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NAVALNY Wins the Oscar for Best Documentary!

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2023 //
19

I was thrilled to see that the documentary about Alexei Navalny won the Oscar. It will bring more attention to his unjust imprisonment by a dictatorship. I hope everyone gets to see this film. His family was there to share the award.

The KGB tried to poison him but failed. He was saved in a German hospital. He could have stayed out of Russia and remained free.

But he returned , knowing that Putin would lock him up for years. He is now in a remote prison camp, in solitary confinement.

But not forgotten.

Let’s hope this recognition bolsters his spirit.

Wonderful!

Categories Censorship, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Fascism, Freedom, International

Josh Cowen: I Was Never a Member of a Teachers’ Union—Until Now

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2023 //
32

Josh Cowen is a Professor of Educational Policy at Michigan State University. He has spent many years as a voucher researcher and recently concluded that vouchers are a failed experiment, based on a multitude of research studies.

As soon as anyone becomes a critic of charter schools or vouchers, the choice lobby attacks them and claims they are paid by the teachers’ unions. I know this from personal experience. A few years ago, a choice lobbyist accused me of taking union money to buy the house I lived in; I assured her that I paid for my home all by myself.

Funny that the shrill well-paid lobbyists act as though unions are criminal enterprises, when in reality they have historically enabled poor and working class people to gain a foothold in the middle class, to have job security, health benefits, and a pension. They also give public schools a voice at the table when governors propose larger classes, lower standards for new teachers, or decreased funding for schools. I believe we need unions now, more than ever. Whenever I hear of a charter school unionizing or of workers in Starbucks or some other big chain forming a union, it makes my day.

Josh Cowen has undoubtedly been subject to the same baseless criticism from the same union-haters whose salaries are paid by plutocrats. He shares his thoughts here about teachers’ unions.

Here in Michigan, the Democratic legislature just re-affirmed our state’s longstanding commitment to working families by removing anti-labor provisions from state law. The move doesn’t apply to teachers and other public employees, because the conservative U.S. Supreme Court sided a few years back with Right-wing activists in their efforts to hinder contributions to public sector unions, but it’s still good news for the labor movement overall.

And I wanted to use their effort—alongside Republican efforts in other states to threaten teachers for what they say in classrooms—to make a simple point.

We need teachers unions. Other folks more prominent than me, like AFT’s Randi Weingarten, have made this point recently too. But I wanted to add my own voice as someone who has not been a union member, and someone who—although I’ve appeared with Randi on her podcast and count many union members as friends—has never been an employee or even a consultant.

If you want to talk dollars, The Walton Family Foundation once supported my research on charter schools to the tune of more than $300,000. Arnold Ventures supported my fundraising for a research center at Michigan State–$1.9 million from them. And the US Department of Education awarded my team more than $2 million to study school choice—while Betsy DeVos was secretary.

Think about that when I say school vouchers are horrific. And understand, I’m getting no support from teachers’ unions.

Instead it is I who supports them.

I’ve been studying teacher labor markets almost as long as school vouchers. Mostly my research has looked at teacher recruitment and retention. But I’ve also written about teachers’unions specifically. There’s a debate among scholars on what unions do and whether their emphasis on spending translates into test score differences. In the “rent seeking” framework economists use, the concern is that dollars spent on salaries don’t have direct academic payoffs.

There is no question that spending more money on public schools has sustained and generational impacts on kids. Research has “essentially settled” that debate, according to today’s leading expert on the topic.

But I want to branch out from dollars and cents and test scores to talk about teacher voice.

And I want to do that by raising a few questions that I’ve asked myself over the last couple years:

Why should the voice of a billionaire heiress from Michigan with no experience in public schools count for more than the voices of 100,000 teachers in my state’s classrooms every day?

Why should the simple fact that they work with children made by other people mean that teachers surrender their own autonomy and judgment not just as professionals but as human beings?

Why should educators have to work under what amounts to gag orders, afraid to broach certain topics or issues in the classroom? Some states are setting up hotlines to report on teachers as if they’re parolees, and a bill in New Hampshire would essentially give the fringe-Right Secretary of Education subpoena power to haul teachers in front of a special tribunal for teaching “divisive concepts.” This, after a Moms for Liberty chapter put out a bounty on New Hampshire teachers who were likewise divisive on an issue. Read: an issue of race or gender.

It’s not just threats to teacher employment. We know this. There are threats to teachers’ lives. How many teachers have died alongside their students—other people’s children—over the years in school shootings?

Why does the Right claim to trust teachers enough to arm them with guns in response to those shootings, but not enough to let them talk about race, gender, or any other “divisive concept?” Even some conservative commentators have worried publicly that we’re asking teachers to do too much. Why are we asking them to be an armed security force too?

‘In her recent history of “The Teacher Wars”, The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein noted that teachers formed unions, and fought for teacher tenure, to protect themselves not just professionally but personally. For free speech. To prevent harassment from supervisors—then as now, teachers were mostly professional women—and to keep from being fired for pregnancy or marital status.

So really, attacks on teachers are nothing new. Instead, teachers seem to be one of the few professions that it’s still acceptable in political conversation—even a mark of supposed intellectual sophistication in some circles—to ponder the shortcomings of the educators who work with our kids every day.

There’s nothing sophisticated about attacking hardworking, thoughtful, and dedicated people. And the only result of doing so will be the further erosion of our public, community schools. And that’s really the point. Just a few days ago, we learned that the big data that I and many others have gotten used to working with finally caught up to the on-the-frontlines warnings of educators everywhere: teachers are exiting the profession at unprecedented rates.

I’ve taken no money from teachers’ unions for any of the work I do. I’ve never been a member of a union—teachers’ or otherwise. Until now. Because after writing this today, I made a donation to my state’s primary teachers’ union and became a general member: a person “interested in advancing the cause of education…not eligible for other categories of membership.”

There’s a word for that in the labor movement. You hear it a lot here in Michigan, where I grew up and now teach future teachers in a college of education. That word is Solidarity.

Sign me up.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Courage, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Freedom, Funding, Health, History, School Choice, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Unions, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Florida Teacher: You Want Choice? Go to a Public School.

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2023 //
39

Steve teaches in Polk County, Florida. He left a comment about where to find a wealth of choices: in public school. Choice advocates claim that public schools are one-size-fits-all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Charter schools and voucher schools are one-size-fits-all. They may exclude students they don’t want, for any reason. They may have a religious core that appeals to one-size. Home-schooling? You can’t get any more one-size-fits-all than learning at home. If you want indoctrination, go to a religious school; if you want education, go to a public school.

Do you want choices? Go to a public school!

Steve writes:

You want choice? Here, in the seventh largest school district in the state, you can choose AP, college-dual enrollment, Cambridge, ACCEL or International Baccalaureate for academics.

You can enter a career academy for aeronautics, health fields, architecture, criminal justice, education, culinary, graphics, CAD/CAM, engineering, legal studies, design, veterinary science, finance, biotechnology, construction. and others.

There are outstanding fine arts programs, with graduates going on to Broadway, television, and the tourism entertainment industry.

Play sports? The state lets you transfer to any school you want. You could join the state champion football team or state champion girls basketball team.

Want something hands on, such as, diesel mechanic, HVAC, auto repair, IT, or welding? Two public vo-tech high schools offer those programs.

All this choice is available in the public system.

So, the issue isn’t choice at all. This is about what vouchers have always been about since the days of massive resistance in Virginia.

Segregation?

Categories Charter Schools, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Florida, History, Innovation, Propaganda, School Choice, Segregation, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Fiona Hill and Angela Stent: The Kremlin’s Grand Illusions

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2023 //
37

Fiona Hill and Angela Stent are experienced foreign policymakers. They published an astute analysis of Putin’s shifting reasons for invading Ukraine and of the West’s failure to explain its policy goals in Ukraine with clarity. Their article was published by the prestigious journal Foreign Policy, which usually is behind a paywall but made this article available online. I am posting the second half of the article. To read it in full, open the link.

The Kremlin is shameless in its rhetoric, and no one in Putin’s circle cares about narrative coherence. This brazenness is matched by domestic ruthlessness. Putin and his colleagues are willing to sacrifice Russian lives, not just Ukrainians’. They have no qualms about the methods Russia uses to enforce participation in the war, from murdering deserters with sledgehammers (and then releasing video footage of the killings) to assassinating recalcitrant businessmen who do not support the invasion. Putin is perfectly fine with imprisoning opposition figures while sweeping through prisons and the most impoverished Russian regions to collect people to use as cannon fodder on the frontlines.

Only 34 countries have imposed sanctions on Russia since the war started.

The domestic ruthlessness is in turn exceeded by the brutality against Ukraine. Russia has declared total war on the country and its citizens, young and old. For a year, it has deliberately shelled Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and killed people in their kitchens, bedrooms, hospitals, schools, and shops. Russian forces have tortured, raped, and pillaged in the Ukrainian regions under their control. Putin and the Kremlin still believe they can pummel the country into submission while they wait out the United States and Europe.

The Kremlin is convinced that the West will eventually grow tired of supporting Ukraine. Putin believes, for example, that there will be political changes in the West that could be advantageous for Moscow. He hopes for the return of populists to power in these states who will back away from their countries’ support for Ukraine. Putin also remains confident that he can eventually restore Russia’s prewar relationship with Europe and that Russia can and will be part of Europe’s economic, energy, political, and security structures again if he holds out long enough (as Bashar al-Assad has in the Middle East by staying in power in Syria). This is why Russia is seemingly restrained in some policy arenas. For instance, it has vested interests in working with Norway and other Arctic countries in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and the Barents Sea, where Moscow has been careful to comply with international agreements and bilateral treaties. Russia does not want its misadventure in Ukraine to embroil and spoil its entire foreign policy.

Putin is convinced that he can compartmentalize Moscow’s interests because Russia is not isolated internationally, despite the West’s best efforts. Only 34 countries have imposed sanctions on Russia since the war started. Russia still has leverage in its immediate neighborhood with many of the states that were once part of the Soviet Union, even though these countries want to keep their distance from Moscow and the war. Russia continues to build ties in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. China, along with India and other key states in the global South, have abstained on votes in favor of Ukraine at the United Nations even as their leaders have expressed occasional consternation and displeasure with Moscow’s behavior. Trade between Russia and these countries has increased—in some cases quite dramatically—since the beginning of the conflict. Similarly, 87 countries still offer Russian citizens visa-free entry, including Argentina, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. Russian narratives about the war have gained traction in the global South, where Putin often seems to have more influence than the West has—and certainly more than Ukraine has.

BLURRING THE LINES

One reason the West has had limited success in countering Russia’s messaging and influence operations outside Europe is that it has yet to formulate its own coherent narrative about the war—and about why the West is supporting Kyiv. American and European policymakers talk frequently of the risks of stepping over Russia’s redlines and provoking Putin, but Russia itself not only overturned the post–Cold War settlement in Europe but also stepped over the world’s post-1945 redlines when it invaded Ukraine and annexed territory, attempting to forcibly change global borders. The West failed to state this clearly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The tepid political response and the limited application of sanctions after that first Russian invasion convinced Moscow that its actions were not, in fact, a serious breach of post–World War II international norms. It made the Kremlin believe it could likely go further in taking Ukrainian territory. Western debates about the need to weaken Russia, the importance of overthrowing Putin to achieve peace, whether democracies should line up against autocracies, and whether other countries must choose sides have muddied what should be a clear message: Russia has violated the territorial integrity of an independent state that has been recognized by the entire international community, including Moscow, for more than 30 years. Russia has also violated the UN Charter and fundamental principles of international law. If it were to succeed in this invasion, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states, be they in the West or the global South, will be imperiled.

Yet the Western debate about the war has shifted little in a year. U.S. and European views still tend to be defined by how individual commentators see the United States and its global role rather than by Russian actions. Antiwar perspectives often reflect cynicism about the United States’ motivation and deep skepticism about Ukraine’s sovereign rights rather than a clear understanding or objective assessment of Russian actions toward Ukraine and what Putin wants in the neighboring region. When Russia was recognized as the only successor state to the Soviet Union after 1991, other former Soviet republics such as Belarus and Ukraine were left in a gray zone.

Some analysts posit that Russia’s security interests trump everyone else’s because of its size and historical status. They have argued that Moscow has a right to a recognized sphere of influence, just as the Soviet Union did after 1945. Using this framing, some commentators have suggested that NATO’s post–Cold War expansion and Ukraine’s reluctance to implement the Minsk agreements—accords brokered with Moscow after it annexed Crimea in 2014 that would have limited Ukraine’s sovereignty—are the war’s casus belli. They think that Ukraine is ultimately a former Russian region that should be forced to accept the loss of its territory.

Kyiv is fighting to protect other countries.

In fact, the preoccupation of Russian leaders with bringing Ukraine back into the fold dates to the beginning of the 1990s, when Ukraine started to pull away from the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (a loose regional institution that had succeeded the Soviet Union). At that juncture, NATO’s enlargement was not even on the table for eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s affiliation with the European Union was an even more remote prospect. Since then, Europe has moved beyond the post-1945 concept of spheres of influence for East and West. Indeed, for most Europeans, Ukraine is clearly an independent state, one that is fighting a war for its survival after an unprovoked attack on its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The war is about more than Ukraine. Kyiv is also fighting to protect other countries. Indeed, for states such as Finland, which was attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939 after securing its independence from the Russian empire 20 years earlier, this invasion seems like a rerun of history. (In the so-called Winter War of 1939–40, Finland fought the Soviets without external support and lost nine percent of its territory.) The Ukrainians and countries supporting them understand that if Russia were to prevail in this bloody conflict, Putin’s appetite for expansion would not stop at the Ukrainian border. The Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and many other countries that were once part of Russia’s empire could be at risk of attack or subversion. Others could see challenges to their sovereignty in the future.

Western governments need to hone this narrative to counter the Kremlin’s. They must focus on bolstering Europe’s and NATO’s resilience alongside Ukraine’s to limit Putin’s coercive power. They must step up the West’s international diplomatic efforts, including at the UN, to dissuade Putin from taking specific actions such as the use of nuclear weapons, attacks on convoys to Ukraine, continued escalation on the battlefield to seize more territory, or a renewed assault on Kyiv. The West needs to make clear that Russia’s relations with Europe will soon be irreparable. There will be no return to prior relations if Putin presses ahead. The world cannot always contain Putin, but clear communications and stronger diplomatic measures may help push him to curtail some of his aggression and eventually agree to negotiations.

The events of the last year should also steer everyone away from making big predictions. Few people outside Ukraine, for example, expected the war or believed that Russia would perform so poorly in its invasion. No one knows exactly what 2023 has in store.

That includes Putin. He appears to be in control for now, but the Kremlin could be in for a surprise. Events often unfold in a dramatic fashion. As the war in Ukraine has shown, many things don’t go according to plan.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Extremism, International

Thom Hartmann: The New McCarthyism

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2023 //
41

Columnist Thom Hartmann warns of the dangerous overreach by Congressman Jim Jordan, enabled by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Jordan and other House radicals intend to spend the next two years investigating government employees, in hopes of discrediting the Biden administration and critics of Traitor Trump.

He writes:

This column could get me thrown in jail.

And the fact that I’m even thinking that way is the entire point of Jim Jordan’s new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee which Jordan chairs.

This is the same Congressman Jordan who voted to overthrow democracy and make Trump America’s first dictator on January 7th, 2001, who finally admitted he talked with Trump several times during the insurrection, and then defied the January 6th Committee’s request to tell them and America what Trump was doing on that fateful day.

He and his fellow fascist seditionists want Americans to be afraid of them, particularly Americans who may be in a position to identify their crimes and hold them to account.

Frankly, I’d be pretty low on their list. Just like the notorious Republican Senator Joe McCarthy back in the 1950s, Jordan and his buddies appear focused on using their power to intimidate those who have actual legal power. Like the FBI, IRS, regulators, and elected officials.

But it would be foolhardy to think they won’t go after members of the press. Or whatever they’re calling people like me these days: “fake news,” “lamestream media,” or the Lügenpresse in the original German.

The Committee will have the power to pry-bar their way into ongoing investigations, terrorizing agencies and government employees looking into Republican participation in the attempted coup of January 6th and the weeks around it.

They’ve even acquired, in yesterday’s vote, the power to access and use top-secret information normally reserved to the highly-vetted members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Sources and methods. How the FBI knows which seditionist Members of Congress were involved in giving tours or conspiring with Proud Boys. Secrets Putin or the Saudi’s would pay billions for, as they apparently already have with Jared Kushner and Donald Trump.

As congressman Ruben Gallego said yesterday, it’s “as if we gave the mafia the right to investigate the Southern District of New York attorney’s office.”

Congressman Adam Schiff calls it The Coverup Committee. He’s right, but it’s worse than just that.

They’ve proclaimed their desire to intimidate the FBI, the Capitol Police, America’s spy agencies, and any politician who might show the temerity to suggest traitors should be held accountable for their treason.

We’ve seen this movie before, complete with the bombast, threats, lies, and bullying. And it tells us a lot about what we can expect over the next two years.

On February 9, 1950, an obscure first-term Senator who’d lied about his military service to get elected, Joe McCarthy, gave the first speech of a 5-city tour before a Republican women’s group in Wheeling, West Virginia. Apparently wanting to stir up some buzz, he pulled a random piece of paper from his pocket, waved it theatrically, and claimed it was a list of “205 known communists” who worked at the State Department.

Americans were worried about communists then, with some justification. The “communist miracle” was widely acknowledged under Stalin as just another form of brutal anti-democratic tyranny. Stalin had starved four million Ukrainians to death in what was known as the Holdomor, while he was imprisoning his own citizens in brutal gulags. The Soviet Union had exploded their first nuclear weapon just six months earlier, and that June North Korea, with help from the USSR, would invade South Korea.

By the end of McCarthy’s tour that month, reaching Salt Lake City, he’d reduced his claim to 57 communists in the State Department; in other cities he’d claimed the number was 81. It’s entirely possible he simply couldn’t keep track of his own lies.

In any case, no such list existed. Right up to the day he drank himself to death, May 9, 1957, McCarthy never was able to name a single communist in the State Department. But his demagogic claim got him on the front pages of newspapers across America.

McCarthy and his right-hand man Roy Cohn (later Donald Trump’s mentor) terrorized people working in the US government.

Being dragged before his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was a career-ender: over 2000 government employees lost their jobs because of his baseless accusations and innuendo.

In 1950, The Progressive magazine called McCarthy:

“[A]n ambitious faker living by his wits and guts, a ruthless egotist bent on personal power regardless of the consequence to his country, a shrewd and slippery operator with the gambler’s gift for knowing when and how to bluff.”

Even average Americans trembled before McCarthy, who was stepping into the anti-communist game late.

Three years earlier the “Hollywood Ten” (Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo)— none of them particularly rich or famous — had all been sent to prison for a year for refusing to acknowledge subpoenas and submit to public interrogation by McCarthy’s peers on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Their crime? Most were writers and one, Ring Lardner Jr., had written an op-ed very much like this one in which he noted:

“One of the first acts of the Republicans who took control of Congress in 1946 (for the first time in 20 years) was to convert a temporary committee [HUAC], which had been investigating fascist sympathizers during the war, into a permanent [committee] concentrating on the … left…”

Off he went to prison.

And now, today, Jim Jordan and his colleagues have that same power of subpoena that was so bluntly wielded by McCarthy and his Republican collaborators when I was a kid.

We’ve been hearing about changes that the Republicans are making here and there in Congress since they’ve seized power, but now the full picture is coming into focus. I worried and warned about this two years ago in my book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.

For example, back in April of 2009 the FBI/DHS issued a report titled: “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” It had been prepared during the presidency of George W. Bush, but Obama was now president when it was released and the reaction from the right was immediate.

John Boehner said the report was “offensive and unacceptable” and was particularly outraged that it used the word “terrorist” to, in Boehner’s words, “describe American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation.”

That mild response caused Obama to essentially pull the report.

But imagine if such a report were issued today by the FBI. Jordan’s new committee could call before it — as McCarthy did in the 1950s — the actual government employees who’d done the research and written it.

Their careers would be destroyed, their homes and families under constant death threat, their lives turned upside down.

It would be a long time before any other federal employee would dare expose terrorism on the American right.

This is how fascists behave. It’s how they’ve behaved throughout history. It’s how they get what they want.

Unless you confront them with overwhelming resistance, you can’t negotiate with them; they keep taking more and more right up to the point of using violence.

I hope I’m wrong, but everything I’m seeing tells me this is exactly the direction Republicans in the House are moving.

We’ve entered the new McCarthy era, and Kevin is doing everything he can to empower Jordan as the new Joe.

Only this time the goal isn’t just feeding the ego of an alcoholic narcissist: it’s to end democracy in the United States.

Categories Biden, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fake, Fascism, History

Miami Herald: “Parental Rights” Is the Battle Cry of Extremists

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2023 //
22

The GOP is always in search of slogans that rile up their angry base and distract them from the fact that the Republicans have no new ideas or policies to improve anyone’s life, other than tax cuts for the 1%.

Thus, the GOP wants to ban “critical race theory” in the schools, even though it is taught as a graduate course in some law schools, not K-12. They want to ban books about race and gender. Their current slogan is “parental rights,” which means that parents must approve what is taught. “Parental rights” is an insanely slippery slope because parents do not agree. Some white parents want to ban Black history, but other parents—Black and white—don’t. Which parents get to control the curriculum?

The Miami Herald editorial board published an editorial criticizing the far-right extremists of “Moms for Liberty,” who have seized on the issue of “parental rights.”

The Miami Herald editorial board says that “parental rights” is not about “true education. It’s another shot fired in Florida’s culture wars.” This effort to replace the professional judgment of teachers with the grievances of rightwing extremists explains why the state of Florida has thousands of vacancies in teaching.

Perhaps there’s no more potent political strategy — and misnomer — than the appropriation by conservatives of the term “parental rights.”

Gov. DeSantis has announced he is targeting more than a dozen school board members in next year’s elections, including Miami-Dade County’s Luisa Santos, who’s considered liberal. The Republican vision for school boards is “pro-parent” and “pro-kids,” in the words of Republican Party of Florida Chair Christian Ziegler, the Herald reported.

Their narrative goes that to be “pro-parent” you must not want your children exposed to topics like “critical race theory,” or you only support a whitewashed version of this country’s history of racism. Being pro-kid means you don’t want them to learn that there are men who date men, women who date women and people who don’t identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. It means you want school libraries sanitized from content that might offend your sensibilities.

It means that there’s one way to look at America and education and anyone with a different opinion be damned, called names like leftist, communist, anti-American.

It’s as if only groups like Moms for Liberty represent what parents want. The group seems more preoccupied with banning books than concerned that too many kids in our schools cannot read at grade level. The leader of its Miami chapter once called the protests after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police “race wars” and repeated QAnon conspiracy theories on Instagram, Politico reported.

To be a parent, under this definition, means to be a conservative in the most extreme sense of the word. So much for the parents who want teachers to speak freely in the classroom. And what about Black parents who want their children’s life experiences to be reflected in school material and who worry their children will suffer from Florida’s attack on how educators can discuss race? They, too, have a right to recourse when their public schools fail to follow a state mandate that Black history be taught. The Herald reported this month that only 11 of Florida’s 67 school districts have developed a plan for teaching African-American studies, and that DeSantis and the Legislature have in the past rejected requests for more resources.

Very little is said about these parents in the so-called parental-rights movement. But, oh, watch out for teachers and librarians indoctrinating our children!

It’s undeniable that there are many parents who agree with DeSantis, who won reelection in November by a margin unheard of in Florida. Without a doubt, the momentum turned in favor of conservatives after parents of all political stripes became frustrated with school closures and mask mandates during the pandemic. If hindsight is 20-20, closing schools did do some damage, as evidenced by declining student achievement across the country. That has turned the assumption that school officials know best how to educate students on its head. Still, closing schools also likely saved many lives, which should count for something.

However, what should have led to a healthy debate on parental participation in education, unfortunately, has been co-opted by culture wars.

Politics 101 says that anger and frustration are the best motivators. People don’t usually organize to keep things as they are. There’s no organized movement to counter or redefine what parental rights mean. Where are the “Moms for the Truth” or “Dads for the Proper Teaching of History?”

The groups that do exist are getting overshadowed by groups like Moms for Liberty, which DeSantis and the media have propped up as the only valid version of parental dissatisfaction with public education.

DeSantis and the Republican Party aren’t hiding their agenda to transform school boards from local nonpartisan bodies into an arm of partisan politics. Opposition has all but been neutered as the Democratic Party has pretty much given up on Florida.

Without a clear opposing point of view on what parental rights means, the loudest voices will dominate. Soon, local control over K-12 will be replaced with a top-to-bottom remake of education that serves only one type of parent and one — blindered — way of thinking.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, Parent Groups, Teachers

Greg R. Flick: Now This Is a Valuable Role for Charter Schools! I Love It!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2023 //
18

The first charter school opened in 1991. Since then, charters have expanded exponentially. There are now more than 7,000 of them. Originally, charters had bipartisan support.

Bill Clinton loved the charter idea and created the federal Charter Schools Program to fund new charter schools, a modest expenditure of $6 million a year (that has since ballooned into $440 million a year, most of which has gone to grow big, wealthy charter chains).

President Barack Obama also loved charter schools , as did his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. When Congress pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy to stave off an economic collapse in 2009, it allocated $100 for schools. $95 billion went to public schools. $5 billion was set aside for the U.S. Department of Education to use as it wished for “education reform.”

Secretary Duncan, aided by helpers from the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, launched a competition among the states to win a share of $4.35 billion. But the states’ eligibility to participate in Race to the Top depended on their complying with certain demands: the states had to agree to open more charter schools, to evaluate their teachers by the test scores of their students, to restructure or close schools with low test scores, to adopt national standards (I.e., the Common Core, not yet finished, never tested).

Race to the Top gave a huge boost to charter schools.

But reality intruded. Large numbers of new charters opened. Large numbers of charters closed, replaced soon by others. Charter scandals proliferated. Get-rich-quick entrepreneurs opened charter schools; grifters opened charter schools. Some charter leaders paid themselves more than big-city superintendents. Highly successful (I.e. high test scores) charters carefully curated their students, rejecting or removing those who had low scores, excluding students with disabilities.

The charter sector began to act like an industry, with its own lobbyists in D.C. and in state capitols. Sometimes the charter lobbyists wrote state legislation to assure that there was little or no accountability or oversight or transparency Fort the public funds they received.

Of course, the charter lobby maintained a strong public relations presence, booking appearances for their paid spokespeople on national TV and in the press. When state legislatures met to vote in the budget, the charters hired buses to bring thousands of students and parents to demand more money and more charters. They were coached to use the right words about the success of charters.

Since charters have been around for more than 30 years, the research on them is consistent. Their test scores, on average, are about the same as regular schools, even though they have much more flexibility. Some get high scores (typically the ones with high attrition rates who got rid of the students they didn’t want), some got very low scores. Most were in the middle. The Cybercharters were the worst by every measure: low graduation rates, poor academics, high teacher turnover, expensive for the low quality but very profitable.

Were they innovative? No. Those considered “successful” operated with 19th century modes of strict discipline. Some substituted computers for teachers.

Charters fell under a cloud when Donald Trump became President and sooointed choice zealot Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. She plugged vouchers and charters and choice. Most Democrats in Congress began to open their eyes and understand that charters were a prelude to vouchers. DeVos’s strident advocacy for charters made most Democrats remember their party’s historic legacy as a champion of public schools, real public schools , not privately managed schools that were Public in Name Only.

So, where stands the charter idea now? Charters are admired and thriving (at least financially, if not academically) in red states. Most Democrats understand that the preservation and improvement of public schools is central to the party’s identity.

A reader of the blog came up with a sensible redefinition of the mission of charter schools. Since they have the freedom to try out new ideas, they should serve the neediest children. They should do whatever it takes—not to raise their test scores—but to educate the children who have struggled in regular schools. Let the charters innovate—their original mission—free of the burden of being labeled “failing” or “low performing.” Let them work their magic for the children who need it most, not for the high achievers who would succeed in any school.

Greg R. Flick, a reader of the blog and himself a blogger (“What’s Gneiss for Education”)) sent this perceptive comment about what charters should do to be truly useful to American education and to provide an exemplary service:

It seems that if we believe the narrative the charters push, we should flip the system on its ear. Let the charters be the default schools for the kids who can’t function in the public schools. Let’s have the public schools be able to cream their student populations, select only the students they want to have…the “easier” students, and have the charters be required to take those kids kicked out of the public schools.

Charters with their smaller classes and “freedom” to innovate will finally be able to help those kinds of kids. And since they are public schools (as they keep on telling us repeatedly) they can’t gripe about taking in the hard nuts, the Special ed kids, the ones with behavioral issues, etc.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Class size, Clinton, Creativity, Democracy, Democrats, Deregulation, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Freedom, Funding, Innovation, Obama, Reign of Error, Republicans, Special Education

Steve Nelson: Censorship Is Never Justifiable—Except Here

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2023 //
55

Steve Nelson is a retired educator who writes often against the regime of test-and-punish. Steve was headmaster of the progressive Calhoun School in Manhattan, and he practiced what he preaches. For a time, he was a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, and I appreciated his wise counsel.

In this essay on his blog, he argues against censorship. In general, I agree with him. I wrote a book about the open, blatant censorship of textbooks, tests, and literary works used in schools, called The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. The book described in detail the protocols that publishers use to exclude words, phrases, and illustrations that anyone might object to. Their exclusions are described in what are called “bias and sensitivity guidelines.” The book contains a list of nearly 1,000 words, phrases, etc. that are never to be mentioned because someone finds them offensive.

I came out strongly against censorship of literary works and textbooks and tests.

But, but, but…as readers of this blog are aware, I practice censorship on this blog. I delete comments that insult me. I treat the blog as my living room. We are here to discuss topics of my choosing. If one of my guests calls me a filthy whore or a lying bitch, I don’t post their comments. Believe me, some have called me even worse epithets, too vile to mention.

I don’t post demonstrably false conspiracy theories. For example, I received a video about the Sandy Hook massacre claiming to prove that it was a hoax, that no one died there, that it was staged by professional “crisis actors.” I refused to post it. I deleted it. I censored it. The principal of the Sandy Hook Elementary School followed my blog and my Twitter account. She died. So did five other staff members and 20 children, ages 5 and 6. The young man who did it killed his mother and himself. The perpetrator of this hoax, Alex Jones, has been ordered to pay over $1 billion to families in Newtown, Connecticut, who have been threatened and harmed because of his lies. Why should I repeat his lies?

I will not post racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic hate speech. But I oppose bowdlerizing books in which such language appears.

I oppose censoring Huckleberry Finn, the books Dr. Seuss published during World War 2, the books of Roald Dahl, the mural hanging in a San Francisco high school to which some students objected despite its artistic merit.

I support censorship of medical misinformation about COVID or other potentially fatal diseases. I support blocking quacks who advise sick people to drink bleach or swallow veterinary medicine. I read a blog written by a doctor titled “Misinformation Kills,” and I refuse to be complicit in spreading misinformation that kills. Elon Musk, on the other hand, a zillion times more powerful than me, has restored the COVID quacks, as well as Nazis and election deniers.

More controversially, I have blocked comments on the blog defending Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and his brutal destruction of that sovereign nation. To me, defending Putin is no different from defending Hitler. I know that the word “unprovoked” will bring in more comments objecting that Putin was provoked to send 200,000-300,000 troops into a sovereign nation because Ukraine belonged to Russia long ago, or NATO was encircling Russia, or the Ukrainians are Nazis, or whatever the excuse of the day is. Sorry, I feel strongly about supporting a nation struggling for its very existence and opposing a vicious tyrant.

So there you have it, Steve. I oppose censorship of art and literature. But I practice censorship here because there are some forms of speech that I do not tolerate. I look forward to hearing from you.

Steve Nelson wrote:

The complex issues of sensitivity, censorship, expression, art and history splashed down on the front page of the New York Times this week in a pair of articles.

One piece examined the legal case brought by Quebec artist Sam Kerson, formerly of Vermont.

In 1993, Kerson installed two murals titled “Vermont, The Underground Railroad” and “Vermont and the Fugitive Slave” at Vermont Law and Graduate School (VLGS) in South Royalton. I’ve written of this before as I have a special interest. I was an administrator at VLGS at the time and played an instrumental role in facilitating the project. After recent complaints from students, describing the depiction of slaves as crude caricatures, VLGS covered the murals. Kerson sued, VLGS prevailed, Kerson appealed, and the appeal was heard in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City on January 27th. The Times article describes the somewhat arcane law that Kerson cites in the appeal to protect his creation.

The second article reported the rewrites of several works by Roald Dahl. The Times reports that the rewrites were “. . . an effort to make them less offensive and more inclusive, according to a representative from the author’s estate.” Changes included such things as removing “fat” and using more inclusive terms for race, gender and parenting.

It is a humorous coincidence that the Puffin Foundation supported the murals, and Puffin Books sanitized the novels. The Puffins are not related, although Wikipedia says this about the Foundation. “The Puffin Foundation, with more than $14 million in assets split between two independent entities, was seeded with the fortune Perry Rosenstein made in the Allen screw business. He got into the fasteners industry as a salesman. As he made the rounds on his accounts, he found several buyers who wanted diversity in Allen screws.”

All these years later, “diversity” and “screwing” are flashpoints!

A critical distinction: Sam Kerson is a passionate anti-racist activist, and no person questions his motives, which were to remind us of both cruelty and heroism. Roald Dahl, by contrast, was known as a nasty anti-semite and anti-feminist.

Particularly in these contentious times, it is important to adhere to principles, whether one prefers the outcome or not. One ought not fiercely defend only the rights or expression that coincide with personal values or beliefs. We can neither understand nor learn from the past if we are constantly tinkering with its representation. That doesn’t mean that any literary or artistic product has total impunity. It is our right – our obligation – to interpret, to critique and to engage in debate. Without discomfort, growth is stunted.

In the Dahl instance, there seems little nuance. Editing books to cleanse them of discomfort is indefensible. Dahl’s language tells us about the era, the context, and the author’s implicit and explicit biases. We need all of it to understand the books and the man. No one is forced to read them. And, of course, any good teacher can use student discomfort to provide valuable lessons on social injustice, misogyny, bigotry and more. Even Puffin Books could reprint with a publisher’s note, citing the examples of language they find offensive and stimulating debate as to why.

I intend no false equivalence, but the outcry over actions like the Florida erasure of the truth of racial injustice rings hollow if rewriting Dahl’s books is easily accepted.

As to VLGS murals, it is important to recognize that they are not like framed paintings, where displays are often rotated and there is no presumption of permanence. The nature of a mural is to be fixed and ongoing. They are Kerson’s creations. The Times writes, “The case turns on language in the federal law that says artists can seek to prevent modification of their work if the change would harm their honor or reputation.’” Kerson claims, as seems self-evident, that removal or covering is a “modification,” and that his honor and reputation are at stake.

I also have sympathy for students and others who find the murals difficult. But like Dahl’s language, the murals can be a topic for critical analysis and rich debate. As a matter of principle, Kerson’s impeccable bona fides are not dispositive. But as a matter of context, his intent does matter.

I am in no position to obligate Kerson to anything, but my guess is that he might welcome a chance to go to VLGS and engage in discussion. Perhaps they could persuade his good heart to their viewpoint. Or perhaps not. But hiding or removing the murals just capitulates to a dangerous trend toward censoring discomfort.

A law school should be reluctant to be part of that trend, however emotionally powerful the concerns may be.

(This post first appeared in the 2/26 Valley News in New England)

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy

Washington Post: When Teachers Are Not Allowed to Teach the Truth

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2023 //
90

Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post wrote about the rapidly spreading censorship that is casting a pall over many classrooms. State legislatures in red states have passed scores of laws describing in vague terms what teachers are not allowed to teach, even if it is factually accurate. Imagine a teacher told he must not say that slavery was wrong. Teachers comply rather than be fired. Some quit. And people wonder why there are teacher shortages!

She writes:

Excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Passages from Christopher Columbus’s journal describing his brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples. A data set on the New York Police Department’s use of force, analyzed by race.

These are among the items teachers have nixed from their lesson plans this school year and last, as they face pressure from parents worried about political indoctrination and administrators wary of controversy, as well as a spate of new state laws restricting education on race, gender and LGBTQ issues.

“I felt very bleak,” said Lisa Childers, an Arkansas teacher who was forced by an assistant principal, for reasons never stated, into yanking Wollstonecraft’s famous 1792 polemic from her high school English class in 2021.

The quiet censorship comes as debates over whether and how to instruct children about race, racism, U.S. history, gender identity and sexuality inflame politics and consume the nation. These fights, which have already generated at least 64 state laws reshaping what children can learn and do at school, are likely to intensify ahead of the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, an ascendant parents’ rights movement born of the pandemic is seeking — and winning — greater control over how schools select, evaluate and offer children access to both classroom lessons and library books.

In response, teachers are changing how they teach.

A study published by the Rand Corp. in January found that nearly one-quarter of a nationally representative sample of 8,000 English, math and science teachers reported revising their instructional materials to limit or eliminate discussions of race and gender. Educators most commonly blamed parents and families for the shift, according to the Rand study.

The Washington Post asked teachers across the country about how and why they are changing the materials, concepts and lessons they use in the classroom, garnering responses from dozens of educators in 20 states.

Here are six things some teachers aren’t teaching anymore.

“Slavery Is Wrong”

Greg Wickenkamp began reevaluating how he teaches eighth-grade social studies in June 2021, when a new Iowa law barred educators from teaching “that the United States of America and the state of Iowa are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist.”

Wickenkamp did not understand what this legislation, which he felt was vaguely worded, meant for his pedagogy. Could he still use the youth edition of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”? Should he stay away from Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You,” especially as Kendi came under attack from conservative politicians?

That fall, Wickenkamp repeatedly sought clarification from the Fairfield Community School District about what he could say in class, according to emails obtained by The Post. He sent detailed lists of what he was teaching and what he planned to teach and asked for formal approval, drawing little response. At the same time, Wickenkamp was fielding unhappy emails and social media posts from parents who disliked his enforcement of the district’s masking policy and his use of Reynolds and Kendi’s text. A local politician alleged that Wickenkamp was teaching children critical race theory, an academic framework that explores systemic racism in the United States and a term that has become conservatives’ catchall for instruction on race they view as politically motivated.

Finally, on Feb. 8, 2022, at 4:05 p.m., Wickenkamp scored a Zoom meeting with Superintendent Laurie Noll. He asked the question he felt lay at the heart of critiques of his curriculum. “Knowing that I should stick to the facts, and knowing that to say ‘Slavery was wrong,’ that’s not a fact, that’s a stance,” Wickenkamp said, “is it acceptable for me to teach students that slavery was wrong?”

Noll nodded her head, affirming that saying “slavery was wrong” counts as a “stance.”

“We had people that were slaves within our state,” Noll said, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Post. “We’re not supposed to say to [students], ‘How does that make you feel?’ We can’t — or, ‘Does that make you feel bad?’ We’re not to do that part of it.”She continued: “To say ‘Is slavery wrong?’ — I really need to delve into it to see is that part of what we can or cannot say. And I don’t know that, Greg, because I just don’t have that. So I need to know more on that side.”

As Wickenkamp raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, she added, “I’m sorry, on that part.”Wickenkamp left the Zoom call. At the close of the year, he left the teaching profession.

Contacted for comment, Noll wrote in a statement that “the district provided support to Greg with content through a neighboring school district social studies department head.” She did not answer a question asking whether she thinks teachers should be permitted to tell children that slavery was wrong.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Art, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History, Ignorance, Lies, Literature

An Invitation to Learn About Ethnic-Racial Political Struggles in Texas

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2023 //
13

I received the following notice from Dr. Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas. She has written extensively about diversity, exclusion, inclusion, equity, and history. Her original letter was sent to executives at the American Educational Research Association. She shared it with me, and I am sharing it with you.

As I am sure everybody knows, we are in the throes of a major fight here in Texas over DEI, academic freedom, CRT in higher education, tenure, and so much more and these folks are loaded with hubris—like they can just roll right over us. That’s what DeSantis is demonstrating. So I and others have been working for close to a year now in trying to unite our communities. We are doing this through an organization we’ve named, Black Brown Dialogues on Policy and now, so that we don’t become Florida by uniting as black and brown humanity. Intersectional. Intergenerational. Civil rights, Gen Z inclusive, white allies—and all people of good conscience. This is the Beloved Community, El Pueblo Amado.I just love how it sounds in Spanish.

There’s more that unites than divides us. We’ll have the program up soon, as well, on our website.

Next Saturday, March 11, BBDP is organizing a Virtual Town Hall on DEI and Ethnic Studies and all are welcome to attend:

MEDIA ADVISORY: Black Brown Dialogues on Policy hosts Virtual Town Hall—Sat. March 11, 2023 from 10:00 AM—4:30PM CST

We get going at 10AM CST and you can view it and post questions from our Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/TeamBlackBrown

We hope to have the Virtual Town Hall program up on our website soon.

AERA luminaries Drs. Francesca Lopez, Christine Sleeter, Kevin Kumashiro and Stella Flores are part of the program. Texas legislators and two Gen Z panels, too.

Media industry professionals are producing it and we are using this Virtual Town Hall as an informational opportunity and organizing tool through which to, on the one hand, pass Ethnic Studies legislation (HB 45), and on the other, defeat terrible bills like those listed below.

HB 45 is about Ethnic Studies. It doesn’t make ES a requirement. Rather, it creates a pathway to a high school diploma through the taking of either Mexican American or African American Studies, courses that are currently electives in state policy at the high school level. Native American Studies and Asian American Studies were “passed,” along with the other two courses in 2018. I and so many others were involved in its passage. And the SBOE has waited for a more conservative board to get in to decide whether and when to align Native American Studies and Asian American Studies to state standards. They’re foot dragging. What we need is a law, or HB 45.

Check out these horrible bills.

The specific bills represent an attack on DEI in higher education: House Bill 1006, House Bill 1607, and House Bill 1046. I heard there was one more, too. We can’t keep up. But these are sufficiently draconian to be concerned.

House Bill 1006 seeks to “prohibit: (A) the funding, promotion, sponsorship, or support of: (i) any office of diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (ii) any office that funds, promotes, sponsors, or supports an initiative or formulation of diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond what is necessary to uphold the equal protection of the lawsunder the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

House Bill 1607 is the higher education analogue to Senate Bill 3 last legislative session that some have dubbed the “Texas anti-CRT” bill, House Bill 1006.

HB 1046 seeks to prohibit what they’re calling “political tests” in higher education utilized in hiring decisions or in student admissions as a condition of employment, promotion, or admission, to identify a commitment to or make a statement of personal belief supporting any specific partisan, political, or ideological set of beliefs, including an ideology or movement that promotes the differential treatment of any individual or group based on race or ethnicity.

It will really make a difference if folks from all over the country attend to convey solidarity with our cause. Public statements, letters to Governor Greg Abbott and the Lt. Governor Dan Patrick in defense of Ethnic Studies, CRT, and DEI are also much appreciated.

I’m sure I missed some folks, so apologies if I left you out. We have a lot on our plates at the moment.

Hasta pronto! Buenas noches. May all have a blessed week.

Peace / paz,

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Co-founder and convener

Black Brown Dialogues on Policy

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Courage, Creativity, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Extremism, Ignorance, Injustice, Texas
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