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Mercedes Schneider and I: New Members of the House Education and Labor Committee

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2021 //
11

We start the day today with reports from Mercedes Schneider and from me on the new members of the House Education and Labor Committee. We both spent several hours on Sunday putting together posts, not aware that the other was doing the same thing. Mercedes reviewed the backgrounds of the Republicans just added to the committee, and she picked up some very interesting information that I missed. I recommend that you read her post.

This is my review of both parties’ new additions to the committee, which should be read in conjunction with Mercedes’.

Fifteen new members were added to the House Education and Labor Committee: 11 Republicans and four Democrats. The information I provided below was gathered mostly from Wikipedia (in italics) and the candidates’ campaign website.

By now, you have no doubt heard that rightwing extremist and Qanon nutcase Marjory Taylor Greene was added to the House Education and Labor Committee by the Republican leadership.

But she is not the only new Republican member appointed to the committee who is hostile to public schools.

Here is the complete list of new Republican members added to the committee.

New Republican members
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA)

Miller-Meeks is a physician and an opthamologist in Iowa. According to Wikipedia: Miller-Meeks opposes the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).[1] She opposes abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or harm to the mother.[1] Of same-sex marriage, she said in 2014 that she favors “traditional marriage.”[1] She has criticized EPA regulation of waterways and coal plants, saying it creates “uncertainty.”[1] During the COVID-19 pandemic, she said she opposed the implementation of face mask mandates to halt the virus’s spread.[13]

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT)

Burgess Owens was elected from Utah. He was a professional athlete. He is African American. He is a very conservative Republican who appears frequently on FOX News.

When asked if he planned to be involved with the Congressional Black Caucus, a group made up of African American lawmakers that is currently made up entirely of Democrats. “I will have nothing to do with the Black Caucus,” Owens responded. “It has nothing to do with color; it has to do with our values. I see an organization that’s been pro-abortion, anti-choice for school, not doing anything to make sure our kids get educated or get job opportunities. They have been our biggest problem.”

Owens says he left the NFL “a cocky liberal” but went on to become “a very humbled and appreciative conservative”.[2] He has also described his current views as “very conservative”.[22] In June 2019, Owens, who is black, provided testimony to a United States House Committee on the Judiciary subcommittee opposing a bill that advocated reparations for slavery.[23] Owens has also criticized U.S. national anthem protests and Colin Kaepernick.[24] In November 2019, Owens called Donald Trump “an advocate for black Americans”.[25] On January 6, 2021, Owens joined fellow Utah Congressman Chris Stewart and voted to reject Pennsylvania’s electoral votes for President-elect Biden.[26]

At a June 1, 2020, Republican primary debate, Owens said Democrats in Washington are held in thrall by Marxists and socialists. Owens stated: “The days of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill are over. We’re dealing with people who hate our country”. He also said the Affordable Care Act should be repealed and that he supported President Donald Trump.[27] Later on in the campaign, Owens changed his stance, stating that coverage for pre-existing conditions should be protected, and that he did not support the repeal of Obamacare.[28][29][30]

In a candidate forum in October 2020, Owens stated that the country’s top economic need is to reduce business regulations and make tax cuts. He also stated his opposition to a minimum wage increase.[31] When asked about the need for bipartisanship, he responded, “The first thing we have to do is make sure that the Republican Party gets control again… We’re at a point now we just cannot afford to go off the cliff and allow a socialist to actually take the lead now… We have to be honest about this. There are truly people who don’t love our culture and do anything to destroy it and transform us into something else.”

In January 2021, speaking before a group of Democrats in the Utah Legislature, Owens stated he now realizes the difference between liberals, Marxists and socialists, and apologized to liberals for past remarks. Owens stated at the time: “What I didn’t realize and now I am realizing is that the ideology that we’re all fighting against is something we all need to know is out there. There are literally people who do not love our country the way we do. And when I say that, my apologies go to liberals, because I didn’t quite see the difference in liberalism and Marxism and socialism. There’s a difference. … We believe in God. We believe in capitalism. We believe in the family unit. Conservatives and liberals believe that. … There’s an ideology, if we don’t recognize it, if we say it doesn’t exist, it’s to our detriment.”[32]

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA)

Rep. Bob Good of Virginia attended Liberty Christian Academy and received his B.S. and M.B.A. at Liberty University, founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Good campaigned in 2020 on a far-right platform, espousing hard-line views on immigration policy and opposition to same-sex marriage[13] and aligning himself with President Donald Trump.[6] Good called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act[6]and rejected public-health measures to combat the spread of COVID-19, a pandemic in the United States.[13] He did not wear a face covering or encourage the wearing of face coverings at campaign events, and opposed restrictions on businesses to slow the spread of the virus.[13] Good suggested, without evidence, that the wearing of face coverings might be harmful.[13] In the November 3, 2020 election, Good defeated Democratic nominee Cameron Webb, a physician.[6]

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI)

Rep. McClain was endorsed by Donald Trump.

McClain has raised over $1 million for treatment of Multiple Sclerosis.[10] She is a devout Roman Catholic.[11]

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

Greene was one of the 139 representatives who challenged the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Congress on January 7, 2021, the day after the storming of the U.S. Capitol.[3] She has voiced support for disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theories including Pizzagate,[4]QAnon,[5]false flag shootings as a means for Congress to legislate for gun control,[6][7]9/11 conspiracy theories,[8] and the “Clinton Kill List“.[6] Her Facebook account has expressed support for executing prominent Democratic politicians.[9] After falsely asserting Donald Trump was elected in a landslide but the election had been stolen from him, in January 2021 Greene filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden the day after his inauguration, alleging abuse of power.[10][11]


Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN)

Rep. Harshbarger is a pharmacist from Tennessee. She ran for a safe Republican seat.

Harshbarger focused her campaign on fixing the opioid crisis, advocating anti-abortion legislation, and protecting religious freedom. She failed to debate any competitors throughout her primary or general race. [11]

On the afternoon of January 6, supporters of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, incited by the president himself, broke into the U.S. Capitol during debate, vandalized the building, and threatened lawmakers. Lawmakers fled to an undisclosed location for safety. Later that evening, Representative Harshberger joined 139 other Republican House members in voting to sustain objections to the certification of the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, based on claims of vote fraud that were supported by no evidence.[12]


Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL)

Rep. Miller graduated from Naperville Central High School and has a B.A. in elementary education and a B.S. in business management. She is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus.

On January 5, 2021, two days into her House term, Miller issued a prepared speech to the conservative group Moms for America.[11][12] She quoted Adolf Hitler, saying: “Each generation has the responsibility to teach and train the next generation. You know, if we win a few elections, we’re still going to be losing unless we win the hearts and minds of our children. This is the battle. Hitler was right on one thing. He said, whoever has the youth has the future.”[13][14]

A number of groups and politicians strongly condemned the comment, harshly criticized Miller, and exhorted the Republican party to do likewise. Public statements were issued by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Anti-Defamation League, World Jewish Congress, and multiple lawmakers including Adam Kinzinger and Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker.[15][16][17][18][19][20] Representative Jan Schakowsky, Senator Tammy Duckworth, and the Illinois Legislative Jewish Caucus called for Miller’s resignation.[21][19][16]

On January 7, Miller’s office tweeted that her remarks had been intended to compare alleged youth indoctrination efforts by unnamed “left-wing radicals” to those of Hitler, while nonetheless encouraging Republicans to even more aggressively appeal to the youth as a means to collective power.[12] On January 8, she apologized for having quoted Hitler in the message, but accused her critics of twisting her words.[11][22]

On January 14, Schakowsky said that she would introduce a measure to censure Miller.[23]


Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN)

Rep. Spartz is a CPA.

Victoria Kulgeyko was born in Nosivka,[4] Chernihiv Oblast, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, today Ukraine.[6] Before moving to the United States, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Kyiv National Economic University. She also earned a Master of Accountancy from the Kelley School of Business of Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis.[8]

While Kulgeyko was in college, she met her future husband, Jason Spartz, on a train in Europe and began dating him.[9] They married in 2000.[10] Victoria Spartz immigrated to the United States in 2000 at the age of 21 and became a U.S. citizen in 2006.[11][12][13]

In late 2020, Spartz was identified as a participant in the Freedom Force, a group of incoming Republican members of the House of Representatives who “say they’re fighting against socialism in America”.[23][24][25][26


Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI)

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald was leader of the State Senate in Wisconsin, where he was a close ally of Governor Scott Walker and helped to pass laws that limited collective bargaining and that gerrymandered state legislative districts. He opposed certification of Biden’s election on January 6.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC)

Rep. Cawthorn was homeschooled and dropped out of Patrick Henry College after one semester. He spoke at Trump’s rally on January 6, rallying a violent mob to invade the U.S. Capitol.

Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA)

Rep. Steel is one of the few Korean-Americans to serve in Congress. She represents the conservative Orange County district in California. She has been active in Republican Party politics. She wants to lower taxes and supports school choice.

During her campaign, Steel spoke out against COVID-19 mask mandates.[13] Her platform included opposition to abortion, same sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and the creation of a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.[13][23] A conservative, she aligned herself with President Donald Trump.[24]

Democrats appointed four new members to the House Education and Labor Committee:

  • Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York

Rep. Jamaal Bowman is a career educator who founded the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a middle school in The Bronx, New York City. He has a Bachelor’s degree in sports management, a masters’ degree in counseling, and a doctorate in educational leadership.

Bowman became a leading advocate against standardized testing.[8][9] His blog on the role of standardized testing has received national attention.[8] He has written about high-stakes testing’s role in perpetuating inequalities,[10] including the turnover, tumult, and vicious cycle it creates in the lives of students and educators, as assessment performance damages a school’s ability to teach and, subsequently, the quality of the education upon which the student is assessed. By the mid-2010s, a quarter of Bowman’s students had opted out of standardized testing. He also advocated for children to receive arts, history, and science education in addition to the basics of literacy and numeracy.[8] Bowman’s school policy used a restorative justice model to address the school-to-prison pipeline.[citation needed] After ten years as principal, he left the job to focus on his congressional campaign.

  • Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico

Rep. Leger Fernandez received her BA from Yale and her law degree from Stanford Law School. She practiced law in New Mexico before running for Congress. Leger Fernandez has advocated for a “New Mexico Green New Deal,” Medicare For All, a transition away from fracking to green energy, and a ban on the sale of military style semi-automatic rifles.[26] She has also supported comprehensive immigration reform and the passing of the DREAM Act.[27]

  • Congresswoman Kathy Manning of North Carolina

Rep. Manning earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard and her law degree from the University of Michigan. Her father worked for Ford Motor Co. and her mother taught public school. Manning was director of the charitable Jewish Federations of America. She supports an increase in the minimum wage, affordable healthcare, improving education, and access to arts in the community.

  • Congressman-elect Frank Mrvan of Indiana

Rep. Mrvan was born in Indiana, where he attended public school and graduated from Ball State University. He was a mortgage broker, then a township trustee. He campaigned on a platform of improving healthcare, increasing jobs and opportunity, and was endorsed by the AFT and United Steelworkers.


 

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Elections, Republicans

Jake Jacobs Reviewed Hillary’s Dreadful Education Plan

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2021 //
17

Jake Jacobs, an art teacher in New York City, a leader of New York BadAss Teachers, and a writer for The Progressive, read and reviewed Hillary Clinton’s policy briefing book in 2017 and reviewed the education section for Alternet. I missed his article, but it’s worth reading now to understand how advocates of privatization have inserted themselves into both political parties and use their vast wealth to control public policy and undermine public schools.

Jacobs points out that Laurene Powell Jobs “has been close with the Clintons since the late ’90s, also sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. She set up billionaire “roundtables” with Clinton’s campaign advisors through 2015 while donating millions to Priorities USA, Clinton’s main PAC.”

Jacobs notes:

Notes taken by Clinton aide Ann O’Leary were made in interviews with Powell Jobs and Bruce Reed, President of The Broad Foundation (and former chief of staff to Joe Biden). According to the notes, the “experts” were calling for new federal controls, more for-profit companies and more technology in public schools — but first on the menu was a bold remake of the teaching “profession…”

Powell Jobs suggests letting principals “pick their teams,” making teachers individually negotiate salary (every teacher—really?), expanding online education offerings like Khan Academy and making teaching universities “truly selective like TFA and Finland.” This comment is perplexing because while Finland has demanding teacher vetting and training, Teach for America places inexperienced teachers in classrooms after a seven-week summer crash course...

Tying campaign donations to a singular issue like expanding charter schools might in days past been seen as a prohibited quid-pro-quo. But in this cycle, Podesta, O’Leary and [Neera] Tanden [director of the Center for American Progress and President Biden’s nominee to lead the crucial Office of Management and Budget, which sets priorities for federal funding] all busily raised campaign money from the same billionaire education reformers with whom they were also talking policy specifics.

But they did more than talk. On June 20, 2015, O’Leary sent Podesta an email revealing the campaign adopted two of Powell Jobs’ suggestions, including “infusing best ideas from charter schools into our traditional public schools.” When Clinton announced this policy in a speech to teachers, however, it was the one line that drew boos.

“Donors want to hear where she stands” John Petry, a founder of both Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and Success Academy, New York’s largest network of charter schools, told the New York Times.  Petry was explicit, declaring that he and his billionaire associates would instead put money into congressional, state and local races, behind candidates who favored a “more businesslike approach” to education, and tying teacher tenure to standardized test scores...

Not mentioning education would become important in the general election. This policy book shows a snapshot in time when wealthy donors were pushing Clinton’s and Jeb’s positions together, seeking more of the federal privatization begun under George W. Bush and continued by Obama...

This was predicted by John Podesta, who bragged just after the 2012 election about nullifying education policy differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney. Sitting next to Jeb Bush, Podesta proclaimed “ed reform” a bipartisan affair, telling donors “the Obama administration has made its key priorities clear. The Republicans are pretty much in the same place…this area is ripe for cooperation between the center-right and center-left”...

The 2014 policy book reveals some essential lessons about how education policy is crafted: in secret, with the input and influence of billionaire donors seeking more school privatization and testing—regardless of what party is in power. Even as the backlash against testing and the Common Core grew, Clinton’s advisors pushed her to embrace them. Clinton vacillated, then fell silent on K-12 policy, and as a result, education issues were largely left out of the election debate. Today, under Trump, privatization marches on worse than ever.


Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Biden, Billionaires, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Failure, For-Profit, Funding, Hillary Clinton, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), New Orleans, Privatization, Race to the Top, Republicans, Standardized Testing

What Happened to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Democratic Opponent?

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2021 //
42

I posted this article last fall. It explains why QAnon Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ran unopposed for election in Georgia. Her allies literally drove her opponent out of the race and out of the state with death threats. His life was destroyed. This is not the way democracy works. This is the way fascism works.

The post starts like this:

Stephanie McCrummen wrote this story in the Washington Post about what happened when Kevin Van Ausdal ran against a member of QAnon in a Congressional district in Georgia.

There was a time when Kevin Van Ausdal had not yet been called a “loser” and “a disgrace” and hustled out of Georgia. He had not yet punched a wall, or been labeled a “communist,” or a person “who’d probably cry like a baby if you put a gun in his face.” He did not yet know who was going to be the Republican nominee for Congress in his conservative district in northwestern Georgia: the well-known local neurosurgeon, or the woman he knew vaguely as a person who had openly promoted conspiracies including something about a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

Anything still seemed possible in the spring of 2020, including the notion that he, Kevin Van Ausdal, a 35-year-old political novice who wanted to “bring civility back to Washington” might have a shot at becoming a U.S. congressman.

So one day in March, he drove his Honda to the gold-domed state capitol in Atlanta, used his IRS refund to pay the $5,220 filing fee and became the only Democrat running for a House seat in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which Donald Trump won by 27 points in the 2016 presidential election.

He hired a local campaign manager named Vinny Olsziewski, who had handled school board races and a couple of congressionals.

He came up with a slogan — “Save the American Dream” — and posted his first campaign ad, a one-minute slide show of snapshots with voters set to colonial fife-and-drum music.

He gave one of the first public interviews he had ever given in his life, about anything, on a YouTube show called Destiny, and when the host asked, “How do you appeal to these people while still holding onto what you believe in?” Kevin answered, “It’s all about common sense and reaching across the aisle. That’s what politics is supposed to be like.”

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Georgia, Insane, Republicans

Arthur Camins: What Democrats Must Stand For Now

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2021 //
29

Arthur Camins reviews recent political history as a way to understand how Democrats lost their principles and values.

Democrats became the party identified with both civil rights and labor, if tepidly on both counts. However, they never fully embraced a multiracial movement for social and economic justice. Neither movement overcame mutual distrust. Segments of working- and middle-class Americans who found economic success in the post-war period began to experience social and economic insecurity. They responded positively to Republicans’ full-frontal law and order, anti-government racist appeals.  In response, a group of Democrats identified as the Democratic Leadership Council offered a counter-strategy to gain or maintain diminishing influence.  In essence, it amounted to acting more like Republicans in language and policy.  They welcomed corporate campaign contributions and deregulation, backed away from integration, became less pro-union, embraced the conservative rhetoric of personal responsibility, public-private partnerships, and individual choice and competition in both education and healthcare.

At the same time, disparate movements for women’s, LGTBQ, and marriage rights, and protecting the environment met with some success and shifted predominant values but did not coalesce into a broader unifying movement for change.

While Democrats did elect Clinton and Obama as two-term presidents, they lost control of the majority of statehouses.  Even the momentous election of the first Black president did not fundamentally alter Republican political or ideological hegemony. The Democratic strategy amounted to concessions on big ideas and values.  Their compromises on the core idea that government is responsible for the well-being of all failed.  They continually repeated, “Chance to climb the latter of success if you work hard and play by the rules,” rhetoric. As the saying goes, you can’t be a little bit pregnant.  Either a political party represents full support for equity and democracy or not. Republicans controlled the terms of the debate. The result of the Democrats’ a little-bit progressive and a little-bit conservative strategy was a loss of credibility with great swaths of Americans.

Centrism and neoliberalism left the Democrats as an empty vessel, offering nothing substantially different from Republicans. Then came Trumpism, with its full-throated embrace of the worst, most hateful strains in American political life.

The only Democratic answer to the lived precariousness with which too many struggle is to fight for and establish security for all with no exceptions.  Programs pitched to help some but not all, such as the Affordable Care Act or charter schools, divide and alienate rather than unify.

The enabling ideas of racist appeals are that inequity is inevitable, whites and the wealthy are more worthy than people of color and the poor, and that their gain must come at the expense of white people. Ensuring a decent life for all and the unified struggle required to attain it cannot happen without a direct reckoning with the divisive role of white supremacy.  Acting to challenge this explicitly in ideas and deed is the only answer to Trumpism.

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Equity, Justice

Peter Greene: Democrats Need a Major Restart for Education

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2021 //
23

You know the old line, “Failure is not an option.” Well, we have federal education policy built on the idea that failure doesn’t matter. Failure is not only an option, it is the only option. No Child Left Behind failed; the same children who were behind were left behind. Race to the Top was a failure; no one reached “the top” because of its demands. Common Core was a failure: It promised to close achievement gaps and raise up fourth grade test scores; it did not. Every Student Succeeds did not lead to “every students succeeding.” At some point, we have to begin to wonder about the intelligence or sanity of people who love failure and impose it on other people’s children. Testing, charter schools, merit pay, teacher evaluation, grading schools A-F, state takeovers, etc., fail again and again yet still remain popular with the people who control the federal government, whether they be Democrats or Republicans.

Peter Greene sums up the problem with his usual wit and insight: Democrats need a new vision. They need to toss aside everything they have endorsed for at least the past 20-30 years. The problem in education is not just Betsy DeVos. The problem is the bad ideas endorsed by Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Will Biden and Cardona have the wisdom and the vision to understand that?

For four years, Democrats have had a fairly simple theory of action when it came to education. Something along the lines of “Good lord, a crazy lady just came into our china shop riding a bull, waving around a flamethrower, and dragging a shark with a head-mounted laser beam; we have to stop her from destroying the place (while pretending that we have a bull and a shark in the back just like hers).” 

Now, of course, that will, thank heavens, no longer fit the circumstances. The Democrats will need a new plan.

Trouble is, the old plan, the one spanning both the Clinton and Obama years, is not a winner. It went, roughly, like this:

The way to fix poverty, racism, injustice, inequity and economic strife is to get a bunch of children to make higher scores on a single narrow standardized test; the best shot at getting this done is to give education amateurs the opportunity to make money doing it.

This was never, ever a good plan. Ever. Let me count the ways.

For one thing, education’s ability to fix social injustice is limited. Having a better education will not raise the minimum wage. It will not eradicate poverty. And as we’ve just spent four years having hammered into us, it will not even be sure to make people better thinkers or cleanse them of racism. It will help some people escape the tar pit, but it will not cleanse the pit itself.

And that, of course, is simply talking about education, and that’s not what the Dems theory was about anyway–it was about a mediocre computer-scorable once-a-year test of math and reading. And that was never going to fix a thing. Nobody was going to get a better job because she got a high score on the PARCC. Nobody was ever going to achieve a happier, healthier life just because they’d raised their Big Standardized Test scores by fifty points. Any such score bump was always going to be the result of test prep and test-taker training, and that sort of preparation was always going to come at the expense of real education. Now, a couple of decades on, all the evidence says that test-centric education didn’t improve society, schools, or the lives of the young humans who passed through the system.

Democrats must also wrestle with the fact that many of the ideas attached to this theory of action were always conservative ideas, always ideas that didn’t belong to traditional Democratic Party stuff at all. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire talk about a “treaty” between Dems and the GOP, and that’s a way to look at how the ed reform movement brought people into each side who weren’t natural fits. The conservative market reform side teamed up with folks who believed choice was a matter of social justice, and that truce held until about four years ago, actually before Trump was elected. Meanwhile, in Schneider and Berkshire’s telling, Democrats gave up supporting teachers (or at least their unions) while embracing the Thought Leadership of groups like Democrats for Education Reform, a group launched by hedge fund guys who adopted “Democrat” because it seemed like a good wayto get the support they needed. Plus (and this seems like it was a thousand years ago) embracing “heroes” like Michelle Rhee, nominally listed as a Democrat, but certainly not acting like one. 

All of this made a perfect soup for feeding neo-liberals. It had the additional effect of seriously muddying the water about what, exactly, Democrats stand for when it comes to public education. The laundry list of ideas now has two problems. One is that they have all been given a long, hard trial, and they’ve failed. The other, which is perhaps worse from a political gamesmanship standpoint, is that they have Trump/DeVos stink all over them. 

But while Dems and the GOP share the problems with the first half of that statement, it’s the Democrats who have to own the second part. The amateur part.

I often complain that the roots of almost all our education woes for the modern reform period come from the empowerment of clueless amateurs, and while it may appear at first glance that both parties are responsible, on closer examination, I’m not so sure.

The GOP position hasn’t been that we need more amateurs and fewer professionals–their stance is that education is being run by the wrong profession. Eli Broad has built his whole edu-brand on the assertion that education doesn’t have education problems, it has business management problems, and that they will best be solved by management professionals. In some regions, education has been reinterpreted by conservatives as a real estate problem, best solved by real estate professionals. The conservative model calls for education to be properly understood as a business, and as such, run not by elected bozos on a board or by a bunch of teachers, but by visionary CEOs with the power to hire and fire and set the rules and not be tied down by regulations and unions. 

Democrats of the neo-liberal persuasion kind of agree with that last part. And they have taken it a step further by embracing the notion that all it takes to run a school is a vision, with no professional expertise of any sort at all. I blame Democrats for the whole business of putting un-trained Best and Brightest Ivy Leaguers in classrooms, and the letting them turn around and use their brief classroom visit to establish themselves as “experts” capable of running entire district or even state systems. It takes Democrats to decide that a clueless amateur like David Coleman should be given a chance to impose his vision on the entire nation (and it takes right-tilted folks to see that this is a perfect chance to cash in big time). 

Am I over-simplifying? Sure. But you get the idea. Democrats turned their backs on public education and the teaching profession. They decided that virtually every ill in society is caused by teachers with low expectations and lousy standards, and then they jumped on the bandwagon that insisted that somehow all of that could be fixed by making students take a Big Standardized Test and generating a pile of data that could be massaged for any and all purposes (never forget–No Child Left Behind was hailed as a great bi-partisan achievement). 

I would be far more excited about Biden if at any point in the campaign he had said something along the lines of, “Boy, did we get education policy wrong.” And I suppose that’s a lot to ask. But if Democrats are going to launch a new day in education, they have a lot to turn their backs on, along with a pressing need for a new theory of action.

They need to reject the concept of an entire system built on the flawed foundation of a single standardized test. Operating with flawed data is, in fact, worse than no data at all, and for decades ed policy has been driven by folks looking for their car keys under a lamppost hundreds of feet away from where the keys were dropped because “the light’s better over here.”

They need to embrace the notion that teachers are, in fact, the pre-eminent experts in the field of education.

They need to accept that while education can be a powerful engine for pulling against the forces of inequity and injustice, but those forces also shape the environment within which schools must work. 

They need to stop listening to amateurs. Success in other fields does not qualify someone to set education policy. Cruising through a classroom for two years does not make someone an education expert. Everyone who ever went to the doctor is not a medical expert, everyone who ever had their car worked on is not a mechanic, and everyone who ever went to school is not an education expert. Doesn’t mean they can’t add something to the conversation, but they shouldn’t be leading it.

They need to grasp that schools are not businesses. And not only are schools not businesses, but their primary function is not to supply businesses with useful worker bees. 

If they want to run multiple parallel education systems with charters and vouchers and all the rest, they need to face up to properly funding it. If they won’t do that, then they need to shut up about choicey policies. “We can run three or four school systems for the cost of one” was always a lie, and it’s time to stop pretending otherwise. Otherwise school choice is just one more unfunded mandate.

They need to accept that privatized school systems have not come up with anything new, revolutionary, or previously undiscovered about education. But they have come up with some clever new ways to waste and make off with taxpayer money.

Listen to teachers. Listen to parents in the community served by the school. Commit to a search for long term solutions instead of quick fixy silver bullets. And maybe become a force for public education slightly more useful than simply fending off a crazy lady with a flamethrower. 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Creativity, Democrats, Disruption, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top

Politico: Will Biden Bring Teachers’ Unions in from the Cold?

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2020 //
12

The past two decades have been rough times for the two big teachers’ unions. Republicans have demonized them. The Obama administration courted their support but did little to help them as they were attacked by the right in Republican state houses and the Courts. Duncan gleefully promoted the misguided use of test scores to evaluate teachers, despite repeated warnings by eminent researchers that the methodology was flawed. In fact, eligibility for states to compete to get more than $4 billion in Race to the Top funding was contingent on states enacting laws to do exactly that. “Value-added measurement” flopped; it was not only a costly failure but it was enormously demoralizing to teachers. When the Los Angeles Times and the New York Post published the VAM scores of teachers, Duncan applauded them.

As a candidate, Joe Biden made clear that he’s not only pro-teacher, he’s a union man. Whether or not either will be chosen, the names of the leaders of the NEA and AFT have been floated as possible choices for Secretary of Education. This would have been unthinkable at any time in the past 20 years.

Politico suggests that the Biden administration heralds a new day for the unions. Certainly they worked hard for his election. He is listening to the unions in a way that Obama never did. The pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform is not happy with this development.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/18/biden-obama-teachers-union-447957

The president-elect benefits from witnessing the union blowback against Obama, who enraged educators when he publicly supported the firing of teachers at an underperforming Rhode Island school in 2010. The National Education Association — Jill Biden’s union — even called on Obama’s first Education Secretary Arne Duncan to resign amid fights over academic standards, public charter schools and testing, though tension faded when Obama in 2015 signed bipartisan legislation to overhaul No Child Left Behind.

By contrast, Biden is starting off with a plan that his wife, while pointing to herself, likes to say is “teacher-approved.” He has pledged to nominate a former teacher as his education secretary and told union members, “You will never find in American history a president who is more teacher-centric and more supportive of teachers than me.” 

But within the Democratic party, the spectrum of ideology on education issues is far more complex than “pro-teacher.”

Biden will need the support of teachers and Congress as he tries to meet his goal of safely reopening most schools in the first days of his administration. But he will also need to navigate sharp divisions that remain within theDemocratic party on charter schools and student assessments — both flashpoints during the Obama administration as well.

The president-elect has been critical of charter schools. And the Democratic Party platform — written with input from teachers unions — argues against education reforms that hinge on standardized test scores, stating that high-stakes testing doesn’t improve outcomes enough and can lead to discrimination.

But it’s an open and pressing question whether Biden’s education secretary will waive federal standardized testing requirements this spring for K-12 schools for a second year or to carry on, despite the pandemic. Teachers unions say it isn’t the time, but a host of education and civil rights groups say statewide testing will be important to gauge how much students have fallen behind during the pandemic…

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, said she does not expect the Biden administration to recycle the education policies of the Obama years.

Biden has called for tripling federal spending on low-income school districts, boosting funding for special education, increasing teacher salaries, helping states establish universal preschool and modernizing school buildings. His education plan also calls for creating more community schools, with expanded “wraparound” support for students — a big priority for unions.

“The Biden administration is going to support public schools, which means not only turning away from the policies of Betsy DeVos — that’s a given — but also turning away from Race to the Top,” she told POLITICO before the election.“It’s going to be very different.”

Categories Biden, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Unions, VAM

Carol Burris: The Secretary of Education We Need–and Those We Don’t

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2020 //
43

Carol Burris wrote the following post. Marla Kilfoyle provided assistance. They asked me to add that there are dozens more exceptionally well qualified people who should be considered for this important post: they are career educators who believe in public education, not closing schools or privatization.

The media has been filled with speculation regarding Joe Biden’s pick for Secretary of Education. Given the attention that position received with Betsy De Vos at the helm, that is not a surprise. 

In 2008, Linda Darling Hammond was pushed aside by DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) for Arne Duncan, with disastrous consequences for our public schools. Race to the Top was a disaster. New Orleans’ parents now have no choice but unstable charter schools. Too many of Chicago’s children no longer have a neighborhood school from the Race to the Top era when it was believed that you improved a school by closing it.

But the troubling, ineffective policies of the past have not gone away. Their banner is still being carried by deep-pocketed ed reformers who believe the best way to improve a school is to close it or turn it over to a private charter board. 

Recently, DFER named its three preferred candidates for the U.S. Secretary of Education. DFER is a political action committee (PAC) associated with Education Reform Now, which, as Mercedes Schneider has shown, has ties to Betsy De Vos. DFER congratulated Betsy DeVos and her commitment to charter schools when Donald Trump appointed her.  They are pro-testing and anti-union. DFER is no friend to public schools.

The DFER candidates belong to Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, an organization that promotes Bush/Duncan education reform, as Jan Resseger describes here. “Chiefs for Change,” you support school choice, even if it drains resources from the public schools in your district, of which you are the steward. In their recent letter to President Biden, Chiefs for Change specifically asked for a continuance of the Federal Charter School Program, which has wasted approximately one billion dollars on charters that either never open or open and close. They also asked for the continuance of accountability systems (translate close schools based on test results) even as the pandemic rages.

We must chart a new course. We cannot afford to take a chance on another Secretary of Education who believes in the DFER/Chiefs for Change playbook. 

We don’t have to settle. The bench of pro-public education talent is deep. Here are just a few of the outstanding leaders that come to mind who could lead the U.S. Department of Education. Marla Kilfoyle and I came up with the following list. There are many more. 

Tony Thurmond is the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, California. Tony deeply believes in public schools. Prior to becoming his state’s education leader, he was a public school educator, social worker, and a public school parent. His personal story is both moving and compelling. 

Betty Rosa dedicated most of her adult life to the students of New York City.  She began her career as a bi-lingual paraprofessional in NYC schools, became a teacher, assistant principal, principal, superintendent, state chancellor, and now New York State’s interim commissioner. 

Other outstanding superintendents include Joylynn Pruitt -Adams, the Superintendent of Oak Park and River Forest in Illinois, who is relentlessly determined to provide an excellent education to the district’s Black and Latinx high school students by eliminating low track classes, Mike Matsuda, Superintendent of Anaheim High School District and Cindy Marten, the superintendent of San Diego.  

Two remarkable teachers with legislative experience who are strong advocates for public schools and public school students are former Teacher of the Year Congresswoman Jahana Hayes and former Arkansas state senator Joyce Elliot. 

There is also outstanding talent in our public colleges. There are teachers and leaders like University of Kentucky College of Education Dean, Julian Vasquez Heilig, who would use research to inform policy decisions.  

These are but a few of the dedicated public school advocates who would lead the Department in a new direction away from test and punish policies and school privatization. They are talented and experienced leaders who are dedicated to improving and keeping our public schools public and who realize that you don’t improve schools by shutting them down. Any DFER endorsed member of Chiefs for Change is steeped in the failed school reform movement and will further public school privatization through choice. They had their chance. That time has passed. 

 

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Categories Accountability, Biden, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chicago, Chiefs for Change, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Philadelphia, Portfolio District, Privatization

Laura Chapman Reviews the Biden Transition Team for Education

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2020 //
47

The Biden campaign released the names of those who will serve on transition teams. Our reader, retired arts educator Laura Chapman, reviewed the members of the education transition team. According to the campaign (cited in Valerie Strauss’s article), the transition team will identify DeVos regulations that should be reversed, but the team will not set policy or staff. Chapman, like many readers of this blog, believes that President Obama’s Race to the Top was profoundly wrong because of its overemphasis on standardized testing (a fact acknowledged even by President Obama) and its advocacy for charter schools and evaluation of teachers by the test scores of their students. Biden promised a new vision and fresh policies for K-12 education, not more of the same failed policies.

Chapman writes:

Biden-Harris Transition teams are selected to review specific agencies. Volunteers are listed only by their “most recent employment.” Those serving in education are “volunteers” and not required to indicate “sources of funding.”

I have looked into the biographies of Biden’s 20 experts in education – entries from LinkedIn, their current organizations, and less often Wikipedia. 

Of these
15 have no documented Pre-k to12 teaching experience.
14 held positions in Obama’s administration with nine of these in the US Department of Education (USDE). Two worked at USDE before Obama.
10 are lawyers.
7 have supported charter schools, here indicated by*
Also lurking here are Billionaire supporters of failed educational reforms. 

LEADER: Linda Darling-Hammond.* CEO Learning Policy Institute. See Wikipedia. Of interest: She developed the EdTPA (Teacher Performance Assessment) used in 40 states and 750 teacher education programs and the Smarter Balanced Assessment aligned with the Common Core, still used in some states, including California. Early in her career, she co-founded a preschool/day care center and Early College High charter school serving low-income students of color in East Palo Alto, California. The school had multiple connections with Stanford University where Linda Darling-Hammond taught. A version of this concept still exists in East Palo Alto Academy where some academic programs are connected with Stanford University. Linda Darling-Hammond is the subject of video interviews conducted in her home by Amrein-Beardsley. I recommend them. Be sure to scan down for the first video /inside-the-academy/linda-darling-hammond This archive also has video interviews with Diane Ravitch, Howard Gardner, Elliot Eisner and others.

UNION CONNECTIONS: American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association.
–Donna Harris-Aikens. Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Senior Director of Education Policy and Practice NEA (14 years). Prior work at NEA on ESEA. Former Policy Manager for Service Employees International Union.
–Beth Antunez, No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Deputy Director, Government Relations for AFT. Previously ATF Assistant Director for educational issues especially community school initiatives.
–Shital Shah, No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Manager of Philanthropic Engagement at AFT. Other AFT positions for 18 years, most of these in community engagement. Other youth and public heath work, including Peace Corps in Honduras.
–Marla Ucelli-Kashyap. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Assistant to the AFT President for Educational Issues. Former Director of District Redesign and Leadership at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and senior program officer at the Rockefeller Foundation. Member, Advisory Council for “Education Reimagined,” devoted to “Personalized learning that is competency-based and has a wide range of learning environments and adult roles.” https://education-reimagined.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Vision_Website.pdf

UNION and OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SERVICE
–Robert Kim. Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. John Jay College of Criminal Justice; writer and consultant on legal, policy, and civil rights issues in education. Senior Title IX EEO investigator. Former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Operations and Outreach, USDE. Senior Policy Analyst, NEA. Co-author, “Education and the Law, 5th ed.” (West Academic Publishing, 2019) and “Legal Issues in Education: Rights and Responsibilities in U.S. Public Schools Today” (2017). Early legal service for ACLU, and Legal Aid.
–Ruthanne Buck. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. A Senior Advisor to U.S. Secretaries of Education John King and Arne Duncan for educator outreach and engagement. Previously Assistant to AFT President for Special Projects and National Field Director at AFT. Led major field and political operations on progressive issues, agencies and candidates.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION (* indicates some connection to charter schools)
–Ary Amerikaner, Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Vice President for P-12 Policy, Practice, and Research at the Education Trust. Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education. The Education Trust operates four offices coast to coast and makes recommendations for federal and state policy. These recommendations have treated ESSA as a civil rights mandate to be followed, with no testing waivers. The Trust wants to expand Civil Rights Data Collection reports on school crime and discipline, also AP courses (for the College Board?). The Trust wants to see the present ban on a “student unit record system” lifted. That would please Bill Gates and allow federal data-collection on individual students in any post-secondary program–including their SS numbers, income tax records and more. See https://dianeravitch.net/2017/01/07/stop-our-government-wants-to-create-a-national-database-about-everyone-including-your-children/ and https://edtrust.org/press-release/opportunities-to-advance-educational-equity-during-the-next-administration/.
–James Kvaal,* Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. President, The Institute for College Access & Success, a non-profit treating issues of student debt. Obama’s White House Deputy Director of Domestic Policy and Deputy Under Secretary USDE. Prior work as consultant for Achieving the Dream (a network of community colleges), America Achieves (Common Core), Annie E. Casey Foundation (Read by Grade Three), College Board (David Coleman), the Harvard Government Performance Lab, Results for America and others. The Institute for College Access & Success has six senior fellows from the Obama administration and lists 220 “partners” devoted to evidence-based policies and “what works.” Partners include Teach for America, Teach Plus, The New Teacher Center, charter school franchises (KIPP, IDEA, Green Dot, and YesPrep). Billionaires fund the Institute: Arnold Ventures (John D. and Laura Arnold hedge funds), the Ballmer Group (a nonprofit co-founded by former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer), the S.D. Bechtel, Jr Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (funded expansion of Green Dot charter schools), William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Schmidt Futures (former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s philanthropy)
–Emma Vadehra.Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Senior fellow, The Century Foundation, also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the charter-friendly Center For American Progress. Executive Director of Next100, a Century Foundation incubator for next generation policy leaders. Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary in USDE’s Office of Planning, Evaluation, Policy Development. Also Chief of Staff for Obama’s USDE serving John B. King Jr. and Arne Duncan. Former Chief of Staff at Uncommon Schools, a charter school management organization.
–Keia Cole. Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Head of Digital Experience at MassMutual, an insurance company. Obama’s Associate General Counsel and Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary of USDE. Responsible for providing strategic direction for USDE’s financial, technology, human capital, and risk management operations. First work at Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division, specialist in financial analysis of media and communications companies. For less than a year she was an Education Pioneers Fellow at KIPP San Jose Collegiate charter school, not as a teacher.
–Roberto Rodriguez.* No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. President and CEO of Teach Plus, operates in 11 states to supply charter school teachers. Obama’s Deputy Assistant to the President for Education. Claims credit for contributions to ESSA, STEM, higher education standards. Rodriguez claims credit for bipartisan work on No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, among other major bills. Advisor on education for Unidos US, the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization. Serves on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Excellent Education, The Achievement Network (promoter of charter schools), the Bainum Family Foundation and Strive Together’s data-mongering Cradle to Career Network.
–Kristina Ishmael. In Nebraska, she taught ELL students for two years and Kindergarten and 2nd Grade for four years. Director of Primary and Secondary Education at Open Education Global (less than a year), in charge of adoptions of Open Educational Resources world-wide. Open Education fellow in Obama’s USDE Office of Educational Technology (2016-2017). Former manager of the Teaching, Learning, & Tech team at New America. Digital learning specialist for the Nebraska Department of Education for four years.
–Lindsay Dworkin. Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Director, Policy Development and State Government Relations at Alliance for Excellent Education. Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Outreach USDE (2016-2017). Legal work in Delaware for the former Governor and State Treasurer of Delaware Jack Markell. The Alliance (All4Ed) advocates for evidence-based instructional practices, and college and career pathways in 40 states and specific federal educational policies. A major Alliance project, Future Ready Schools, is active in 30 states pushing for digital access to “anytime, anywhere, personalized learning.” Superintendents in over 3400 districts have signed the Bill Gates inspired “pledge” at https://dashboard.futurereadyschools.org/pledge/
–Paul Monteiro, Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Assistant Vice President of External Affairs, Howard University. Previously Chief of Staff for Howard University’s President. Former Acting Director of the Community Relations Service, Obama’s Department of Justice (one year, 4 months), National Director of AmeriCorps VISTA. Public Engagement Advisor to White House on Arab Americans, faith communities, anti-poverty groups, and gun safety organizations. Deputy Director of Religious Affairs for Presidential Inauguration Committee including the National Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral. Two year appointee, Board of Education Prince George County Public Schools. Adjunct Professor, University of Maryland for three years.

USDE WORK prior to OBAMA
-Norma Cantu. University of Texas at Austin, Chair Department of Educational Administration, former US Assistant Secretary of Education 1993-2001. (Position misidentified on Biden’s list)

OTHER
–Jessica Cardichon. Lawyer. An upper elementary teacher in NYC for nearly seven years. Director of Learning Policy Institute’s DC office. Leads the Institute’s federal legislative and regulatory strategy. Co-leads LPI’s teams on state policy, member of LPI’s teams on Educator Quality, Deeper Learning, Equitable Resources and Access and Early Childhood Education. Authored reports on the Federal role in school discipline, and taking advantage of ESSA’s policies. Education Counsel to Senator Bernie Sanders, and Senior Director for Federal Policy and Advocacy, Alliance for Excellent Education.
–Jim Brown.* Lawyer. No evident Pre-k to12 teaching. Former Chief of Staff for Pennsylvania Governor Robert P. Casey and Pennsylvania Secretary of General Services. At U.S. House of Representatives, served as Staff Director and General Counsel for the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs (now the Committee on Financial Services). Jim is co-founder of a company that manages over $800 million in venture capital. He is a trustee of Immaculata University, the Gesu Catholic School (K-12) and Young Scholars Charter School in Philadelphia. He is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education Foundation.
–Margaret R (Peggy) McLeod. In her native Puerto Rico, she taught in two Montessori schools and owned a center that provided afterschool services to students with disabilities. Served as ESL teacher in DC. Currently Deputy Vice President of Education and Workforce Development, National Council of La Raza. Previously Executive Director, Student services, Alexandria (VA) City Public Schools. Assistant Superintendent for Special Education, District of Columbia (DC), also in DC, the Title III director, Office of Bilingual Education, Title VII coordinator, and bilingual program developer. A member of the National Board of Education Sciences since 2010.
—Pedro A. Rivera. Extent of classroom experience not found. President of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, PA since August 2020. Former five-year Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania aiding the adoption of a funding formula for basic education; a performance measure for schools (Future Ready PA Index), and a school improvement strategy. Former Executive Director for the School District of Philadelphia, former Superintendent of the School District of Lancaster, PA, classroom teacher, assistant principal, principal.  https://buildbackbetter.com/the-transition/agency-review-teams/ 

Categories Biden, Charter Schools, Darling-Hammond, Linda, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Obama, Race to the Top

Jennifer Rubin: How Congress Can Limit the Reach of the Trump Court

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2020 //
37

Jennifer Rubin is a columnist for the Washington Post. I believe she was chosen to express a conservative view but she was quickly repelled by Trump and Trumpism. In this column, she explains how a Democratic Congress can protect progressive policies—by doing their job.

The prospect of Republican senators marching lock-step to confirm a justice — picked precisely because of her hostility to the Affordable Care Act and legal abortion — should help Democrats boost their already commanding position in Senate races. Only by retaking the Senate can a Democratic-led Congress prevent conservative rule by the judiciary.

Come to think of it, wasn’t an overly powerful Supreme Court something Republicans used to worry about? Back when Roe v. Wade was decided, they argued that the political branches of government should determine such issues; now they seek refuge in an uber-conservative Supreme Court out of step with a large majority of Americans on everything from guns to abortion to health care.

If Democrats do go on to win the White House and have comfortable majorities in both chambers, they can begin to defang a Supreme Court that has been stocked with rigid ideologues. Much has been made of the Democratic threat of “court packing” (was it “court stripping” when Republicans decided that eight justices were enough rather than consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland?); however, the threat of adding justices to the bench may have its intended effect in curbing the court’s quest to overturn decades of precedent. It is the last card to be played, not the first.

Instead, the first step Congress should take is — get ready! — to legislate. It can pass a federal statute (likely to require the demise of the filibuster if it cannot be accomplished in a reconciliation bill) to codify Roe (which draws more than 60 percent support) and, if lawmakers see fit, stripping out the Hyde Amendment that limits federally funded abortions to cases of rape, incest or cases in which the life of the mother is at risk. In other words, the federal government can decide not only to protect the right to seek an abortion but also to make abortions more accessible to poor women. We can argue whether that is a good or bad policy, but no one can argue that Congress has no prerogative to address the issue. Nor can anyone say that Congress can’t, say, pass a Defense of All Marriages Act, which would secure same-sex marriages.

Congress can also “fix” the Affordable Care Act, which it intends to expand anyway, should the Supreme Court strike the law down on the basis that the tax justification that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. used to uphold the law vanished when the individual mandate fell out.

Call this the Ruth Bader Ginsburg approach. When the Supreme Court refused to extend the statute of limitations in wage discrimination lawsuits, her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyearinvited Congress to amend the statue. It did. Much of the anti-democratic, precedent-busting work of a hyperpartisan Supreme Court can be undone by a unified Congress and White House.

Congress can also use its constitutional power to limit the jurisdiction of the court’s appellate power and to limit the terms of justices. If the Supreme Court is to be a partisan outfit, then give it less to do and make each seat less valuable.

Conservatives are rushing through a rock-ribbed conservative with little regard for precedent for one reason: They are watching their electoral majority slip away — and, “worse,” they know their prospects of a comeback are diminishing, given that the electorate is looking more and more like America and that voting is not being suppressed. A court that zigzags its way through the Constitution depending on the policy preferences of the presidents who appointed them is not a court that will engender respect. It is one that needs to be cut down to size.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Democrats, Education Reform, Republicans

Politico: The Odds of Stopping Trump’s Next Supreme Court Appointment

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2020 //
91

As Politico explains in this article, the odds of stopping another Trump appointment to the Supreme Court are slim to none.

Republicans have 53 Senate members. Democrats 47.

It would require four Republicans to vote no. If only three vote no, there will be a tie, and VP Pence will cast a tie-breaker in favor.

There has been speculation that Collins and McSally might vote no if the vote is held before the election. Murkowski of Alaska has said she thought it was inappropriate to confirm a new justice right before the election. That’s a possible three.

James Hohmann has a fascinating article in the Washington Post. He writes that Republicans will forge ahead with a nominee and won’t care f they are called hypocrites for saying the opposite in 2016, when they refused to give a hearing to Obama’s appointee Merrick Garland, ten months before the election.

He says the Senate would likely vote after the election, during the lame duck session.

He says Trump called McConnell and said he would appoint a woman, a conservative to be sure. Trump called McConnell on his flight back to Washington from a rally in Minnesota to say he likes Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit, two people briefed on the discussion tell Seung Min Kim….

Barrett, only 48, was confirmed to her post in late 2017 on an almost party-line vote. The only two Democrats who defected were Sens. Joe Manchin (W.V.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.), who was defeated the next year. As a devout and outspoken Roman Catholic (she has seven children), she has left little doubt in her public comments and jurisprudence about her deeply-held hostility to reproductive rights. “Your legal career is but a means to an end, and … that end is building the kingdom of God,” Barrett said in a 2006 speech to graduates of Notre Dame, where she attended law school.

He added that the Supreme Court battle would energize the right and enable Trump to change the subject away from the pandemic.

He also said that if the Democrats win, the left will pressure them to expand the Court and “pack” them.

Categories Democrats, Republicans, Trump
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