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Congressional Leaders Rebuke DeVos for Excluding 7.5 Million Students from Emergency Aid

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2020 //
28

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a hard, cruel woman. We all knew she is a billionaire. What was not yet clear is that she is utterly heartless. She drew up a list of students who would not get any federal assistance during the pandemic, although Congress did not authorize her to exclude anyone.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 1, 2020

Contact:
Madeleine Russak: 202-224-5398 (Murray)
Will Serio: 202-225-3661 (DeLauro)

Murray, DeLauro Urge DeVos to Reverse Unauthorized Guidance Excluding 7.5 Million Students From Emergency Financial Aid

Murray, DeLauro: “The extreme eligibility restrictions… were added by the Department without any directive from Congress and without any statutory basis”

(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, urged Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to reverse her harmful and unauthorized guidance that will restrict more than 7.5 million students from accessing sorely needed emergency financial aid provided under the under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). In a letter, the lawmakers stressed that the barriers created by the U.S. Department of Education do not exist in the law and will prevent aid from reaching students that Congress intended to support.

“Secretary DeVos pushing DACA recipients, undocumented students and other vulnerable students out of needed relief from the CARES Act is cruel. This virus doesn’t discriminate when it comes to the students who are impacted, and our response absolutely shouldn’t either,” said Senator Murray. “It is completely unacceptable that despite such dire need for assistance among students during this unprecedented time, Secretary DeVos has restricted emergency financial aid without any authorization. This is absolutely not what Congress intended, and Secretary DeVos must reverse this guidance immediately.”

“Secretary DeVos’s latest guidance unfairly restricts emergency financial relief for millions of students at institutions of higher education who need it most,” said Congresswoman DeLauro. “The Department’s interpretation of the CARES Act has no basis in the text of the law nor Congressional intent. Students are struggling to make ends meet and keep food on the table just like countless people across the country right now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Secretary DeVos should be making it easier for them to access this critical aid, not harder. I urge her to reverse course.”

The 7.5 million students that could be barred from funding under the restrictive guidance includes undocumented students, DACA recipients, students who have not filled out the FAFSA, students in adult basic education and dual enrollment programs who do not have a high school diploma, and more. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education unnecessarily prohibited students from using emergency financial aid for charges from their institutions even with their permission. This means that students relying on campuses’ limited food and housing services during this crisis—such as students experiencing homelessness and former foster youth—will face additional barriers to meeting these costs.

“The extreme eligibility restrictions, which were added by the Department without any directive from Congress and without any statutory basis, represent an unconscionable response to the virus that does not discriminate against which students are impacted by it,” wrote the lawmakers in the letter.

Read the full letter below and HERE.

May 1, 2020

The Honorable Betsy DeVos
Secretary of Education
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.
Washington, DC 20202

Dear Secretary DeVos:

We urge you to reverse your harmful and unauthorized guidance that significantly restricts the flexibility for emergency financial aid to students provided under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Public Law No. 116-136. The federal resources provided in the CARES Act are critical to institutions of higher education (“institutions”) and students dealing with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Unfortunately, your decision could deny CARES Act relief to more than 7.5 million students in higher education.

Of the $12.6 billion allocated by formula under the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) of the CARES Act, no less than 50 percent was designated for emergency financial aid to support students’ cost of attendance. Students across the country are facing severe disruptions of their programs of study. They are under incredible financial strain and need additional support to continue their education while protecting their health and caring for their families.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Education (“Department”) released guidance 12 days after announcing emergency financial aid allocations under the CARES Act that imposed new and unwarranted restrictions limiting which students can receive funding. The barriers created by the Department do not exist in the CARES Act, will prevent emergency financial aid from reaching many students with financial need that Congress intended to support, and add substantial burden to implementation of the law.

First, the Department asserts that all emergency financial aid recipients under the CARES Act must be eligible for assistance under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA). This limitation excludes students who do not meet academic progress standards, students who have not registered for the Selective Service, students with some types of drug convictions, certain students in adult basic education and dual enrollment programs who do not have a high school diploma, international students, and students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, including all Dreamers, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, and other undocumented students.

The Department’s requirement that emergency financial aid recipients have “demonstrated eligibility to participate in programs under Section 484 of the HEA” also effectively requires that students fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). There is no other reliable or efficient way for an institution to determine and verify the extensive eligibility requirements of Title IV. A significant number of students enrolled in higher education—particularly low-income students—have not filled out the FAFSA. It is unreasonable to ask current students who are working to finish their terms to fill out a detailed form to receive emergency financial aid. According to the most recent estimates of FAFSA filing rates for 2015-16 from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, more than 7.5 million undergraduate and graduate students do not file a FAFSA. Thus, the Department’s unjustified decision to restrict emergency financial aid grants to Title IV eligible students will deny support to a vast number of working families.

The Department’s decision to restrict eligibility for emergency financial aid based on Title IV of the HEA is also plainly inconsistent with prior Department documentation. In the official “Certification and Agreement” form that institutions must sign to receive funding, the Department clearly states that, “The Secretary does not consider these individual emergency financial aid grants to constitute Federal financial aid under Title IV of the HEA.” It is unclear how the Department can impose federal financial aid requirements on funds it does not consider to be federal financial aid. The Department also emphasized in a cover letter to institutions the flexibility of emergency financial aid and discretion to institutions afforded under the CARES Act, stating that “the only statutory requirement is that the funds be used to cover expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus…” The Department’s subsequent guidance significantly limited this flexibility.

The Department’s inconsistency continues with its consideration of the 90/10 rule under Title IV of the HEA. While the Department managed to apply federal financial aid requirements based on the HEA to students, it chose to exempt funds under the CARES Act from counting as revenues considered in determining whether for-profit institutions meet the requirement to derive not less than ten percent of revenues from non-federal financial aid sources. The guidance indicates that “Funds paid directly to institutions by the Department through the HEERF will not be included as revenue for 90/10 purposes.” Once again, the Department has chosen to interpret the law selectively in a manner that harms vulnerable students and supports for-profit institutions.

Like the Department’s initial guidance documents, the CARES Act imposes no restrictions on student eligibility for emergency aid and makes no reference to the eligibility requirements associated with Title IV of the HEA. When we drafted emergency legislation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress did not place limitations on which students could or should get emergency aid—we simply directed the Secretary and institutions to make funds available to students. The extreme eligibility restrictions, which were added by the Department without any directive from Congress and without any statutory basis, represent an unconscionable response to the virus that does not discriminate against which students are impacted by it.

Additionally, the Department’s prohibition on allowing students to directly apply emergency financial aid to relevant institutional charges may disproportionately impact vulnerable students. The CARES Act clearly makes funding available to satisfy the cost of attendance, which includes tuition, fees, and institutionally-provided food, and housing. Many students rely on their institutions to meet basic needs. For example, a number of campuses that have restricted campus operations during COVID-19 still operate limited food and housing facilities for students—such as homeless students, former foster youth, and others with no “home” to return to. While we appreciate that the Department has appropriately prohibited institutions from using emergency financial aid dollars to reimburse themselves for operational expenses (in accordance with Section 18004(c) of the CARES Act), there is no reason to create obstacles for students who may not have access to a bank account and who may want to proactively elect to apply emergency grant aid to cover the cost of institutionally-provided services. The Department should allow and encourage institutions to disburse emergency financial aid as quickly, equitably, and seamlessly as possible. It is unreasonable that a student could not satisfy new institutional charges incurred after March 27, 2020, if they provide authorization to the institution to apply their emergency aid funds to such amounts.

Finally, the Department declared that “students who were enrolled exclusively in an online program on March 13, 2020… are not eligible for emergency financial aid grants.” The CARES Act does not state that individual students who were enrolled exclusively online could not receive emergency financial aid. Such decisions were intentionally left up to each institution so that campuses could make decisions that fit the unique needs of each student. The Department was again inconsistent with its guidance, as it afforded institutions discretion in the case of incarcerated students (as Congress intended) yet not with students enrolled exclusively online. Instead, the Department’s decision to prohibit support for fully-online students, and restrict the flexibility afforded by the CARES Act, will add additional burden to students and institutions.

We are deeply disappointed with your unauthorized decision to restrict eligibility for emergency financial aid to students during this difficult time for our country and in violation of Congressional intent. Accordingly, we urge you to reverse your decision to limit students’ access to emergency financial aid and block students from using funds for institutional charges. During this national emergency, it is essential to provide resources that meet the diverse needs of all our students and institutions of higher education. Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.

Sincerely,

SENATOR PATTY MURRAY
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate

Ranking Member, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions, U.S. Senate

CONGRESSWOMAN ROSA L. DELAURO
Chair, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives

Categories Betsy DeVos, Cruelty

Arkansas: Reasons Why Governor Hutchinson Should Care About Virus in the Prisons

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2020 //
5

Blogger “Like a Renegade” observes that Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is indifferent to the presence of COVID 19 in the prison population.

The blogger reminds the governor that prisoners interact with a large number of staff who then go out into the general population and may spread the disease.

She also points out that most inmates are in jail for a term, or for a death sentence.

The virus is no respecter of boundaries. It can be carried by cafeteria workers, guards, medical staff, police, or inmates on work release. She suggests that the indifferent, inhumane Governor Hutchinson pay attention.

Governor Hutchinson is one of those conservatives who is pro-life so long as it’s unborn.

Categories Arkansas, Cruelty, Health

Stuart Egan: The Step-by-Step Destruction of Democracy in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2020 //
7

In this powerful post, NBCT teacher Stuart Egan describes the calculated attack on democracy and social justice in North Carolina.

The state was once considered one of the most enlightened in the South. It is now one of the most regressive, taken down by the Tea Party, by a legislature dominated by ALEC, and by politicians determined to destroy opportunity for people of color and poor people.

Egan provides a timeline of North Carolina’s descent, which accelerated after the Tea Party capture of the General Assembly in 2010. Behind the scenes, big money pushed ALEC bills.

Egan writes:

That timeline is filled with actions that are calculated, highly crafted, delicately executed, and driven by dogma deliberately done to hurt public education and communities that rely on public schools. Each occurred before the May 16th, 2018 march in Raleigh.

Citizens United, you may remember, allowed for corporations and other entities to donate to political candidates. It gave rise to PACs and SUPERPACs. It’s why you now see an incredible amount of money in political races donated by people who have a vested interest in a race or candidate but cannot vote in that race.

HB17 was the legislation produced in a special session in December of 2016 right before Roy Cooper took office. It was a power grab that granted the incoming state superintendent, Mark Johnson, the most power any state super had ever had. Johnson might be the most unqualified person to ever hold the job. What ensued was a lawsuit between Johnson and the State Board of Education that lasted for 18 months. Ultimately, it cemented Johnson’s role as a puppet and led to DPI’s reorganization and reduction of personnel.

The Innovative School District is an educational reform that allows the state to select “poor” performing schools to be taken over by an out-of-state entity. In three years, it has only one school under its umbrella, but has gone through multiple leaders.

And then there was the Voter ID law, racially driven gerrymandered political maps, and the abolishment of automatically paycheck deductions for groups like NCAE. (Yes, the Voter ID law and the gerrymandered districting has been overruled, but we still as a state have not had an election cycle since both were overturned.)

It used to not be this way, but after the Great Recession of 2008 and the rise of a new wing of the Republican Party, a noticeable shift occurred in North Carolina politics. Decades ago, public education was championed by both Democrats and Republicans alike. Think of governors like Holshousher and Martin and you will see a commitment to funding public education like NC saw with Sanford, Hunt, and Easley. The governor’s office and the General Assembly were often in different hands politically speaking, but on the issue of public education, they stood much more united than it is today.

That unification is not there anymore. And it wasn’t caused by public education or its advocates. It was planted, fed, fostered, and championed by those who came to power after the Great Recession. These are not Eisenhower Republicans or Reagan Republicans; they are ALEC Republicans whose sole purpose is to politicize all things and try and privatize as many public goods as possible. And on a state level, nothing is more of a public good than public schools.

They have been very adept at combining racial and social issues with public education to make it hard not only to compartmentalize each through legislation, but easy to exploit how much social and racial issues are tied to public education without people thinking they are interlinked. Laws and mandates like HB2, the Voter ID Law, the gerrymandered districts, and the attempted judicial system overhaul have as much to do with the health of public schools as any other factor.

When you keep people from being able to vote, you affect public education. When you keep people below the poverty line, you affect public education. When you gerrymander districts along racial lines, you affect public education. You cannot separate them exclusively. And we have lawmakers in power who know that very well. It’s why when you advocate for public schools, you must be aware of social and racial issues and be willing to fight along those lines.

Public school advocacy that was “successful” before 2008 will not work as effectively in 2020. No ALEC aligned politician who is in a right to work state that outlaws collective bargaining is going to “work with” advocacy groups like NCAE.

For NCAE and other groups to truly advocate for public schools, they must fight for issues outside of school rooms that affect the very students, teachers, and staff who come into those school rooms.

By every measure, North Carolina has regressed and opposed equity and democracy.

For example, “Now name the only state in the country with the lowest legal minimum wage, no collective bargaining rights, no Medicaid expansion, loosely regulated voucher and charter school expansion, and a school performance grading system that measures achievement over growth. North Carolina.“

The legislators who have passed regressive laws are not interested in dialogue or reason. They knew exactly what they were doing. They don’t negotiate. They don’t listen. They must be voted out of office.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Corruption, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Reform, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, North Carolina

Harold Meyerson: How Mean Are Senate Republicans?

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2020 //
39

In this editorial, Harold Meyerson plumbs the depths of meanness in the Senate’s majority party. It would be better for the unemployed if more of them were quarantined and unable to vote:

ON TAP Today from the American Prospect
MARCH 26, 2020

Meyerson on TAP

The Senate’s OTHER Vote Last Night—Along Party Lines. As every news-following American knows, the Senate voted unanimously last night to pass a $2.2 trillion stimulus package for our rapidly shrinking economy. But hardly any news-following American knows about the vote that immediately preceded that—on the amendment that four Republican senators introduced to greatly reduce unemployment insurance payments.

The senators’ objection to the agreed-upon UI fix in the stimulus bill was itself widely reported. Because unemployment insurance levels in many states with right-wing governments are so low, Democrats insisted upon the federal government topping off UI payments with an additional $600 a week to the unemployed for a four-month period. Four conservative senators objected on the grounds that that might create incomes for the unemployed that exceeded their pay when on the job. Not surprisingly, two of those senators were South Carolinians Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott. South Carolina, it should be noted, is one of the six states that have never passed a minimum-wage law, and one of the two states (the other is North Carolina) that always place first or second in having the lowest rate of unionized workers—invariably, below 3 percent. In short, it’s no great achievement to make more money off the job than on the job in the senators’ home state, precisely because South Carolina’s historic denigration of workers creates so many poverty-wage jobs. Graham and Scott were like the kids who kill their parents and plead for mercy because they’re orphans.

But here’s the kicker: Surely, the objections of these two troglodytes and their two co-sponsors (Florida’s Rick Scott and Nebraska’s Ben Sasse) were just idiosyncratic social meanness, right?

Wrong. The vote on their amendment was 48-48; the only Republican to join the chamber’s 47 Democrats in voting no was Maine’s Susan Collins. (Fortunately, the Democrats, as part of the agreement on the stimulus bill, had insisted that the amendment require 60 votes to pass.)

If there’s a clearer expression of Republicans’ concern for their fellow Americans who lose their jobs in the pandemic crisis, I sure don’t know it. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Economy, Republicans

This Story Made Me Cry: A Mother and Child, Separated for 2 1/2 Years

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2020 //
33
Can this be America? The Trump administration separated parents and children at the border. This mother and child were separated in 2017. The mother was deported to Guatemala, the child sent to live with an aunt in Fort Myers. They communicate by cellphone. One child. One mother. Not so far from Mar-a-Lago. Gratuitous and pointless cruelty. Not a rapist or murderer. A mother and a child.
FORT MYERS, Fla. — She tries to avoid the word. What she says is that her mom is in Guatemala. Or that her mom has been deported and will try to come back soon.

But when her teacher, or her social worker, or her best friend Ashley asks, Adelaida sounds it out — one of the first words she learned in English. “They separated us.”

Adelaida Reynoso and her mother, María, were among the first migrant families broken up by the Trump administration, on July 31, 2017, long before the government acknowledged it was separating parents and children at the border.

They haven’t seen each other since.

Adelaida is now 9, a third-grader in southwest Florida, one of the top students in her class, carrying a thick English dictionary in a purple backpack. María, now 31, was deported alone to rural Guatemala. She has met with lawyers and smugglers and priests about reuniting with her daughter. Nothing has worked.

Despite a massive legal effort and protest movement, many of the migrant families split up at the border remain apart. The children have now spent enough time in the United States to narrate their stories of separation in fluent English. Their parents are back in Central America, watching sons and daughters grow up over grainy video calls.

One call came last month, from Sacapulas, Guatemala, to Fort Myers, Fla., as Adelaida leaped off the school bus on a quiet, palm-tree-lined street.

“I want to show you my papers from class,” the girl told her mother. “It’s the report about how I behave.”

She held the black cellphone in front of her. On the screen, her mother’s face was blurry, a sliver of the Guatemalan countryside in the background.

“I got a 100 and a 92 and two A’s.”

“How smart,” her mom’s voice crackled through the phone.

Adelaida wore a red polo shirt and a ponytail. She waved her books in front of the phone. She showed her mother her bus stop, a stretch of sidewalk outside the two-bedroom apartment she shared with 11 people, including two aunts and an uncle.

“Do you have any homework?” María asked.

“No, they didn’t give us any today,” Adelaida said.

María summoned her most maternal voice.

“When you get home, you need to wash your hair,” she said.

They stared at each other and said nothing. Adelaida moved her finger over the image of her mother’s face, caressing the screen.

“You’re always in my heart,” Adelaida said.

It’s the same every afternoon. Adelaida spends her days at Manatee Elementary, her English vocabulary overtaking her Spanish. Then she goes home and looks at her mother’s face on the phone.

Some days, Adelaida gets angry. When other kids in class talk about their mothers. When her aunt kisses her cousin Angel good night, but not her.

María can see her daughter’s eyes getting big and glassy, her face turning red.

“I need you by my side,” Adelaida exclaims.

“I’m trying,” María responds. She hangs up and cries.

Categories Cruelty

The Billionaire Republican Governor Who Doesn’t Pay Debts

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2020 //
1

Billionaire Governor Jim Justice was elected governor of West Virginia as a Democrat but after election, he switched parties with Trump by his side.

Raw Story reports that Governor Justice, up for re-election, has stiffed hundreds of former workers in his coal mines.

Raymond Dye had a buildup of blood behind his left eye that prevented him from seeing. David Polk had an abnormal heartbeat, and his wife had high cholesterol. Roger Wriston’s wife had a bad back.

All the men had worked for a collection of coal companies owned by Gov. Jim Justice and his family, which had pledged to provide health insurance after the miners retired. Last year, though, the retirees learned that those firms had stopped paying their premiums. And as a result, their coverage had been terminated. Polk skipped doctor appointments.

“I know that waiting on medical treatment can do irreparable harm to my health,” he later said in a legal filing, “but I cannot afford to pay the bills.”

The expenses for the aging retirees, compounded by decades of work in southern West Virginia’s coal mines, were often costly. At one point, Wriston and his wife ended up with a bill for $12,367.76, another court filing said.

“I don’t think it’s fair what they’re doing to someone who worked their whole life,” Wriston’s wife, Tammy, said in an interview.

About 150 retired miners around West Virginia were making a similar discovery. So the United Mine Workers of America, the same miners’ union that had endorsed Justice’s election as governor in 2016, went to court last year and asked a federal judge to force the Justice companies to pay.

Lawyers for Justice’s companies initially opposed the union’s request for such an order, arguing the miners had not followed proper procedures for appealing a denial of health-benefit claims. Then, the companies settled, promising to clear up the matter and ensure benefits were provided.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Cruelty, West Virginia

The Two Most Horrifying Stories about Standardized Testing in the Past Decade

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2020 //
15

Valerie Strauss wrote a column in her Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post about the two most horrifying stories in the past decade of high-stakes standardized testing. Both occurred in Florida, a state where standardized testing is treated as an unerring and essential metric, except for students who use state money to attend religious schools, which are exempt from the state’s testing regime.

So devoted is Florida to standardized testing that all its legislators, the governor and the State Commissioner Richard Corcoran (whose wife runs a charter school) should be required to take the tests required of eighth graders and publish their scores.

You should subscribe to the Washington Post just to read Valerie Strauss.

Strauss writes:

Of all of the absurd and appalling stories that emerged from the standardized test-based school reform movement in the 2010s, there were two that, arguably, best revealed to me how bankrupt and even cruel some of the things policymakers foisted on children could be….

There were stories about teachers being evaluated on the test scores of students they didn’t have and subjects they didn’t teach.

There were stories of high-performing teachers getting poor evaluations because of complicated and problematic algorithms that were used to calculate their “worth” in class — which some reformers said could be ascertained by eliminating every single other factor (even hunger and chronic grief) that could affect how well a child does on a test….

But there were two that still resonate deeply and reveal just how vacant — and mean — some of the policy was. Why recount them? Because as new school reform efforts are being implemented, it is worth remembering that good intentions are not enough and that bad policy has real and sometimes extreme effects on children and adults.

One of these stories was from 2013, when the state of Florida required a 9-year-old boy who was born without the cognitive portion of his brain to take a version of the state’s standardized Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). The boy, Michael, was blind, couldn’t talk or understand basic information. Judy Harris, the operator and owner of a care facility for children in Orlando where Michael was left shortly after birth, told News 13 at the time:

Michael loves music, he loves to hear, and he loves for you to talk to him and things like that, but as far as testing him, or questioning him on what is an apple and a peach, what is the difference? Michael wouldn’t know what that is.”

But the rules said every student could take a test and be evaluated, however severe their disabilities might be. I wrote about the situation at the time and asked education officials in the Florida Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education why this was happening. They all said every student could be assessed. At the time I wrote:

State Rep. Linda Stewart of Orlando told me she didn’t think that a young boy who can’t tell the difference between an apple and a peach should be taking any test, and tried to get officials in the Education Department to step in to stop the charade of Michael taking a test.
She said nobody did. “Nobody wanted to take the responsibility of stopping it,” she said.
Rick Roach, an Orange County, Florida, school board member who was following Michael’s story, confirmed that Michael was in fact forced to take the test, meaning that a state employee sat down and read it to him, as if he could actually understand it.

In 2013, Roach had told Michael’s story to educator Marion Brady, who wrote about it for The Answer Sheet. I recently asked Roach about Michael’s status and he said Michael, now 15, still lives at the home run by Harris.

The second disturbing story was about a boy in Florida named Ethan Rediske, who suffered a brain injury at birth and had cerebral palsy, epilepsy, cortical blindness and the developmental equivalency of a 6-month-old child. He died on Feb. 7, 2014.

In 2013, Ethan was forced to “take” a version of the FCAT over the space of two weeks because Florida still required every student to take one. His mother, educator Andrea Rediske, managed to obtain a waiver so that he didn’t have to take the test in 2014, but it turned out there was a hitch. As Ethan was in a morphine coma dying in a hospital, the state insisted that his family prove he deserved the waiver. The ugliness of the situation was captured in the following email she wrote to Orange County School Board member Rick Roach and to reporter Scott Maxwell, who wrote about Ethan and similar cases for the Orlando Sentinel:

Rick and Scott,
I’m writing to appeal for your advocacy on our behalf. Ethan is dying. He has been in hospice care for the past month. We are in the last days of his life. His loving and dedicated teacher, Jennifer Rose has been visiting him every day, bringing some love, peace, and light into these last days. How do we know that he knows that she is there? Because he opens his eyes and gives her a little smile. He is content and comforted after she leaves.
Jennifer is the greatest example of what a dedicated teacher should be. About a week ago, Jennifer hesitantly told me that the district required a medical update for continuation of the med waiver for the adapted FCAT. Apparently, my communication through her that he was in hospice wasn’t enough: they required a letter from the hospice company to say that he was dying. Every day that she comes to visit, she is required to do paperwork to document his “progress.” Seriously? Why is Ethan Rediske not meeting his 6th-grade hospital homebound curriculum requirements? BECAUSE HE IS IN A MORPHINE COMA. We expect him to go any day. He is tenaciously clinging to life.This madness has got to stop. Please help us.
Thank you,
Andrea Rediske

The cases of Michael and Ethan were not isolated. Since that time, the national obsession with standardized testing has somewhat abated. Many states have moved away from evaluating teachers by test scores and reduced the consequences for low scores. Yet most students are still required to take standardized tests, and problems with them remain.

These stories are two I don’t believe I will ever forget.

Categories Cruelty, Florida, School Choice, Special Education, Standardized Testing

A Film You Should See: “Where Is My Roy Cohn?”

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2019 //
21

On a flight yesterday, I watched a documentary that was a biography of Roy Cohn. It is called “Where Is My Roy Cohn?,” a phrase uttered by Trump when he was disgusted by his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who apparently had some scruples about destroying the Justice Department on behalf of the man who appointed him.

The biography is short. The story is compelling. It portrays a man who had absolutely no scruples, no ethical core, no moral values. He was willing to lie, cheat, steal, twist words, anything to win. Winning was everything. He was a closeted homosexual who gleefully collaborated with his mentor Senator Joseph McCarthy to find and expose other homosexuals. He died of AIDS, but never admitted that he had the disease (he preferred to call it “cancer of the liver”).

The loathsome Cohn was Trump’s attorney and his mentor. He defended the Trump Organization against federal charges that the Trumps excluded blacks from their federally-financed housing projects. He helped to prosecute the Rosenbergs and assure that they got the death penalty. He was the chief lawyer for the Mafia and helped many of its leaders avoid long prison sentences. He was disbarred for stealing from his clients.

It is contemporary history. If you can find it online, watch it. It explains a lot about the world we live in now.

Categories Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Fraud, Lies

Will Bunch: McKinsey, the “Slimeball” Consultants

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2019 //
20

Will Bunch, regular opinion writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, excoriates McKinsey in this column. 

He writes:

In the last few years, McKinsey & Co.’s image as a go-to high-paying job option for the Ivy League’s best and brightest has morphed into something uniquely dark and sinister, as outstanding journalism from the New York Times and others has shed a light on arguably the world’s most secretive company, which never reveals its client list.

Nonetheless, the various scandals swirling around McKinsey have largely registered under the radar screen before last week, when journalists from ProPublica, publishing in the Times, exposed McKinsey’s work on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Two important things to note: a) it was the administration of Barack Obama that hired McKinsey for this task in 2015 and b) ICE officials under the Trump administration, justifiably pilloried for their cruel treatment of migrants, actually thought some of McKinsey’s ideas were inhumane.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Education Reform, For-Profit

ProPublica Report on Seclusion of Children Gets Results!

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2019 //
5

The expose published by ProPublic and the Chicago Tribune about the isolation of students with disabilities in locked “quiet rooms” got immediate response from the Governor and the State Board of Education in Illinois.

This is known as seclusion.

The governor said he will introduce legislation to end and prohibit the barbaric practice. 

The Illinois State Board of Education announced Wednesday that it will take emergency action to end the seclusion of children alone behind locked doors at schools, saying the practice has been “misused and overused to a shocking extent.”

Responding to a Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois investigation published a day earlier, Gov. J.B. Pritzker called the isolation of children in the state “appalling” and said he directed the education agency to make emergency rules for schools. He will then work with legislators to make the rules into law, he said.

The rules would not totally ban the use of timeout rooms but would end isolation. The state board said children would be put in timeout only if a “trained adult” is in the room and the door is unlocked. Timeouts also must be used only for therapeutic reasons or to protect the safety of students and staff, the board said.

The board also said it will begin collecting data on all instances of timeout and physical restraint in Illinois schools and will investigate “known cases of isolated seclusion to take appropriate disciplinary and corrective action.” State officials had not previously monitored these practices.

H/T to Laura Chapman for alerting me to this important news.

Categories Cruelty, Discipline, Illinois, Special Education
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