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Samuel E. Abrams: The Mounting Trouble with Education Savings Accounts

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2025 //
8

Samuel Abrams has deep experience in the study of education privatization; for many years, he directed an institute on that subject at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is now working with the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization.

He is also affiliated with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he published a new report on the problems with education savings accounts (aka, vouchers).

Read the report.

Here is his executive summary:

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) were first enacted in Arizona in 2011 as a particularly deregulated way to offer vouchers for specific students, particularly those with disabilities. As opposed to conventional private school tuition vouchers, ESAs could be used to cover tuition plus a range of other educational services. Soon thereafter, four additional states substantially replicated this new form of funding. But in 2022, Arizona and West Virginia took ESAs to another level, constructing them as universal vouchers, with all students eligible to participate, without regard to family income, prior public school attendance, or student disability. ESAs in these states could be used to cover either tuition at minimally regulated private schools or pods (mini schools with children of likeminded parents); or costs associated with homeschooling, from books and online curricula to field trips and ancillary goods and services deemed essential. Nine states have since followed suit and more appear poised to do the same. These ESAs constitute a dramatic elevation of educational outsourcing, at once fulfilling Milton Friedman’s long-argued libertarian vision for vouchers and comport-ing with the Trump administration’s commitment to downsize government and let the market fill the void.

Because of the unregulated nature of ESAs, accountability issues quickly emerged regarding both spending and pedagogy. Proper monitoring of spending by parents dispersed throughout a given state, for so many different types of goods and services, has swamped the capacity of state offices. The same holds regarding accountability for the quality of instruction in private schools, pods, and homeschools now supported with taxpayer money.

Meanwhile, because ESAs and other voucher programs tend to serve families who have already opted for private schools or homeschooling, two fiscal outcomes have become apparent. First, the programs create a new entitlement burden for taxpayers; rather than merely shifting an existing subsidy from public to private schools, the programs obligate taxpayers to support new groups of students. Second, the new subsidies have incentivized private schools to bump up tuition, on the grounds that families now have extra money to pay the higher tuition.

In addition, ESAs impact public schools. These schools suffer when substantial funding follows students who use ESAs for homeschooling or attendance at private schools or pods. The stubbornness of fixed costs for core operations for public schools often necessitates cuts to staff, from teachers to nurses, and resources, from microscopes to musical instruments. The impact on rural public schools and thus rural civic life may be greatest. Charter schools and conventional vouchers have played little role in rural America, as filling seats in charter or private schools in sparsely populated parts of the country represents a steep challenge. But with ESAs, students may leave public schools for pods or homeschooling. If enough students leave some small rural schools, those schools will have to consolidate with schools in neighboring towns, meaning significant travel for students and the forfeiture of much community life.

As with conventional vouchers, ESAs can lead to inequities and discrimination in student admissions and retention. Few protections exist in private schools, particularly religious schools, against discrimination based on disabilities, religion, or sexual orientation. Participating schools have also been documented to push out low-achieving students, thus adding to the problem of concentrating these students in default neighborhood public schools. For faculty and most staff, participating religious schools also generally afford no protection from dismissal on the grounds of religious affiliation or sexual orientation.

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RECOMMENDATIONS:

Given the damage Education Savings Accounts can do, the following measures are recommended:

State Departments of Education

• Implement stricter oversight of what goods and services may be purchased with ESA funds.

• Strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.

• Require publication of all participating schools, their graduation rates, and their availability to students with disabilities.

State Lawmakers

• Most importantly, legislators should repeal existing programs.

• If ESAs cannot be repealed in states where they have already taken hold:

o Oppose any expansion of these programs to include new groups or cohorts.

o Pass legislation that imposes clear budget and spending limits on ESA programs to rein in cost overruns that have become common with these programs.o Require stricter oversight of what goods and services can be purchased with ESA funds and strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.

o Mandate periodic audits of curriculum and instructional practices in ESA-receiving schools.

o Require ESA-receiving schools to hire certified teachers.

o Require ESA-receiving schools to conduct the same annual academic assessments that public schools are required to administer.

o Require ESA-receiving schools to abide by existing federal and state civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, especially related to students with disabilities and LGBTQ+ students and faculty.

o Require that any effort to create a new ESA program be subject to open public hearings and, if feasible, public referenda.

Local Government Officials

• In states where ESAs exist, document the effects these programs have on students, families, and local public schools.

• In these same states, seek legislation to alleviate negative effects.

• Engage in awareness-raising efforts, such as informing local constituents of the po-

tential harms of ESAs, especially in rural communities, and adopting resolutions opposing ESAs.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Privatization, Research, Vouchers

KIPP Charter Chain Can’t Account for $52 Million

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2025 //
5

We all make mistakes. You know how sometimes you misplace a $20 bill? You are sure you left it on top of your dresser. But it’s not there. It happens.

Don Wiener of the Center for Media and Democracy writes that KIPP can’t identify what happened to $52 million. It’s not on the dresser. Where might it be?

Wiener writes:

Roughly 7% of public school students nationwide now attend charter schools, and while traditional public school enrollment has declined, enrollment in charter schools is increasing every year, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Knowledge is Power Program — known as KIPP — is one of the largest charter school networks in the country, operating 278 K–12 “college-preparatory” schools nationwide. More than half of these schools are concentrated in six locations: Texas, Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Atlanta.

A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) review of KIPP’s fiscal year 2023 IRS filings reveals that its schools in the U.S. reported more than $52 million in unexplained spending under the category “all other expenses.”

“The lack of transparency in charter schools and their [management organizations] invites profiteering, grift, and fraud,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education.

Founded in 1994, KIPP has been criticized for high teacher turnover, closing selected schools because of low graduation rates and low test scores, and exaggerating the college graduation rate of its students. KIPP has also been accused of over-reporting its primary and secondary school graduation rates by not counting many of the students who drop out along the way.

KIPP’s lack of transparency in reporting how it spends taxpayer dollars is notable. “Since its revenue from taxpayers is commingled with its revenues from wealthy charter school advocates and the foundations they control, there is no way to sort out how much taxpayer money has directly gone into luxurious trips for KIPP employees,” wrote Lisa Graves, CMD’s former director and current board president, in a 2016 study.

In her review of previously unreleased documents, Graves found that in addition to spending on already notoriously high salaries for school managers, KIPP’s central office was paying for expensive resort vacations and trips to Disney World for staff members, for example.

In 2022, a KIPP official in Washington, D.C., embezzled $2.2 million to buy automobiles and other items for personal use.

Insight into how KIPP schools spend taxpayer money should be readily available from the annual IRS 990 forms that all nonprofits file detailing their revenue and expenses, management, and governance. But in its IRS filings, KIPP consistently lumps together large unidentified expenditures in the single “all other expenses” line item.

Clearly listed expenses fall into ordinary categories such as personnel salary and benefits; student expenses; occupancy expenses; office expenses; and general expenses, such as insurance. Payments to contractors are also listed.

For the 2022–23 academic year, each of the 278 KIPP schools averaged $151,000 in “other” or unitemized expenses. The network’s nonprofit charter management organization (CMO) does not explain how that $52 million was spent.

“These findings do not surprise me at all,” said Burris, who has researched the charter school world for years. “Charter chains like KIPP create related organizations, divide salaries between individual schools and the CMO, and at times will even create for-profit related entities, making it impossible to understand how money is spent.”

Even though audits can help provide more information, they generally “do not include real detail,” Burris added. “This contrasts with public school districts that present detailed budgets and where any expenditure can be viewed with a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act request], no matter how small.”

The 11 charter schools in the Kipp Metro Atlanta Collaborative reported total expenses of $112.7 million. Of that, almost $11 million — approximately $1 million per school — is listed under “all other expenses.”

The IRS requires that each of the “other expenses” be itemized if the total in that category accounts for more than 10% of total expenses. As with many other KIPP schools, the “all other expenses” reported for Atlanta’s charter network fall just shy of the threshold for itemization.

IRS filings for the 2022–23 school year show the KIPP Texas network spent a total of almost $481 million, with almost $6.5 million of that reported as “all other expenses.”

For the same school year, Kipp Social Public Schools in Los Angeles reported almost $4 million in “all other expenses,” with a total of $195 million in overall expenses for its 23 schools.

Given this leeway in IRS reporting, there is no way to confirm whether taxpayer money is being used for extravagant travel or is otherwise spent inappropriately at some KIPP schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools

Carol Burris: With Religious Charters, the Charter Lobby’s Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2025 //
3

Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education. She was a high school teacher and principal in New York State, where she was honored by the state principal’s association as principal of the year. She is a tireless advocate of public schools and an equally tireless opponent of privatization.

She writes:

On April 30, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a pivotal case concerning whether a charter school can teach a religious curriculum. The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board v. Drummond addresses Oklahoma’s St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School’s attempt to become the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. 

This case was always intended to go to the Supreme Court, testing the limits of the separation of Church and State. What is surprising, however, is who has entered the fight against St. Isadore. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), which has never met a charter school it did not like, has filed an amicus brief against its existence. This is unexpected from an organization that has supported charter schools run by for-profit corporations, virtual schools with poor outcomes, and even micro-schools, claiming that different models provide needed choice and innovation. When public money is allocated to religious private schools via vouchers, the charter lobby is either supportive or silent in the name of “choice.”

The reason for their present opposition is self-interest. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “a decision to allow religious charter schools will throw charter laws into chaos nationwide, resulting in significant financial and operational uncertainties.”  Nina Rees, the former long-time CEO of the organization, lamented that a ruling in favor of St. Isadore “could also jeopardize the myriad federal and state funding streams they [charters] currently qualify for—funding that the sector has fought hard to secure and continues to fight for on the premise that students attending public charter schools are entitled to the same funds they would receive in district schools.”

On what basis, then, will SCOTUS make its decision? At the heart of the case is whether charter schools are state actors or state contractors providing educational services. The Oklahoma State Virtual Charter Board argues that merely because the state legislature declares a charter school “public,” it does not transform it into a public school. Furthermore, even if charter schools are state actors for some functions, they might not be state actors for purposes of the First Amendment, specifically regarding curriculum matters.

There is precedent for their argument.

In 2010, both a federal court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, determined, in an employment case, that an Arizona charter school was not a “state actor” and thus a wrongful termination lawsuit could not be brought forth by a former teacher.  “This case presents the special situation of a private nonprofit corporation running a charter school that is defined as a ‘public school’ by state law,” the three-judge appeals court panel said in its unanimous Jan. 4 decision in Caviness v. Horizon Community Learning Center. The court concluded that the corporation running the charter school (private non-profit or for-profit corporations run most charter schools) was not a state actor but a contractor providing a service.

In some states, where districts are the only authorizers of charter schools, charter schools likely fully meet the “state actor” test. That was the original intent of the charter movement—schools within a district free of some restraints to try innovative practices. However, only a few states still embrace that model, thanks to the relentless pressure from organizations like NAPCS, which have provided St. Isadore with more than enough fodder for its arguments. Over the years, charter trade organizations have successfully lobbied for looser charter laws, expanded charter management organizations, and vigorously defended for-profit corporations like Academica and Charter Schools USA, which use nonprofit schools as a façade. In short, they have made charter schools as “private” and profitable as possible. 

Remember how charter schools could secure Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds during COVID-19 when public schools could not? Charter trade organizations, including NAPCS, encouraged charter schools to leverage their corporate status, resulting in the sector securing billions of dollars. Some even provided talking points for justification.

The truth is that charter schools have used their private status when it is in their interest, even as they secure an advantage from the public label. And that is why they have only themselves to blame if the chicken comes home to roost and the sector is thrown into chaos. If that results in a shake-up of the charter industry and a return to truly public charter schools in most states, that may not be a terrible outcome. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Religion, Separation of church and state

Bye Bye, Tennessee Non-Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2025 //
5

If your memory is good, you may recall Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top, which had $5 billion of unrestricted funds with which to spur education reform. Duncan had a contest in which states competed for a piece of that big pie. To be eligible to compete, states had to pass a law authorizing charter schools, and almost every state did. They had to agree to adopt national standards, which meant the unfinished, untried Common Core State Standards, as well as the tests based on the standards. They had to agree to evaluate individual teachers based on the rise or fall of the test scores of their students.

Eighteen states “won.”

The biggest winner was Tennessee, which won $500 million. Tennessee’s biggest new program was the creation of its so-called Achievement School District. The ASD would gather the lowest performing schools in the state into a non-contiguous district and turn them into charter schoools.

The ASD hired Chris Barbic, leader of Houston’s YES Prep charter chain, to run the ASD. Barbic pledged that he would raise the state’s lowest-performing schools into top-performing schools in five years.

He failed. The state’s lowest performing schools continued to have low scores. In 2015, he resigned, saying he needed to focus on his health and family.

The ASD limped along for another decade, without success. Nonetheless, some other states–including Nevada and North Carolina–copied the model, creating their own all-charter districts. They also failed.

The Tennessee Legislature voted this week to shut down the ASD.

The ASD removed low-performing schools from local control and placed them under a state-run district, with the goal to push Tennessee’s bottom 5% of schools to the top 25%. Many of the schools were turned over to charter operators to run under 10-year contracts.

Research showed the ASD led to high teacher turnover, and did not generate long-term improvements for students. The district also faced community backlash for taking over schools in districts that served mostly low-income communities and predominantly Black student populations. The ASD cost taxpayers over $1 billion. Only three schools remain in the ASD.

Every other part of Race to the Top failed. Evaluating teachers by test scores was a disaster: it rewarded teachers in affluent districts and schools while penalizing those who taught the neediest students. Charter schools did not have higher scores than public schools unless they chose their students carefully, excluding the neediest. The Common Core standards, with which tests, textbooks and teacher education were aligned, had no impact on test scores. The U.S. Department of Education evaluated Race to the Top and declared it a failure., in a report quietly released on the last day of the Obama administration.

On to vouchers! Since voucher students don’t take state tests, no one will know that this is a boondoggle that benefits those already in private and religious schools.

The search for miracles and panaceas goes on.

Trump’s answer. Parents know best.

Next time you get surgery, make sure the surgeon is not licensed. Next time you take a flight, be sure to fly with an unlicensed pilot.

Categories Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Obama, Race to the Top, Tennessee

Denis Smith: What I Learned at the NPE Conference in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2025 //
6

Denis Smith retired from his position at the Ohio Department of Education, where he oversaw charter schools (which are called “community schools” in Ohio). In this post, he describes what he saw at the Network for Public Education Conference in Columbus, Ohio, in early April.

He wrote:

When It’s About Hands Off! That Also Applies to Public Schools

The Hands Off! demonstrations at the Ohio Statehouse that drew thousands of protestors wasn’t the only gathering of activists last weekend in downtown Columbus. Just a short distance away at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, a smaller but equally passionate gathering of concerned citizens from across the nation came to Ohio’s capital city to attend the Network for Public Education’s National Conference and affirm their support for the common school, the very symbol of democracy in this increasingly divided nation.

That disunion is driven in part by the rapid growth of universal educational vouchers and charter schools, where public funds flow to private and religious schools as well as privately operated charter schools and where public accountability and oversight of taxpayer funds is limited or even absent. In many states, including Ohio, those public funds in the form of vouchers are drawn from the very state budget line item that is earmarked for public schools.

Of particular concern to the conference attendees is the division in communities fueled by vouchers, which have been shown in some states to subsidize private and religious school tuition exceeding 80% of those enrolled. In Ohio, according to research conducted by former Ohio legislator Stephen Dyer, the figure is 91%.Several speakers referred to this situation as “welfare for the rich” and “an entitlement for the wealthy.” 

The research shared at the conference also confirmed the findings of the National Coalition for Public Education that “most recipients of private school vouchers in universal programs are wealthy families whose children never attended public schools in the first place.” So much for the tired Republican rhetoric of vouchers being a lifeline of escape from “failing schools” for poor inner-city children.

Another strong area of concern shared at the NPE event was the growing intrusion of religious organizations like Life Wise Academy which recruit students for release time Bible study during the school day. While attendees were told that school guidelines direct that such activities are to be scheduled during electives and lunch, the programs still conflict with the normal school routine and put a burden on school resources, where time is needed for separating release time students and adjusting the instructional routine because of the arrival and departure of a group within the classroom.

One presenter, concerned about students receiving conflicting information, said that his experience as a science teacher found situations where there was a disconnect between what he termed “Biblical stories and objective facts.” In addition, he shared that a group of LifeWise students missed a solar eclipse because of their time in religious instruction.  

Some Ohio school districts, including Westerville and Worthington in Franklin County, had to amend their policies in the wake of HB 8, which mandated that districts have religious instruction release time policies in place. The district policies had been written as an attempt to lessen the possibility of other religious programs wanting access to students and the further disruption that would cause to the school routine. 

The recent legislative activity about accommodating religious groups like Life Wise is at variance with history, as conference chair and Network for Public Education founder Dr. Diane Ravitch pointed out in her remarks about the founding of Ohio. As part of the Northwest Territory, she noted that Ohio was originally divided into 32 plots, with plot 16, being reserved for a public school. No plot was set aside for a religious school.

Ohio became the first state to be formed from the Northwest Territory, and its provision for public education would become a prototype for the young republic. The common school, an idea central to the founders of the state, would be located such “that local schools would have an income and that the community schoolhouses would be centrally located for all children.”

Unfortunately, the idea of the common school being centrally located in every community is an idea not centrally located within the minds of right-wing Republican legislators. From the information exchanged at the conference, that is the case in the great majority of statehouses, and a matter of great concern for continuing national cohesiveness.

The theme of the NPE National Conference, Public Schools – Where All Students Are Welcome, stands in marked contrast with the exclusionary practices of private and religious schools where, unlike public schools, there are no requirements to accept and enroll every student interested in attending. While these schools are reluctant to accept students who may need additional instructional support, they show no reluctance in accepting state voucher payments.

Texas Rep. Gina Hinojosa. Photo: Texas House of Representatives

Texas State Representative Gina Hinojosa, one of the keynote speakers, told the audience about her experience in fighting Gov. Greg Abbott’s voucher scheme and the double meaning of the term school choice. “School choice is also the school’s choice,” she told the audience, as she estimated that 80% or more of state funds will go to kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Her battle with the Texas governor, who has defined the passage of voucher legislation in the Lone Star State as his “urgent priority,” is a tale of his alliance with Jeff Yass, a pro-voucher Pennsylvania billionaire who has donated $12 million so far to Abbott’s voucher crusade. 

Hinojosa was scathing in her criticism of Abbott and his fellow Republicans and of a party that once “worshipped at the altar of accountability.” Now, she told the attendees, “they want free cash money, with no strings attached.” 

“Grift, graft, and greed” is the narrative of appropriating public funds for private purposes, Hinojosa believes, a tale of supporting “free taxpayer money with no accountability.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Photo: Denis Smith

The NPE conference ended with an address by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee. With his background as a former teacher and coach, Walz had a strong connect with an audience comprised mostly of educators and public school advocates. His folksy language and sense of humor further endeared him to the conference attendees.

Based on the continuing bad behavior of Jeff Yass and other affluent actors in the voucher and charter wars, greedy bastards is a better descriptor than oligarchs, he observed. From the reaction of the audience and what they heard previously from Gina Hinojosa and other presenters, the language offered by Walz was a more accurate definition of welfare for the wealthy. 

At the end of his remarks, Walz encouraged educators not to despair but to accept their key place in society. “There is a sense that servant leadership comes out of serving in public education.”

Attendees at the NPE conference included educators, school board members, attorneys, legislators, clergy, and policy makers – a cross-section of America. Their presence affirmed a core belief that the public school, open to all, represents the very essence of a democratic society. And there is no debate about whether or notthose schools are under attack by right-wing legislatures intent on rewarding higher-income constituents with tuition support to schools that choose their students as they exercise the “school’s choice.”(As a devotee of the Apostrophe Protection Society, I applaud this distinction.)

So what are we going to do about this? Attendees left the conference with some strong themes.

The choir needs to sing louder.

Hope over fear. Aspiration over despair.

The road to totalitarianism is littered with people who say you’re overreacting.

Who are the leaders of the Democratic Party? They’re out there. On the streets.

It’s not just don’t give up. Be an activist.

As the loudness about the subject of what is more aptly described as “the school’s choice” gets louder,” you can bet that servant leaders like Diane Ravitch, Gina Hinojosa, Tim Walz and others are making a difference in responding to the challenge of servant leadership to ensure that the common school, so central to 19th century communities in the Northwest Territory and beyond, continues to be the choice of every community for defining America and the democracy it represents.

                                                                   

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Ohio, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Texas: Religious Leaders Condemn Governor Abbott’s Decision to Hold Vote on Vouchers During Holy Week

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2025 //
4

Pastors for Texas Children has been working hard to defeat vouchers, which would not only eliminate separation of church and state but destroy the state’s rural schools.

Pastors for Texas Children said the following:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jay Pritchard, 214.558.6656, jay@upwardpa.com

April 14, 2025

Faith Leaders Condemn Voucher Vote During Holy Week as an Affront to Religious Liberty

Austin, TX — Pastors for Texas Children (PTC) strongly condemns the Texas House’s decision to schedule a vote on HB3—the Governor’s private school voucher bill—for this Wednesday, squarely in the middle of Jewish Passover and ChrisHan Holy Week.

“This is an outrageous assault on religious liberty,” said Rev. Charles Johnson, ExecuHve Director of Pastors for Texas Children. “Governor AbboP is exploiting sacred days of worship and family observance to silence faith leaders who have led the opposiHon to his dangerous voucher scheme.”

For months, clergy and faith communiHes across Texas have spoken out against diverHng public funds to private and religious schools. By scheduling this vote during the holiest days of the year, Governor Abbott and House Public Education Chair Brad Buckley are showing calculated disrespect for those religious tradiHons.

“By forcing this vote during ChrisHan Holy Week and Jewish Passover, Greg Abbott and Brad Buckley aredefiling our sacred Hme and silencing prophetic voices,” said Rev. Johnson. “It’s a cynical and cowardly political tacHc.”

Let the People Decide

PTC calls on Governor Abbott and Chair Buckley to reschedule the vote or, better yet, put the issue on the November 2025 ballot and let Texans decide whether public tax dollars should fund private and religious schools.

Momentum is growing to place a school voucher referendum before the voters. Texas law allows for ballot initiatives with a simple majority vote in the Legislature—a far more democratic path than ramming this bill through during a religious holiday week.

“God is God is God—not Greg Abbott,” said Rev. Johnson. “We have a divine and constitutional mandate to protect free, public education. To schedule this vote when clergy are in the pulpit and families are at the Seder table is a disgrace. If the Governor believes in his plan, he should put it before the people—not hide behind a holiday.”

Pastors for Texas Children urges lawmakers of all faiths and parties to stand up against this manipulaHon and vote NO on HB3. Let Texans decide the future of their schools—not politicians exploiting the calendar for poliHcal gain.

About Pastors for Texas Children

Pastors for Texas Children is a statewide network of nearly 1,000 churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship working to protect and support public educaHon. We equip faith leaders to advocate for fully funded public schools and oppose efforts to divert public dollars to private and religious institutions.

Learn more at pastorsfortexaschildren.org

Categories Education Industry, Religion, Resistance, Rural Schools, Separation of church and state, Shame, Texas, Trump, Vouchers

Why Care about Public Schools? A Dialogue.

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2025 //
7

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, and Johann Neem, a professor of history of education at Western Washington University, discussed the meaning and purpose of public schools in a forum organized by the History of Education Quarterly.

Why care about public schools? Why resist the “school choice” movement for charters and vouchers? Why stand up for public schools? Why do public schools matter?

Burris and Neem’s dialogue will answer your questions. It’s a well-informed discussion about why public schools are central to our democracy, not merely a consumer choice.

Their conversation was sponsored by the History of Education Society.

Open the link and read the responses of two very knowledgeable people who understand the importance of public schools.

Categories Education Industry, Supporting public schools

North Carolina Continues to Downgrade Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2025 //
0

Not so very long ago, when North Carolina had forward-looking governors like Terry Sanford and James Hunt, North Carolina was considered the best state in the South for its public schools and universities.

Since the Tea Party takeover in 2010, the Republican-dominated legislature has done its worst to shed that reputation. Now it strives to be a state that ignores and underfunds public schools while pouring money into substandard charter schools and segregated voucher schools.

Where once North Carolina boasted of having more National Board Certified teachers than any other state, it now treats teachers disrespectfully, underpaying them and driving out some of its best teachers.

North Carolina is in a race to the bottom, hoping to fall behind Mississippi, Alabama, even Florida, in its maltreatment of the teaching profession. The state Republicans don’t want its children to be well-educated.

Just recently, the Republican leaders in the State Senate decided to increase class sizes and to lower the percentage of licensed and certified teachers in its classroom.

The North Carolina News & Observer reported:

Legislation filed Monday by state House Republican education leaders would eliminate class-size requirements in schools and allow school districts to hire unlicensed teachers. The “Public School Operational Relief” bill would change class-size requirements in elementary schools to class-size “recommendations.” House Bill 806 also would only require 50% of the teachers in a public school to have a license — down from the 100% requirement for traditional public schools.

The bill comes at a time when schools are struggling to find enough teachers. A state report released last week showed the teacher turnover rate was 9.88%, meaning nearly one out of every 10 teachers left the profession between March 2023 and March 2024.

If adopted, the bill would have major ramifications for how North Carolina public schools educate their students. Three of the legislation’s primary sponsors are the Republican co-chairs of the House K-12 Education Committee: Rep. David Willis of Union County, Rep. Brian Biggs of Randolph County and Rep. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County. The bill’s fourth primary sponsor is Rep. Heather Rhyne, a Lincoln County Republican and House Majority Freshman Leader.

Eliminating school class-size requirements Under state law, class sizes are capped in K-3 class sizes with no limits for other grade levels. Charter schools are exempt from the class-size limits. State GOP lawmakers lowered K-3 class size limits in 2017, saying it would help improve instruction.

But school districts, such as Wake County, have complained it’s led to them reassigning students and putting enrollment caps at some elementary schools.

Currently, the state funds one teacher for every 18 students in kindergarten, 16 students in first grade and 17 students in second and third grades. Individual classrooms are allowed to go three students above that number. The bill would make K-3 the same as grades 4-12, with class size limits being recommendations only.

Lowering the number of licensed teachers under current law, school districts are required to have all their teachers be licensed. This includes people who have received temporary licenses allowing them to teach while they meet their training requirements.

Nearly half of all the new teachers in North Carolina enter classrooms under alternative licensure routes, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. Charter schools are only required under state law to have 50% of their teachers be licensed. The new bill would have all public schools — charter schools and traditional public schools — use the 50% teacher licensure requirement in each school.

While the bill says school districts can hire unlicensed teachers, it says you’d need to be a college graduate to teach the core subject areas of mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts.…

The legislation could run afoul of a 2022 N.C. Supreme Court ruling requiring the state to transfer funds to public schools to help provide every student with a sound, basic education and access to highly qualified teachers. But a pending ruling by the Supreme Court could throw out the 2022 ruling in the Leandro case.

Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article303662976.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, North Carolina, Teachers

Jennifer Berkshire: What’s Behind the Republican War Against Education: Part 1.

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2025 //
7

Jennifer Berkshire has been writing insightfully about the rightwing attacks on public schools and on education for many years. She has written for national magazines and collaborated with education historian Jack Schneider to create a podcast “Have You Heard?”) and to write two excellent books: A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and The Education Wars (which is also the title of her blog).

This post is the first of two that “connects the dots.” I am posting them together as they provide an excellent critique of the logic of today’s education policy changes. She explains the Republican animus towards public schools and education and their desire to eliminate the U.S. Departnent of Education.

She writes:

If you read the coverage regarding this week’s ‘bloodbath’ at the Deparment of Education, there is little sense to be made of the savage layoffs and shuttering of whole units. In reports like this one, this one, and this particularly half-baked take, the general tone is a sort of ‘how could this be happening?’ bafflement. But there is a brutal logic to rendering much of the Department inoperable. Since Trump’s first term, the intellectual architects of Trumpism have been laying the groundwork for what is essentially a roll-back of the modern civil rights era. In other words, we don’t have to speculate wildly about what these folks are up to because they’ve been telling us non-stop for the past six years. We need to pay attention.

They’re kneecapping the knowledge agencies

If it feels like DOGE is devoting a disproportionate amount of effort to dismantling agencies and departments that create, distribute, and legitimize knowledge, that’s because it’s true. A fascinating new analysis of DOGE layoffs finds that so-called knowledge agencies have borne the brunt of the chainsaw. This has nothing to do with ‘efficiency’ but instead reflects the belief of influential thinkers in the Trump-o-sphere that these are precisely the agencies and departments that have been captured by the woke mind virus and require elimination.

If you’ve managed to make it this far without encountering the ‘insights’ of Curtis Yarvin aka Mencious Moldbug, congratulations. But Yarvin’s argument that democracy is over, and that we’d be better served by a technocratic monarch, has found favor with the likes of JD Vance; its Yarvin’s case for demolishing ‘the cathedral,’ the knowledge institutions at the heart of modern life, that we’re living through right now.

The goal is to send fewer kids to college.

The AP posted a panicked story this week about the student loan website crashing in the wake of the ED layoffs. Make it too onerous for students to access information about paying for college, the story implied, and they just might give up and stay home. To which some high-profile Trump ‘intellectuals’ might respond: ‘good!’ In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, activist Christopher Rufo stated that his goal is reduce the number of students who attend college by half. Scott Yenor, an influential advisor to Ron DeSantis, wants to see the number reduced to less than 10 percent, and has argued repeatedly that too many women attend college. Various GOP proposals, meanwhile, could reduce the volume of student loans by one third.
The idea that we’d make it harder and more expensive for kids to attend college after a few decades of ‘college for all’ thinking may be hard to wrap your head around. But the likes of Rufo and Yenor view this experiment as a collosal failure. In their view, college campuses are filled with students who don’t belong there, representing the sort of social engineering that they’re now determined to unwind. The anti-DEI purges currently remaking campuses reflect the general sentiment on the right these days that colleges, entirely captured by the ‘woke,’ are indoctrinating youngsters. But at the heart of these efforts is an even more retrograde cause: making college elite again.

They believe in natural hierarchies and race science.

The creepiest story I read this week had nothing to do with education but with the effort to rebuild the US semiconductor industry known as the CHIPS program. Employees in the CHIPS program office have been undergoing a now-familiar ritual: demonstrating their intellectual worth and abilities to Trump officials.

In late February, Michael Grimes, a senior official at the Department of Commerce and former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, conducted brief interviews with employees of the CHIPS Program Office, which oversees the grants.

In interactions some described as “demeaning,” Mr. Grimes asked employees to justify their intellect by providing test results from the SAT or an IQ test, said four people familiar with the evaluations. Some were asked to do math problems, like calculate the value of four to the fourth power or long division.

What does demanding IQ or SAT test results from engineers have to do with the dismantling of the Departmet of Education? Everything. If you start from the assumption that IQ is, not just fixed, but genetically determined, as many Trump intellectuals do, there is little case to be made for public schools that try to equalize outcomes—it can’t be done. Far better to shovel cash at the would-be ‘cognitive elite’ (an apt description of vouchers for the well-to-do, when you think about it) than to redistribute resources to the ‘lessers.’ It’s a bleak and brutal view of the world and one that holds increasing sway on the right.

They believe that race-based data powers the ‘civil rights regime’

In his fantastic new book, Dangerous Learning: the South’s Long War on Black Literacy, legal scholar Derek Black argues that a vision of racial equality is woven through education policy. Writes Black: “Education bureaucracy disaggregates every aspect of education by race–from basic attendance, test scores, and graduation rates to suspensions, expulsions, advanced placement opportunities, access to qualified teachers, and more.” But this is precisely why the data collectors have borne the brunt of the DOGE-ing of the Department of Education. 

Read the likes of Richard Hanania, whose argument that ‘woke’ is essentially just civil rights law, inspired Trump’s early executive order rolling back affirmative action in federal hiring, and you get a much clearer picture of what’s happening right now. As Hanania argues, “[g]overnment should not be into the race, sex, and LGBT bean counting business.” His colleague, the afforementioned Scott Yenor, goes even farther. Yenor wants to see states criminalize the collection of data on the basis of race or sex as a challenge to what he describes as “the country’s corrupting ‘civil rights’ regime.” 

So while federally-funded education research may have just been decimated, at least the researchers themselves aren’t being rounded up—yet.

They’re rolling back civil rights

At the heart of the Trumpist intellectual project is a relatively straight-forward argument. The civil rights revolution in this country went too far and it’s time to start rolling it back. As Jack Schneider and I argue in our recent book, The Education Wars, the role that public schools have historically played in advancing civil rights makes them particuarly vulnerable in this moment of intense backlash. It’s why the administration has moved with such ferocity against the most recent effort to extend civil rights through the schools—to transgender students. And it’s why the cuts to the Department of Education have fallen so heavily on its civil rights enforcement role. Of the agency’s civil rights offices across the country, only five are still open.

The OCR is one of the federal government’s largest enforcers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, investigating thousands of allegations of discrimination each year. That includes discrimination based on disability, race and gender.

Not anymore…

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Privatization, Racism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

A Message to Journalists: Don’t Be Fooled! Follow the Money!

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2025 //
3

Every once in a while, I read an article that is so important and so powerful that I want to give it as much attention as possible. This is such an article. Please read it and share it. Post the link on every social media site. Send it to school board members and journalists.

The article was written by Dr. Maurice Cunningham, a retired Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts. Cunningham has been studying “dark money” in education for years. It was published by “Our Schools” and “Independent Media Institute.”

If you want to understand the attacks on public schools, on teachers, and on teachers’ unions, read this article. If you want to understand how the organized groups that smear public schools got started, read this article. If you read a story about two or three “moms” sitting around their kitchen table and worrying whether the teachers at the local public school are indoctrinating their children, read this article. If those “moms” raised over $1 million in their first year, read this article.

They have fooled many journalists. Don’t let them fool you!

Cunningham warns:

“These groups are the creation of deep-pocketed conservative networks, not “grassroots” advocates.“

By Maurice Cunningham

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out” is a bromide drilled into every journalist. So it is baffling why, if an interest group includes the words “moms” or “parents,” it is just taken at its word, especially when a little digging can reveal that many of these groups are the creations of billionaires out to destroy public education.

As the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, I have been following billionaire-backed education interest groups for more than a decade. Since big money lacks public credibility, it often masquerades as organizations claiming to represent the interests of “parents,” “moms,” “educators,” and “families.” The concocted stories about how these groups were created are often repeated by an incurious press, which misses the opportunity to tell its readers a more interesting story: how billionaires and right-wing activists pour money into upbeat-sounding organizations to further their aim of privateering our public school system.

These astroturf operations have been proliferating resulting in serious negative impacts. Consider the havoc wreaked on some school boards by Moms for Liberty (M4L). M4L even got into presidential politics in 2024, boosting Donald Trump, at the behest of the donors, who co-founder Tina Descovich termed as M4L’s “investors.”

Consider a November 2024 Washington Post story on Linda McMahon’s nomination to be secretary of education. The article contrasted remarks from National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle with an alternative view from Keri Rodrigues, founding president of the National Parents Union (NPU), which the reporter Laura Meckler called “a grassroots group,” thus giving the impression that NEA and NPU are similar organizations.

They are not. NEA is a well-established teachers’ union that credibly claims 3 million members and is governed by a democratic structure. NPU appeared on the scene in 2020, surfing in on millions of dollars from the foundations of American oligarchs, including the Walton family, Mark Zuckerberg, and Charles Koch.

In 2024, Rodrigues, a fixture at education privateering groups, told the Boston Globe that NPU could get its message to “250,000 families to vote against” a ballot question sponsored by the teachers’ union and would “put that network to work.”

There is zero evidence that this extensive network exists or that it did anything on the ballot question. There is also no proof to validate Rodrigues’s claimthat the organization has 1.7 million members nationally.

A 2021 Washington Post article introducing Moms for Liberty chronicled its claimed rapid rise without raising questions about how it grew so fast. The story simply provided the M4L narrative of its creation story, centered around former Florida school board members Descovich and Tiffany Justice. It omitted M4L’s third co-founder Bridget Ziegler, though it did quote her husband, Christian Ziegler, about the group’s political potency.

Bridget Ziegler served briefly on the M4L board and was replaced by GOP campaign consultant Marie Rogerson. Christian Ziegler was then the powerful vice-chair of the Florida Republican Party and a key Trump supporter. (In 2023, the Zieglers became famous for a threesome scandal. She quickly resigned from her executive position with the Leadership Institute, an established training institution for right-wing activists. Christian was removed from his perch as chair of the Florida Republican Party.)

The Post October 2021 story featured a photo of Descovich pulling aside, Superman style, a white jacket to reveal the group’s logo t-shirt while posing next to an American flag. The questions about the group’s ties to the Republican Party and suspicious financing were laughed off by the founders of M4L. The Post followed up a month later by printing an op-ed by Descovich and Justice.

NPU, M4L, and similar groups organize as nonprofit corporations under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Service Code. As nonprofits, their Form 990 tax returns are made public but only in November, following the tax year. The information is skimpy but valuable. Journalists can access the Form 990s by requesting them directly from the nonprofits or from the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, which helps trace donors as well.

These groups leave clues that no reporter can miss:

  1. Don’t buy the phony origin stories: These organizations all claim to be about moms joining together to improve education. But in no time, they have access to millions of dollars in donations and have the services of elite law firms, pollsters, media consultants, and often, ties to the Republican Party.
  2. Follow the money: It isn’t easy in the first two years of a nonprofit’s existence, but there are signs: easy access to right-wing media, hiring expensive consultants, and big-budget conferences.
  3. Watch how these groups work: The founding leadership usually consists of veteran right-wing operatives or communications professionals with years of experience in privateering organizations.
  4. Get the big picture: Right from the beginning, M4L had obvious ties to Republican and right-wing organizations that often went unreported.
  5. Keep following the money: When nonprofit tax forms finally become public, they’ll reveal how much was donated and can help identify the top contractors and how much they were paid.

Let us expand on these insights to show how these secretive operations can be exposed right from the beginning by using Form 990.

Don’t Buy the Phony Origin Stories

The typical “moms” or “parents” creation story goes something like this: outraged by some aspect of their children’s public school education, two or three “moms” band together to attract other like-minded parents to cure the deficiencies of the system, which are always the fault of the teachers’ unions. In truth, the “moms” are agents of far-right billionaires often tied—like M4L and Parents Defending Education (PDE)—to the secretive Council for National Policy, which seeksto privateer K-12 for profit, expand Christian education, and promote homeschooling.

According to the billionaire-funded online publication the 74, NPU “is the brainchild of two Latina mothers,” Keri Rodrigues and Alma Marquez, who “had disappointing experiences with education, both as parents and students, and with advocacy groups.”

To its credit, the 74 was candid about the funding of NPU: the foundations of billionaires, including Bill Gates, the Walton family, the late Eli Broad, and Michael and Susan Dell, and organizations like the City Fund, which gets its money from Reed Hastings, John Arnold, and Walton family members, inheritors of the Walmart fortune.

Nonetheless, the tenor of the story was of a grassroots moms’ start-up. Other news outlets ignored the 74’s detailing of billionaire funding. An online search through the New York Times website supplemented with a library search through Gale OneFile showed 13 NYT stories or columns that mention the National Parents Union since the group’s public launch on January 1, 2021. Only one column by Michelle Goldberg noted that “The National Parents Union is funded by the pro-privatization Walton Family Foundation.” The Waltons are, however, the only funders Goldberg mentioned.

The New Yorker came closest to the truth in a June 2021 piece: “The Walton foundation set up the National Parents Union in January 2020, with Rodrigues as the founding president.” A review of Form 990s for NPU and the Walton Family Foundation from 2020 through 2023 that I reviewed shows that NPU accepted more than $11 million in contributions. The Walton Family Foundation donated around $3 million of that amount.

The media is failing to cover the single most important fact the public needs to know about “parents” and “moms” groups: who is supplying them with millions of dollars in funding.

As for M4L, although a few media outlets wrote it had three founders, most followed the practice of CNN, which in December 2021 omitted Bridget Ziegler and described “the two women behind Moms for Liberty, a group of conservatives that came together in January,” downplaying the fact that at that time, the state GOP vice-chair’s wife was also one of the co-founders. By January 9, 2021, soon after its incorporation, M4L’s online store was offering magnets, t-shirts, and hats, and a “Madison Meetup” package of right-wing materials.

While mainstream media was valorizing M4L’s origin story, right-wing outlets produced a steady stream of propaganda about the organization. Later in January 2021, Descovich appeared on the Rush Limbaugh Show (guest-hosted by Todd Herman). Media Matters for America found that, by July 2022, M4L “representatives have been regulars on right-wing media, appearing on Fox News at least 16 times and Steve Bannon’s “War Room” at least 14 times.”

Another supposedly grassroots parents’ group that has an origin story grounded in deception is PDE. In lodging a civil rights complaint against the Columbus, Ohio, public schools in May 2021, PDE President Nicole Neily told the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, “We just all work from home… We’re all working moms.”

In fact, Neily is a well-compensated political operativein the Koch network. According to the Koch-connected Speech First’s Form 990 for 2019, which was available after November 2020 and thus before PDE was founded in 2021, Neily was paid $150,000 in 2019.

Follow the Money

Due to the barriers to tracing the funding of such groups, it can be hard to follow the money, especially in the first two years of operation. But in 2021, an article in the New Yorker described how the VELA Education Fund, a partnership of the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute, had given NPU $700,000 in 2020 to “help people with fewer resources,” including promoting homeschooling during COVID-19. This is despite the fact that NPU was not familiar with homeschooling.

Press outlets have also overlooked funding sources of M4L. In 2021, co-founder Descovich told CNN that M4L had raised more than $300,000 through t-shirt sales, small donors, and fundraising events. However, one such event was a gala featuring former Fox News personality Megyn Kelly in June 2021, six months into M4L’s first year. The top tickets went for $20,000. The Celebrity Speakers Bureau pegged Kelly’s speaking fee as between $50,000 and $100,000. The event raised at least $57,000.

In July 2021, Descovich appeared at a Heritage Foundation virtual town hall on “Preserving American History in Schools.” By October 29, 2021, M4L was referring members to the Leadership Institute for training and sending members to the Heritage Foundation for events and other resources. Both these organizations have been part of the right-wing political firmament since the 1970s. A bit of digging showedthat M4L was deeply embedded in far-right politics. But most press accounts ignored that evidence and the public remained largely in the dark.

In April 2021, PDE headed by Neily, brought on Elizabeth Schultz as a “senior fellow,” who had worked under Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during his first term and was a vocal anti-LGBTQ activist.

Watch How These Groups Work

These groups can be intertwined. PDE, M4L, and another faux-grassroots group, No Left Turn in Education (NLTE), all came on the scene around the same time, with NLTE being founded in 2020. PDE’s website includes a map called “IndoctriNation” with lists of affiliates across the nation. The April 15, 2021, listings (the website appears to have gone live only in March 2021) showed that most of its allies were chapters of M4L and NLTE with few actual members, according to my research in 2021.

Media reports seemed content to accept the “moms working from home” creation story despite the obvious early support from well-resourced groups.

NPU held its organizing meeting, which it claims drew representatives from all 50 states, in New Orleans in January 2020. To promote the event, NPU employedMercury Public Affairs, an international public relations firm. To draw press attention, NPU also commissioned polling from Echelon Insights, a Republican pollster that has also worked for the Walton family.

In the same year of its founding, in 2021, PDE published detailed plans, such as “How to Create ‘Woke At’ Pages,” that instruct parents on how to use secrecy to attack “woke activists” in the education system. PDE also began initiating lawsuits against local school boards, represented by the Republican law firm of Consovoy McCarthy.

William Consovoy, who passed in 2023, was in the Federalist Society, the nationwide network of conservative lawyers that helped form Trump’s picks for the U.S. Supreme Court. Consovoy had been a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and represented Donald Trump during a congressional investigation. The firm also represented Trump in 2020 as he tried to intervene before the Supreme Court to stop the vote count in Pennsylvania. When PDE’s 2021 Form 990became available, it showed PDE paid Consovoy McCarthy $800,000 in legal fees.

Get the Big Picture

The clues kept coming, only to be ignored by the press.

In 2022, M4L held its first national summit in Tampa, Florida. In its reporting of the event, NBC portrayedthe group as a political powerhouse, reporting that attendees “browsed booths set up by conservative groups, including Turning Point USA, the Leadership Institute and Heritage Action, and the evangelical Liberty University” without describing these organizations for what they are—the critical infrastructure of Christian nationalism.

Media reports on the event generally ignored who the sponsors of the summit were or the amounts of their donations. The Leadership Institute donated $50,000. The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America provided $10,000 each. And PDE chipped in $10,000. Meanwhile, Descovich was still peddling the story that M4L was getting by on t-shirt sales, even though an aide to Leadership Institute’s Morton Blackwell bragged about how the institute had provided the relevant training to help the group “become a national force.”

When there were questions raised about how M4L could fund such a lavish event with t-shirt sales, M4L denied any connections to deep-pocketed right-wing groups, and most news reporters presented a simple “he said, she said” account and moved on. Reporters generally missed the bigger story that the institutional right was creating and passing off phony “moms” and “parents” operations.

Keep Following the Money

Once Form 990s were filed, the deception became obvious, but that didn’t mean it got covered by big media outlets.

The 2022 Form 990 for NPU showed that Keri Rodrigues was paid $410,000 from NPU and a sister organization. She paid her husband, the chief operating officer of both organizations, $278,529. Yet, in August 2024, CBS Morning News presented Rodrigues as a typical parent worried about back-to-school shopping.

PDE’s Form 990 for 2021 was even more revealing, as exposed by True North Research’s Lisa Graves and Alyssa Bowen for Truthout in 2023. Graves and Bowen showed that PDE is deeply tied with far-right Supreme Court fixer Leonard Leo, even paying $106,938 to his for-profit consulting firm.

PDE, a brand-new operation, raised $3,178,272 in its first year in 2021. It paid Neily, who is also on the board, a total compensation of $195,688 for her 40-hour work week.

According to Speech First’s Form 990 for 2021, Neily put in an additional 20-hour week for Speech First, earning another $86,117 and a total of $281,805 from both Koch- and Leo-funded operations combined. In 2023, PDE pushed Neily’s base salary and other compensation up to $341,400. This is quite an income for a stay-at-home working mom.

The trail from NPU leads back to the Walton family and billionaire allies who have been working to undermine teachers’ unions and siphon public money to charter schools for years.

Scratch the surface of groups like M4L and PDE, and you find the Heritage Foundation, the Leadership Institute, and Leonard Leo—the elite of far-right politics who work to replace public schools with for-profit schools, religious schools, and homeschooling. These details make for a very important story that most journalists have overlooked.

Stop Being Fooled

Reporters should not be fooled by the techniques used by these fake “mom” and “parent” groups on behalf of their extremist overseers. As Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway show in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, these techniques have been used by “scientific” nonprofits created by the same conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, to contest climate change.

Many have tracked the origin of these techniques back to the tobacco industry’s fight to protect their profits from the growing body of research linking their products to cancer and other health problems.

In 1994, tobacco giant RJ Reynolds created the industry front group Get Government Off Our Back to advance a “smokers’ rights” campaign to fight against the tsunami of scientific evidence exposing the health risks of tobacco. Reynolds kept its backing a secret while promoting it as a movement of “grassroots” smokers.

Meanwhile, in his farewell address, former President Joseph R. Biden warned about how the wealthy are a big threat to democracy:

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

For years, the same oligarchy that threatens basic rights has been threatening our freedom to have access to a high-quality system of public education. There is no reason they should be aided by credulous reporters from trusted news sources. If we can question our moms on whether they really love us, we can question the authenticity of these moms and parent groups.

Maurice Cunningham PhD, JD, retired in 2021 as an associate professor of political science at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and is the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corruption, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Fake News, For-Profit, Fraud, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hoax, Parent Groups, Privatization, Propaganda, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, School Choice, Shame, Unions, Vouchers
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