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Carol Burris: Fleecing the Taxpayers! Write Your Senator Now!

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2023 //
6

Carol Burris writes here about a new legislative proposal, co-sponsored by some Democratic Senators, to shower millions of dollars on organizations that promote or planet new charter schools, including religious charter schools. This is a ripoff of government funds. Write your Senator now to kill this bad proposal..

Burris writes:

Eight senators (Bill Cassidy [R-La.], John Coryn [R-Tx], Cory Booker [D-NJ], Tim Scott [R-SC], Michael Bennet [D-CO], Mike Braun [R-Ind], Maggie Hassan [D-NH], Brian Schatz [D-HI]) introduced a bill last week that was clearly written with the help of the charter lobby. The Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act would allow billionaire-funded nonprofits operating as “state entities” to keep more of a cut when dispersing Charter School Program (CSP) grants. The bill would also allow these “state entities” to award up to $100,000 to would-be charter entrepreneurs, including religious organizations, to pre-plan a charter school before they have even submitted an application to an authorizer.

Send your letter to your senator to oppose the charter lobby’s bill today. Click HERE.

As we documented in our reports, CSP planning grants have led to enormous waste and fraud. NPE found that millions of CSP dollars have gone to school entrepreneurs who never opened a school—confirmed by the Department of Education and the GAO. That is why the 2022 reform regulations we supported put some modest guardrails on how and when planning grants could be spent.

That did not sit well with the charter lobby, led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which persuaded these eight Senators to make it even easier to get funding to pre-plan a school. 

But it gets worse.  This bill would also increase the funding state entities can keep for themselves when they disperse grants. That cut is already at 10%. This bill would raise it to a whopping 15%. 

Here is an example that shows the impact. The Opportunity Trust is funded by millionaires and billionaires, including the Walton Family Foundation and The City Fund, which itself was funded by billionaires Reed Hastings and John Arnold. It just received a $35,555,557.00 Charter School Program SE grant to open more charter schools in Missouri, even though the St. Louis School Board and the municipal government have made it clear they do not want more charter schools in the city. Charters are only allowed in St. Louis, one unaccredited district, and Kansas City, which their application failed to mention. 

The democratically elected school board of St. Louis just passed a resolution asking the U.S. Department of Education to rescind the grant, stating, among other objections, that the Opportunity Trust lied in its application regarding its working relationship with the district. The one charter school in the unaccredited district that Opportunity Trust opened has been a financial disaster. 

Yet, The Opportunity Trust can currently keep more than $3.5 million for administering grants and “technically assisting” charter grantees. This new bill would allow Opportunity Trust to increase the amount it can keep to more than $5.3 million. 

In addition, the bill would allow the Opportunity Trust to award nearly $1.8 million to would-be charter entrepreneurs to pre-plan schools in a city where they are not needed or wanted. This June, St. Louis Today exposed how three present and former executives of the controversial Kairos Academy, an Opportunity Trust-sponsored school, double-dipped to receive over a half million dollars to “plan” the charter school even while receiving a full salary from their public schools. Two of the three have already left the charter school. 

Shockingly, the Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act would not only encourage such double-dipping, it would also increase the funding stream.  

At the beginning of the CSP, only state education departments could receive these large grants. However, the charter lobby worked to change the law so that nonprofits like Opportunity Trust could also control who gets the money and keep a share for themselves. 

Half of the 2023 CSP SE awards went to organizations like Opportunity Trust—nonprofits that advocate and lobby for charter schools and are unaccountable to the public. 

Contact your Senators today. Stop the charter school lobby’s new attempts to fleece American taxpayers and undermine public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion

Garry Rayno: Cost of New Hampshire Vouchers Explodes

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2023 //
4

The state commissioner of education in New Hampshire, Frank Edelblut, homeschooled his 10 children. He knows nothing about public schools and the role they play in communities. Appointed by Governor Chris Sununu, Edelblut has devoted his time in office to promoting anything but public schools.

He pushed voucher legislation and projected it would cost $3.3 million in its first two years. The actual cost was $22.7 million. The vast majority of children who use vouchers never attended public schools.

New Hampshire has about 160.000 students who attend public schools. In the first year of the voucher program, 90% of the students who claimed vouchers were already enrolled in religious and private schools. The proportion now remains over 80%. Vouchers are now claimed by about 2.6% of the state’s students. About 1/2 of 1% of the voucher users previously were enrolled in public schools.

Vouchers are a subsidy for private school students.

Garry Rayno of IndepthNH writes:

CONCORD — In three years, the enrollment in the Education Freedom Account program has grown 158 percent, while the cost has increased 174 percent in figures released this week by the Department of Education.

For the current school year, 4,211 students are in the program, up from 3,025 at the same point last year, and from 1,635 for the 2021-2022 school year.

The costs have grown from $8.1 million the first year, to $14.7 million the second year and $22.1 million this school year.

This year the financial threshold to participate in the program was raised from 300 percent of the federal poverty level to 350 percent.

That increases the threshold for the current school year from $59,160 for a family of two, to $69,020, and for a family of four from $90,000 to $105,000 annually.

Once a family qualifies for the program there are no future financial limits on earnings.

Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, who championed the program before the legislature, was pleased more and more students are participating in the EFA program

“It has been three years since the launch of New Hampshire’s successful Education Freedom Account program, and it is apparent that New Hampshire families are taking advantage of this tremendous opportunity that provides them with different options and significant flexibility for learning,” said Edelblut. “With three years of data under our belt, we know that students are coming and going from the program, which is exactly how it was designed – to allow various options for personal learning needs that may fluctuate from year-to-year based on whatever path is appropriate in the moment.”

The program was sold by Edelblut and others as an opportunity for lower-income parents to find the best educational fit for their children if they have problems within the public school system.

However the vast majority of the money spent through the expansive voucher program has gone to pay the religious and private school tuition of students in those schools prior to the EFA program’s creation. [Emphasis added]…

A larger number of EFA students this year left public schools to go into private or parochial schools, 444 students, compared to 282 last school year, and 286 in the 2021-2022 school year.

Overall there are 1,577 new students to the EFA program this school year, while 109 students left the program due to graduation, 75 returned to public schools, and 524 students left the program for other reasons.

The 1,577 new students are 128 more students than the previous year.

When the program first began, the Department of Education projected its first two years would cost about $3.3 million and instead the state paid $22.71 million.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, New Hampshire, Vouchers

E.J. Dionne: The Moral Failure of Those Who Refuse to Criticize Hamas’ Terrorism

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2023 //
40

E.J. Dionne is a thoughtful columnist for the Washington Post. He writes here about the extremists on the left who defend the terrorism and butchery by Hamas. I repost his article because his views are similar to my own. I deplore the callousness and undemocratic policies of the Netanyahu regime. I support a two-state solution. I hope for the day that Israel and its neighbors are willing and able to collaborate to improve the standard of living for everyone in the region. And I deplore the horrific terrorism that Hamas inflicted on Israeli civilians of all ages on October 7. Hamas knew that their attack would provoke a ferocious response by Israel, and that the world would react with fury towards Israel. Hamas uses the Gazans as human shields.

I hope that Netanyahu is permanently disgraced by his failure to seek reconciliation and by the security lapses that allowed Hamas to slaughter civilians. I hope that everyone involved in the attack on Israel is captured and punished. I am deeply concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and pray for the safety of innocent Palestinians and for a swift end to the Army’s incursion. Above all, I pray for peace among the Israelis and their neighbors.

He writes:

A conversation I had last week with a progressive Jewish friend is, I think, representative of many discussions happening on the left. Most liberals are horrified and outraged over Hamas’s killings and kidnappings in southern Israel but also strongly support a Palestinian state and are deeply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

My friend anguished over parts of the left — yes, they are very vocal online but a tiny minority of a broader movement — that not only failed to condemn Hamas’s atrocities but in some cases justified terrorist acts against innocents, many of them left-wing Israelis in kibbutzim who long for peace based on justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike. For my friend, this moral failure signaled that antisemitism had embedded itself in the wing of politics with which she has long identified.

To comment on this intra-left controversy risks distorting the political stakes, since there is a rare consensus in mainstream politics that Hamas’s terrorism was “an act of sheer evil,” as President Biden said in his powerful speechon Tuesday. Little pockets of sympathy for Hamas will have no effect on U.S. politics going forward. The important contrast is between the moral and strategic seriousness of Biden’s response and the petty, unhinged and self-involved rantings of Donald Trump. Maybe, just maybe, Americans pondering a vote for the former president will see more clearly that returning him to the White House would be an act of democratic suicide.

But liberals and supporters of the democratic left like to pride ourselves on being sensitive to injustice, decent in our instincts and capable of making distinctions. To rationalize the sadistic crimes of Hamas meets none of these standards. Doing so also undercuts the arguments that the vast majority on left wants to make about the future of Israel and Palestine.

It’s true that years of right-wing governance in Israel, the spread of settlements on the West Bank and the assault on democracy by the Netanyahu government have altered the balance of forces on the left. Older liberals such as Biden (and, yes, I’m in that camp) have an unshakable and ingrained sympathy for the survival of a Jewish homeland in Israel, while also empathizing with the injustices and suffering that Palestinians confront. We continue to support an increasingly distant two-state solution precisely because we want the Jewish homeland to be democratic and we want Palestinians to have a democratic government of their own.

But the destruction of Israel would be a moral catastrophe, and Hamas longs for that outcome.

Unlike the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel, Hamas is explicitly antisemitic and will accept nothing short of the end of Israel. Netanyahu thought he could keep Hamas in check and ignore Palestinians, who, like so many of the Israelis slaughtered in the south, were willing to take risks for peace. The strategy of containing Hamas and privileging settlements on the West Bank has failed in an abysmal and tragic way.

The sharp turn to the right in Israel that Netanyahu engineered has undercut support for the country among younger Americans in the United States. Most of these increasingly vocal critics have resisted supporting Hamas, but the gut liberal sympathy for Israel has largely disappeared among those born after Biden’s generation and mine. If Hamas’s shameful attack has mostly restored consensus in the Democratic Party around the need to defend Israel against mass terrorism, the underlying opposition to Israel’s settlement policies and its refusal to engage with Palestinian demands for self-determination remains.

The shock of these traumatic events should shake everyone into a reassessment rooted in moral realism. As my Post colleague Max Bootargued last week, the imperative of accountability should lead eventually to Netanyahu’s ouster. Even as supporters of Israel stand up for its right to self-defense, analysts with long experience in the Middle East, including Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times and The Post’s David Ignatius, warn of the dangers of overreach in Gaza. Having reported alongside them and learned from them during the war in Lebanon in the 1980s, I share their skepticism of grand military plans that promise to settle a conflict for good. We have seen too many such promises fail in the Middle East. And Biden was right in his speech to call attention to moral obligations that apply even in legitimate wars of self-preservation.

The left should not stop advocating on behalf of justice for Palestinians. And Israel’s center and left should not stop demanding that Netanyahu’s plans to undercut the country’s judiciary be shelved permanently. But terrorism will not create a more democratic Israel or lead to self-determination for Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is rife with ambiguities and conflicting moral claims. This cannot be said of what Hamas did. Its actions are, exactly as Biden said, unambiguously evil.

Categories Censorship, Disruption, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Hypocrisy, Justice

Nancy Flanagan: Students Should Not Be Expected to Teach Themselves

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
24

On her blog called “Teacher in a Strange Land,” Nancy Flanagan describes the heartwarming story of a high school marching band that carried on after their teacher quit and explains why the story is not heartwarming after all.

She writes:

It’s a sad but kind of sweet story:a little rural school (282 students, total, K-12) in West Virginia has a small but mighty high school band, enthusiastically supporting the home team on Friday nights. Over the summer the band director leaves the district. First day of school, the principal shows up in the band room, offering the 38 band members the option of dropping out and taking another class. Ten of the students, however, decide to stay and teach themselves (with the principal’s permission, noting that he had already set money aside in the budget for a band program).

The rest of the story, in the Washington Post, praises the students for making their own rules, playing the fight song and chants at games, and generally keeping the ball rolling, with two bona fide teachers serving as advisors.

The story dedicates half a sentence– West Virginia is experiencing a certified teacher shortage like many states nationwide—to the real, underlying problem. The headline is particularly annoying: A high school band teacher quit. Now, the students teach, direct themselves.

Imagine a first-grade classroom, with a dozen adorable, willing children. Their teacher quits, in August. So the principal decides that a couple of adult wranglers can manage them, because she’s set aside money for new reading books and computers, and because they all learned their letters in kindergarten. Maybe a new teacher will turn up. In the meantime, they can be kept busy doing what they did last year.

Perhaps you’re thinking that the national shortage of teachers is limited to certain sub-specialties, or geographic regions, that no responsible school leader would leave a group of six-year-olds to “teach themselves.” If so, you ought to take a look at the percentages of students, especially in charter schools, with unqualified substitutes. There are uncertified subs everywhere, in all subjects, k-12, and unfilled jobs in prestigious private and suburban schools, two months after the start of the school year.

The loyal-to-band kids in West Virginia do not surprise me. Band students, in my thoroughly biased opinion, are THE BEST, and these kids appear to be like band kids everywhere—self-starters, and leaders. Good kids.There are, of course, good kids in all grades and disciplines, in every school, those who can be trusted to carry on when the chips are down.

But here’s the thing that doesn’t get mentioned in this feel-good story: the band kids in WV learned how to do the things they have done—writing rules, running rehearsals, playing tunes—from a teacher. By all indications, a pretty good teacher, someone who instilled a spirit of cooperation that led students to try to balance out the band sound by switching instruments.

Once football season is over, who will be moving their music education forward, teaching them the new skills and music they deserve? Who is preparing younger students there, who will take become the high school musicians when these amazing kids graduates? There is no building process, no pipeline of activities that lead to cycles of growth. Without a teacher, this program is headed toward a dead end.

Please open the link and finish the story.

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Creativity, Disruption, Students, Teacher Shortage, West Virginia

Randi Weingarten On “”The War on Woke”

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
11

The New Republic convened a meeting to discuss Trump, book banning and the culture wars. Randi Weingarten described the attack on schools as a coordinated strategy to destroy public schools and promote vouchers. Edith Olmsted of The New Republic interviewed her. None of this is new to readers of this blog, but the American public needs to hear this message. Again and again.

Book Bans Are a Conservative Plot to Destroy Public Schools, Says Randi Weingarten, The teachers union head denounced the “extremist strategy,” which also includes voucher campaigns and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.

DANIEL BOCZARSKI/GETTY IMAGES FOR MOVEON

Teachers union head Randi Weingarten says that the campaign by conservatives to ban books isn’t about the books at all, but part of a broader strategy to destroy public schools—one that was supercharged by the pandemic.

“You take the agita and the anxiety that people had at Covid, that fear, and you combine it with a right wing who has wanted to kill public schools for years and take that money for vouchers, and you have the scenario we have,” Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit.

Vouchers, which use public education dollars to fund private and religious school attendance, are just one pillar of the conservative campaign to “undermine, destroy, and defund” public schools, she said. The other two are book banning and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.

Weingarten pointed to conservative activist Chris Rufo and a comment he made at Hillsdale College, a Christian nationalist school, in which he admitted that focusing on these issues was all part of a master plan to promote universal vouchers: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

In an interview with TNR after the event, Weingarten explained the “extremist strategy” Rufo and other conservatives have used to defund public schools. “The hook was trust. If you really create as much distrust as possible in public schooling, then parents will look at privatization as an option,” she said.

That’s where critical race theory comes in.

“[Rufo] tried to make a term that nobody knows so toxic, so that you can weaponize it and make fear,” she said. “Conversations about hard subjects became weaponized as indoctrination. Which is patently ridiculous, and dangerous.”

Race, as well as gender, is the subject conservatives have focused on in their campaigns to ban books in public schools and libraries.

“What [Republican Governor Ron] DeSantis is doing in the so-called ‘war on woke,’ is exactly part of their playbook—to make people afraid of books, and afraid of what we do in school,” Weingarten said. According to Pen America, Florida passed 15 “educational intimidation” bills in the last two and a half years.

The “parents’ rights” movement is made up of a loud minority, Weingarten said, and actively undermines what most parents want. “What we see in Florida is that 60 percent of the book banning has been done by 11 people,” she said.

The AFT has partnered with The New Republic in fighting back against such bans. TNR’s Banned Books Tour has been delivering thousands of banned books across the country this month, most recently in Florida.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Read, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Gary Rayno: The World Moral Order Is in Tatters

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2023 //
41

I read the NHInsider regularly to follow the doings of the libertarians and rightwing Republicans who currently control the state. The education articles are written by veteran journalist Gary Rayno. I was very impressed by this article posted yesterday, which aptly summarizes the mess the world is in today, relying on the wisdom of William Butler Yeats. Religious zealots and intolerance are steering events.

He writes:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

This quote from the William Butler Yeats poem “The Second Coming” — written in 1919 just after World War I — often appears in times like these when the world’s moral order crumbles and more resembles “Lord of the Flies.”

Today human tragedy is on the front pages of newspapers, on television and radio news programs, on Twitter (X) and other social media.

The world is teetering on the edge of World War III as some nations try to pull the world’s superpowers into a conflict that millions of people will not survive.

Today’s conflicts in the Mid East and Europe are made more dangerous by technology that can pinpoint artillery shells to blow up a tank or to kill civilians in large numbers depending on the depravity of the shooters.

The Mid East is the founding place of three of the world’s major religions and has seen its share or wars in the last century not just between Arabs and Israelites, but among Arab nations as well.

The region’s long history of conflicts did not prepare anyone for what happened last week on a Jewish holy day when the terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip for years, invaded Israel, killed nearly a thousand people, including families with young children, beheaded some, tortured others and took about 150 hostages back to Gaza to use as bargaining chips.

They not only killed, tortured and maimed Israeli citizens, they used their own citizens as human shields by preventing them from leaving Gaza.

The absence of respect for human life and suffering is inconceivable but all too common in today’s polarized world as the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world talk about killing Democrats and Hamas leaders talk about eliminating all Jews.

The Israeli government, as it often does, retaliates with even more force than used against it, and has the stated goal of eliminating Hamas. That objective means lost Palestinian civilian lives seen as collateral damage.

Once the fighting begins, war produces few white hats.

The wars in the Mideast are often both ethnically and religiously driven pitting the Muslim Palestinians against the Jewish Israelites with centuries of history to solidify the beliefs of both sides.

While religion is not the biggest driver for war, intolerance is, it is in the Mideast.

And the problem with religious wars was aptly stated by former President Richard Nixon when he said “In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.”

The Mideast conflict has taken the focus away from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities the Russians have inflicted on the Ukrainians and their country.

The war in Eastern Europe is more ethnically driven than religious.

Until Putin decided to expand the Russian empire, Europe had been largely free of conflicts since World War II, but like the Mideast conflict, attempts are to draw the superpowers into the chaos and expand the carnage.

While the world’s eyes are on the Mideast and Eastern Europe, the United States government is being held hostage by a couple dozen extremists, particularly in the US House, but also the Senate, who want to see chaos and ensure the dysfunction of government as we know it.

The Christian Nationalist movement is the foundation of some of the extremists, but not all of them.

The House decided to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and since that time more than a week ago, nothing is moving and that prevents any help to fund the nation’s allies in the two conflicts or to keep government functioning beyond the middle of November.

Republicans and their slim majority in the House cannot agree on a new Speaker and probably won’t until the crisis threatens to explode and Republicans realize they will pay politically for their inability to solve the civil war within their ranks.

One member of the House Republican caucus called it a clown show.

In the Senate a former football coach, Tommy Tuberville, is holding up hundreds of military appointments at this crucial time over the abortion issue, while others like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are holding up key appointments like ambassadors etc. that will have a direct effect on what is happening in the world’s hot spots, mostly to create chaos and hits on their Twitter accounts.

The Grand Old Party appears to be more interested in creating chaos than governing.

At the state level, 19 Republican governors, and we all know governors are experts in foreign policy, criticize President Biden’s handling of the attacks on Israel including New Hampshire’s own Chris Sununu.

Not that long ago, politics was put aside when the nation faced serious threats such as the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC or the beginning of Desert Storm, but no more.

The head of the National Republican Committee, Ronna McDaniel, referred to the latest conflict in the Mideast as a “great opportunity” to attack Biden.

You did not hear Democrats criticizing President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attack, or President George H. W. Bush after he began Desert Storm.

The nation came together to support their leaders’ actions. And you did not see the demonstrations on college campuses and city streets that happened this weekend pitting Palestinian supporters against those backing Israel.

Like the Palestinians and Israelites, much of what divides the United States has a religious undertone incorrectly based on the notion the United States was established as a Christian country.

That would be very interesting because many early settlers to the “new world” came here to escape religious persecution in nations with state religions.

The Constitution guarantees religious freedom as well as the founding principle of “all men (women) are created equal.”

Many on the right are trying to impose their religious beliefs on issues like abortion or LGBTQ+ rights or what young people can read or watch.

And you don’t have to look to the Mideast to see what can happen when religious beliefs become a driving force in politics.

In Littleton, Theater Up received a $1 million grant to help fix up the town’s aging Opera House, which is on the National Historic Building list, through a long-term lease. The group currently uses the building, but its lease ends in May.

After discussions with the town’s selectmen, one of whom is the state Senator for District 1, Carrie Gendreau, and who objected to murals painted on a private building in town earlier this year saying she objected to its LGBTQ+ theme, the theater group was informed the selectmen were not inclined to help pay for a $2,500 building study to determine what could and could not be done in the historic building.

The decision was due to the group’s affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community and complaints about its production of La Cage aux Follies, the award-winning play about a gay couple, the group was told.

Theater Up was also informed the selectmen continue to explore a ban on public art in the community which would certainly impact the group’s ability to continue its mission.

This is religious oppression in reverse, much like the group that tried to block the state from distributing COVID-19 in a new program serving the elderly two years ago.

This is imposing one’s beliefs on those who do not share them.

The second half of Yeats poem is not so well known as the first, but is more telling about where we might be headed and what a “second coming” could really mean.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Garry Rayno may be contacted at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Religion

Texas Observer: McCarthyism Rides High Again at Texas Universities

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2023 //
12

Gabriel Arans of the Texas Observer writes about the revival of McCathyism at universities in Texas. Republicans are intent on pushing out professors they think are too liberal.

Arana writes:

Texas A&M University’s disgraceful treatment of celebrated journalism professor Kathleen McElroy should terrify anyone who cares about academic freedom, education, and equality in Texas. The state’s Republican leaders, along with Governor Greg Abbott, have launched a radical, McCarthyite crusade to purge education of liberal bias.

Only in Texas or Florida would decades of experience at the country’s most prestigious newspaper and a track record of championing newsroom inclusivity disqualify someone for a job relaunching A&M’s defunct journalism program, which was shuttered in 2004 after 55 years.

McElroy’s ordeal is just the beginning.

At first, A&M officials seemed to realize how lucky they’d been to snag McElroy, a Black woman who served in various managerial positions at the New York Times for 20 years before completing a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she served as the director of the School of Journalism and Media and now teaches.

McElroy didn’t want to draw attention to herself, but A&M insisted on a public ceremony to celebrate her appointment as head of the university’s new journalism program. On June 13, she signed an offer accepting a tenured position in front of a crowd gathered at the school’s academic building, pending approval from the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents.

Over the next few weeks, the deal unraveled. After conservative activist site Texas Scorecard published a scare-mongering article about McElroy’s work on newsroom diversity, right-wing ideologues on the board of regents started scrutinizing her hire. Six or seven regents called and texted now-disgraced University President Katherine Banks to express concerns.

“I thought the purpose of us starting a journalism program was to get high-quality Aggie journalist [sic] with conservative values into the market,” regent Jay Graham texted Banks. “This won’t happen with someone like this leading the department.”

Another regent, Mike Hernandez, added that McElroy was “biased and progressive-leaning” and called giving her tenure a “difficult sell” for the board.

Members of a conservative alum group called the Rudder Association and other right-wing Aggies flooded Banks’ office with calls and emails.

Text messages show that Banks—who initially denied any involvement in McElroy’s bungled hiring, then was caught lying—was fully behind conservatives’ efforts to rein in liberal academia: “Kathy [Banks] told us multiple times the reason we were going to combine [the colleges of] arts and sciences together was to control the liberal nature that those professors brought to campus,” Graham wrote.

So Banks watered down the offer to McElroy. Still eager to return to her alma mater to train the next generation of journalists, she agreed to accept a revised five-year, nontenured teaching position, which would not require the regents’ approval.

“You’re a Black woman who worked at the New York Times,” José Luis Bermúdez, the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, warned McElroy. Her hire, he said, had been caught up in “DEI hysteria.”

But then, Banks diluted the offer further, offering McElroy a one-year, “at will” position. McElroy declined and spoke about how the university had treated her with the media.

“I’m being judged by race, maybe gender,” McElroy told the Texas Tribune. “I don’t think other folks would face the same bars or challenges.”

(Editor’s note: McElroy sits on the parent board of the Texas Observer. Because of our editorial independence policy, she has no say in our editorial decisions. Alongside this piece, today the Observerpublished a heartfelt essay from McElroy about her journalism journey and the irony of being the subject of media coverage rather than the one behind it. )

Over the summer, with the governor’s support, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 17 (SB 17), which requires institutions of higher education to do away with all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives by 2024. Already, the University of Houston has shut down its Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as well as disbanding its LGBTQ+ Resource Center (under pressure, however, it appeared to backtrack, but it is only a matter of time before the offices are officially closed). Public universities across the state have formed committees to implement the law and seek input from the academic community. It’s clear, however, that days are numbered for all the offices and programs that help students from different backgrounds.

While the ostensible goal of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts is to prioritize merit over race in higher education—and get rid of all the “divisive” diversity stuff that liberal academics champion—the real intent is to put radical, uppity queers, minorities, and liberals in their place. A key part of the plan is to strip liberal academics of the protections that allow them to pursue research and speak publicly without fear of reprisal; this past session, right-wing legislators tried to get rid of tenure but settled on more modest restrictions. The Senate also passed a ban on “critical race theory,” an academic theory that posits racism is embedded in society, but the House failed to pass the measure….

Anti-DEI hysteria will lead to a brain drain at Texas’ public universities. Academics at most institutions enjoy the freedom to conduct scholarship without interference. To ensure they can pursue ideas that may be unpopular to the public and pursue knowledge for its own sake, they are granted protection after demonstrating excellence in their field. The best scholars don’t want to work in a place where they have to worry that criticizing wingnut politicians will get them put on leave—as A&M did when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick complained to administrators about criticism levied against him by opioid expert Joy Alonzo—and the best students from around the country will choose institutions that value academic freedom, openness, and inclusion rather than those under siege by the radical right.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Disruption, Extremism, Higher Education, Republicans

Robert Hubbell: The Only Way Forward for the House GOP

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2023 //
7

Robert Hubbell is an always sensible blogger. In this post, he addresses the dysfunction in the House GOP. Kevin McCarthy paid the price for empowering the far-right faction of his party. He put his fate in their hands, even though they are a small minority. Hubbell believes there is only one way forward. Bipartisanship.

He writes:

Each additional day that Republicans fail to elect a Speaker of the House is a “never-before-in-the-history-of-our-nation” event. Kevin McCarthy was the first speaker to be ousted on a motion to vacate. Steve Scalise is the first “post-motion-to-vacate” nominee for speaker to withdraw his candidacy before a floor vote on his nomination. We are in uncharted constitutional waters.

The “Speaker of the House” is one of two legislative officers mentioned in the Constitution. (Art I, Sec 3, Cl. 5: “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker.”) The Speaker is second in the line of succession prescribed in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. The power of the House to act is dependent on a speaker who manages the calendar, controls debate, and calls for votes on motions to advance and approve legislation.

The inability of Republicans to elect a speaker is due, in part, to their narrow margin of control—four votes. But Nancy Pelosi accomplished great things with a four-vote margin during the 117th Congress (2021-2022)—the first two years of President Biden’s historic legislative run.

The dysfunction in the Republican House is a direct consequence of MAGA’s election of extremist candidates in gerrymandered districts (e.g., Jim Jordan). Those MAGA extremists constitute one of several independent federations operating under the umbrella name “Republican Party” in the House. But as is plain, the term “Republican Party” is a notional concept in the House with no operational consequence.

The atomism of the House GOP will not be overcome no matter how many times the fractious Republican caucus votes for a speaker. Nor will it change if Republicans elect a speaker subject to removal by a motion to vacate made by a single member.

The consequences are real; some Republicans understand that fact. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul said the following after Scalise withdrew his name from consideration:

We are living in a dangerous world; the world’s on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do — and quite frankly, they like it.

I see a lot of threats out there. One of the biggest threats I see is in the [GOP caucus] room, because we can’t unify as a conference and put the speaker in the chair . . . .

There is only one path forward. It is staring Republicans in the face. But they have yet to debase themselves enough or humiliate enough of their wannabe leaders to accept the inevitable: They do not have a governable majority and must join with Democrats to elect a consensus candidate with support from both parties.

Or, as Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, the only path forward is for

traditional Republicans break with the extremists within the House Republican Conference and partner with Democrats on a bipartisan path forward.

Some Republicans understand that fact but have yet to find the courage to speak that truth out loud. The time will come; it must. The only question is how long before Republicans accept that truth—and how much drama and disruption the GOP will inflict on the American people before they surrender to reality.

Addendum: Republicans are floating the notion of an “acting speaker” with expanded powers to allow passage of limited resolutions and specific bills. No such creature exists under the Constitution or the rules of the House. If Republicans can agree on expanding powers for an acting speaker, they can elect a speaker. (For a discussion of the limited powers of acting Speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry, see House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House – Chapter 34. Office of the Speaker (govinfo.gov))

Further addendum: On two occasions, the House has elected a speaker by a plurality vote. But a plurality vote to elect the speaker requires a rule change that would, in turn, require a majority vote. There is only one path forward: A bipartisan governing coalition.

Please open the link to finish the post.

Categories Disruption, Elections, Politics, Republicans

Houston: Teachers and Parents Say that Mike Miles’ System Is Seeping into Their Schools

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2023 //
9

Governor Greg Abbott and his State Commissioner Mike Morath hand-picked Mike Miles as Houston’s superintendent, based on the alleged failure of one school, Wheatley High School. In fact, Wheatley had made significant progress and was no longer a “failing” school, and HISD was a B-rated district.

Nonetheless, the state took control of HISD, ousted the elected board and a well-qualified superintendent. Mike Miles took control with a puppet board, charged with “fixing” 28 schools. The 28 quickly turned into 85 schools, all required to submit to Miles’ authoritarian “New Education System.” He pledged to leave the district’s other 190 schools alone. Miles has never been a teacher or a principal. His tenure as superintendent in Dallas was cut short after multiple controversies.

Now, teachers and parents in HISD are alarmed to see Miles’ NES overflowing into schools that were not mandated to adopt it and did not volunteer to adopt it.

Houston ISD English teacher Karen Calhoun enjoyed short-lived relief this summer when her principal at Askew Elementary School opted not to join the dozens of campuses getting overhauled by the district’s new superintendent, Mike Miles.

Despite the decision, Calhoun has watched in recent weeks as her beloved school seemed to morph into a version of the turnaround initiative, known as the “New Education System,” that she hoped to avoid.

Less than a week before classes began, Askew’s principal told reading and math teachers they had to use the same curriculums as NES schools, Calhoun said. The principal also directed all staff to check that students understood the lesson every four minutes or so using “multiple response strategies” — the same techniques that teachers at NES schools are required to use, Calhoun said.

The orders deflated the spirits of many teachers at Askew, a B-rated campus on Houston’s west side, she said.

“The bulk of our teachers have taught 10-plus years. So that means that everybody in that room pretty much knows what they’re doing,” Calhoun said. “You can do multiple strategies in a lesson, but it’s authentic, it’s not mandated. It’s not like, ‘Every three minutes you have to do something. Every four minutes you have to do something.’”

One month into HISD’s school year, significant curriculum and instructional changes have crept into campuses that were supposed to be exempt from Miles’ overhaul, teachers and families at 15 non-NES schools told the Houston Landing in recent weeks. The new practices appear to contradict comments made earlier this summer by Miles, who said he planned to largely leave most schools to operate as they were while he transformed 85 other campuses under the NES umbrella.

In interviews, the educators and parents said many of the changes they’re seeing include elements initially advertised as only for NES schools. Thirteen of their 15 schools scored A or B ratings under the state’s academic accountability system in 2022.

For teachers, the new requirements include removing classroom decor, writing daily lesson objectives on whiteboards at the front of the classroom and repeatedly incorporating the every-four-minute learning checks into their lessons.

In addition, principals leading nearly two-thirds of non-NES schools are choosing to use new reading and math curriculums, Amplify and Eureka, that are mandated in the overhauled campuses, HISD officials confirmed Thursday. Educators at those schools must use the teaching practices recommended by the curriculum providers, such as a daily quiz, called a Demonstration of Learning.

“It sure does feel like NES,” said Melissa Yarborough, an English teacher at the non-NES Navarro Middle School, who now has to use the new curriculum after her principal chose to adopt it this year. “If you don’t get to that Demonstration of Learning by the time you’re supposed to get to it, then that administrator is going to be telling you your pacing is wrong.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Disruption, Houston

Michael Hiltzik: The House GOP Demands Cuts to Programs for the Neediest

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
3

Michael Hiltzik, my favorite columnist in the Los Angeles Times, writes about the demands of the House GOP to avert a government shutdown. Their draconian cuts would protect their wealthy donors (by cutting IRS agents) but savage the programs that are essential for the neediest families, adults, and children.

He writes:

It’s all well and good to treat the House Republicans’ careening toward a government shutdown as a cabaret farce staged for our amusement

However, the threat to ordinary Americans, especially those dependent on government programs, is no joke.

As outlined by the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, two progressive think tanks working from official communications including the budget resolution released Sept. 20 by House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, they would involve these cuts in the social safety net:

Even if the Republicans don’t provoke the shutdown currently likely to begin at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the budget cuts House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) has said he would support to meet the demands of his caucus’ far-right wing would devastate government assistance to the most vulnerable Americans.

  • A cut of $14.7 billion, or 77%, in Title I education grants to school districts with high levels of poverty, which fund services and supports for students from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds. The CBPP calls this funding “a core federal support for K-12 education.”
  • Reduction of the fruit and vegetable benefit in the Agriculture Department’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)by 56% to 70%, affecting about 5 million participants.
  • Unsustainable reductions in low-income assistance programs for housing and heating.
  • $1.9 trillion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years.

These cuts go well beyond those agreed upon in the debt-ceiling negotiations last May, which McCarthy accepted.

As a sop to the Republicans’ rich patrons, the House caucus would rescind all of the $88 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service that was enacted as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The absurd truth of all this “negotiating” is that it won’t help Speaker McCarthy, America’s most outstanding political invertebrate, get a funding proposal through his chamber that would be even remotely acceptable to the Senate. That includes Senate Republicans, who have signed on to a bipartisan spending scheme.

There are doubts that McCarthy can get any proposal through his caucus, which is effectively controlled by extremists who keep moving the goalposts by insisting on ever more draconian spending cuts. They show every sign of determination to shut the government down this weekend, even though it’s a political article of faith that the public always blames the GOP for shutdowns (as it should), leading to disaster at the ballot box.

The lack of character among congressional Republicans, not excepting those aligned with McCarthy, is truly amazing. These are people who have no compunctions about slandering working Americans while taking every opportunity themselves for slacking off.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), one of McCarthy’s lieutenants, remarked during the debt-ceiling negotiations that Democrats were “willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work.”

The serene nerviness of this slander was truly impressive, given that the House of Representatives had taken 12 of 20 workdays off in April and 10 of 22 workdays (not counting Memorial Day) off in May. Overall, the House has been scheduled to be in session only 117 days in 2023, fewer than half the 240 days most of the rest of us are at work.

The House took off the entire month of Augustand didn’t return to session until Sept. 12, all while the possible shutdown was looming. The rest were officially designated “district work days,” to which we can only respond, “Oh, sure.”

Graves has resurfaced during the shutdown negotiations, telling the Washington Post that the Republicans’ “bottom line is we’re singularly focused right now on achieving our conservative objectives,” which include “huge savings.”

As the Post toted up the numbers, those savings involved “taking more than $150 billion per year out of the part of the budget that funds child care, education subsidies, medical research and hundreds of additional federal operations.”

If there’s a silver lining in the House GOP’s performative horseplay, it’s that it has cured the political press of treating the standoff as a symptom of congressional dysfunction. It’s not; as is being reported more accurately and sensibly in recent days, it’s a symptom of Republican dysfunction and, more than that, McCarthy’s dysfunction.

McCarthy sold his soul to the Republican extremist in order to win the job of speaker. Now what will he do?

The extremists have made their priorities clear. Protect their rich donors, while slamming the door shut on those who rely on government aid to survive. They are a cruel and shameless lot.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Injustice, Republicans
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