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Scott Maxwell: Florida Legislators Want to Ban Actual History

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2023 //
30

Scott Maxwell, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, reports on Orwellian legislation that has been proposed by conservative elected officials. These officials don’t want professors to teach about racism. It is sure to be divisive and make someone uncomfortable. Thus they find it necessary to ban “teaching theories that suggest “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.” This is a recent addition to the state’s higher education bill (SB 266).

This legislation is intended to shield students from unpleasant facts.

Students should not be taught about the origin of Florida’s law (recently revised) that did not allow former felons to vote, ever.

Maxwell writes:

That policy was instituted in the wake of the U.S. Civil War by Florida politicians who were, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, trying to stop the state from becoming too “n*ggerized.”

Sen. Geraldine Thompson, an African American Democrat who founded Orlando’s Wells’Built Museum of African American History and Culture, said the goal of the legislation is to distort history so students will never learn the history of systemic racism. Nor will they learn that the University of Florida did not admit Black students for its first 100 years. Legislators want to bury those facts, as they want to bury the history of lynchings and massacres. Nor do they want students to learn about the unequal sentences imposed on Blacks and whites convicted of the same crimes.

There were examples galore. Like two 17-year-olds in Lee County who were both charged with robbing gas stations with guns. Both had precisely three prior records as juveniles. Both made off with a few hundred bucks. The Black teen got four years in prison. The White one avoided prison altogether…

Thompson actually floated a legislative proposal to more thoroughly study the discrepancies found in the Herald-Tribune’s “Bias on the Bench” series to get more complete numbers and see what, if anything, needed fixing. Her idea was rejected.

Then, the Florida Supreme Court went a step further, curtailing “fairness and diversity” training for Florida judges.

This seems to be the new Florida way for handling systemic inequality. First, you nix efforts to fix it. Then you try to ban even discussing it.

The actual language in the higher-ed censorship proposal is a hot mess, full of nebulous catch phrases and vague bans, forbidding curriculum that, for example, “teaches identity politics,” as if that’s a statutorily defined thing.

The goal seems to be to generally chill speech, so that no one’s quite clear what they’re allowed to teach…

Thompson noted that the chilling effects are already happening with Florida schools canceling classes that they fear might offend legislators.

Teaching students actual history and sharing with them concrete contemporary data isn’t unpatriotic. Trying to stop or censor that is.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Equity, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Gender, Racism

TIME: How Voucher Programs Hurt Students

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2023 //
8

Joshua Cowen, Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University, wrote the following article for TIME magazine:

In recent months, state legislatures across the country have broadened efforts to subsidize private school tuition with taxpayer dollars. New proposals for these programs—collectively called school vouchers—have appeared in more than a dozen states and passed as major priorities for Republican governors like Kim Reynolds in Iowa and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas. Since 2021, Arizona, Florida, Utah and West Virginia have also created or expanded voucher plans. Meanwhile, a handful states like Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have run voucher programs for years. But do school vouchers actually work? We need to focus on what research shows, and what that means for kids moving forward.

As an analyst who has studied these and other forms of school choice for nearly two decades, I’m in a good position to give an answer. And based on data from existing voucher programs, the answer is almost unambiguously negative.

Let’s start with who benefits. First and foremost, the answer is: existing private school students. Small, pilot voucher programs with income limits have been around since the early 1990s, but over the last decade they have expanded to larger statewide initiatives with few if any income-eligibility requirements. Florida just passed its version of such a universal voucher program, following Arizona’s passage in the fall of 2022. In Arizona, more than 75% of initial voucher applicants had never been in public school—either because they were new kindergartners or already in private school before getting a voucher. That’s a problem because many voucher advocatesmarket these plans as ways to improve educational opportunities for public school children.

And what about the students who do leave public schools? Some plans, like the currently proposed bill in Texas, restrict eligibility to students in public school for at least one year. But for the children who do transfer using a voucher, the academic results in the recent scaled-up statewide programs are catastrophic. Although small, pilot-phase programs showed some promise two decades ago, new evaluations of vouchers in Washington, D.C.,Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio show some of the largest test score drops ever seen in the research record—between -0.15 and -0.50 standard deviations of learning loss. That’s on par with what the COVID-19 pandemic did to test scores, and larger than Hurricane Katrina’s impacts on academics in New Orleans.

And these harmful voucher impacts from existing statewide vouchers lasted for years, with little else on balance to show for it.

What explains these extraordinarily large voucher-induced declines? Aren’t private schools supposed to be elite educational opportunities? When it comes to private schools accepting voucher payments, the answer is clearly no. That’s because elite private schools with strong academics and large endowments often decline to participate in voucher plans. Instead the typical voucher school is a financially distressed, sub-prime private provider often jumping at the chance for a tax bailout to stay open a few extra years.

In Wisconsin, 41% of voucher schools have closed since the program’s inception in 1990. And that includes the large number of pop-up schools opening just to cash in on the new voucher pay-out. For those pop-up schools, average survival time is just 4 years before their doors close for good.

Here’s another problem: for most students, using a voucher is a temporary choice to begin with. In states that have reported data on the question–Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin—roughly 20% of students leave voucher programs each year, either because they give up the payment or because schools push them out. In Florida, where vouchers just expanded, that number is even higher: around 30% per year in pre-expansion data.

That kind of turnover is bad for kids, even when they’re leaving under-performing voucher schools. Not least because kids who leave voucher programs tend to be students of color, lower income children, and kids struggling academically in the first place.

And it’s not just the academic results that call into question any rhetoric around opportunities created by vouchers. Private schools can decline to admit children for any reason. One example of that is tied to the latest culture wars around LGBTQ youth, and strengthened in current voucher legislation. In Florida, a voucher-funded school made national news last summer when it banned LGBTQ children. In Indiana, pre-pandemic estimates showed that more than $16 million in taxpayer funding had already gone to voucher schools with explicit anti-LGBTQ admissions rules.

Voucher schools also rarely enroll children with special academic needs. Special education children tend to need more resources than vouchers provide, which can be a problem in public schools too. But public schools are at least obliged under federal law to enroll and assist special needs children—something private schools can and do avoid.

When we look at all the challenges to accessing education with these programs it’s clear that actually winning admission to a particular private school is not about parental school choice. It’s the school’s choice.

That is what research on school vouchers tells us. Vouchers are largely tax subsidies for existing private school families, and a tax bailout for struggling private schools. They have harmful test score impacts that persist for years, and they’re a revolving door of school enrollment. They’re public funds that support a financially desperate group of private schools, including some with active discriminatory admissions in place.

And public support for these programs is tenuous at best, highly dependent on state contexts. Recent media reports indicate that the latest voucher push is at least partly the result of well-funded campaigns led by Betsy DeVos, the conservative billionaire and U.S. Education Secretary under Donald Trump. DeVos has championed vouchers for decades as an alternative to traditional public education in what she, Trump, and other supporters call “government schools.”

But DeVos has acknowledged the poor track record for vouchers—at least when it comes to academic impacts. Asked about the dismal results of the Louisiana voucher plan while she was a public official, DeVos avoided detailed comment, but her answer back then was as good a summary as any that a voucher expert like me could provide. That program, she said, was “not very well-conceived.”

That goes for school voucher plans today, currently spreading across the country.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Failure, Hoax, Inequity, Privatization, School Choice, Students, Vouchers

A Conversation about the State Takeover of the Houston Independent School District

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2023 //
7

The Network for Public Education sponsored a conversation among me, Daniel Santos, and Domingo Morel.

Daniel Santos is an 8th grade social studies teacher in the Houston schools and vice-president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

Domingo Morel is author of Takeover and the nation’s leading expert on the process by which a state abrogates local control of a school district.

I am a graduate of the Houston public schools.

As background, there are two things you should know:

1. Houston is not a “failing” district. It has a B rating.

2. State law in Texas allows the state to take control of a district if only one of its schools has persistently low scores.

Students, parents, teachers, and elected officials have complained about this abrogation of democracy. Governor Abbott and State Commissioner Mike Morath ignore them.

Watch the discussion here.

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Houston, Resistance, Texas

Llano County, Texas: How to Stop the Book Censors

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2023 //
23

Paul Waldman and Greg Sergeant of the Washington Post described the social pressure within the community that cause dthe book censors in the county to back off.

It isn’t every day that the ruminations of local bureaucrats in a small rural Texas county become national news. But when commissioners in Llano County — population 21,000 — voted Thursday to keep its three-branch library system open, the moment was closely monitored by the biggest news organizations in the country.

That’s because Llano County has become a national symbol of local right-wing censorship efforts after officials threatened to close its libraries entirely rather than allow offending materials to remain on shelves. Under intense scrutiny, the commission blinked. Its leader acknowledged feeling pressure from “social media” and “news media.”

The commissioners’ apparent reluctance for Llano to be seen as a locus of censorship points to an unexpected development: Skirmishes emanating from book bans at schools and libraries in red states and counties, once localized affairs, are becoming viral national sensations. And the American mainstream appears to be paying attention.

Like many other similar conflicts, this one was triggered by a single Llano resident, Bonnie Wallace, who objected in 2021 to library books she pronounced “pornographic filth.” A bunch were removed, including unobjectionable materials such as Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” and Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

The county also dissolved its libraries’ advisory board and reconstituted it with advocates of book removal, including Wallace herself. After other residents sued for the books’ return, a judge ordered the books placed back on the shelf, prompting the county to consider shutting the libraries pending the suit’s resolution.

At Thursday’s hearing, several of Llano’s self-designated commissars of book purging read explicit sex scenes from young adult books, but they went further, advocating for closure. One said: “I am for closing the library until we get this filth off the shelves.”

When the national media paid attention, other residents of Llano County realized that extremists were taking the lead and giving their community a bad name. Shame is a strong motivator.

But one of the big surprises of these sagas has been outbreaks of resistance to book purges in the reddest places, and here again, some locals dissented. One said: “We have to be a community that values knowledge.” Another fretted: “We are all over the media, and this is making us look pretty bad as a community.”

It turns out that even in an overwhelmingly conservative place (Donald Trump won nearly 80 percent of Llano’s votes in 2020), plenty of people value free expression. Many Republicans aren’t on board with the right’s censorship agenda. And these folks can organize.

To be fair to Llano County’s conservatives, many insist they don’t want to burn or censor books. As they told one of us (Paul Waldman) in interviews in Llano last fall, they only wanted material to be age-appropriate.

But that doesn’t explain opposition to books about racism. And even if some conservative voters are more measured, these efforts are open to abuse. In places such as Florida, they have allowed lone conservative activists to remove dozens of books from schools based on flimsy or absurd objections.

The book-banning impulse is taking on a crazed life of its own. At a Llano County tea party meeting in November, Waldman witnessed Wallace passionately pleading that “I need more conservative friends” to help get “pornography out of the library,” adding: “We must, must, must keep fighting.” It was obvious that, for people like Wallace, the prospect of controlling which books their community can access has been a thrill.

Such right-wing activists thought they had good reason for confidence. After Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected Virginia governor in 2021 on a dishonestly termed “parental rights” platform, some censorship-minded activists imagined they had a national mandate. But arguably only the GOP base was paying attention to that issue at the time (swing voters were focused on school closures).

Now, the national media — and perhaps the mainstream of the country — are watching these local abuses unfold. “Every day it seems there’s a new book banned, an art exhibit canceled, or a drag performance under threat,” Jonathan Friedman of PEN America told us. “People are waking up to the fact that state and local governments are running rampant.”

National opinion isn’t cooperating with the censors. In the 2022 elections, many prominent culture-warring GOP candidates lost. (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is an exception.) Polls show large percentages of parents are concerned about schools banning books and that Americans overwhelmingly reject bans based on teachings about history and race.

Therein lies a trap for the GOP. The activist base is demanding increasingly reactionary censorship measures, and officials such as DeSantis are obliging for 2024 primary purposes. Yet as these local far-right lurches attract attention, they taint the national GOP as extreme.

Democrats should take heed. Some still appear skittish about culture-war issues, as evidenced when Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told TPM’s Hunter Walker that “we want to stay above” censorship controversies, as if ignoring them would make them go away or is good politics.

But when the national spotlight falls on censorship, the right is exposed, the left is energized and moderates balk at seeing their communities controlled by a small band of extremists.

Democrats must speak to those resisting these outbreaks of hysteria in deep-red places such as Llano. In some of them, fundamental liberal values still endure. The way to respond to this wave of censorship isn’t to hope it burns out, but to flush it into the light and confront it head on.

Overall, the story in Llano County is encouraging. It shows that civic leaders don’t want their community to be known for book banning.

But what’s really discouraging is the loud silence from the U.S. Department of Education. Why is Secretary Cardona silent? Why does he want to stay out of censorship controversies? Why isn’t he defending teachers and librarians? Why isn’t he standing up for the right to read?

This is a perilous time. American schools, teachers, and librarians need a champion not milquetoast. Teachers and librarians know that their jobs are at risk if they stand up to the vigilantes. What does Secretary Cardona have to lose? He should be speaking out against vouchers. He should be speaking out against censorship. He should be defending the accurate teaching of American history. He cannot float above the issues without appearing weak.

Democrats must speak out against censorship and privatization. That is a winning strategy.

Categories Cardona, Miguel, Censorship, Courage, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Lies, Literacy, Literature, Texas

Tennessee: Legislature Bans Honest Teaching About Racism

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2023 //
10

The Tennessee legislature has passed a law controlling the freedom of teachers and college professors to discuss racism. Quite literally, teachers are required to deliver content without expressing a point of view, for instance, acknowledging that slavery was wrong. The author of the bill says he is promoting freedom of expression by restricting freedom of expression.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—

“Divisive concept” rules are a set of laws passed last year that include many concepts usually taught in courses like sociology, psychology and political sciences.

The bill passed the House of Representatives on April 13, after passing Senate on April 5.

In 2022, lawmakers passed rules that allow state leaders to withhold funding for schools that teach about social, cultural and legal issues related to race and racism. Most of those concepts focus on how the impact of racism affects people today.

The law also specified that schools can teach about ethnic groups’ histories as described in textbooks and instructional materials. Educators can also only teach about controversial aspects of history, such as racial oppression or slavery, as long those discussions are impartial.

The bill, HB 1376, was introduced by Representative John Ragan (R – Oak Ridge). He previously said that the new bill was meant to strengthen the law passed in 2022 by “promoting freedom of expression,” and keep “colleges about advancing knowledge, not about advancing political or social agendas.”

Originally, the bill required institutions to publish a syllabus for each course offered in the semester on its website, meant to assess whether a “divisive concept” may be included in the curriculum. That requirement was removed in an amendment to the bill.

The bill restricts universities from using state funds for meetings or activities of an organization that “endorses or promotes a divisive concept.” It also requires employees who support diversity initiatives to “increase intellectual diversity” and support students through mentoring, career readiness and workforce development initiatives.

Employees would be exempt from the requirement if the new duties conflict with other laws, such as Title IX officers.

It also allows students and employees who believe that the school violated last year’s law a chance to file a report with the school. The school would then need to annually report violations to the comptroller of the treasury, redacting them as needed to stay in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

The bill would also specifically require universities to allow any guest speaker on campus regardless of “non-violent political ideology” or “non-violent political party affiliation.”

The concepts that were banned from lessons in 2022’s law are listed below.

  • That one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex
  • That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist or oppressive — whether consciously or subconsciously
  • That a person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of their race or sex
  • That a person’s moral character is determined by their race or sex
  • That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex
  • That a person should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress because of their race or sex
  • That a meritocracy is inherently racist, sexist or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex
  • That Tennessee or the U.S. is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist
  • Promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government
  • Promoting division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people
  • Ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes, privileges or beliefs to a race or sex, or to a person because of their race or sex
  • That the rule of law does not exist but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups
  • That “all Americans are not created equal and are not endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
  • That governments should deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the law

It also bans lessons that include “race or sex scapegoating” or “race or sex stereotyping,” as those terms are defined in law. In October 2022, a group of UT faculty called the law “chilling,” and questioned the law’s intent.

Rep. Justin Jones (D – Nashville) spoke about the bill when he returned to the House of Representatives after he was expelled and reinstated. He asked a series of questions, such as whether “college students are mature enough to talk about race and systemic racism, some of the concepts you want to prohibit being discussed at the college level?”

“I believe in God. All else is settled by facts and data,” Ragan said.

Jones again asked him to answer the question, but Ragan said he responded to the question.

“So, we’re playing ‘not-answer.’ Okay,” Jones said.

He also asked why the bill was introduced and said it seemed based on “white fragility and fears of the truth of history.”

“This bill was brought to me by a dean of college education, in addition to another university contributed to this bill. That was my motivation, too,” Ragan said.

He also said he did not want to name the person who brought the bill to him.

“How will we be honest about our history if you’re prohibiting any concepts about America’s racist history?” Jones said. “This sounds like fascism. This sounds like authoritarianism. This does not sound like democracy or freedom … This member has consistently invoked God to justify this unjust, immoral and extreme, racist law.”

Speaker Cameron Sexton (R – Crossville) stopped Jones from speaking. Rep. Justin Pearson (D – Memphis) also spoke after being reinstated to the House.

“This is a deeply concerning bill because it is continuing a pattern of practice that is harmful to all people,” he said. “When you try to control what a person thinks, then you are assuming the role of God rather than allowing freedom of thought.”

He said that the list of “divisive concepts” bars discussions on biases, white privilege and racism’s role in slavery.

The bill passed by a vote of 68-26 in the House.

During a meeting on March 13, Ragan said he received complaints from universities in the state about an “overemphasis” of the original law at the expense of “intellectual diversity,” which led to him proposing the new bill.

Representative Harold Love, Jr. (D – Nashville) previously asked if a conference focusing on Black history could still be held and promoted by a university should the bill pass. Ragan said it would be allowed as long as they “are not required to promote or endorse.”

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Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Higher Education, Ignorance, Injustice, Propaganda, Racism, Tennessee

Paul Waldman: FOX “News” Is Controlled by the Monster It Created

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2023 //
3

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post shows how the FOX “personalities” lied to their audience because they were afraid the audience would go to other sites that fed the audience’s hunger for conspiracy theories. The FOX talking heads created the monster, and now they are owned by the monster. All of this is especially interesting because Dominion Voting Systems is suing FOX and others for libel, and the FOX statements show that they knew their on-air statements were lies.

On screen, Fox News personalities paint a world of clear heroes and villains, where conservatives are always strong and right and liberals are weak and wrong. But the extraordinary private communications revealed in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox show who they really are. Panicked over Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, those same hosts, and the executives who run the network, cowered in abject terror.

They feared the same monster that keeps House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) up at night, the monster that conservative media and Republican politicians created: base voters who are deluded, angry and vengeful.

McCarthy has sought to appease the beast by granting exclusive access to 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. But with each capitulation, McCarthy and Fox News only make the monster stronger.

To see how, begin with the Dominion lawsuit. The company, which makes election software and voting machines, alleges that Fox defamed its business by repeatedly claiming that its systems were used to steal the 2020 presidential election. To win this kind of case against a news organization, a plaintiff must show that the organization acted with “actual malice” — that it said things it knew were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Mistakes alone are not enough.

Emails and texts sent in the days after the election appear to show exactly that. On air, Fox was spreading lies about supposed election fraud and bringing on guests without concern for their credibility, including Rudy Giuliani and GOP lawyer Sidney Powell. Meanwhile, Fox’s stars and executives privately belittled those same people and the claims they were making.

“Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote in one email. Giuliani was “acting like an insane person,” host Sean Hannity declared.

At the same time, Fox News tried to suppress the truth. Reporters for the organization who corrected false claims were reprimanded and threatened. One reporter who fact-checked Powell and Giuliani was told by her boss that executives were not happy about it and that she should do a better job of “respecting our audience.” When Fox truthfully reported Joe Biden’s victory, Carlson texted his producer: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real.” When another reporter fact-checked a Trump tweet spreading lies about stolen votes, Carlson demanded that the reporter be fired.

These documents make clear not only that Fox News stars and executives think their audience is a bunch of half-wits but also that they live in fear that the audience will turn on them unless they tell viewers exactly what they want to hear regardless of the facts.

Who taught that audience to believe conspiracy theories and to assume that any unwelcome information must be a sinister lie? Fox News, of course.

Now consider Jan. 6. McCarthy knows the facts. The Capitol insurrection wasn’t a false-flag operation by antifa or the FBI. Indeed, McCarthy initially blasted Trump for his role in stirring the rioters and dismissed conspiracy theories. So why has he given exclusive access to surveillance footage to Carlson, the constant purveyor of conspiracy theories?

There’s no mystery. Carlson’s producers will comb through endless pixels to find images with which to mislead viewers: to convince them that the riot wasn’t so bad or that Trump’s supporters weren’t to blame or that the whole thing was a setup.

That will only further convince Carlson’s audience to deny the truth about Jan. 6, and punish any Republican officeholder who disagrees. As for McCarthy, will this exercise help him by making it more likely that Republicans will reinforce his thin House majority in the next election — or take the Senate or the White House? Quite the opposite. It only makes it more likely that voters will view his party as extremists and loons who are far more interested in the obsessions of a spectacularly unpopular ex-president than in the genuine problems the country faces.

Like the trembling dissemblers of Fox News, McCarthy must feel that he has no choice: Feed the beast or be eaten by it. Winning the future is an idea they cannot latch on to because they are so frantic to survive one more day.

Republican elites are not powerless. They helped make this mess and could nudge their base back toward reality if they chose. But they’re too afraid to try.

Categories Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fake News, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Lies, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

FOX vs. DeSantis on Libel Law

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2023 //
19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haha.

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

Anand Giridhadaras: The Woke and the Unwoke

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2023 //
25

The following was posted by Anand Giridhadaras on his blog The Ink. He is the author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

In 2017, a political eternity ago, I gave a talk at the Obama Summit in Chicago. One section of it dealt with the question of so-called wokeness, which has in the years since between a national tinderbox, with more heat than light. I wanted to share that part of the speech today. The bottom line: Wokeness is good, actually. But we need a plan for the still-waking……

As our society fractures, some change-makers are drawn to visions of progress that don’t bother with suasion. I’m thinking especially of those of us who live in what we regard as the America of the future and who think of ourselves as “woke” — aware of injustice, committed to pluralism, willing to fight for it.

As wokeness has percolated from Black resistance into the cultural mainstream, it seems at times to have become a test you must pass to engage with the enlightened, not a gospel the enlightened aspire to spread. Either you buy our whole program, use all the right terms, and expertly check your privilege, or you’re irredeemable.

Is there space among the woke for the still-waking?

Today, there are millions who are ambivalent between the politics of inclusion and the politics of exclusion — not quite woke, not quite hateful.

Men unprepared by their upbringing to know their place in an equal world. White people unready for a new day in which Americanness no longer means whiteness. People anxious about change’s pace, about the death of certainties.

The woke have a choice about how to deal with the ambivalent. Do you focus on building a fortress to protect yourselves from them? Or a road to help them cross the mountain?

A common answer to this question is that the people angry at losing status don’t deserve any help. They’ve been helped.

I understand this response. It is hardly the fault of the rest of us that those wielding unearned privilege bristle at surrendering it. But it is our problem. The burden of citizenship is committing to your fellow citizens and accepting that what is not your fault may be your problem. And that, amid great change, it is in all of our interest to help people see who they will be on the other side of the mountaintop.

When we accept these duties, we may begin to notice the ways in which our very different pains rhyme. The African-American retiree in Brooklyn who fears gentrification is whitening her borough beyond recognition probably votes differently from the white foreman in Arizona who fears immigration is browning his state. Yet their worries echo.

When we learn to detect such resonances, we gain the understanding of other people that is required to win them over, and not simply to resist them.

It isn’t enough to be right about the world you want to live in. You gotta sell it, even to those you fear.

I find this rhetoric very appealing. Of course, we should try to persuade those who don’t agree with us, as they try to persuade us we are wrong.

But I think the appeal to reason is doomed. It would be like trying to persuade a devout follower of Trump that he is a con man. I have tried but never succeeded, just as they have tried to persuade me that Biden is demented, with no success.

The leaders of the anti-WOKE frenzy, like DeSantis and Rufo, are riding this crusade for power and money. They are not open to suasion.

Their followers tend not to be able to define what WOKE is. They just know they are against it. They assume that WOKE means grievance politics, and they want nothing to do with it.

I’ll see if Anand has some useful ideas about how to remove the stigma that rightwing rabble rousers have attached to the word WOKE. I certainly see nothing attractive in their antonyms: “I’m sleeping.” “I’m not awake.” “I have no interest in making the world a better place.” “I don’t care about social justice.” Who would espouse such views?

Categories Democracy, Equity, Extremism, Justice, Racism

Clarence Thomas, the Billionaire, and the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2023 //
19

The blog called “Misinformation Kills” usually focuses on COVID Lies and misinformation and their perpetrators. In this post, however, Dr. Alison Neitzel takes a different perspective on the money men who are undermining our democracy by capturing the courts.

She shows the outlines of a “vast rightwing conspiracy,” as described years ago by Hillary Clinton in 1998. At the time, people thought she was exaggerating. Now we know it exists.

It involves not only Harlan Crowe, the very generous benefactor of Justice Clarence Thomas, but Charles Koch and the mysterious Council on National Policy, where rightwing zealots meet and greet and plan their strategy.

Leonard Leo, the Catholic and deeply conservative leader of the Federalist society, planned the successful conquest of the U.S. Supreme Court. Donald Trump was his useful idiot.

Koch is all in for deregulation. But not when women’s reproductive rights are at issue.

Will Justice Thomas be held accountable for his unethical behavior? His benefactors will protect him. His dear personal friendship with Mr. Crowe began after Justice Thomas joined the Supreme Court. What a coincidence!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Deregulation, Education Industry, Elections, For-Profit, Fraud, Freedom, Funding

DeSantis and His Morality Police in the Schools

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2023 //
26

The editorial board of the Miami Herald knows exactly what Ron DeFascist is up to: He wants to remove local control of public schools and gather complete power over what is taught in the schools. He wants to crush unions. He wants to censor books in school libraries. He wants to make sure that students use the bathroom assigned to the gender on their birth certificate. He wants to control the pronouns that teachers use in their classroom (check every student’s birth certificate so you don’t break the last two laws). He wants to control the state curriculum and tests to be certain that only patriotic history is taught. It’s not at all clear whether Black history can be taught (even though it is mandated) unless it meets his approval. He wants to control school boards, and he doesn’t hesitate to select and endorse candidates who share his views. He is power-mad. And he thinks his authoritarian behavior is a model for the nation! He must have skipped history at Harvard.

Florida Republicans’ ‘ideology patrol’ is coming to a school near you | Opinion

The Florida Legislature could de-certify many teacher unions in charge of negotiating salaries and working conditions.

Florida Republicans’ ‘ideology patrol’ is coming to a school near you | OpinionBY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL BOARD

It’s the biggest irony of a state that calls itself “free.”

A basic tenet of America’s political system — one that conservatives, more than liberals, have staunchly defended — is that the government closest to the people is best. But the Florida Legislature, egged on by Gov. DeSantis, is poised to further constrain locally elected school boards from making decisions about books, what teachers can say in the classroom and even school bathroom rules.

If the Republican-led House and Senate get their way, by the time they are done local education will be a mere arm of state leaders who act like the ideological patrol of Florida’s K-12 system. Meanwhile, there’s not enough talk about real issues like post-pandemic learning losses and the shortage of teachers. In fact, lawmakers might make the latter even worse with a union-busting bill that could de-certify many teacher unions in charge of negotiating salaries and working conditions.

So strong is the Legislature’s desire to turn K-12 into a field of culture battles, they are seeking to turn school board races, which are currently nonpartisan, into partisan contests. This would play right into DeSantis’ hands. He’s said that his goal is to elect candidates of his choosing in 2024 local races, including for the Miami-Dade County School Board.

This move would exclude millions of Floridians who aren’t registered with either major party — and who outnumberRepublican voters in Miami-Dade — from voting for their board member in primaries. The saving grace is that this measure would only go into effect if at least 60% of voters in the state approve it as an amendment to the Florida Constitution.

Another bill would relax residency requirements for school board candidates. They would not have to live in the district they want to represent until taking office. This isn’t unheard of in Florida. The same requirement applies to sheriffs and other constitutional officers. But it would allow any outsider with money and backing from, say, a powerful governor to run to represent communities they have no connection to.

To be fair, there are some sound proposals making their way forward at the Capitol. Lawmakers want shorter, eight-year term limits for school board members, down from 12 years. There’s a bill to require instruction on the effects of social media on young people and to ban the use of a school’s internet for social media, unless it’s for education purposes. Senate Bill 52 is ready for a Senate vote and also would ban cellphones in class.

But lawmakers are too busy fighting gender pronouns, sex education and transgender youth.

SB 1674 would make it a second-degree misdemeanor for adults to use a bathroom or “changing facility” that doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth. The bill also would require districts to come up with “disciplinary procedures” to deal with students who violate the ban, further stigmatizing trans kids who already are often the target of ridicule.

Republican lawmakers want to prohibit teachers and staff from calling students by pronouns that differ from those given to them at birth, even when a parent is OK with it. SB 1320 expands a law that bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity — known by critics as “Don’t say gay” — through the eighth grade.

That same bill would also give outsized power to a single person to, at least temporarily, ban books from schools. Districts would be required to pull books that have been challenged while a complaint is being heard. It allows not just parents, but any county resident, to file an objection, likely resulting in blanket attempts by activists to ban books about LGBTQ issues and race.

SB 1320 also would take away school boards’ power to choose textbooks for sexual and reproductive health classes. Instead, that would be up to the Department of Education, which reports to the governor.

Current law already requires districts to teach that abstinence is the “certain way” to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and about “the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage.” But lawmakers seem to think we still cannot trust the people we elected to run our schools with basic decisions about curriculum.

We’re not fools. This isn’t simply a traditional power grab by Tallahassee. This is an attempt to ensure only certain voices are allowed in public education. Parents and educators who think differently be damned.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Teachers, Unions
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