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What Happened at New College Since the DeSantis Coup

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2023 //
60

Students at New College in Sarasota, Florida, conducted their own, alternative commencement in response to Governor DeSantis’ takeover of the board of the small, progressive public college. He replaced board members who believed in the college’s mission of a self-directed liberal education with new board members who were allied with the DeSantis brand of Christian nationalism.The board replaced the president of the college—an academic—with a rightwing politician who has no qualifications for the position.

In this post, which appears on Tumblr, a New College graduate explained what is happening. The commencement speaker invited by the new regime was Scott Atlas, Trump’s coronavirus advisor (who is not an epidemiologist). The students invited their own speaker, Neil Gaiman, a Bard College professor, whom you will see if you open the link.

everentropy writes:

Hi, I’m a New College alum. I have been following this closely, so I can give you a run-down…Background: New College of Florida is a small liberal arts college in Sarasota. It has around 800 students, and probably less next year. It does not have grades, it instead has narrative evaluations. There are no required classes beyond what is legally required for Common Core. As an Honors College, everyone is required to do an undergraduate thesis and defend it in front of a Baccalaureate Committee. I studied Environmental Science and I was able to create my own major (known as an Area of Concentration). I even designed an Independent Study Project that went in-depth on cholera.

As for what is happening now, the simple answer is that Governor DeSantis appointed a bunch of conservatives to the Board of Trustees (or BoT). One of these is Chris Rufo, the guy behind the CRT scare. They have been trying to systematically tear down the college. This has included things like firing the president and trying to change the school’s curriculum and entrance requirements, with a conservative evangelical Christian angle.

For a more in-depth answer, here is a list of things they have done or are currently planning on doing. (i had it under a readmore but it looks like that fucks up the formatting) They fired the previous president, even though she was ACTUALLY solving many of the issues including enrollment and bringing in donors. By every measure she was doing a great job. Of course, you can’t hire DeSantis’s cronies if someone else is in the position! They fired a queer librarian a week before finals. They denied five professors tenure, including two from the “woke” specialization of… organic chemistry. They are currently trying to change the school mascot. It is, according to the student government constitution { }, AKA the null set. They want a mascot to be more marketable, not because students are asking for it. Most insultingly, they sent out a survey asking for students’ “opinions” and one of the options they had was the Conquistadores. It’s 2023, it’s hilariously out of touch. They removed the “DEI Department”. Which didn’t exist. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was part of the admissions and outreach department. New College isn’t even big enough to have staff dedicated to that. They couldn’t even fire anyone so they made a stupid show of “eliminating it” that did nothing. They are trying to use the CLT, a Christian-based entrance exam, instead of the SAT. (Several alums have started adding an I after the CL.) Also, the formerly student-run cafe is now being run by a local business that has put (misspelled) bible verses on the cups. They want to have a “classics” education, and require students to take specific courses. New College already teaches from “the greats” for many classes, but they don’t actually know what the New College curriculum is. It will also almost certainly be from a Christian, western perspective, rather than the broader one that students currently get. New College teaches you HOW to think, it doesn’t tell you to think a specific way.

They are trying to put in both a baseball and basketball team. That doesn’t sound that bad on the surface but New College has barely enough students for ONE team, and that would have to be co-ed. It’s a school of around 800 students. (Probably less next year). There’s no way they qualify for competitive sports. It’s a grift meant to give positions to friends of the BoT through cronyism. I genuinely feel sorry for any student transferring because they were promised a sports career.

Also, New College doesn’t have sports and is proud of that fact. It’s an attempt to ruin our culture by attracting students that didn’t come here solely for learning. We even have a motto that our football team is “undefeated” (because we don’t have one). They also want to make this a pipeline for students from Inspiration Academy specifically and are trying to make it easier to enter. Finally, the cherry on top of the cake, and the reason that Mr. Gaiman gave this speech in the first place, is that they asked Scott Atlas to be speaker for commencement. He was one of the members of former President Trump’s COVID taskforce and actively downplayed the threat of COVID. His speech was not about how students have a bright future and how they will do great things. No, it was full of self-congratulations, name-dropping, and lies about COVID. If I hadn’t known what it was I would never guessed that it was a commencement speech. The only thing even remotely about the students was about standing up for your beliefs, even when people tell you you’re wrong. The people watching literally turned their backs on him and started chanting “Wrap it up!” which was pretty funny honestly. I enjoyed that. I’m pretty sure most people who attended did so to protest him. Also, the current president of the college didn’t make a speech or hand out diplomas, probably because he knew how disliked he is. Make no mistake, this is meant to be a test case. And when they are done here they will move on to other colleges, and conservatives will bring this to other states as well. That’s why resisting is so important. I will say a bright spot in all of this is the outpouring of support we have received. Thank you everyone who has reblogged this with a message of support. We appreciate it. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.

#save new college#savenewcollege#new college of florida#chris rufo#scott atlas#ron desantis#wrap it up!#long post#ask to tag#I’m pretty sure I’m missing things#but yeah that’s most of it#it’s been EXHAUSTING#it’s only been a few months but it feels longer

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Courage, Creativity, DeSantis, Disruption, Extremism, Florida

Indiana: High School Play Canceled, Students Raise Money to Stage It Themselves

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2023 //
10

School administrators and school boards are canceling school plays that include LGBT characters. When this happened in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the students started a GoFundMe and raised the money to stage the play on their own. A professional stage director came back to Fort Wayne to help the students. This generation of young people is our hope for the future.

Students at an Indiana high school are moving ahead with an LGBTQ+ inclusive play after administrators canceled the production earlier this year.

Carroll High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana is just one of many schools across the country where student plays and musicals have been canceled or censored this year due to concerns over content. Howard Sherman, the managing director of the performing arts center at New York’s Baruch College, recently noted that the wave of opposition has been focused largely on productions with LGBTQ+ content.

As The Washington Post and other outlets have reported, students at Carroll High were informed two days into auditions for Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood that the play had been canceled due to complaints from parents about its LGBTQ+ characters. A re-telling of the Robin Hood story, the play features a nonbinary character and a same-sex couple.

“I know there were people who were upset that the play was being considered to be put on, I think there was worry about protests and things like that,” Northwest Allen County Schools superintendent Wayne Barker said at a school board meeting.

Almost immediately, students began talking about putting the play on themselves. They soon connected with Fort Wayne Pride, which organizes Pride events in the community, and launched a GoFundMe campaign on May 4.

As of this week, the campaign has raised over $79,000, well exceeding its $50,000 goal. The funds will go toward renting a venue, insurance, costumes, and set construction.

Fort Wayne native Blane Pressler, the artistic director of Ozark Actors Theatre, has returned to his hometown to help put on the play, which will run for one night only at the Foellinger Outdoor Theater on May 20.

The students are thrilled. The show is likely to be a huge success. The students demonstrated their independence and courage. Those who object to the play can stay home. The GoFundMe has already exceeded its goal and may produce enough money to fund future shows.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Extremism, Gender, Indiana

Ex-Trump Advisor Chosen as New College Commencement Speaker; Graduates Plan Alternate Ceremony

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
14

A few months ago, Governor DeSantis engineered a takeover of Florida’s only progressive public college, New College. First he gained a majority of the board, then the board fired the president of the college and hired the unqualified Richard Corcoran, who had been a hard-right speaker of the House and state commissioner of education.

For the first commencement under the new regime, Corcoran invited Dr. Scott Atlas to be commencement speaker. Atlas was Trump’s coronavirus advisor. He frequently clashed with Dr. Anthony Fauci because Atlas believes in herd immunity, not public health measures.

The graduates are planning an alternate commencement.

Students at New College of Florida are planning their own graduation event after a conservative speaker with ties to former president Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis was selected to give the college’s commencement address.

Dr. Scott Atlas was chosen by New College of Florida interim president Richard Corcoran to address seniors at a May 19 graduation ceremony in Sarasota.

The radiologist was appointed as Trump’s special coronavirus adviser in 2020.

He resigned after clashes with other public health leaders over his advocacy for herd immunity as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students say the current administration is made up of new hires, who have only been part of the community for a handful of months.

They say the additional graduation event on May 18 will give them a chance to celebrate on their own terms.

A GoFundMe account set up to help pay for the separate commencement had raised nearly $20,000 by Wednesday afternoon.

Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford University and a fellow in the Academy for Science and Freedom at the Washington, D.C., campus of Hillsdale College, the small Michigan Christian school DeSantis has said he wants to model New College after.

Atlas’s conservative ideology is in line with a month’s long process to change the culture at the small liberal arts college in Sarasota.

The overhaul began in January when DeSantis appointed six new conservative trustees to the college’s board. The trustees then fired the school’s president and appointed former state education commissioner Richard Corcoran as interim.

In the span of just a few months, trustees fired the school’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion and abolished the school’s small DEI office. They fired the school’s librarian and dean of academic engagement and denied tenure to five faculty members. They also hired a director of athletics, although the college currently offers only intramural sports.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Creativity, DeSantis, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Health, Higher Education, Science, Trump

High Schools Canceling Student Plays to Avoid Controversy

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2023 //
49

Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post reports that high schools are canceling productions of plays that might offend parents and members of the community. The “culture wars” have watered down which topics are permissible in 2023. Once again, we see how fear of offending anyone restricts freedom.

She writes:

The crew had built most of the set. Choreographers had blocked out almost all the dances. The students were halfway through rehearsals.


Then in late January, musical director Vanessa Allen called an emergency meeting. She told the cast and crew of 21 teens that their show — the musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” — was off.

Board members in Ohio’s Cardinal Local Schools disliked some features of “Spelling Bee,” Allen explained, including a song about erections, the appearance of Jesus Christ and the fact that one character has two fathers.


Sobs broke out across the room, said Riley Matchinga, 18, who was slated to play one of the leads: Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, the character whose fathers are gay. “Everyone’s faces just fell,” she said. “I could see everyone’s hearts melting, because we had worked so hard.”


Following a record-setting surge in efforts to change curriculums and ban books at schools nationwide, the education culture war has now reached the stage. The controversy in Cardinal is one of a number of recent instances in which school administrators have intervened to nix or alter school theatrical productions deemed objectionable — often because they feature LGBTQ characters or deal with issues of race and racism.

In Florida’s Duval County Public Schools this January, administrators stopped a production of the play “Indecent,” which details a love affair between two women, due to its “mature content.” In February, Indiana’s Northwest Allen County Schools pulled the plug on a production of the play “Marian” after adults raised the alarm over its depiction of a same-sex couple and a nonbinary character. And in March, Iowa’s South Tama County Community School District halted a performance of the play “August: Osage County” over fears that its treatment of suicide, addiction and racism was inappropriate for school-aged children.

Censorship of K-12 student productions has been happening for years, said Howard Sherman, managing director of the performing arts center at New York’s Baruch College. Since 2011, Sherman has tracked and fought efforts to end or edit school theater, assisting with roughly four dozen such cases, many of which never became public.


Still, this most recent wave of opposition seems more intense and organized than in past years, Sherman said, and more tightly focused on plays and musicals with LGBTQ content.


“Something that was being dealt with community by community has now, for some people, become a cause, ” he said. “You see politicians and officials enacting rules and laws which are incredibly onerous and designed to enforce a very narrow view of what students can see, read, learn or act on stage.”

The logic: if high school students see a play with gay characters, they might think being gay is normal, and they too might be gay. Counter-logic: the same students are far more likely to see movies, TV, and plays where people are not gay.

Robert Pondiscio of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, defended censorship:

“You have to be mindful of local values,” Pondiscio said. “School has always existed to signal to children what is worth knowing and valuable, what we praise and condemn, and you have to apply that to musicals as well.”

In North Lebanon School District in Pennsylvania, the school board voted down a proposed performance of “The Addams Family,” which is the most frequently performed high school musical. The board thought it was too gloomy.

In Ohio, the students won a minor victory:

In Ohio’s Cardinal schools, Matchinga and her peers were determined to put on “Spelling Bee.” They bombarded the school board with emails questioning the cancellation.


Musical director Allen began revising the script to erase lines board members dubbed inappropriate — eliminating profanity, a line about “[beating] up” kids and replacing the phrase “fake mom” with “step mom,” according to school documents obtained by The Washington Post. She was assisted by Rachel Sheinkin, one of the writers of the 2005 Broadway musical. Ultimately, after requesting more than two dozen edits and receiving 12, the school board voted to let “Spelling Bee” proceed.

Alterations to Matchinga’s lines included replacing “and I’ve heard she is pro-choice/though still a virgin” with “but she will not make her choice/til she is certain.”


“I don’t think that really made a big effect on the story, and the show was still really funny and we got a ton of laughs,” Matchinga said. “Overall, I think it was okay.”

But in the future, the school board will have veto power on which plays may be staged.

Let’s see, “Mary Poppins” should pass muster. What else?

Categories Art, Arts Education, Bigotry, Censorship, Creativity, Cruelty, Democracy, Extremism, Florida, Freedom, Gender

LeBron James Is the Greatest Citizen-Educator of Our Time

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2023 //
24

The basketball superstar LeBron James grew up in Akron. He wanted to help children in Akron, so he funded a school. It is not a charter school. It is a community school that operates as part of the Akron public schools. Unlike most charter schools, it doesn’t choose the top-performing kids; it chooses the kids who need help the most, those with the lowest scores. It provides a range of services for them and their families. It offers a food pantry for families, for instance.

Now the LeBron James Family Foundation is reaching out to offer services to the entire community. This family foundation has some valuable lessons for the Walton Family Foundation, which uses its billions to destroy public schools and communities; it could teach lessons to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has imposed a series of failed programs on schools, dreamed up by consultants who never asked students, parents, or school staff what they wanted or needed.

Now, in a story told by Tawney Beans of the Akron Beacon Journal, the Lebron James program is expanding to offer job training and other services for community members.

It was quite the opening day for House Three Thirty.

The space, formerly home to Tangier restaurant, has almost concluded its two-year transformation into a retail, dining and event community center spearheaded by the LeBron James Family Foundation.

After the complex opened at 6 a.m. Thursday, a steady trickle people made their way through the space. Some simply wanted a hot cup of joe from the first-of-its kind Starbucks Community Store, others couldn’t wait to peek inside and scope out where to have their next church event, and still more came to see just how much impact a self-proclaimed “kid from Akron” could really have.

Some of the first visitors included LeBron James’ mother, Gloria, as well as former St. Vincent-St. Mary basketball teammate and LeBron James Family Foundation employee Willie McGee.

While touring the space, Gloria spoke about her pride in her son for creating House Three Thirty.

“I’m really proud of this venture, especially because it opens the doors to so many opportunities for our community — job training, employment, [Chase] bank being here and helping our community with their banking needs,” she said. “Then a huge ball area where lifelong memories can be made like weddings and receptions and birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and all that goes with that.”

McGee shares that pride and hopes that the new facility, coupled with the nearby I Promise School, I Promise Village and soon to be HealthQuarters, will have a substantial impact on the Akron community.

“We’re offering them the ability to come into a safe space where they feel comfortable, that they can receive resources,” he said. “We’re trying to build something to where whatever you need, you’re able to get in this area, and by being centrally located we want all of Akron to be able to come and join in.”

DeLondia Feaster of Akron had her 45th birthday party in Tangier and was pleased to see that the foundation kept much of the historic building’s integrity. One detail she admired were the picture frames in the main hallway, which were once adorned with photos and posters of entertainers who performed at the previous Akron restaurant and cabaret.

“I feel like I’m in Vegas, somewhere where you can go in somewhere and everything is in one shop,” she said. “It should bring some pride. A kid from the projects bringing something like this to a city is huge, you know, it’s really huge for the city, and I just hope people take advantage of that.”

Another spectator, Karon Boston of Akron, enjoyed the history within House Three Thirty — specifically, the portions depicting James’ progression from his time at St. Vincent-St. Mary to the NBA.

Highland Square resident Barbara Kemper and friend Cheryl Renick took in the new space from its sitting area near Starbucks.

“It’s nice to have something in this area besides bars,” Kemper said.

Sundae Davinport, a barista at House Three Thirty’s Starbucks, said that the family atmosphere of the place has given her a reason to wake up in the morning and be happy to go to work.

Davinport is the mother to a previous I Promise Program student and has spent the last eight weeks training in the facility’s kitchens. She’s learned everything from how to properly cut chicken and fish to ways to cook steaks and vegetables.

“We learned a lot,” she said. “I never knew there was 100 or more ways to cook an egg.”

That happiness to go into work was also influenced by the support she has received from the foundation, even something small like getting her hair braided for free at House Three Thirty’s in-house barber and beauty shop.

Contact Beacon Journal reporter Tawney Beans at tbeans@gannett.com and on Twitter @TawneyBeans.

Categories Community Schools, Creativity, Education Reform, Funding, Ohio, Parents

The Mississippi Free Press: A Powerful Voice for News, History and Truth!

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2023 //
3

Donna Ladd, a native Mississippian, founded the Mississippi Free Press three years ago to shine a bright light on the state’s politics, history, and culture. The MFP has grown into a journalistic force. I am excited to join its advisory board, because the force of sunlight can be so powerful. I want to share Donna Ladd’s last newsletter, introducing a new reporter—Torsheta Jackson—and describing some of their exciting plans for the future. This team wants to free Mississippi from the dead hand of the past. Read Donna’s letter and I think you will understand why I am so enthusiastic about the Mississippi Free Press.

Read our latest stories from mfp.ms. And please support our work: mfp.ms/donate. Thank you! Meet Torsheta Jackson!

Donna writes:

One of my favorite reporting trips ever was touring around Noxubee County with then-freelance writer Torsheta Jackson in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because she grew up in the East Mississippi county, over on the Alabama border, Torsheta was the tour guide, driving us around in her big truck I had to lift myself into. First, she pointed out where she grew up in Shuqualak (locally pronounced “Sugar-lock”), the child of educators. Along the way, she pointed out slabs where industry, grocery stores and schools used to stand before her hometown became a shell of its former self over the decades after forced integration in 1970.

We walked around the ruins that now dominate the little downtown and talked about poverty, neglect, white-flight cycles and disinvestment in the county settled by rich white planters—including Mississippi State University founder Stephen D. Lee’s family—and built by enslaved people. The county has always been majority-Black, but usually under white control, from newspapers, to industry, to local education decisions and resources. It was also the site of vicious white terrorism to keep it that way.

Click now to support MFP’s Mapping Mississippi systemic-reporting strategy covering the 82 counties of Mississippi.

In the county seat of Macon, Torsheta showed me the county’s only remaining grocery store—white-owned and too expensive in a region where hunger is far too rampant, she said. She then took me to see the library, which still has its gallows, where they used to hang people in front of crowds on the front lawn, now marketed as a tourist attraction. We looked straight out the front window of the library at the tall Confederate statue standing in front of the courthouse across the street in a town that is 82% Black. The Board of Supervisors voted in July 2020 to remove it; last I checked, it was still there as post-George Floyd anti-racism enthusiasm wanes.

Torsheta showed me the abandoned Central Academy, which the superintendent of the county public schools helped open in the 1960s, supported by state vouchers, becoming the seg academy’s headmaster. She drove me to all the now-boarded-up, or disappeared or repurposed, public schools that used to be in Noxubee (locally pronounced “Nock-shu-bee”) County before most white families fled either to C.A. or to the local Mennonite school, which also opened in 1970.

Torsheta and I spent hours in the “new” Noxubee County public school just north of Macon, talking to the principal and the school psychologist—both women she knew growing up there. We learned about the perpetual state of crisis that faces the district and its one remaining public-school system covering the entire county; district leadership was changing again that day, in fact. And, of course, we learned about the systemic challenges that face Black women and their families, in particular, in Noxubee County, from no broadband, to hunger, to mental health and more. Their honesty with us informed Torsheta’s award-winning installment of our “(In)equity and Resilience: Black Women, Systemic Barriers and COVID-19” cause-solutions journalism project. It is now the prototype of our statewide county-level Mapping Mississippi systemic-reporting strategy that we’re amping up by summer with Torsheta’s help and inspiration.

Not to mention, a new area of research opened up for me when I heard the school psychologist’s story about a mob of local white men killing a Black woman school principal to stop the education and advancement of Black children: white terrorism specifically deployed to keep Black children uneducated and, thus, inequity and white control in place for generations to come. They said what they were doing for white-supremacy perpetuity right in the local newspaper. It wasn’t a secret. They bragged about ugly mob race violence by county leaders.Make a recurring donation now monthly, quarterly or annually to support the systemic journalism of Torsheta Jackson and our other reporters. Become an MFP VIP Club member.

It was an eye-opening and powerful journey for us both. Torsheta would later say on MFP Live that, before that reporting experience, she had not understood fully how intentional barriers and discrimination caused the decline of her home county over the decades. After this journey into the past, she did.

It was also on that tour of Noxubee County that I decided that I wanted Torsheta as a full-time reporter to take her systemic journalism across the state and help me build our Education Equity Solutions Lab. This is a very different kind of education reporting than the partisan griping about schools and funding that we usually see in Mississippi. For me, what I called Project Torsheta started on that trip. With her years of teaching experience (19 as of now), her brilliance, her curiosity, her wit and her stunning work ethic, I knew Torsheta was the kind of reporter Mississippi needs and deserves covering education. She can show us like no one else how education’s use as a political tool hurts families, children and whole communities.

Fast forward a couple of years, and it’s happening. Report for America announced Wednesday that it is supporting Torsheta as our lead education-equity reporter to do this work, paying a chunk of her salary for the next two to three years. After two years of working together to figure out timing and resources, Torsheta and I—and our whole team—are ecstatic that our vision is happening. I cannot wait to develop this work with Torsheta, and it doesn’t hurt that we recently hired fantastic Business Manager Jared Norton to free me up for more journalism. Torsheta and I (and others) will soon be traveling the state together again, doing the systemic journalism we know can help improve this state for all of our people.

I’ll talk more soon about our second new reporter we announced this week. Heather Harrison of Copiah County is the vivacious and dogged outgoing editor of The Reflector at Mississippi State. I knew in our first conversation (and then confirmed in a team solution circle) that she is bringing the energy, passion and curiosity that it takes to succeed and thrive at the Mississippi Free Press. She’ll be our first regional full-time bureau reporter, remaining in Starkville to largely cover that region of the state and help us collaborate with the Starkville Daily News.

Needless to say, you readers are making all of this growth happen. We started with $50,000 and one full-time reporter just three years ago. You have helped create 17 good-paying jobs and pay for myriad freelancers, contractors and interns—most of them brilliant and engaged Mississippi natives staying in their home state to do the work. Our resources are mostly from readers. You get it, and you are intentionally helping us grow our team and our reach to more counties.

Please help keep us growing by giving what you can now at mfp.ms/donate. Remember, your recurring donations are paying for at least one reporter already, so every amount matters.

Donna Ladd, Editor and CEO

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Courage, Creativity, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Media, Mississippi

Will Bunch: Helen Gym Should Be the Next Mayor of Philadelphia! I Agree!

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2023 //
8

Helen Gym is a brilliant, eloquent progressive candidate for Mayor of Philadelphia. She is an activist and a member of the City Council. I enthusiastically endorse her candidacy. I have known her for a dozen years and am repeatedly impressed by her values, her energy, and her passion for justice. Philadelphia schools have suffered grievously due to budget cuts imposed by the state. A decade ago, two young children died because their schools had no nurse. Helen thinks that every school should have a nurse and counselors. In the suburbs, such services are taken for granted. But not in Philadelphia, where public schools and their students have been shortchanged for years.

Will Bunch is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has followed the mayoral race closely. He sums up the reasons why she is the right person at the right time. Her election would bring hope to Philadelphia. This election could be a turning point for this great but neglected city.

He writes:

Philly needs a bullhorn mayor to slice through decades of status quo baloney

In a crowded Philly mayoral race, Helen Gym is fighting for the city’s poor and neglected. No wonder status quo elites are so desperate to stop her.

Philadelphia City Councilmembers Helen Gym, Jamie Gauthier, and Kendra Brooks walk with protesters following the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Steven M. Falk / MCT

It was one of those raw late April afternoons in Philadelphia where the weather in the far corner of Love Park — unrelentingly grey, windy, occasional drizzle — seemed to match the grim civic mood looming over the City Hall tower in the background. At the supposed 12:45 p.m. start time for this Helen-Gym-for-mayor campaign rally, just a few folks milled around and chatted with the candidate in her bright red coat, carrying a reusable Target shopping bag, and you briefly wonder if you got the time or place wrong.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a blue-clad army of about 50 supporters — young and old, Black, brown and white, including members of the teachers’ union that has endorsed Gym, carrying signs that read “The Wealth To Fix Our City Exists!” — crossed JFK Boulevard all at once, and it was showtime. Over the next half-hour, speakers from the various Jenga blocks of Philly’s shaky civil society reimagined the city as it could be. A librarian from South Philly spoke about the dream of reopening on the weekends as a community refuge. An instructor and union leader from the Community College of Philadelphia imagined the benefits of free tuition.

“When I say, “Moral!,” chanted emcee Elisa King, a minister and counselor at CCP, “you say, “Budget!’” — driving home the rally’s theme that City Hall needs to focus on restoring vital services, not more incremental tax cuts.

When the 55-year-old former city council member finally got the microphone, the spring sun had seared through the layer of clouds. Gym declared her idea of a moral budget “is not defined by the corporate-backed interests, the developers and the status-quo electeds, bureaucrats and wealthy individuals who have long tried to buy this campaign with their tired ideas and their technocratic solutions.” The crowd whooped. “Those candidates have played it safe all their lives.”

The only remaining progressive in a May 16 primary field whittled down to five or six major candidates defined her rivals’ ideas as “just too small for this moment. They’re talking about safety that’s only defined by policing. They’re talking about development only in terms defined by the tax cuts and those people who get to benefit. They manage crisis — we’re here to end them!” Almost on cue, a passing dump truck on the boulevard tooted its horn loudly in support.

It’s fitting that the race to pick the 100th mayor of America’s founding city is also arguably its most consequential in decades, perhaps since the divisive Frank Rizzo era. That’s because the coronavirus also attacked the civic immune system that had allowed the city’s leaders to ignore the warning symptoms of the nation’s highest rate of deep poverty and unacceptable schools housed in unsafe buildings while touting the surface glitz of Philadelphia’s comeback … for tourists, and handful of gentrifying neighborhoods. Now, a spike in gun violence and related dysfunction has put the nation’s sixth-biggest city at a crossroads.

I might be The Inquirer’s national columnist but I’ve watched this local election closely — not just because I work and pay taxes and ride the troubled subways here (or because my two adult offspring live here) but also because what Philadelphia voters decide in little more than two weeks will say a lot about how America is going to solve its urban problems, especially persistent poverty. In this (sort of) post-pandemic era, comparable cities such as Boston, Chicago, and L.A. have rejected old-school police-union fearmongering for young, progressive mayors who see how issues like attacking climate change or youth unemployment can bring real change.

It’s not at all clear yet whether Philadelphia has the courage or boldness to follow its sister cities down that fresh pathway. I’ve watched both televised debates and have been somewhat taken aback with how most of the major candidates have crafted a message around not new ideas but “leadership.” What they are really offering, in essence, is a pledge to restore some presence and personality to City Hall that’s been missing during the shockingly absent Jim Kenney administration, but with little evidence they’d change the status quo policies of minor tax cuts or FOP-endorsed policing that coincided with decline.

In the debates and on the campaign trail, Gym has set herself apart as the only candidate who fully grasps the root problems in the most desperate neighborhoods — and who wants to go big to actually address them. How many times can we hire more cops or return to “stop-and-frisk” policing with the same tired results? That’s why Gym is the leader in pushing for trained responders to replace cops on mental-health calls — hugely successful where it’s been tried — and is the only candidate who agrees with the majority of Philadelphians who twice elected Larry Krasner as DA, that some criminal-justice reforms were long overdue.

Elite critics of some of Gym’s bigger and bolder ideas — going all-out in fixing unsafe school buildings, or guaranteed employment for adults under 30 — call them unrealistic pie in the sky. Most everyday voters know what matters most about a political leaders is less about the budgetary small print and more about who and what they are willing to fight for. And in her seven years as an at-large city council member, Gym has fought for what cynics had written off as lost causes, and won a strikingly high percentage of the time.

A ”fair workweek” ordinance that mandates essential workers have predictable schedules. Long-overdue eviction protections for the city’s beleaguered tenants. A return to local control of the Philadelphia School District while fighting to restore school nurses and counselors. A push to get lead out of school drinking water. No wonder that after her first term on council, The Inquirer Editorial Board hailed her as “a savvy, passionate and progressive leader.”

Things are a lot different now that Gym is running for mayor. While she’s been endorsed by the influential Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and a panoply of other unions and progressive groups, many of the city’s elites — even some who’ve been somewhat supportive of her council work — seem dead-set on preventing her from running Philly. Some of that is with a budgetary magnifying glass, but much of it centers on attacking her personality and blocking her ideas. Yes, she changed her mind on charter schools after founding one — but who wouldn’t after watching them become a negative drain on public education? Of course it was a mistake to protest the Union League and go there just days later, but is that a big-enough reason to punish Gym — and the city — by voting for someone who doesn’t share your values?

“I think it’s about making things about individuals and reducing it to isolated incidences rather than looking at a track record that holds steady over time,” Gym told me Wednesday after her rally. “The way to marginalize real movements for change is to hyper-individualize faults within imperfect people. I mean, I’m not perfect — I make mistakes and all of that — but I think the difference with me is I have a 20-year-plus track record of standing alongside communities.”

One truism about politics is that a lot of times you can gauge a candidate by the enemies they make. The Chamber of Commerce crowd and their handmaidens aren’t fighting Gym because of her mistakes but because of the things that she gets right. There’s a reason that many of Philadelphia’s most essential yet underheard folks — the teachers and librarians and social workers — don’t just think that Gym is the best among a large field of candidates, but truly believe that her election in 2023 is a matter of civic life-or-death.

“She is rising to the moment, which is a moment of crisis for our city,” Stan Shapiro, vice-chair of Philly Neighborhood Networksand a former City Council staffer, told me before the rally. “It’s not a time for the status quo, for business as usual, for just keeping the lights on. There aren’t enough lights. There aren’t enough rec centers. There aren’t enough health centers.”

One of the other straw-man arguments from Gym’s critics centers on how she’s carried a bullhorn to protest in the streets on behalf of Philly’s kids, or its underserved people, or the moment when — the horror! — she was willing to get detained in Harrisburg to dramatize how state Republicans won’t invest in education. We’ve had decades of “conveners” and glad-handers on the second floor of City Hall with too little to show for it. It’s time to try a bullhorn mayor, a real fighter. In a race with many candidates, there is only one that truly matters.

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Hope, Justice, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Nancy Flanagan: One of the Very Best Books About Teaching!

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2023 //
6

Nancy Flanagan, now retired, taught music for many years. She is a keen observer of teaching and also of the pundits who regularly criticize teachers. She has been there, done that, and has no sympathy for armchair “experts.”

She recently reviewed a book that won her praise: Alexandra Robbins’s THE TEACHERS: A YEAR INSIDE AMERICA’S MOST VULNERABLE, IMPORTANT PROFESSION.

This book, Flanagan writes,

does what many other books about teaching are not able to do–take the reader right into the classroom, and describe what’s happening, with empathy and perception. There are lots of books about problems in American education, and lots of books that suggest solutions for those problems, but we seldom get to see examples, conversations and the people doing the work.

If you want a drone’s eye view of American public education—where it’s been, what bedevils the century-old movement to improve it—I would recommend Diane Ravitch’s trio of excellent books that follow education reform over the last couple of decades, or A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire.

But if you want to see what happens in the classroom and in the lives of teachers, Robbins accomplishes that better than any book I’ve read since Tracy Kidder’s Among Schoolchildren, written in 1989, which now feels like ancient history. The book is a tour de force—every teacher I know who’s read it agrees—unapologetically written from the POV of teachers without feeling the need to make excuses or backpedal.

I read an advance copy of the book and was similarly impressed. I felt that at this very moment, when teachers are being vilified by the likes of Betsy DeVos, Ron DeSantis, and other red state politicians, Alexandra Robbins’ book is a necessary antidote to scurrilous claims that teachers are “grooming” students for a life of perversity or training them to be Marxists. People who rain insults on teachers should be barred from public life.

Robbins follows three excellent teachers and describes their lives, their trials and successes.

Robbins highlights things that other education books don’t notice or can’t be bothered with–in-building teacher jealousies and vindictiveness, physical violence against teachers, the long-term effects of cuts to things once considered normal in every school, what it’s like to sit in an IEP meeting with a recalcitrant parent or clueless colleague.

Flanagan writes:

This book is also the first and best description I have read about the impact of the pandemic on teaching and learning. There have been endless articles and research on “learning loss”–all rife with meaningless data and numbers–but nobody talks about the impact of being expected to position family needs as secondary to students’ needs. Robbins gets this right–there is a line between acting morally vs. choosing school over family, a choice that teachers were urged to make, and reviled when they chose their own families and their own health. We have not yet reconciled that, here in America—but the book makes a good start on it.

Highly recommended for everyone, but especially teachers. It’s a fairly fast and facile read, although well-documented with endnotes, and should give teachers a lift, knowing that their work and their dilemmas have been acknowledged.

Categories Courage, Creativity, Teachers and Teaching

Virginia: Spotsylvania Will Remove 14 Books from Its School Libraries

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
16

Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin sends his own children to an elite private school that never bans books and teaches critical race theory, But the governor ran on a platform of “parental rights,” which has unleashed censorship and book banning in the state’s public schools.

The schools of Spotsylvania have posted a list of 14 books that will be withdrawn to protect children from ideas their parents don’t like. Among the 14 are two by Nobel-prize winning author Toni Morrison.

The books were challenged for having “sexually explicit material” in them, according to a message to families from superintendent Mark Taylor.

The superintendent of Spotsylvania public schools has no prior experience in education. His appointment was made after hard-right conservatives won control of the school board. Aside from his lack of experience, Mark Taylor was controversial because of incendiary comments he made on social media. “They allegedly include memes mocking trans people and school shootings, racist innuendos and calls for parents to pull their children out of public schools.”

By the end of the week, the school district will remove:

“All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson

“Like a Love Story” by Abdi Nazemian

“Dime” and “America” by E.R. Frank

“Sold” by Patricia McCormick

“Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez

“Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison

“Looking for Alaska” by John Green

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky

“Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen

“Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe” by Preston Norton

“More Happy Than Not” by Adam Silvera

“Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi PicoultSpotsylvania superintendent floats elimination of all school libraries

In a statement, Taylor pointed to a Virginia lawthat requires school districts to establish parental notification policies for instructional materials with sexually explicit materials, saying the 14 books fall under that category.

Taylor added that the division doesn’t have the resources to review whether the roughly 390,000 books in all school libraries have similar materials, so purging the 14 books from the shelves would be the only way to ensure they aren’t accessible….

Taylor noted in his message to families that the decision won’t stop teachers from including the pulled books in classroom assignments, which would have to be shared with parents under the law. According to the district, the books will be stored until they are donated.

What teacher will be brave enough or foolish enough to assign a banned book?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Creativity, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom, Libraries, Literacy, Literature, Republicans, Virginia

Illinois: District Fires Outstanding Teacher Because of Book She Ordered

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
18

While traveling in the Midwest, I visited Illinois State University, which has an excellent teacher education program. A leader of that program recently wrote me while in a state of distress. One of her best students, she said, was just fired by her district. Why? One parent objected to a book in her classroom.

Who will want to teach when teachers’ lives and reputations can be jeopardized by one angry parent? Maybe that is the point: Demonize public schools and their teachers to build support for vouchers, where uncertified teachers are hired and the Bible is the beginning and end of all knowledge.

Here is an excerpt from the letter I received:

Tonight, I’m writing to you to share the story of the most amazing teacher I have ever worked with in my nearly 25 years in education–except she is no longer a teacher as of last Thursday. I know you have committed your career to fighting injustices like hers, so it is my hope that you might amplify her story in the fight against misinformation and teacher defamation.

As a teacher educator at Illinois State University, I met Sarah Bonner 10 years ago when she was in my action research capstone class as the final requirement for her master’s degree. During the year I worked with her, I was struck by her approach to education, and I encouraged her to continue working toward a doctorate degree. Since that time, I have had the opportunity to work closely with her, co-designing a framework that paired literature and inquiry as a way to expand 8th grade students’ in rural Illinois worldviews; co-teaching alongside her to maintain my connection to the classroom and to continue to evolve our work; guiding her in her dissertation work where she connected with teachers who were interested in transforming their own teaching; watching her mentor emerging, new, and experienced teachers; and witnessing the blossoming of students under her guidance–especially those who are often marginalized in largely conservative, small schools. I can honestly say that I have never had the opportunity to work with a more compassionate, innovative, and thought-provoking teacher. She’s by far a better teacher than I was when I was still in the middle school classroom, and working alongside her has pushed me to be an even better teacher educator than I was before.

For this reason, I cannot begin to describe the devastation that I experienced when I learned less than two weeks ago that not only was she being attacked by our local conservative “news” station, but that her district advised that she seek union representation to represent her while they investigated the story. She received this news on Wednesday, March 15. By Friday March 17 she learned that she was being put on paid leave the next week so they could investigate–and they hadn’t even talked with her yet.

What was the story? As a part of a book tasting day, Sarah consulted NCTE, ALA, and Good Reads to find award-winning and notable books that would reflect her students’ interests–and checked out nearly 100 books from the public library. One of those books was Juno Dawson’s “This Book Is Gay.” A student picked up the book, a sex education book for LGBTQ+ youth, snapped some pictures of its pages, and sent those pages home. Rather than approaching Sarah with questions or concerns, this child’s parents alerted the media outlet, and a witch-hunt began.

Suddenly, the wild and false allegations began: Sarah was requiring this book; the book was a regular part of her classroom library; she was sharing pornography with children; she was grooming children. And then, they went to her class website, which shared a link to Common Sense Media’s Netflix Documentary page, which so happened to feature Moneyshot, and now she was encouraging students to watch and learn about porn. Ironically, this film hadn’t even been released when she was last in the classroom. The story just kept growing until this award-winning teacher realized that she could not go back to that community again. And so, by this past Thursday, she had officially resigned. In just over a week, a teacher’s reputation, livelihood, and life was completely upended.

Sarah is fortunate brcause she’s got the deep knowledge and experience to bounce back and counter the current narrative. Unfortunately, this kind of experience is not unique, and too often teachers who aren’t equipped to handle it take huge hits. It’s impacting their mental health, their careers, their entire livelihoods. We have a narrative around a teacher shortage. We don’t have a teacher shortage—we have a shortage of respect and support for teachers. And we live in Illinois, a liberal state that requires LGBTQ+ history and contributions to be taught by 8th grade. Too many people are watching the antics happening in states like Florida and thinking those are outliers. They are not. Sarah is an award-winning teacher. She is a leader in and on the executive board of the National Council Teachers of English. And yet, she will no longer impact the lives of so many students.

Democracy is in peril as we continue to bow to pressures to restrict the books students can read. We cannot normalize allowing a few loud voices’ the power to destroy careers and lives. I have attached the statement she wrote and read to her board upon her resignation.

Here is Sarah Bonner’s statement to her school board:

Thank you to the Heyworth Board and Administrative team for allowing me to speak this evening. If you know anything about me as a professional, you know that this is not the way I would have chosen to be here tonight. Twenty years ago when I was given the keys to my very first classroom, I knew teaching was my calling. And, while I’ve taught in previous school districts over the years, Heyworth was the place that allowed me to become the professional I was meant to be.

Throughout my time here, I earned both my Masters and Doctorate degrees with the help of district tuition waivers. I became the National Council of Teachers of English (or NCTE) Media Literacy Teacher of the Year in 2018 along with the national Outstanding Middle Level Educator award the following year. I wrote and published a book through Teachers College Press to further the teaching field. Additionally, I hosted and supported numerous future teachers from Illinois State University as they began their journey into the classroom. Lastly – most importantly – I had the opportunity to connect with the best kids I’ve ever worked with in my career.


Our community – or even our nation – may never know the gravity of what teachers bear on a regular basis. For me, I not only worked tirelessly on designing and cultivating meaningful learning experiences for my students, but I also worked hard to maintain healthy relationships with students and families, upheld weekly and transparent communication among all shareholders, contributed regularly to the junior high teacher team, worked a second teaching job at Illinois State University to better support my family, served as the Middle Level Section Steering Committee Chairperson for NCTE, wrote a doctoral dissertation, published a book for teachers, along with being a partner, a mother, and a human wrestling with being newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

With all of this weighing heavily on my plate, I depended on national communities like the American Library Association and NCTE as well as reading communities like Goodreads to help generate texts that engage all readers with a vast collection of interests. The activity my students and I participated in last week was made up of close to 100 different books recommended from these spaces. Given the nature of the lesson compressed with a heavy list of responsibilities, vetting each and every single text for explicit details was impossible. Should the book in question be available to students? Yes. However, should this specific book have been a part of the 100 choices during this class activity? No. Simply put, the title was on the ALA Rainbow Reading Awardee list and I picked it along with a few others because I knew students in my class had interests. To make students, families, community members feel unsafe was never the intention of my decision making.

While I’m saddened by how the events have played out over the last week, there’s a piece of me that isn’t surprised. Being an innovator in teaching means that boundaries, perspectives, and ideas need to be pushed. When I realized years ago that our kids who would receive these amazing scholarships to these Big 10 schools were coming back the following year because they couldn’t adjust to life outside of a rural small town, I knew I needed to do something. I knew I needed to disrupt traditional learning practices to embody the needs of today’s world. Our kids deserve learning experiences that prepare them for our world and not just our town. However, being a changemaker often comes with a cost…especially if you’re one of the only ones willing to take risks and think differently.


London’s favorite soccer coach, Ted Lasso – the man who makes us all believe in the power of believe – said it best ”You know, people have underestimated me my entire life. And for years, I never understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day, I saw this quote by Walt Whitman. It said, “Be curious, not judgmental.” All of a sudden it hits me. Of all those that used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. They thought they had everything all figured out. So they judged everything, and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me… who I was had nothing to do with it. ‘Cause if they were curious, they would’ve asked questions.”
As I leave here tonight, I hope you will remember a few things:

  1. Sometimes things need to break in order to rebuild it stronger. Encourage
    curiosity. As you enter a space of healing, I hope the district and Heyworth community can find a place to listen and understand that you all want the best for our kids. Our teachers especially deserve to be heard and questioned in responsible ways.
  2. Remember to support your teachers moving forward. If I were them at this point, I would feel scared, unsafe, and paralyzed knowing that I could be next. Our teacher community needs reassurance that innovation is still supported and protected as time moves on.
  3. And, remember the good I brought to our kids and community by taking innovative risks in Language Arts. While I’ve been here, I have witnessed students stand up for other students with disabilities, fight against racism, organize trash clean ups, create documentaries that tell the untold stories of their community, advocate for safe spaces, strengthen their own beliefs, shape their own personal identities, and critically think about the world around them. With the work I’ve been able to do with students, I’m reminded on a daily basis that our kids will be the hope our future needs.

The Heyworth school district has lost a teacher who is dedicated to their children and her profession.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Creativity, Democracy, Extremism, Illinois, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching
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