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Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Can’t Escape Project 2025

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2024 //
30

Ever since the general public began hearing Project 2025, the document scared those who listened. Although it was described by its authors as the agenda for Trump’s second term and it was written by veterans of the Trump administration, Trump pretended he knew nothing about it. Who wrote it? What does it say? Never heard of it.

For sure, very few people have read its 900+ pages. I read the section on education. Eliminate the Department of Education. Voucherize programs like Title 1, Headstart, special education funding, with no federal regulations attached to the money. Promote funding for religious and private schools. Ditch separation of church and state.

It also calls for a national ban on abortion and for eliminating the Civil Service and replacing career government employees with people loyal to Trump. It is the document that describes—department by department, agency by agency—how to destroy “the administrative state.”

There’s a saying that comes to mind: “When an authoritarian tells you what he plans to do, believe him.”

Heather Cox Richardson wrote about Trump’s clumsy efforts to distance himself from an agenda written by senior officials in his administration:

On Friday, speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump begged the members of the audience to “vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine…. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

The comment drew a lot of attention, and on Monday, Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham gave him a chance to walk the statement back. Instead, he said: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.” “Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”

Trump’s refusal to disavow the idea that putting him back into power will mean the end of a need for elections is chilling and must be viewed against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024, decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States. In that decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s right-wing majority said that presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” and that presidents should have a presumption of immunity for other presidential actions. 

John Roberts defends the idea of a strong executive and has fought against the expansion of voting rights made possible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The idea that it is dangerous to permit minorities and women to vote suggests that there are certain people who should run the country. That tracks with a recently unearthed video in which Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance calls childless people “psychotic” and “deranged,” and refers unselfconsciously to “America’s leadership class.” 

The idea that democracy must be overturned in order to enable a small group of leaders to restore virtue to a nation is at the center of the “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” championed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán’s imposition of an authoritarian Christian nationalism on a former democracy, in turn, has inspired the far-right figures that are currently in charge of the Republican Party. As Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts put it: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Kevin Roberts has called for “institutionalizing Trumpism” and pulled together dozens of right-wing institutions behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to create a blueprint for a second Trump term. Those who created Project 2025 are closely connected to the Trump team, and Trump praised its creators and its ideas. 

Today, The New Republic published the foreword Vance wrote for Kevin Roberts’s forthcoming book. Vance makes it clear he sees Kevin Roberts and himself as working together to create “a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.” Like others on the Christian right, Vance argues that “the Left” has captured the country’s institutions and that those institutions must be uprooted and those in them replaced with right-wing Christians in order to restore what they see—inaccurately—as traditional America.  

That determination to disrupt American institutions fits neatly with the technology entrepreneurs who seem to believe that they are the ones who should control the nation’s future. Vance is backed by Silicon Valley libertarian Peter Thiel, who put more than $10 million behind Vance’s election to the Senate. In 2009, Thiel wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” 

“The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics,” he wrote. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” 

Thiel set Vance up to invest in companies that made him wealthy and touted Vance for the vice presidential slot, and in turn, the Silicon Valley set are expecting Vance to help get rid of the regulation imposed by the Biden administration and to push cryptocurrency. Trump appears to be getting on board with comments about how the tech donors are “geniuses,” praising investor Elon Musk and saying, “We have to make life good for our smart people.” In a piece that came out Sunday, Washington Post reporters Elizabeth Dwoskin, Cat Zakrzewski, Nitasha Tiku, and Josh Dawsey credited the influence of Thiel and other tech leaders for turning Vance from a Never-Trumper to a MAGA Republican. 

Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that the cryptocurrency industry is investing heavily in the 2024 election, with its main super PAC raising $202 million in this cycle. Three large cryptocurrency companies are investing about $150 million in pro-crypto congressional candidates. 

On Saturday, Trump said he would make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.” He promised to end regulations on cryptocurrency, which, because it is not overseen by governments, is prone to use by criminals and rogue states. That regulation is “a part of a much larger pattern that’s being carried out by the same left-wing fascists to weaponize government against any threat to their power,” Trump said. “They’ve done it to me.”

But the problem that those trying to get rid of the modern administrative state continue to run up against is that voters actually like a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights. In recent days, Minnesota governor Tim Walz has been articulating how popular that government is as he makes the television rounds.

On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper listed some of Walz’s policies—he passed background checks for guns, expanded LGBTQ protections, instituted free breakfast and lunch for school kids—and asked if they made Walz vulnerable to Trump calling him a “big government liberal.” Walz joked that he was, indeed, a “monster.” 

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we’re working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.” 

The extremes of Project 2025 have made it clear that the Republicans intend to destroy the kind of government Walz is defending and replace it with an authoritarian president imposing Christian nationalism. And when Americans hear what’s in Project 2025, they overwhelmingly oppose it. Trump has tried without success to distance himself from the document. 

He and his team have also hammered on the Heritage Foundation for their public revelations of their plans, and today the director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down. The Trump campaign issued a statement reiterating—in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary—that Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 and adding: “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should service as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign—it will not end well for you.” 

The Harris campaign responded to the news by saying that “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real—in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.” 

The reasoning behind the idea of a strong executive, or a “leadership class” that does not have to answer to voters, is that an extremist minority needs to take control of the American government away from the American people because the majority doesn’t like the policies the extremists want. 

When Trump begs right-wing Christians to turn out for just one more election, he is promising that if only we will put him into the White House once and for all, we will never again have to worry about having a say in our government. As Trump put it: “The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Gender, Trump

ProPublica: How Vouchers Almost Bankrupted Arizona

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2024 //
6

Voters in Arizona voted overwhelmingly against voucher expansion in a state referendum in 2018, but Republican Governor Doug Ducey and the Republican legislature expanded them anyway. The pro-voucher campaign was funded by Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos.

The financial blow to the state has been devastating. As in every other state, most vouchers are used by private and religious school students from affluent families.

ProPublica writes here about the voucher disaster in Arizona:

In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies.

In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model.

Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.

As a result of all this unexpected spending, alongside some recent revenue losses, Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children.

Among the funding slashed: $333 million for water infrastructure projects, in a state where water scarcity will shape the future, and tens of millions of dollars for highway expansions and repairs in congested areas of one of the nation’s fastest-growing metropolises — Phoenix and its suburbs. Also nixed were improvements to the air conditioning in state prisons, where temperatures can soar above 100 degrees. Arizona’s community colleges, too, are seeing their budgets cut by $54 million.

Still, Arizona-style universal school voucher programs — available to all, including the wealthiest parents — continue to sweep the nation, from Florida to Utah.

In Florida, one lawmaker pointed out last year that Arizona’s program seemed to be having a negative budgetary impact. “This is what Arizona did not anticipate,” said Florida Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman, during a floor debate. “What is our backup plan to fill that budget hole?”

Her concern was minimized by her Republican colleagues, and Florida’s transformational voucher legislation soon passed.

Advocates for Arizona’s universal voucher initiative had originally said that it wouldn’t cost the public — and might even save taxpayers money. The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank that helped craft the state’s 2022 voucher bill, claimed in its promotional materialsat the time that the vouchers would “save taxpayers thousands per student, millions statewide.” Families that received the new cash, the institute said, would be educating their kids “for less than it would cost taxpayers if they were in the public school system.”

But as it turns out, the parents most likely to apply for these vouchers are the ones who were already sending their kids to private school or homeschooling. They use the dollars to subsidize what they were already paying for.

The result is new money coming out of the state budget. After all, the public wasn’t paying for private school kids’ tuition before…

Arizona doesn’t have a comprehensive tally of how many private schoolers and homeschoolers are out there, so it remains an open question how much higher the cost of vouchers could go and therefore how much cash should be kept on hand to fund them. The director of the state’s nonpartisan Joint Legislative Budget Committee told lawmakers that “we’ve never really faced that circumstance before where you’ve got this requirement” — that anyone can get a voucher — “but it isn’t funded.”

Most importantly, said Beth Lewis, executive director of the public-school-advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona, only a small amount of the new spending on private schools and homeschooling is going toward poor children, which means that already-extreme educational inequality in Arizona is being exacerbated. The state is 49th in the country in per-pupil public school funding, and as a result, year after year, district schools in lower-income areas are plagued by some of the nation’s worst staffing ratios and largest class sizes.

Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on vouchers to help kids who are already going to private school keep going to private school won’t just sink the budget, Lewis said. It’s funding that’s not going to the public schools, keeping them from becoming what they could and should be.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Fraud, Funding, School Choice, Vouchers

Project 2025: A Recipe for Disaster!

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2024 //
41

Former President Trump recently discovered that members of his administration had produced a set of plans for his next term. They did this under the guidance of the Heritage Foundation, the Republican Party’s ideological center. If you believed that Trump knew nothing about this 900-page guidebook, I know of a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Project 2025 is a handbook of extremism. It represents the far-right Republicans’ desire to eliminate many federal programs and, as right winger Grover Norquist one memorably said, “Shrink it so it can be drowned in a bathtub.”

North Carolina public school advocates Patty Williams and David Zonderman are public school graduates and parents. They wrote the following about Project 2025:

In the Spring of 2023, the Heritage Foundation released Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, aka Project 2025. Now, more than a year later, it is finally getting the serious attention that it demands. In its early pages, the Foundation claims to “have gone back to the future—and then some.” We are warned that, “The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” To fight this supposed incubus sucking the life out of the republic, a growing number of conservative organizations have joined the Heritage Foundation in supporting this project and intend to assemble an army to march on Washington to “deconstruct the Administrative State.”

 

Project 2025 is both breathtaking and scary in its scope. It envisions a far-right rewriting of government missions, policies, and procedures, ranging from the White House, through all Cabinet-level departments, to the Federal Reserve and other independent regulatory agencies.  Tens of thousands of federal employees could be fired or subject to politically-inspired loyalty tests, gutting almost 150 years of civil service reform, and erasing institutional memory, knowledge, and expertise. Whole federal departments—including the Department of Education—and the funding that goes with them could be left on the cutting room floor, with disastrous consequences for the least among us.

 

This far-right “Playbook” is a frontal assault on honest and competent government, and the underpinnings of our 248-year-old democracy. Project 2025 flips the script on our nation’s foundation of liberty, prosperity, and the rule of law by inverting and perverting fact and data about how government actually functions to protect the environment, ensure safe workplaces, and provide some safety net for those in poverty. 

 

Project 2025 may appear to come from the right-wing fever swamp, which conjures up something out of science fiction. Indeed, it does remind us of a legendary Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode, first televised in March of 1962. In “To Serve Man,” earth is visited by the Kanamits. Enormously tall aliens, they appear frightening at first, but are eventually welcomed by humans. The Kanamits help end famine, eliminate war, and provide unlimited energy supplies for the betterment of the planet. 

 

Seemingly altruistic in their efforts, the Kanamits leave a book behind at the United Nations, which a decoding expert, Hero Chambers and his able assistant, Pat, begin to translate. Meanwhile, the Kanamits invite enthusiastic Earthlings to visit their planet, and flight reservations fill up quickly. Only when Pat races up to a space ship about to lift off does she reveal to Chambers that the title of the book—To Serve Man—is a cookbook. A recipe for disaster.

 

Project 2025 also proclaims to serve man, perhaps not literally on a silver platter like the Kanamits; but it may also cannibalize our government, our nation, and our democracy. Unlike the hapless denizens of earth in the Twilight Zone, we don’t need a decoding expert to see through the myths and deceptions that seek to dismantle our enduring republic and its Constitutional rights.

 

Let’s not wait until it’s too late and our collective goose is cooked. It’s time to stir the pot. Encourage your friends and family to vote as though their democracy depends on it—because it does.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, Vouchers

Public Education Advocates Urge Kamala Harris to Select a VP Who Opposes Privatization

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2024 //
26

The following letter was sent to Vice President Kamala Harris by advocates for public schools from across the nation. They pointed out that public schools, attended by 50 million students, are being harmed by privatization programs, which force public schools to cut budgets, lay off teachers, and eliminate courses and activities. Voucher schools are allowed to discriminate against. Students they don’t want: students with disabilities, students with low test scores, LGBT, and students of a different religion. For the past decade, research concurs that vouchers actually harm poor kids, who lose academic ground. Most vouchers are amused by students who already attend private and religious schools.

They urged VP Harris to reject Pennnsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro because of his support for vouchers. They urged her to support someone with a strong record of opposing privatization, like Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky or Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota

Please read.

Real Democrats support real public schools.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Randi Weingarten: The Moment We Are In

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2024 //
3

The American Federation of Teachers held its annual convention in Houston. Its president, Randi Weingarten, delivered this speech about the perils of the present time and the importance of unions.

Read the pdf of the speech here:

RWSpeech 1Download

She began:

These are unprecedented times. First and foremost, I want to thank President Biden. He’s been a great president, a great public servant and an incredible patriot. We owe him a debt of gratitude.


Of course I’m starting with a primary source. I don’t think they’ve banned Charles Dickens—yet. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. …” Those words were written more than 165 years ago, but today they feel very Dickensian.


Today, our union has never been stronger, and a revival of labor activism is sweeping the nation. Wages are up, inflation has cooled, the Biden-Harris administration has created more jobs than any other in history, and America’s economy is the strongest in the world—powered by America’s workers.


Yet…


Fear, anxiety and despair have taken hold across our country, driven by disinformation, shifting demographics, loneliness and a pervasive feeling that the American dream is slipping further and further out of reach. Our students and our patients are coming to us with greater and greater needs. Academic freedom and the right to peacefully protest have come under attack. From floods to famines to fires, climate catastrophes are worsening. Hate crimes, particularly anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate, are climbing. And gun violence still haunts us.


Let’s be clear: Political violence is never justified; not on Jan. 6 and not against political candidates. And while the calls to condemn political violence were encouraging, billionaires and demagogues are still capitalizing on fear to stoke division, defund public education and public services, decimate healthcare and dismantle our democracy—all to cement their power. And the Supreme Court’s extremist majority is aiding and abetting them, rewriting the Constitution in terrifying ways.

Operatives like Christopher Rufo, who work on behalf of billionaires like Betsy DeVos, openly admit their scheme—to create distrust in public education and in their political enemies so they can enact their extremist agenda.


These aren’t the first unscrupulous operatives we’ve faced. We’ve been outspent, been bet against, and had our union’s obituary written more times than we can count. Michelle Rhee tried to sweep us away. Scott Walker tried to legislate us out of existence. Billionaires backed the Janus case to try to bankrupt us. A red wave was supposed to crest in 2022 and wash us away.
Mike Pompeo tried to vilify us, first claiming that America’s school teachers teach “filth,” and then calling me the most dangerous person in the world—more dangerous than Vladimir Putin.

Why? Because I am your elected leader.


But we’re still here. In fact, we’re thriving. I guess that old saying IS true—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And, in our case, bigger.
The AFT had 1.4 million members when I became president in 2008. Since then, we’ve been through two recessions, a pandemic and all the crap I just described.


Despite everything that has been thrown at us, since our last convention, the AFT has added 185 new units and more than 80,000 new members.
And today, the AFT is 1.8 million members strong!


Who are the newest members of the AFT? Four airport ground crew workers in Bangor, Maine—and 450 teaching assistants at Brown University. Nine licensed practical nurses at PeaceHealth in Oregon, and 910 diagnostic imaging techs in Michigan. Bus drivers in Farmington, Ill., and faculty and staff at universities in Kansas and Hawaii. Healthcare workers at Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin. Librarians in Ohio, doctors in Maryland, charter school educators in Massachusetts, paraprofessionals in Minnesota. And thousands more who just want a better life, including—after a 50-year fight—the 27,000 educators and school staff in Fairfax County, Va.
Why do they join the AFT? Because the AFT believes in improving people’s lives. Because the AFT believes in our communities and our country. And because the AFT believes in you.


This growth is essential. America’s middle class has risen and fallen as union membership has risen and fallen. That’s why we—indeed, the entire AFL-CIO—are working to grow.


Our unions help us win better wages and benefits. Our unions give us real voice at work. It’s how the United Federation of Teachers negotiated groundbreaking paid parental leave and lower class sizes. It’s how Cleveland got their new policy prohibiting students from using cell phones during the school day. United Teachers Los Angeles won sustainable community schools. And the Chicago Teachers Union is negotiating for healthy, safe, green schools.

It’s about the value of belonging.

Please open the PDF and finish reading this terrific speech.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Gender, Harris, Kamala, Teachers, Trump

Mercedes Schneider: Politicking for Jesus

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2024 //
26

Mercedes Schneider read Project 2025 and concluded that its unifying goal is to turn the American people into white evangelical Christians. This “conservative” vision of a different America doesn’t give much thought to those who are neither white nor evangelical not Christian.

She writes in summary:

Free the churches, imprison the librarians.

Roberts was in the news for stating that an “ongoing American Revolution” will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” According to The Hill, that comment caused “blowback” for Roberts and the Heritage Foundation.

None of Jesus’ ministry involved any political agenda, much less the government-driven denigration of “other” or the imposing of His will on any human being.

Yet here we are.

It behooves every literate American to read this extremist document before casting a vote in November.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Economics, Elections, Environment, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Gender, Librarians, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump

Project 2025: What Happens to K-12 in a New Trump Term?

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2024 //
11

Matthew Stone of Education Week described the plans for K-12 education in a second Trump term, as they appear in Project 2025, a document written by hundreds of former Trump officials. The 44-page education section emphasizes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, distributing its functions to other agencies, converting categorical funds (like Title I for low-income children) into block grants, and rooting out “critical race theory” and any recognition of the existence of LGBT students. The document emphasizes the primacy of parental rights.

Trump has distanced himself from the document, because its recommendations are so radical, but it was prepared under the watchful eye of Kevin Roberts, president of the ultra-rightwing Heritage Foundation. Roberts is a close associate of Trump’s.

Stone wrote:

What would Donald Trump do in the realm of K-12 if voters return the former president to the White House?

He and his campaign haven’t outlined many specifics, but a recently published document that details conservative plans to completely remake the executive branch offers some possibilities. Among them: 

  • Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, would disappear in a decade. 
  • Federal special education funds would flow to school districts as block grants with no strings attached, or even to savings accounts for parents to use on private school or other education expenses.
  • The U.S. Department of Education would be eliminated.
  • The federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would be scaled back.

The proposals are contained in a comprehensive policy agenda that’s part of a Heritage Foundation-led initiative called Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project, which includes nearly 900 pages of detailed plans for virtually every corner of the federal government and a database of potential staffers for a conservative administration. It will also feature a playbook for the first 180 days of a new term.

The agenda is designed to be ready for a conservative president to implement at the start of a new administration next year, depending on the outcome of November’s election.

Project 2025 involves former Trump administration officials and other allies of the former president, as well as dozens of aligned advocacy organizations. One of those is Moms for Liberty, the Florida-based group that rose to national prominence fighting school boards over COVID-19 safety protocols and has endorsed conservative school board candidates across the country in recent years.

On the campaign trail, Trump has said that parents should elect school principals, called for merit pay for teachers and the abolition of teacher tenure, promised to cut federal funding to schools pushing progressive social ideas, and pledged to establish universal school choice.

But because he’s released little in the way of detailed plans, Project 2025’s 44-page agenda for the U.S. Department of Education offers the clearest picture yet of the education priorities Trump could pursue in a second term, and how a second Trump administration could use the federal government to advance conservative policies like private school choice and parents’ rights that have taken root in many Republican-led states.

Trump is trying to distance himself from Project 2025 because it is so radical. But no one takes his protestations seriously.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Republicans, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

North Carolina: Five Words for Voters: “And You’re OK with That?”

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2024 //
7

Leaders of the pro-public school organization called Public Schools First in North Carolina discovered that many public school parents and advocates are unaware that the state’s General Assembly has passed a budget that gives vouchers to the rich. They are distributing the following opinion piece from the Greensboro News to inform the public:

Our Opinion: Five words for GOP candidates: ‘And you’re OK with That?’

“And you’re OK with that?”

As Republican candidates for the state legislature begin to the make the rounds this fall, they should be hearing those five words over and over from constituents of all political stripes.

At every stop, on every stump, they should be pressed to give straight answers to that simple question on three issues:

Private-school vouchers

Even as they’ve increased taxpayer funding for private school tuition, adding wealthy families to the dole, many local public districts, including our own in Guilford and Forsyth counties, complain that they are seriously underfunded.

To be more specific, your party plans to plow hundreds of additional millions in taxpayer money into private school tuition assistance. Although 40% of that money ($96 million) would go to middle-class and working-class families earning between $57,721 to $115,440 a year (for a family of four), 44% (or $107 million) would go families earning $115,441 to $259,740.

And 16% (or $39 million) would go to those who need it the very least: wealthy families earning more than $259,741 annually.

One Democratic lawmaker likened it to asking low- and moderate-income taxpayers to help pay for a wealthy kid’s Porsche.

How do you square that with your rhetoric against “the welfare state” and profligate spending of other people’s money?

How do you square it with public school funding gaps throughout the state?

And how do you tell public schools no, that’s all we have to spend and then turn around and tell rich families y’all come. Who do we make the check out to?

Keeping secrets

Your party also slipped a provision into the state budget bill last fall that allows state lawmakers to decide for themselves whether they will make any of their documents accessible to the public. 

By law, they also get to choose whether to destroy or sell documents. They’re the decider. Which means they’re creating their own deep state right here and now on Tobacco Road.

What are they trying to hide and why?

And what gives them the right to membership in this exclusive club, but not others (the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general and other North Carolina officials who are elected statewide need not apply)?

Easy money

Then there’s the provision the Republican-controlled legislature embedded within an (unnecessary) anti-masking bill that allows more “dark money” donations to political candidates in North Carolina.

As the current law stands, candidates must disclose the names of donors to their campaigns. They also are prohibited from taking donations from corporations, and contributions from individuals and political groups may not exceed $6,400.

This bill would change all that by making it legal for political parties in the state to take money from “Super PACs,” which are allowed to keep their donors secret and may receive unlimited amounts of money.

Those Super PACs would be able to collect the money and pass it on to the political parties, which could then funnel it to candidates, no questions asked.

At least your party has made no secret of the fact that it designed this new rule specifically with the GOP gubernatorial candidate in mind. Mark Robinson substantially trails his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, in fundraising.

To recap, are you OK with:

Channeling taxpayer money to rich people as public schools go wanting?

Keeping documents and correspondence a secret from the public … unless you decide to share it?

And allowing anonymous cash to flow unfettered to candidates of both parties?

If the answer is yes, please explain how any of this benefits most North Carolinians and why we should vote for you anyway.

And how this in any way resembles government for, by and of the people.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, North Carolina, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Lisa Haver: Pennsylvania Must Avoid the Voucher Scam

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2024 //
6

Lisa Haver is a former Philadelphia teacher. She is co-founder and coordinator of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools. She warns about the absurdity of defunding the state’s public schools while expanding vouchers to subsidize students currently in private and religious schools. This article appeared in the Philadelphia Hall Monitor.

Lisa Haver writes:

Musician and entrepreneur Jay-Z last month joined the ranks of out-of-town billionaires lobbying to expand voucher programs in Pennsylvania. Representatives from his Roc Nation came to Philadelphia to push for passage of PASS (Pennsylvania Award for Student Success), legislation that would divert more tax dollars from the state’s education budget to private schools. Roc Nation representatives repeated claims by voucher supporters, including Governor Josh Shapiro and suburban billionaire Jeffrey Yass, that PASS would give the students an alternative to the city’s “failing schools.” Jay-Z’s spokespersons told reporters that after seeing students “struggling in the public education system, within the lowest performing schools, we wanted to do something to help the community.” 

Not being from around here, Jay-Z and his representatives, apparently, are not up on the history of underfunding and privatization in the city and the state and the many schemes over the years that have failed to deliver on promises for a better education and stronger communities.  They seemed unaware of how vehemently Philadelphians oppose the idea of diverting even more money from underfunded public schools to affluent private schools.

The proposed expanded voucher legislation allows for even less accountability than the state’s existing programs. Since their passage in 2001, the Education Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) have sent over $2 billion in taxpayer funds to private schools. Education Voters PA estimates that 78% of EITC and OSTC funds go to religious schools that do not have to be accredited or adhere to the same curriculum standards that public schools do. This means public money going to schools that teach creationism or that slavery wasn’t really that bad and to schools that can and do discriminate against LGBTQ students and those with special needs. School choice has always meant the schools’ choice. And a feature, not a bug, of EITC and OTSC is the absence of data. Ed Voters PA points out that Act 46, passed in 2005, “explicitly prohibits the state from collecting data about voucher programs or students” who participate in them. 

There is already conflicting information about how PASS would work, who would be eligible, and the size of the scholarships, which range from $2500 to $15,000 depending on grade and level of need. But even the maximum allowance wouldn’t cover the tuition of the exclusive private schools whose tuition ranges from $25,000 to almost $50,000. The reality is that most of the voucher money goes to families with students already in private schools, not to students transferring from public schools.  

Republican legislators and pro-school choice lobbyists maintain that distributing public funds to privately managed schools with a minimum of public oversight will help the city’s children get a better education. Where have we heard that before? 

In 1997, the state legislature passed the Pennsylvania Charter Law. Privatizing public schools, they assured us, would rescue the children trapped in failing public schools. The reality? Yearly assessments–using the framework formulated by charter operators themselves–show that Philadelphia charters rarely outperform district schools in academics. The district has spent millions in years-long legal proceedings to close substandard schools. Other charters have closed due to financial malfeasance of the schools administrators, or in the recent case of Math Science Civics, the whims of the charter CEO. The state charter law allows substandard charters to operate for years while they appeal non-renewal actions. 

Parents who had hoped to find better schools in charters are returning to their neighborhood schools, with over half of the city’s charters now under-enrolled. Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, which enabled the privatization of public schools, students have been subjected to learn-to-the-test scripted curricula, with test prep classes replacing interesting and challenging electives. Their schools have been branded as failures, and many of their neighborhoods have lost the schools that served as community anchors.

Does Jay-Z really believe that the children of Philadelphia will win in a “hunger games” approach to education? 

Last year, school districts in Pennsylvania won a significant victory when the Commonwealth Court ruled that the state must provide, as mandated in the state constitution,  a “thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.” Jay-Z should join the parents, students, educators and community members urging the state legislature to pass a budget that will fund smaller class size, school libraries, and healthy school buildings–in every school in every Philadelphia neighborhood.  

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Vouchers

Ohio: Charter Schools Ripping Off Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2024 //
2

Steve Dyer, former legislator and perennial budget hawk, tracks wasteful spending on charter schools in Ohio in this post. Ohio is throwing away billions on charters and vouchers, at the expense of its public schools, which typically outperform its privatized schools. A pro-charter analyst concluded that Ohio’s charter schools were among the worst in the nation.

Dyer writes on his blog Tenth Period:

It’s difficult to say that a $1.3 billion state program can go under the radar, but lately it seems that Ohio’s charter school industry has done just that, thanks in large part to the absolute explosion of taxpayer funded subsidies given to wealthy private school parents.

And while the state’s largest taxpayer ripoff ever — in excess of $200 million plus — happened as the result of the infamous ECOT scandal (the state is only going after about $100 million of the $200 million plus that I calculated because they just didn’t do the forensic audit of years prior to the couple prior to the school shutting down), the per pupil funding explosion in Ohio’s charter schools has been equally remarkable.

The amount of money the state sends, on average, to Ohio’s charter schools is now more than what 129 Ohio School Districts SPEND per equivalent pupil, including all locally raised property and/or income taxes. 

That’s right. 

Ohio now provides Ohio’s Charter Schools (all but 5 of which rated in the bottom 25% of all schools nationally) more money on average than 1 in 5 Ohio school districts spend per equivalent pupil, including all their local property tax money. 

I’ve included a list of all the school districts that spend less per equivalent pupil than Charter Schools receive on average in state aid.

That’s quite a list, don’t you think?

This explains how Ohio’s charter schools now get nearly $1.3 billion in state aid while having fewer students than they had in the 2013-2014 school year, I suppose. That year — the record for number of charter school students — had about $300 million less going to charters despite having about 1,000 more students than today.

This is why it’s critical to keep our eyes on all the privatization efforts, not just the shiniest one in front of us. 

It is. Inevitable.

Organize and vote accordingly.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in about 25 years of following, analyzing and writing Ohio education policy, it’s that there is nothing more certain than Ohio Republican elected officials taking tax dollars out of the hands of our 1.4 million public school students and instead stuffing the bank accounts of political contributing profiteers and wealthy private school parents. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Failure, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Politics, Privatization, Scandals
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