiative (See VAMboozled!), irreparably harmed the teaching profession, casting doubt on teachers’ ability.

EdReports, another Gates-funded group, promotes their favored programs, but why trust what they say about reading instruction? They’ve failed at their past education endeavors.

But the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continues to reinvent itself and funds many nonprofits that promote their agenda, including the SoR.

Former Governor Jeb Bush’s Organizations

Former Governor Bush of Florida (1999 to 2007) promoted SoR, but if children have reading problems, states should review past education policies, including those encouraged by former Governors, including Mr. Bush. His policymaking in public education has been around for a long time.

One should question, for example, Mr. Bush’s third-grade retention policy ignoring the abundance of anti-retention research showing its harmful effects, including its high correlation with students dropping out of school.

He rejected the class size amendment and worked to get it repealed. Yet lowering class size, especially in K-3rd grade, could benefit children learning to read.

As far back as 2011, Mr. Bush promoted online learning. He’s not talking about technology supplementing teachers’ lessons. He wants technology to replace teachers!

Here’s a 2017 post written in ExelInEd, Mr. Bush’s organization, A Vision for the Future of K-3 Reading Policy: Personalized Learning for Mastery. They’re promoting online learning to teach reading as proven, but there’s no consistent evidence this will work.

Here’s the ExcelinEd Comprehensive Early Policy Toolkit for 2021 where teachers often must be aligned to the SoR with Foundations of Reading a Pearson Assessment. If the teacher’s role loses its autonomy, technology can easily replace them. 

Laurene Powell Jobs and Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify

How did Rupert Murdoch’s old program Amplify become the Science of Reading?

Rupert Murdoch invested in Amplify, News Corp.’s $1 Billion Plan to Overhaul Education Is Riddled With Failures. Then Laurene Powell Jobs purchased it. Does a change in ownership miraculously mean program improvement?

Teachers from Oklahoma described how student expectations with Amplify were often developmentally inappropriate, so how is this good reading science?

Many SoR supporters who imply teachers fail to teach reading do podcasts for Amplify. Are they compensated for their work? Where’s the independent research to indicate that Amplify works?

Amplify, and other online reading programs, are marketed ferociously to school districts with in-house research relying on testimonials. When schools adopt these programs, teachers have a reduced role in students’ instruction.

Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Their Data Collection

Priscilla Chan pushes Reach Every Reader, including prestigious universities that write SoR reports.

Why must they collect data involving children and their families?

CZI promotes the Age of Learning and ABC Mouse for young children. The reviews of this program appear primarily negative.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Fake, For-Profit, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Literacy, Online Education, Research, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

WSJ: A Day in the Life of Jeffrey Epstein

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2023 //
22

Jeffrey Epstein, sexual predator and child abuser, became a very rich man as a financial advisor to the rich and famous. When he died awaiting trial, he was allegedly worth $600 million. His estate paid off claims to more than 100 women whom he had abused.

Due to his notoriety and his many powerful friends, he continues to be a fascinating figure. The Wall Street Journal somehow obtained his daily diaries and has written several stories about his interactions with his important friends.

This one was published a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal:

On Monday, Sept. 8, 2014, Jeffrey Epstein had a full calendar. He was scheduled to meet that day with Bill Gates, Thomas Pritzker, Leon Black and Mortimer Zuckerman, four of the richest men in the country, according to schedules and emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Epstein also planned meetings that day with a former top White House lawyer, a college president and a philanthropic adviser, three of the dozens of meetings the Journal reported he had with each of them.

Six years earlier, in 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, and he subsequently registered as a sex offender. He was arrested again in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, and died that year in jail awaiting trial.

Mr. Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has said they discussed philanthropy, and it was a mistake to meet with Epstein. Mr. Black, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, who has said previously he met for tax and estate advice, declined to comment. The other two men haven’t previously discussed their meetings with Epstein and didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mr. Pritzker is chairman of Hyatt Hotels and Mr. Zuckerman is a real-estate investor and media owner.

That Monday featured appointments at two luxury hotels in midtown Manhattan—the Park Hyatt and Four Seasons. Epstein was also scheduled to host several visitors at his sprawling townhouse near Central Park.

Epstein’s driver picked him up in the morning and brought him to meet the Microsoft mogul and Hyatt hotel heir at the Park Hyatt hotel near Central Park.

Epstein had met with each of them before. In 2011, Epstein was discussing a multibillion-dollar charitable fund with JPMorgan Chase executives and wrote in emails to them that he could involve Mr. Gates and Mr. Pritzker.

On this day, Mr. Gates was scheduled to spend several hours with Epstein, accompanying him to various meetings. Mr. Gates runs, with his ex-wife, one of the world’s biggest philanthropies. 

“As Bill has said many times before, it was a mistake to have ever met with him and he deeply regrets it,” said a spokeswoman for Mr. Gates.

Mr. Pritzker, part of a wealthy and politically connected Chicago family, was a frequent guest at Epstein’s townhouse, according to the documents. 

Mr. Pritzker and Hyatt representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment about the scheduled meetings.

The schedule called for Epstein and Mr. Gates to head two blocks along 57th Street to the skyscraper that houses the offices of Apollo Global Management. 

Epstein had been scheduled to meet with its co-founder Mr. Black the day before, and the two men were slated to meet again three days later, the documents show.

Mr. Black had more than 100 meetings scheduled with Epstein from 2013 to 2017. They typically met at Epstein’s townhouse and occasionally at Mr. Black’s office, the documents show.

The billionaire stepped down as Apollo’s CEO in March 2021. An Apollo review found he paid Epstein $158 million for estate planning and tax work. 

Mr. Black declined to comment about the scheduled meetings. Apollo has said Epstein was working for Mr. Black, not Apollo.

Epstein and Mr. Gates were next scheduled to head to Epstein’s townhouse to meet with Mr. Zuckerman, the owner of U.S. News & World Report.

At the time of the meeting, Mr. Zuckerman also owned the Daily News and was executive chairman of Boston Properties, a big owner of office buildings. 

Mr. Zuckerman was scheduled to meet Epstein more than a dozen times over the years. On some occasions, the two men planned to meet at Mr. Zuckerman’s office or home, which was near Epstein’s townhouse, the documents show. 

One night in January 2014, Epstein waited past 11 p.m. to meet with Mr. Zuckerman, who was scheduled to visit his townhouse at 10:30 p.m., the documents show. 

A spokeswoman for Mr. Zuckerman had no comment on the scheduled meetings.

The Four Seasons, a luxury-hotel chain in which Mr. Gates’s investment firm holds a stake, was the next scheduled stop. There, Epstein introduced Mr. Gates to Kathryn Ruemmler, who until earlier that year had served as President Obama’s top White House lawyer.

Over the next few years, Epstein often had appointments with Ms. Ruemmler, who was a partner at Latham & Watkins at the time and is now general counsel at Goldman Sachs. 

Ms. Ruemmler had a professional relationship with Epstein and many of their meetings were about a mutual client, a Goldman Sachs spokesman said. “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Ruemmler said. 

The spokeswoman for Mr. Gates said Epstein never worked for Mr. Gates. A spokeswoman for Latham & Watkins said Epstein wasn’t a client of the firm.

Epstein returned to his Upper East Side townhouse in the afternoon, the schedule shows. One of the largest private homes in Manhattan, the townhouse was originally built for a Macy’s heir.

At 4:30 p.m., Epstein was scheduled to meet with Ramsey Elkholy, a musician and anthropologist. Mr. Elkholy had several other meetings with Epstein over the years.

Mr. Elkholy said one of Epstein’s girlfriends had introduced them, and that he occasionally went to Epstein for financial and book publishing advice. “When I heard about everything that happened, I was sick to my stomach,” he said.

“In hindsight, I realize that Jeffrey was a very good con man,” Mr. Elkholy said. “He could give the impression that he was helping you when in fact he was mostly B.S.-ing.”

The next person on Epstein’s calendar, Leon Botstein, was running late that day. The longtime president of Bard College was arriving at LaGuardia Airport and planned to head straight to the townhouse, the documents show.

Mr. Botstein said he first visited Epstein’s townhouse in 2012 to thank him for $75,000 in unsolicited donations for Bard’s high schools, then visited again over several years in an attempt to get more. He also invited Epstein to events at the college.

Mr. Botstein said fundraising for the school was his responsibility, and that he met just as frequently with other potential donors.

“It was a humiliating experience to deal with him, but I cannot afford to put my pride before my obligation to raise money for the causes I’m responsible for,” Mr. Botstein said.

“It looked like he was someone who was convicted and served his time,” Mr. Botstein said. “That turned out to be corrupt, but we didn’t know that.”

The last meeting scheduled for the day was with Barnaby Marsh, a philanthropic adviser to wealthy families. At the time, Mr. Marsh was an executive at the John Templeton Foundation, which donates to various science and research groups. He had roughly two dozen meetings with Epstein.

Mr. Marsh said he often went to Epstein’s townhouse for gatherings because it was full of academics and wealthy people who discussed philanthropy ideas. “So many of these billionaires knew him,” Mr. Marsh said. “And he would sit in the corner, just kind of watching.”

Mr. Marsh said Epstein openly discussed his jail time. Mr. Marsh said, however, that he never saw evidence Epstein made significant donations. “He was a lot of talk, but he never did anything.” 

That is just one day in Epstein’s calendar. He was scheduled to meet regularly with some of those same people, and infrequently with others. Here is a look at how often they appeared in Epstein’s schedule in the year before and the year after that day:

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fake, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Nebraska: Privatizers Win a Victory Over the Common Good

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2023 //
18

Nebraska was one of the few states that managed to resist privatization. But it is a well-known fact that the privatization industry cannot tolerate any state that devotes its resources to public schools open to all students. Nebraska had no charter schools, no vouchers, no Common Core, and no grounds for dissatisfaction: its scores on NAEP are strong.

But Nebraska is a red state, and the billionaires could not leave it be.The legislature passed a voucher bill, and Nebraska’s Stand for Children will fight to get it on a state referendum, as they are confident that Nebraskans will reject vouchers. That’s a good bet, as vouchers have never won a state referendum.

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We have some very bad news to share with you, and there’s no way to sugarcoat it: Our legislature has passed Nebraska’s first school privatization bill.

Just a while ago, 33 senators voted to pass LB 753. But we aren’t deterred; we’re determined. Over 300,000 students attend a public school in Nebraska. And there are hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans who, like us, support public schools and will stand up for what’s right.

If you’re one of those Nebraskans (and we think you are), please support our work today for Give To Lincoln Day. A gift of $20 or more will send the school privatizers a strong message: NOT IN NEBRASKA.

Give Now

Right now, somewhere not in Nebraska, DeVos and other billionaires who backed this bill are undoubtedly celebrating. Our state was one of the last to fall for their privatization schemes.

And fall we will, if Governor Pillen signs LB 753 into law. The conventional notion that public dollars should be invested in the common good and in common schools will, at that point, only be true in North Dakota, where the governor recently vetoed an eerily similar piece of legislation.

While the mega-donors like DeVos break open their champagne, our team at Stand For Schools is still hard at work – fighting to advance public education in Nebraska for ALL and getting fired up for the Support Our Schools Nebraska effort.

Please support our work today with a gift of $20 or more for Give To Lincoln Day. We can honestly say we’ve never needed your help more than we do today. Our team is ready to win this fight – whether it’s in a courtroom or at the ballot box – but we can’t do it without you.

Help Us Fight Back

PS: You can read our organization’s full statement about the the Nebraska Legislature passing LB 753 here.

Copyright © 2023 Stand For Schools, All Rights Reserved

Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 95166
Lincoln, NE 68509

Here is Stand for Schools statement, released today:

Today’s passage of LB 753 marks a dark new era for schooling in Nebraska.

The Legislature’s Education Committee considered proposals this year to make school lunches free, broadly prohibit discrimination, include student voices in curriculum decisions, and increase the poverty allowance in TEEOSA. But instead of improving the schools that serve 9 out of 10 children in our state, instead of addressing the needs of over300,000 students attending Nebraska public schools, 33 senators chose todayto prioritize giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations by sending tax dollars to unaccountable private schools.

They did so despite overwhelming and constantly mounting evidence that the implementation of tax-credit voucher schemes does not improve access to private schools or academic outcomes but rather marks the beginning of a devastating dismantling and defunding of public education, as it has in dozens of other states.

Policymakers who voted to pass LB 753 made the wrong choice. Statewide polling consistently shows a strong majority of Nebraskans firmly oppose school privatization measures. From Omaha to Ogallala, and Spencer to Sidney, Nebraskans take pride in our public schools because we know they are the head and heart of our urban and rural communities.

Like our fellow Nebraskans, Stand For Schools remains committed to a vision of public education that is welcoming to all students regardless of their race, religion, gender, or ability. Realizing that vision is neither easy nor politically expedient. It is, for instance, far easier to lean on out-of-state bill mills and think tanks than it is to grow our own nonpartisan solutions to nonpartisan Nebraska problems. It is far easier to demonize the education professionals who work hard in our public schools every day than it is to address crisis-level staff shortages by recruiting and retaining the qualified teachers and school psychologists our students need. It is far easier to restrict the ability of school districts to raise revenue than to finally, fully fund our K-12 public education system. And it is far easier to offload the duties of educating the next generation of Nebraskans to unaccountable private schools than to do the hard work of providing a free, fair, equitable, and excellent public school system that works for all.

Today, 33 senators chose what was easy over what was right. The consequences of their decision will be far-reaching and long-lasting. The hours the Legislature spent debating LB 735 will not compare to the years it will take to undo the damage done to public schools and the harm caused to students, their families, and their communities.

Thankfully, there are hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans who aren’t afraid of hard work, who are undeterred by today’s decision and determined to make it right. Stand For Schools is proud to join them. Together with the Support Our Schools Nebraska coalition, we will work to put LB 753 on the 2024 ballot and ensure voters’ voices are heard: Not in Nebraska.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Disruption, Education Industry, Fake, Funding, NAEP, Nebraska, Privatization, Resistance, School Choice, Vouchers

Indiana: Charters and Vouchers Score Big $$ in Legislative Session

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2023 //
5

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld reports on the gains of the billionaire-funded school choice industry in the last session of the Indiana legislature. The Republican dominated state is all in for enriching both charters and vouchers, without any proof of success.

Hinnefeld writes:

Indiana’s private school voucher system was the big winner in the 2023 legislative session, but charter schools came in a close second. They secured sizeable increases in state funding to pay for facilities and transportation, along with – for the first time – a share of local property taxes.

As Amelia Pak-Harvey of Chalkbeat Indiana explains, the success followed an all-out lobbying and PR effort in which charter supporters teamed with voucher proponents. Advocates insist charter schools are public schools, and private schools certainly aren’t. But the joint effort was effective.

The Republican supermajority in the General Assembly rewarded charter schools with:

  • An increase to $1,400 from $1,250 per pupil in “charter and innovation network school grants,” intended to make up for the fact that charter schools haven’t been able to levy property taxes.
  • A new law that says school districts in four counties, Lake, Marion, St. Joseph and Vanderburgh, must share increases in their local property-tax revenue with charter schools.
  • A requirement that districts in the same four counties share with charter schools if their voters pass a referendum to raise property taxes to pay for operating expenses.
  • $25 million in fiscal year 2024 for facilities grants for charter schools. That’s in addition to the “charter and innovation school network grants” listed above.

All told, the budget and student funding formula will provide about $671 million in state funds over the next two years for brick-and-mortar charter schools and another $112 million for virtual charter schools. That doesn’t include the local property tax funding that charter schools in four counties will receive.

House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, said at the start of the session that expanding school choice would be a priority. Growing the voucher program was on the table from the start, but it wasn’t until the last day of the session that charter school funding bills took their final shape.

As Chalkbeat reported, a $500,000 campaign by charter supporters, including catchy TV and Facebook ads attributed to the Indiana Student Funding Alliance, certainly helped. The Institute for Quality Education, an Indianapolis organization that promotes vouchers and charter schools, helped pay for the ads. Its political action committee, Hoosiers for Quality Education, gave over $1.3 million to Republican campaigns in 2020-22. Another pro-charter group, Hoosiers for Great Public Schools, gave over $1 million. Arguably no other special interest did more to keep the Statehouse in solid GOP control.

Both PACs are largely funded by out-of-state billionaires: the Walton family of Arkansas for Hoosiers for Quality Education and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings for Hoosiers for Great Public Schools.

The Student Funding Alliance campaign initially focused on getting a share of a planned property-tax operating referendum for Indianapolis Public Schools. IPS dropped plans for the referendum, and the call for “parity” in school funding shifted to the legislature, where it had a ready audience.

Charter schools get about the same per-pupil state funding as district schools. They get more federal money. But they haven’t been able to raise money with property taxes. That will now change for charter schools in the four designated counties, and that’s two-thirds of the charters in the state. By my count, 56 of Indiana’s nearly 100 brick-and-mortar charter schools are in Indianapolis (Marion County) and nine are in Lake County.

In almost every other instance, government entities that levy property taxes – school districts, cities, counties, townships, etc. – can be held accountable via elections. If you don’t like how the school district is spending your tax dollars, you can vote out the school board. That won’t be the case with charter schools, which are privately operated nonprofits with appointed boards.

Expanding school choice was a key part of GOP legislators’ education program, but it wasn’t the only part. The supermajority also passed what the ACLU referred to as a “slate of hate”: laws to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth, set the stage for banning books and prosecuting school librarians, ban teaching about sex in early grades, and force schools to out trans kids to their parents.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Gender, Indiana, Indianapolis, Privatization, Vouchers

Robert Reich: Why Did CNN Do it?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
49

Writing at Alternet, Robert Reich explains why CNN gave Trump an hour to peddle his vainglorious lies and narcissism. CNN has a new owner. He wants the network to be “centrist,” to bring on equal numbers of Democrats and MAGAnuts. And behind the new owner is an investor and board member who has given significant money to Trump.

Why did CNN give Trump this gift?

Reich writes:

The germ of an answer could be found last August, when Chris Licht, CNN’s new chairman and CEO, canceled Brian Stelter’s Sunday show, “Reliable Sources,” which had been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican party.

Licht also fired Stelter and his staff.

The show had been commercially successful. It was doing better than several of CNN’s prime-time shows.

Around the same time, Licht told CNN staff they should stop referring to Donald Trump’s “big lie” because the phrase sounded like a Democratic party talking point. Licht also told the staff he wanted more “straight news reporting,” along with more conservative guests.

This explains to me why CNN invited a female Trump lawyer on the air on the day that E. Jean Carroll won a civil judgment against Trump for $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation. I suppose I expected to hear from an impartial legal expert, but instead there was a beautiful angry Trump lawyer, speaking through clenched teeth. Her unconcealed rage undermined her credibility, but I was nonetheless surprised to see the network turn to someone so partisan.

Reich continues:

Follow the money. CNN’s new corporate overseer is Warner Bros. Discovery Inc, whose CEO is David Zaslav.

Zaslav has been pushing Licht to reposition CNN to be a network preferred by “everybody … Republicans, Democrats….”

How is it possible to report on Trump and not speak of the big lie, or say they’ve broken norms if not laws?

So, what’s motivating Zaslav? Keep following the money.

The leading shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery is John Malone, a multibillionaire cable magnate. (Malone was a chief architect in the merger of Discovery and CNN.)

Malone describes himself as a “libertarian” although he travels in right-wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32% of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has “actual journalism.” Malone also wants the “news” portion of CNN to be “more centrist…”

When you follow the money behind deeply irresponsible decisions at the power centers of America today, the road often leads to right-wing billionaires.

We have known a long time. You never go wrong following the money.

Categories Billionaires, Media, Trump

“Democracy” on the Rise of the Republican Confederacy

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2023 //
43

A reader of the blog uses the sobriquet “Democracy” to protect his or her anonymity. His/her comments are always thoughtful.

The attack on public schools — in Virginia and across the country — is not some spontaneous “parent rights” outburst. It’s orchestrated. It’s being funded and set into motion by right-wing “Christians” at the Council for National Policy, a far-right group that had outsized-influence with the Trump administration.

Richard DeVos, husband of Betsy, has been president of CNP twice. Ed Meese, who helped Reagan cover up the Iran-Contra scandal, has been president of CNP. So has Pat Robertson. And Tim LaHaye.

Current and former CNP members include Cleta Mitchell, the Trump lawyer who was on that call to the Georgia Secretary of State demanding that he find Trump more than 11,780 votes, and Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA who bragged about bussing tens of thousands of people to the January 6th ‘Stop the Steal’ rally and insurrection. Two of the top peeps at the Federalist Society, Eugene Meyer and Leonard Leo, are also CNP members. (Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were high priorities for the Federalist Society and for CNP). Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is a member. So is Stephen Moore, the wack-boy “economist” that Trump wanted to appoint to the Federal Reserve but ultimately didn’t because he owed his ex-wife $300,000 in back alimony and child support, and who was an “advisor” Glenn Youngkin in his campaign for Virginia governor even though he’s been dead wrong about virtually all of his economic predictions and who helped Sam Brownback ruin the economy of Kansas.

The Council for National Policy is interconnected to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network and Tea Party Patriots and a host of other right-wing groups. This is – in fact – the vast “right-wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton complained about. Glenn Youngkin made himself all very much a part of this.

Did this “new” Republican Southern Strategy work? Well, Youngkin won the Virginia governorship, and exit polls showed that Youngkin won 62 percent of white voters, and 76 percent of non-college graduate whites. And, Youngkin got way more of the non-college white women votes (75 percent) than his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe.

Here’s how the NY Times explained it:

“Republicans have moved to galvanize crucial groups of voters around what the party calls ‘parental rights’ issues in public schools, a hodgepodge of conservative causes ranging from eradicating mask mandates to demanding changes to the way children are taught about racism…Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate in Virginia, stoked the resentment and fear of white voters, alarmed by efforts to teach a more critical history of racism in America…he released an ad that was a throwback to the days of banning books, highlighting objections by a white mother and her high-school-age son to ‘Beloved,’ the canonical novel about slavery by the Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison…the conservative news media and Republican candidates stirred the stew of anxieties and racial resentments that animate the party’s base — thundering about equity initiatives, books with sexual content and transgender students on sports teams.”

Republicans and racism. Who knew?

Lots of people.

Yale historian David Blight put it this way:

“Changing demographics and 15 million new voters drawn into the electorate by Obama in 2008 have scared Republicans—now largely the white people’s party—into fearing for their existence. With voter ID laws, reduced polling places and days, voter roll purges, restrictions on mail-in voting, an evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a constant rant about ‘voter fraud’ without evidence, Republicans have soiled our electoral system with undemocratic skullduggery…The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.”

And this Republican “Confederacy” hates public education.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Koch Brothers, Lies, Racism, Religion, Republicans
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