Dan Patrick is the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, a powerful position in the state. He used to be a rightwing radio talk show host, a little Rush Limbaugh. Now he’s in a position to do real damage, not just blow off steam. He recently told the superintendents of rural schools that the state couldn’t afford to give them any new money, although not long ago Governor Greg Abbott bragged about a $30 billion surplus and about cutting property taxes.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has laid out his plan for dismantling public schools, even if it means failing to produce a workforce that will keep Texas’ economy going.
The man who calls himself a Christian first, a conservative second and a Republican third exercises an iron fist over the Texas Senate. He recently told the Texas Association of Rural Schools & Texas Association of Midsize Schools not to expect a significant increase in state funding, which has been unchanged since 2019 despite rampant inflation.
Instead, Patrick has promised to divert taxpayer money to private, mostly Christian schools backed by his billionaire benefactors.
Texas Republicans are heading into the 89thLegislature in honey-badger mode, heedlessly pursuing ideological goals regardless of public opinion. Because just like the honey badger that has become an Internet meme, Patrick “don’t care.”
“We’re not underfunding you in our view,” Patrick told school superintendents on Dec. 6, my colleague Jeremy Wallace reported in his newsletter. “We are funding you the most we can.”
Correction: it’s the most he’s willing to do.
The state provides a basic allotment of $6,160 per student, which is $4,000 less than the national average. School districts are slashing budgets and laying off staff due to inflation. Advocates have asked for another $1,000 per student to keep providing essential services.
“I’m just being honest with you; there is no way we can increase the student allotment by $1,000,” Patrick said.
That’s a lie. The state left $30 billion unspent in 2023 when Patrick refused to increase school funding until lawmakers approved taxpayer funding for religious private schools. An extra $1,000 per student would cost $14 billion, well within the budget.
Patrick frequently claims he supports public schools, but actions speak louder than words. He criticizes teachers, prioritizes tax cuts and praises religious education, falling back on a clichéd conservative playbook.
Step One: Underfund and hamstring a government service, in this case, public schools, until it starts falling apart. Step Two: Blame underpaid, under-resourced public servants for the failure and proclaim only the private sector can help. Step Three: Send taxpayer money to your cronies to provide the service, with a significant markup, and make the public pay more for it.
Abbott and Patrick say they have the votes necessary to pass a school voucher bill next year. Past promises to boost funding for public schools now appear off the table.
Private schools do not face the same regulation or scrutiny as public schools. Private schools are free to teach whatever the sponsoring group wants outside of a few minimum requirements. Private school students are not required to take the state’s standardized STAAR Test.
Polls show most Texans support public schools and want the state to spend more. But with a handful of donors writing multimillion-dollar checks, Patrick has entered the honey-badger stage of one-party rule.
Most Texans and major corporations think women should have more reproductive rights. Patrick don’t care.
Most Texans support legalized gambling to boost local economies. Patrick don’t care.
Most Texans support legalizing marijuana. Patrick don’t care; he wants to ban the $4 billion-a-year hemp industry.
Republicans have controlled every statewide office for 30 years. At the state and national level, conservatives control every branch of government. The GOP is feeling strong, like they honey badger.
Patrick wants Texas and the United States to be a Christian nation and Texas laws to reflect his interpretation of the Bible. Sabotaging public schools is a key step to fulfilling that dream.
He writes about the dangerous shenanigans of the gang in the Legislature that hates public schools:
So the bill that impressed me was an attempt to do something about this growing black hole.
Specifically, the bill would have:
2) required that private schools receiving vouchers administer the same standardized tests that public school students take, allowing an apples to apples comparison of the private school’s performance;
1) required that private schools receiving vouchers provide an annual report on how they are spending the public dollars they receive (and post that report on-line);
3) required that schools provide data on the income of students/families that receive vouchers along with other scholarships. (In states like Ohio, where they have removed all income limitations on vouchers recipients, the vast majority of voucher recipients were already attending, and could already afford, the private school they now use the voucher to pay for).
Again, these would be the bare minimum of safeguards for this out-of-control approach.
Which is, of course, exactly why the provisions were ultimately stripped out of the bill that ultimately passed the House Education Committee (where the original bill had been submitted).
Note: One of the points made by private school advocates was that the tests used to measure public school outcomes were not a good measure of the work they did.
So as the billions flow to private schools through vouchers, we taxpayers still don’t know how the funds are actually being spent. And we still don’t have an apples-to-apples comparison to see if all this unaccountable money is actually leading to improved or worse education results. (Other data show the answer is “worse”).
But for Public Schools…Shut them Down
So that’s the treatment of private schools receiving public dollars via vouchers.
But wouldn’t you know it? For Ohio’s publicschools, constantly the target of attack and criticism, we see the exact opposite approach.
Rushing through the current “lame duck” Ohio legislative session is a brand new bill that takes seriously the same standardized tests the voucher-funded private schools convinced lawmakers they need not take (remember, they testified it’s not a good measure of their work). So seriously, the new bill proposes that all Ohio public school buildings that fall in the bottom five and 10 percent of two measures (both determined by standardized tests) for three years be shut down.
Public school advocates have pointed out many of the flaws of this approach, including that many of the entities that would “take over” these schools have no experience providing K-12 education at all. They’ve also pointed out that this approach bears similarities to the failed top-down approach from a 2015 bill which created Academic Distress Commissions for struggling districts. After stripping away local control, the Commissions did not generate improvements, and the approach was ultimately repealed.
But bigger picture, of course, is the differential treatment of the two systems: One type of publicly funded Ohio schools doesn’t have to provide even the bare minimum of accountability and transparency, while the other set would face turmoil and even shutdowns for failing to meet certain criteria not applied to the first group.
It’s yet another blatant tipping of the scales towards privatizing public education.
Take Action
They are trying to rush this bill through the Ohio Senate’s Education Committee tomorrow. Here are steps you can take to stop it:
Tell Committee Chair Andrew Brenner NOT TO PASS the school closure bill:
Contact your State Rep. Tell them the Ohio Senate is trying to pass a massive new school closure bill (SB 295) without any input from the House. Ask them, “Shouldn’t the House get a say on this issue??”
SB 295 would remove local control from elected school board members and parents
The state should not be making big, closed-door decisions with little to no community involvement.
Our students deserve safe, equitable, fully-resourced, engaging schools in their own area! In most cases, closing local schools is bad for our communities and bad for Ohio. In ALL cases, parents and students should be heavily involved in the decision-making processes!
Houston’s public schools were taken over in 2023 by the state because one (1) high school was persistently getting low scores. One! That school happened to have a disproportionate number of students with disabilities, students who were English learners, students who were impoverished, as compared to other high schools in the district .
The Texas Education Agency engaged in a hostile takeover. Governor Abbott may have wanted to teach the blue district of Houston a lesson, and he did. His hand-picked State Commissioner imposed a new superintendent, Mike Miles, and replaced the elected school board. Houston lost democratic control of its schools.
Miles was a military man and a graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy, whose graduates were steeped in top-down methods and taught to ignore constituents. Miles was superintendent in Dallas, where he had a rocky three-year tenure. He then led a charter chain in Colorado.
Miles proceeded to impose a new lockstep curriculum and to fire administrators and principals who did not please him.
Members of the public complained bitterly about being disregarded, ignored, belittled. Miles plowed ahead.
New test scores came out, and the scores went up. Miles felt triumphant. See, he said, I was right! The Houston schools needed a leader who didn’t listen to the public.
But when Miles and the state’s puppet board put a $4.4 billion bond issue on the ballot last month, parents urged others not to vote for it. In the only place where parents had a say, they organized against the bond issue. It went down to a defeat.
On November 5, Houston voters rejected a proposed $4.4 billion bond that would pay for critical school construction, renovation and infrastructure projects, as well as safety and security improvements, by a wide margin, 58% to 42%. It appears most of those voting against the measure did so not in opposition to the bond itself, but out of deep distrust for Miles and the district’s leaders. For weeks the rallying cry repeated publicly by opponents, including the Texas Federation of Teachers, was simply “no trust, no bond.”
Miles said it had nothing to do with him. But he was wrong. It was a referendum on his leadership. He lost.
Public education requires community engagement. It requires parent involvement. Committed parents will fight for their schools. They want to know who’s leading their schools, they want to be heard. Miles still doesn’t understand the importance of listening. He thinks that the goal of schooling is higher scores, regardless of how many people are alienated. He doesn’t understand the importance of building community. And without it, he failed.
It’s time to consign the Broad Academy philosophy of leadership to the dust bin of history. Districts don’t need military command and control. They need educators who have a clear vision of what education should be, who care about ALL students, and who understand how to build community.
Peter Greene writes about the contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education goals. On the one hand, Trump says he will eliminate the Department of Education and turn federal funding over to the states, to use as they wish. At the same time, he says that he will punish schools if they persist in teaching liberal ideas that Trump dislikes, like diversity, equity and inclusion, or if they are insufficiently patriotic.
How will he punish schools if the federal funding has been relinquished to the states?
Greene writes:
It has been on the conservative To Do list for decades, and the incoming administration keeps insisting that this time it’s really going to happen. But will it? Over the weekend, Trump’s Ten Principles for Education video from Agenda 47 was circulating on line as a new “announcement” or “confirmation” of his education policy, despite the fact that the video was posted in September of 2023.
The list of goals may or may not be current, but it underlines a basic contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education plans. The various goals can be boiled down to two overall objectives:
1) To end all federal involvement and oversight of local schools.
2) To exert tight federal control over local schools
Trump has promised that schools will not teach “political indoctrination,” that they will teach students to “love their country,” that there will be school prayer, that students will “have access to” project-based learning, and that schools will expel students who harm teachers or other students.
He has also proposed stripping money from colleges and universities that indoctrinate students and using the money to set up a free of charge “world class education” system.
Above all, he has promised that he “will be closing up” the Department of Education. Of course, he said that in 2016 with control of both houses of Congress and it did not happen.
Are there obstacles? The Department of Education distributes over $18 billion to help support schools that educate high-poverty populations, providing benefits like extra staff to supplement reading instruction. The Project 2025 plan is to turn this into a block grant to be given to the states to use as they wish, then zeroed out. Every state in the country would feel that pinch; states that decide to use the money for some other purpose entirely, such as funding school vouchers, will feel the pinch much sooner. The department also handles over $15 billion in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding, which helps cover the costs of special education; Project 2025 also calls for turning it into an unregulated block grant to states with no strings attached, meaning that parents would have to lobby their state government for special ed funding.
Cuts and repurposing of these funds will be felt immediately in classrooms across the country, particularly those that serve poor students and students with special needs. That kind of readily felt, easily understood impact is likely to fuel pushback in Congress, and it’s Congress that has the actual power to eliminate the department.
Beyond the resistance to changing major funding for states and the challenge of trying to move the trillion-plus-dollar funding system for higher education, the Trump administration would also face the question of how to exert control over school districts without a federal lever to push.
Previous administrations have used Title I funding as leverage to coax compliance from school districts. In 2013, Obama’s education secretary Arne Duncan threatened to withhold Title I funds if a California failed to adopt an “acceptable” standardized testing program. In 2020, Trump himself threatened to cut off funding to schools that did not re-open their buildings. And on the campaign trail this year, Trump vowed that he would defund schools that require vaccines. That will be hard to do if the federal government has given all control of funds to the states.
The Department of Education has limited power, but the temptation to use it seems hard to resist. Nobody wanted the department gone more than Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, who was notably reluctant to use any power of her office. But by 2018, frustrated with Congressional inaction on the Higher Education Act, DeVos announced a plan to impose regulations on her own. In 2020, she imitated Duncan by requiring states to compete for relief money by implementing some of her preferred policies.
Too many folks on the Trump team have ideas about policies they want to enforce on American schools, and without a Department of Education that has control of a major funding stream, they’d have little hope of achieving their goals. Perhaps those who dream of dismantling the department will prevail, but they will still have to get past Congress. No matter how things fall out, some of Team Trump’s goals for education will not be realized.
During the campaign, Democrats continually drew attention to the radical proposals of Project 2025 as the agenda for a second Trump term. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 and pretended to know nothing about it or anyone who wrote it. Now that he is President-elect, Project 2025 is indeed Trump’s agenda.
Someone on social media asked, “If Trump disavowed Project 2025 when campaigning, isn’t I clear that he has no “mandate” to act on it?
The LA Times reports:
Russell Vought, one of the chief architects of Project 2025 — a conservative blueprint for the next presidency — is no fan of the federal government that President-elect Donald Trump will soon lead.
He believes “woke” civil servants and “so-called expert authorities” wield illegitimate power to block conservative White House directives from deep within federal agencies, and wants Trump to “bend or break” that bureaucracy to his will, he wrote in the second chapter of the Project 2025 playbook.
Vought is a vocal proponent of a plan known as Schedule F, under which Trump would fire thousands of career civil servants with extensive experience in their fields and replace them with his own political loyalists, and of Christian nationalism, which would see American governance aligned with Christian teachings. Both are core tenets of Project 2025.
Throughout his campaign, Trump adamantly disavowed Project 2025, even though its policies overlapped with his and some of its authors worked in his first administration. He castigated anyone who suggested the blueprint, which polls showed was deeply unpopular among voters, represented his aims for the presidency.
But last week, the president-elect nominated Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the White House budget and its policy agenda across the federal government.
Trump called Vought, who held the same role during his first term, an “aggressive cost cutter and deregulator” who “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.”
The nomination was one of several Trump has made since his election that have called into question his claims on the campaign trail that Project 2025 was not his playbook and held no sway over him or his plans for a second term.
He selected Tom Homan, a Project 2025 contributor and former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative organization behind the blueprint, as his “border czar.” Trump named Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner also linked to Project 2025, as his deputy chief of staff for policy. Both also served in the first Trump administration.
He also named Brendan Carr to serve on the Federal Communications Commission. Carr wrote a chapter of Project 2025 on the FCC, which regulates U.S. internet access and TV and radio networks, and has echoed Trump’s claimsthat news broadcasters have engaged in political bias against Trump.
Trump named John Ratcliffe as his pick for CIA director and Pete Hoekstra as ambassador to Canada. Both are Project 2025 contributors. It has also been reported that the Trump transition team is filling lower-level government spots using a Project 2025 database of conservative candidates.
During the campaign Trump said that he knew “nothing about” Project 2025 and that he found some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” In response to news in July that Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, was leaving his post, Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles — whom the president-elect has since named his chief of staff — issued a statement saying that “reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed.”
Asked about Trump’s selection of several people with Project 2025 connections to serve in his administration, Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt responded with a statement, saying Trump “never had anything to do with Project 2025.”
“This has always been a lie pushed by the Democrats and the legacy media, but clearly the American people did not buy it because they overwhelmingly voted for President Trump to implement the promises that he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt wrote. “All of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.”
In addition to calling for much greater power in the hands of the president, Project 2025 calls for less federal intervention in certain areas — including through the elimination of the Department of Education. It calls for much stricter immigration enforcement and mass deportations — a policy priority of Trump’s as well — and rails against environmental protections, calling for the demolition of key environmental agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service.
It calls for tougher restrictions on abortion and for the federal government to collect data on women who seek an abortion, and backs a slew of measures that would strip rights from LGBTQ+ people.
For Trump’s critics, his selections make it clear that his disavowal of the conservative playbook was nothing more than a campaign ploy to pacify voters who viewed the plan as too far to the right. It’s an argument many were making before the election as well.
Before the election of 2020, Joe Biden made some exciting promises to educators. He said publicly at a televised event in Pittsburgh that he would get rid of the onerous federal testing mandate. And he pledged to stop funding charter schools. The U.S. Department of Education hands out $440 million every year to create new charter schools or to expand existing charter schools. The Network for Public Education has published studies that document the wastefulness of the federal Charter Schools Program’s’ extravant funding but it survives nonetheless, because of Democratic choice fans like Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Michael Bennett, and Senator Corey Booker.
President Biden did not keep his promises. He didn’t even try.
He could have chosen a leader for the U.S. Department of Education who would fight to fulfill his promises. He didn’t.
Cardona did not take aim at the onerous federal testing program that is a remnant of George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind law. NCLB was enacted in 2002. Twenty-two years ago. Does anyone believe that “no child was left behind”? Did the billions of dollars spent on annual testing of every single student in grades 3-8 has lift achievement to new heights and close achievement gaps? No. Dr
Instead, he chose Miguel Cardona, the State Commissioner of Connecticut, an amiable man who never says or does anything controversial. He did not repeat any of Biden’s promises.
Did Secretary Cardona propose any revision of the law? True, it went from NCLB to the equally ludicrous “Every Student Succeeds Act” in 2015. But has every student succeeded just because the law got a new name? No. What did Secretary Cardona propose? Nothing.
During Secretary Cardona’s tenure, there was an explosion in manufactured hostility towards public schools and their teachers, led by rightwing groups like “Moms for Liberty.” And these groups loudly demanded censorship of books in school libraries. Under the guise of “parental rights,” small numbers of very aggressive people made absurd claims about public schools: that teachers were “grooming” children to be gay or transgender; that school nurses were performing surgery in their offices to change boys into girls; that schools kept litter boxes for students who identified as cats; that public schools were “indoctrinating” students into radical views about race, gender, and American history. Teachers were fired for daring to teach “banned books” or accurate history about racism.
All of this was crazy stuff, spun out of whole cloth. Just plain nuts.
While our public schools were reeling from the barrage of lies about them, who were their defenders? The unions, for sure. PEN International. The American Library Association. Publishers. But where was the U.S. Department of Education? I honestly don’t know. It was a time when a strong and forceful voice was needed to stand up to the censors and bullies. I didn’t hear it. Did anyone else?
President Biden pledged to support public schools and to end federal favoritism for privately-managed charter schools. That didn’t happen. Rather than challenging the powerful charter school lobby, Secretary Cardona accepted its invitation to be the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the National Association of Public Charter Schools in 2021.
The federal Charter Schools Program gets $440 million every year to open new charter schools or to fund the expansion of charter chains. The Biden administration didn’t try to kill the appropriation, but it did enact regulations for CSP, a striking achievement. But it then ignored its own regulations, funding segregated charter schools that the regulations forbade.
Probably the worst example of a charter school that received a large federal grant despite its failure to comply with the Department’s regulations was the Cincinnati Classical Academy.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Education gave $2 million to the Cincinnati Classical Academy, a charter school created by Hillsdale College, the far-right institution closely aligned with former (and future) President Trump. The school claimed in its application that it intended to provide quality education for needy minority students, but in fact the school serves an overwhelmingly white, affluent population.
The Network for Public Education was all over this $2 million grant because it was such a flagrant violation of the Department’s own regulations.
Carol Burris, the executive director of NPE, wrote a letter that was cosigned by more than a dozen local education and civil rights groups in Cincinnati. The letter was sent a year ago, with hopes that the Departnent would recall the grant because of false and misleading information in its grant application.
The Department did nothing. No action was taken.
Please read the letter:
December 4, 2023
The Honorable Miguel Cardona Secretary
U.S. Department of Education 400 Maryland Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20202
Dear Secretary Cardona:
We write to express our deep concern regarding the two Charter School Programs awards given to Cincinnati Classical Academy (CCA), a Hillsdale member charter school. CCA received a $100,000 planning grant from Ohio’s State Entities grant in 2021-2022, and in 2023, a Developer grant directly from your Department in the amount of $1,991,846. This letter provides evidence that the application submitted to your Department contained false and misleading information on which the award was based.
Further, after reading the three application reviewers’ notes, it is apparent that no attempt was made to fact check the application. Instead, the reviewers ignored what should have been obvious redflags, as we explain below.
A detailed summary of the false and misleading information presented in the application is also provided. We ask you to investigate the awardee Cincinnati Classical Academy’s application and claims and terminate the grant based on that review.
Evidence of the Intent to Mislead the Department Regarding the Purpose of the Grant
Throughout the application, the charter school repeats that it is worthy of the grant because CCA exists to provide a high-quality alternative for disadvantaged students in Cincinnati’s public schools. The first two objectives, as stated in the application, are as follows: (1) help to close the achievement gap for economically disadvantaged students in southwestern Ohio; (2) continue to provide a proven and tuition- free charter school option to underserved children and families in an area where limited options for quality schools exist.
To make its case, the application cites demographic information for the city of Cincinnati, which, according to the application, is 41.37% African American/Black, 53.3% white, and has a high poverty rate. Helping students escape poverty and serving underserved students continue as themes throughout the application, justifying the grant.
However, as the table below shows, the school is not serving the underserved students of the area but rather a population that is dramatically whiter and wealthier than not only the city of Cincinnati but the entire County of Hamilton.
The table below provides the 2022-2023 school year demographic distribution of students in the Cincinnati School District public schools, all Hamilton County Schools, all charter schools in Hamilton County, and the applicant—Cincinnati Classical Academy. School enrollment was 452. The demographics of CCA do not reflect either Cincinnati School District public schools or the schools of Hamilton County, which the charter school purports to serve.
Yet, it never provided a demographic breakdown of its students for its first or second year; it only gave a demographic breakdown of the population of Cincinnati. Nor did it acknowledge the under-enrollment of disadvantaged students or put forth a plan to address it. None of its goals and objectives address the lack of diversity and under-enrollment of underserved students. Even more concerning is that the three reviewers never noted the absence of demographic information and instead parroted the application’s assertion that the school was in a high-needs area.
The applicant certainly knew the disproportionate enrollment of wealthier white students in the charter school when it submitted its application in July of 2023. According to the application, 98.2% of the 2022- 23 students were returning in 2023-2024; therefore, the applicant also knew that the school’s demographics would remain stable. It was merely adding a grade level to accommodate its present sixth- grade class.
In summary, although the applicant stated its mission to be closing the achievement gap and serving disadvantaged students, the applicant knew that its student body made the serious fulfillmentof that mission impossible. We also believe this disproportionality in enrollment is by design, as explained below.
Location of Cincinnati Classical Academy
The applicant states the following regarding the location of the charter school: “The location within a diverse neighborhood with access to direct route highways to all areas of the city has allowed CCA to provide a high-quality tuition-free classical education model to adiverse student population, including student’s [sic] representative of urban intergenerational poverty and those experiencing social and economic deprivation during childhood and adolescence.”
Although the school’s mailing address gives the impression that the school is located in Cincinnati, the school is located in Reading, Ohio, a city that is an inner suburb of the Cincinnati metropolitan area.
According to the latest census, 84.8% of Reading residents are white,7.7% are Black, and 10.6% live in poverty5. The village of Evendale that abuts the school property is also predominantly white and has a poverty rate of 2.8%,6 significantly below the Cincinnati rate of 24.7%7, which is nearly twice the national rate.
The location of the school was a deliberate choice. According to theschool’s website, the charter school had sought to locate the school in the former Catholic school facility since 2020.
From the website:
The new school has had interest in the property since 2020, but at that time Ohio law allowed public community schools [charter schools] to locate only in“challenged” school districts. That did not include Reading. In a surprise turn of events, Ohio H.B. 110 removed this restriction starting July 1, 2021.
“We were elated. We contacted the parish immediately to explore their interest,” Hartings said. “We were so fortunate to find a community that shares our values and goals, and that embraced the kind of school we are offering. The campus means a lot to the community, which has several generations of memories there.”8
According to the submitted application, the charter school gives preference to resident children of the Reading Community School District, as required by Ohio State law. Therefore, the placement of the charter school in a “non-challenged “school district would likely result in a student population that was whiter and wealthier than the population described in the application.
Forward Face of the Cincinnati Classical Charter Academy
The forward face of a charter school is its website. From a school’s website, parents glean its philosophy and culture. What is featured on CCA’s website provides insight into the families the school wishes to attract. The applicant claims it seeks a “diverse student population,including student’s [sic] representative of urban intergenerational poverty and those experiencing social and economic deprivation during childhood and adolescence.”
The CCA website, however, describes the school as providing “a tuition-free, classical liberal arts education” in “partnership with Hillsdale College,” a private Christian college, with no forward mention that the school is a charter school. The featured slide deck zooms in on the Christian cross on the school building. Although there is information on the school’s catered lunch program, it does not mention any provision for free or reduced-price lunches. Nowhere on the website does the school provide information in Spanish or other languages or indicate that it is inviting either socio-economically or racially diverse students.
In pictures of classrooms and hallways, the student body shows few students of color and no faculty of color. An image of the gymnasium shows a crucifix displayed on the wall, which we have been advised violates the law and the terms of the grant. A review of the school’svirtual tour features white students and a white faculty and administration.
Inaccuracies in the Application
Throughout the application, the applicant touts the first-year achievement results on state tests provided on page 759 of the application in Appendix G15. The applicant claims, “These results were achieved with
The Department reviewers never questioned why the school never included demographic information. Instead, reviewers parroted back what the applicant said as if it were fact. A simple visit to the school website would have revealed the school for what it is. The lack of fact-checking by reviewers solicited from the charter community has been an ongoing concern.
a diverse student population that evidences the appeal of the Hillsdale K-12 classical education model to families from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds,” a claim which is clearly an over- exaggeration.
The school’s proficiency rates on page 759 do not match those listedon the state website.9 For example, the Ohio Education Department lists CCA’s 6th grade proficiency for the 2022-23 year as 76.9% and mathematics as 43.4%. These same rates are included in the school’s annual report.
Yet, the application lists the rates of the same grade level as 92% and70%, respectively. Inflated rates are given in the application for every grade level in the school.
To further make its case, it compares the school’s ratings to those of what it refers to as underperforming public schools in an underserved target area. It begins with the performance of the Cincinnati Public Schools and continues with schools in a five-mile radius. None of the schools listed in that five-mile radius are part of the Cincinnati Public School system. It should also be noted that the names of the schools it lists for the Reading School District are incorrect, and there are three, not four, schools in that district.
Conclusion
To be blunt, CCA is designed to attract an elite student body whose families seek a private school experience paid for by taxpayers. Its videos, website, and literature, which include showcasing the cross on the top of the building and a crucifix in the gymnasium, are designed to attract white Christian middle- class families from the diverse districts in the area.
The application does not report or explain its lack of diversity. Instead, it masquerades as an equity initiative. The application does not present a plan to become more diverse but instead funding to expand a grade level each year.
While it is true the charter school’s proficiency rates exceed the state, that is hardly surprising given that nearly half of all Ohio publicschool students are economically disadvantaged compared to less than17% of CCA.
Therefore, we ask that the grant to CCA be terminated and, based on the false and misleading information that the school provided, that allmoney be returned to the Department and no further money bedisbursed.
Respectfully submitted,
The Network for Public Education
With:
Greg Landsman, Ohio Congressional District 1
Catherine Ingram, Ohio Senator District 9
Child Wellness Fund, Inc.
Cleveland Heights Teachers Union
Erase the Space
Public Education Partners- Ohio
Cincinnati Federationof Teachers
Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship
Bold New Democracy
Dani Isaacsohn, Ohio State Representative District 24
Cecil Thomas, Ohio Representative District 25
Sedrick Denson, OhioState Representative District 26
Rachel Baker, Ohio State Representative District 27
JessicaMiranda, Ohio State RepresentativeDistrict 28
Ohio PTA
Ohio Education Association
Ohio Federation of Teachers
Cincinnati NAACP
Heights Coalition for Public Education
Honesty for Ohio Education
Northeast Democratic Club
Northeast Ohio Friends of Public Education
Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding
David Armiak of the Center for Media and Democracy reviewed the recent defeat of vouchers in three states: Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska. He points out that vouchers have never won a state referendum. Voters have always said “No” to sending public money to private and religious schools.
Who pays for the state campaigns on behalf of vouchers?
Billionaires.
The two most reliable funders of voucher proposals are billionaires Betsy DeVos and Charles Koch.
The billionaires keep pushing vouchers even though we now know that they are subsidies for families whose children are already enrolled in private schools. And we now know that vouchers don’t help public school students who use them. And we now know that vouchers are a huge drain on state budgets and always cost more than predicted.
DeVos and Koch like to fund failure. Their goal is not to improve education but to destroy public schools.
Armiak writes:
The dark money group Advance Colorado Action (ACA, formerly Unite for Colorado) qualified the ballot measure, but most of the identifiable money spent pushing its passage came from a related advocacy group, Colorado Dawn.
Unite for Colorado was founded in 2019 by Dustin Zvonek, the former vice president for strategy and innovation and state director for Charles Koch’s astroturf operation Americans for Prosperity. As of 2022, Unite for Colorado provided Colorado Dawn with almost half of its revenue ($2.7 million out of $5.9 million).
Both groups have been hit with multiple campaign finance complaints in recent years, including one last month against Colorado Dawn for sending misleading text messages and spending money to influence a ballot measure without registering as an issue committee.
Colorado Dawn reported spending nearly $1.9 million as of October 23 to back Amendment 80, The Colorado Sunreported.
In Kentucky, voters in every county rejected Amendment 2 by a margin of almost two to one (65%).
If it had passed, the state constitution would have been amended to allow public funding to go to private schools.
A record-breaking $14 million was spent by groups in favor and against the amendment, Kentucky Public Radio reported. The Protect Freedom PAC pulled in $5 million from school privatization billionaire Jeff Yassand spent $4 million on ads supporting the measure.
Other groups spending in favor of the amendment included Kentucky Students First ($2.5 million); Empower Kentucky Parents ($1.25 million); Empower Kentucky Parents PAC ($800,000); and the state chapter of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity ($328,000).
Empower Kentucky Parents received $1 million from American Federation for Children, a group organized and funded by the billionaire DeVos family. Betsy DeVos served as secretary of education during Trump’s first term in office and now supports his plans to eliminate the department.
In Nebraska, 57% of voters supported a ballot measure (Referendum 435) to repeal a new state law that would have provided parents with $10 million in public funds per year in the form of vouchers for their children to attend private K–12 schools.
The Nebraska Examiner reported that Keep Kids First spent just $111,000 as of November 4 to prevent the repeal of the referendum in the Cornhusker state. The American Federation for Children is also the largest known donor so far to Keep Kids First, giving $561,500 in 2023–24.
Josh Cowen kindly agreed to write a review of Pete Hegseth’s book about American education, which appears on this blog exclusively!
Hegseth has a simple answer to the problems of education: give all students a voucher and expect that most will choose a classical Christian education.
Josh Cowen is Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State. His latest book is The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers (Harvard Education Press).
As you know, Pete Hegseth was a FOX News host who was nominated by President-Elect Trump to be Secretary of Defense. However, his appointment appears to be in jeopardy at this moment, due to allegations about his sexual exploits and drunken behavior.
Josh Cowen wrote:
Pete Hegseth’s Education Book: American Culture on the Decline, and Only Taxpayer-Funded Classical Christian Schools Can Save Us
I read Pete Hegseth’s book on education, Battle for the American Mind, so you don’t have to. Hegseth is Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Defense Secretary [at this writing], and a Fox News contributor, which means his various views on the military and his trove of televised commentary are going to get more scrutiny. But as someone who understands just how important education is to right-wing plans to remake America, I was neither surprised to learn that the would-be defense secretary had thoughts about schooling, nor hesitant to look at what Hegseth had to say.
So here are a few quick thoughts. Technically, Battle is a co-authored volume with a man named David Goodwin, an activist in the classical Christian education movement. The book is presented as a joint effort that melds Goodwin’s “research about Christianity, America’s founding, history, and education” with Hegseth’s apparently probing questions about those topics. It is, however, largely written in Hegseth’s own voice (being the relative celebrity between the two).
When the book was first published in 2022, it became a bestseller.
The first half of Battle is something of an indictment of American culture, politics, and education. Or more specifically, of the damage that progressives have done to all three. The second half of the book poses classical Christian education as the panacea.
Hegseth (and Goodwin) try to establish early on the notion of “paideia,” which Goodwin apparently read about through the scholars Lawrence Cremin and Werner Jaeger, and in which Hegseth seems to have been taken interest. What is “paideia?” If you’re not terribly concerned with the various buzzwords in classical Christian education circles, it’s not especially important. But in those circles it’s something between an article of faith and what passes for an intellectual framework for their goals.
Basically, paideia is what creates culture: “Paideia is contained in that human part of the soul that makes us who we are…is common to a community…made up of ideas, presumptions, beliefs, affections, and ways of understanding that defines us (p. 52).”
Crucially, “paideia is shaped during childhood” and can be cultivated. And the “Western Christian Paideia (WCP) is a unique form of paideia in that it was intentionally developed and cultivated beginning with the Greeks” who proved “that education was a powerful influencer of paideia (p. 53).” Which makes education attractive to all belief systems. What gives American paideia so much appeal is its potential to meld the Greek tradition with a right-wing version of Christian virtue for future generations.
In typical right-wing fashion, Hegseth accuses Progressives from a century ago, and “the Left” today of what his own sect is doing. It’s the Left’s “indoctrination” of children that makes it so dangerous. Except, most of Battle is a half-screed, half-baked plan to focus on children generally and on their education specifically in a cultural (and, if needed, political) uprising against the Left. As Hegseth says: “the real battlefield isn’t colleges, it’s kindergartens.”
Along the way we meet the familiar bugaboos of right-wing American ideology today’s GOP party politics: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the teachers’ unions, critical race theory, DEI, Black Lives Matter, Howard Zinn, “cultural Marxism,” the Warren Court and—in a turn of a phrase that seems to have evoked any number of self-satisfied high-fives in right-wing media green rooms—the scourge of the “Covid-(16)19 Virus” in American schools. Get the idea?
Meanwhile, approved pop culture touchstones that serve almost as sources for the book’s counter-material include the movie Gladiator, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, the heroes in both the C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein series, (said to be a favorite of J.D. Vance as well), and more spot-quotes of dead philosophers than I care to count for this blog post.
Honestly, Battle reads like a couple of 10th Grade AP History students crammed with a video series from Hillsdale College before knocking out their final term papers and hitting “send” before hitting the gym. It’s that profound.
It would also be silly, if it weren’t also entirely an artifact of very real, very potent, and very present intentions on the American Right for education and for child-related policy. It’s easy to make fun of a couple of bros taken in by a smart-sounding Greek word like “paideia.” But when a possible future defense secretary draws from his experience in Afghanistan as evidence that paideia exists, and while malleable, cannot be imposed on other cultures, only grown from within—the “Afghan paideia” was too strong for Americans to impose our own on it, but now “we are losing it at home” (p. 57)—it’s worth paying attention.
In this telling, American “democracy” is simply progressive “gospel” (p. 89) and is secondary to restoring the promise of American…paideia.
It’s that kind of mindset—more than trust in the market, more than purported concerns for COVID-era learning loss, more than a genuine desire for all kids to have the education that best fits their needs—that truly gives the Right’s push for educational privatization its energy.
Enter school vouchers—a “key element” of their goal. Hegseth and Goodwin close Battle with a call for voucher tax credits—not the direct appropriation kind coming from state budgets at the moment. The reason for that detail is mostly due to a desire to avoid government as a middle man (though make no mistake, the impact on public funding is the same). The goal here is to rebuild the American paideia through classical Christian education:
“Our hope (and plan),” Hegseth and Goodwin write, “is that most parents are clamoring to get their kids into the best local classical Christian school,” with “Jesus Christ at the center of all of it.” (p. 237). That hope and plan requires the “battle” in the book’s title—an insurgency protected by “the full Armor of God,” as they put it.
That phrase comes from the book of Ephesians in the Bible:
Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Understand that this “full armor” phrase comes specifically as the authors are discussing their “hope (and plan)” for publicly funded classical Christian schools.
As a Christian man myself—one who grew up in the same network of Catholic covenant communities as Justice Amy Coney Barrett—I know how prevalent this kind of thinking is among some members of my faith tradition. I would even call it fringe, and not widely held or fairly representative of a modest Christian.
Except that fringe is at the center of right-wing politics today, of right-wing education policymaking, and—quite possibly—at the highest levels of government, up to and including a Hegseth Pentagon and the Trump White House.
Editor’s note: We should be grateful that Hegseth was not chosen to be Secretary of Education.
Jeff Bryant is a veteran journalist who covers education issues. He is the chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He shared the following article with this blog.
What a Podcast Killed by Houston Public Media Reveals About the State Takeover of the City’s Schools
A podcast about the state takeover of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), which Houston Public Media (HPM) produced, promoted, and then quietly killed before it debuted, has been shared with Our Schools. “The Takeover,” hosted by Dominic Walsh, an award-winning public education journalist, examines the takeover, the state’s installation of a new board and a controversial superintendent Mike Miles, and the subsequent series of reforms Miles rolled out that have frustrated and angered teachers, parents, and students.
Our Schools has thoroughly examined the recordings to ensure their authenticity and is reporting on the contents of each episode so that readers are better informed about the consequences of the state takeover of Texas’s largest school district—the eighth-largest district in the nation. We have decided not to make the podcast public for legal reasons.
In four episodes of what was meant to be Season One of the podcast, Walsh covers events that took place in the school year 2023-2024, beginning with the secret ceremony in which Miles was sworn in to serve as superintendent in June 2023. Episode four culminates in March 2024 when public outrage forced Miles to back down on an evaluation plan that could have potentially resulted in half of the district’s principals losing their jobs, including some who lead the district’s top-rated schools.
Walsh ended the Season by questioning whether widespread public anger at policies implemented by Miles could endanger a school bond referendum that voters eventually decided on during the November 2024 election. That bond referendum was defeated, and the Houston Landing reported that Texas voters had never before rejected a proposed school bond measure “totaling $1 billion or more.” HPM called the defeat “an unofficial referendum of state takeover.”
Much of the airtime in “The Takeover” is taken up by interviews that are critical of what Miles has implemented, including those with parents, teachers, librarians, and students, many of whom bitterly complain about the new reforms. Walsh points out that state takeovers of local school districts almost never produce positive results, as numerousstudieshaveshown.
Walsh has given ample time to takeover supporters on the podcast as well, including Miles; Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath, who appointed Miles; state-appointed Houston School Board President Audrey Momanaee; and Texas lawmakers, both Democratic and Republican, who support the takeover. He also speaks about positive developments since the takeover began, including improved test scores in math and science.
Yet, while Walsh’s reporting can be described as balanced, he largely frames the takeover and the new reforms Miles has imposed as the latest iteration of the decades-long education reform movement that Walsh negatively characterizes as being “top-down.” He further points out that the reforms are overly reliant on standardized testing with punitive accountability measures that often lead to schools being closed, teachers and school principals being fired, and parents feeling alienated.
A request for comment was sent to HPM station manager Joshua Adams, but Our Schools is yet to receive a response.
Episode one of “The Takeover” is titled “School Reform, the Musical,” a reference to a musical skit Miles staged, and played the leading role in, to ease the district about his massive disruption efforts and to counter any criticisms. But the episode could easily have been called “Winners and Losers,” which is the theme Walsh keeps returning to while describing who gains in Miles’s new education system and who loses out.
The winners tend to be those school staff members who benefit from a tiered salary system Miles implemented and teachers who are comfortable with a centrally created and scripted curriculum. The losers? Parents who see their children’s favorite teachers being fired or leaving in frustration. Students who find the scripted curriculum less engaging. Librarians whose libraries are shuttered. Teachers who lament about losing their freedom to tailor instruction to students and miss the curriculum they felt most passionate about, like teaching the entire book in English Language Arts class.
A contrast Walsh repeatedly draws throughout the episode is Miles’s claims of knowing “the best way” to improve schools versus what Walsh observes as the “painful reality” on the ground when the reforms were rolled out.
Episode one, “School Reform, the Musical” states:“State installed superintendent Mike Miles says his plan will make schools better, raise test scores, and career readiness, especially in high poverty neighborhoods that need it the most. And who could argue with those goals. Everyone wants that. Right? But it’s complicated.” —Dominic Walsh
In episode two, “The Law,” Walsh begins by examining the law that made the state takeover possible and delves into the “conflicting philosophies” over public education and the rampant inequity in the education system. His reporting reveals that the law, House Bill 1842, was mostly based on the low academic performance of just one school, which had started to improve just before the announcement of the takeover. Walsh questions whether the low performance in Houston schools might be due to a lack of resources and the rigid system Texas uses to assess its schools.
Another state law the episode considers—passed in 2017—was an attempt to incentivize school districts to partner with charter school management groups to operate their lowest-performing schools. This law kept the HISD and other districts with low-performing schools under constant pressure of being privatized. Walsh explains that Houston’s reform movement is based on strict accountability measures of schools, which were exported to the entire nation later on.
Episode two, “The Law” states:“This is a story about conflicting philosophies—deep-seated disagreements over the possibilities, potentials, and purpose of public education in a deeply unequal society.” —Dominic Walsh
Episode three, “The Texas Miracle,” goes back to the 1990s to explore the origin of top-down education reform in Texas under then-Governor George W. Bush and the so-called Texas miracle that became the inspiration for the No Child Left Behind Act, enacted in 2002 by then-President George W Bush. These policies were furthered under the Barack Obama presidential administration, and, in Houston, under the leadership of former superintendent Terry Grier from 2009 to 2016. He was rewarded with school improvement grant money by Obama, which he used to force changes in some of the very same schools Miles is focused on today.
However, Walsh speaks with education researcher Julian Vasquez Heilig, who was an employee of HISD’s Office of Research and Accountability from 1999-2001. He explains that the acclaimed progress resulting from the Texas miracle was a “mirage.” In another interview, education historian Jack Schneider says that the positive results, of what he calls the “bipartisan, neoliberal” policy of NCLB and similar laws, have never really been achieved.
Nevertheless, Walsh explains that the reform agenda spawned a host of reforms, to which Miles is devoted. In fact, as Walsh reports, the charter school network that Miles created and led, called the Third Future Schools, uses an education approach almost identical to what Miles is trying to implement for Houston’s public schools system. Walsh notes that Third Future Schools struggled to meet all the progress measures in another Texas school district when the company was contracted to transform a school. Walsh concludes, “If Miles can pull this off in Houston, it will be a first.”
Episode three, “The Texas Miracle” states:
“In the eyes of some researchers, if we have learned anything from the past two decades of education policy, it’s that this type of top-down, test-based school reform does not work, largely because of what it misses. But others think Mike Miles may have finally cracked the code.”
—Dominic Walsh
The Takeover’s final episode, “Reconciliation,” largely focuses on the behind-the-scenes players that will determine the fate of Houston schools. These include the state-appointed board that Miles answers to—it mostly functions as a rubber stamp for Miles’s reform agenda, according to critics—the Texas Education Agency that initiated the takeover, and Texas state lawmakers, including the legislature and Governor Gregg Abbott, who determine state education policy. In reporting on each of these entities, Walsh finds various “contradictions” that are hard to reconcile.
Walsh interviews Audrey Momanaee about the takeover board and questions how the effort can align with the “visions and values of community,” as she claims while delivering “results,” like higher test scores and a narrowed curriculum, which don’t seem to be in line with the values of the local community. Walsh returns to this same contradiction in his interview with Morath in which Walsh notices how Morath’s emphasis on raising test scores clashes with his goal to raise “educated citizens.” Texas state lawmakers present an even starker contradiction, Walsh notes, as they pass laws that hold public schools to increasingly harsher accountability measures while attempting to pass a new voucher system that would redirect more education funding to private schools, which have no public accountability at all.
In the face of these contradictions, Walsh accuses leaders of the Houston takeover of “kind of operating as if they have blinders on” as they choose to ignore what education should be, instead, going for scripted curriculum, command and control managerial practices, and ever higher test scores. Walsh notes that Miles seems to waver from his agenda only when wealthier parents and representatives of the business community voice their dissatisfaction.
Episode four, “Reconciliation” states:
“How the state measures success, how it decides when to intervene, and when this takeover will end, is actually up in the air. In fact, the whole public education system in Texas is in flux.”
—Dominic Walsh
Why HPM decided to kill “The Takeover” before it had a chance to air is not immediately clear based on the content of the podcast.
According to a September 2024 article in the Texas Monthly, which called the decision to kill the podcast “head-scratching,” executives at the news organization pulled “The Takeover” the day before it was scheduled to debut when they learned that Walsh’s “long-term romantic relationship with an HISD teacher” presented, what they believed, was a “conflict of interest.” Through a series of public records requests, Texas Monthly reporters Michael Hardy and Forrest Wilder obtained copies of the podcast episodes and internal communications related to its cancellation.
In their investigation, Hardy and Wilder found “no evidence that HPM canceled the podcast because of external pressure, as some community members have speculated. No inaccuracies in Walsh’s reporting are identified in the internal communications we reviewed, and HPM executives did not respond to a question about whether they had identified any.”
Hardy and Wilder also note that “What constitutes a conflict of interest is a disputed subject among journalists.” They have interviewed experts on ethics in journalism who question HPM executives’ decision to cancel the podcast.
HPM still archives Walsh’s education reporting on its website, with no disclaimer. Walsh, however, no longer covers education and seems to be reporting on other beats for HPM.
But it’s hard not to sense the irony as Walsh signs off his reporting in “The Takeover” saying, “Whatever happens we will be here. Stay tuned.”
At the behest of Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the legislature enacted a voucher program. As in every other state with vouchers, most are used by students already enrolled in private or religious schools. The voucher is a subsidy for families who could already pay but are happy to take the extra money.
The Arkansas LEARNS Act, signed into law in 2023 by Gov. Sarah Sanders, created a voucher program that sends public money to private school families to use for tuition, fees and other expenses. This school year, the program is open to many homeschoolers as well. Homeschool families don’t have tuition bills to pay, but they’re able to use voucher funds for a variety of other education-related expenses, such as books and supplies, curricula, computers and other technology, and private tutoring.
Some of those vendors appear to focus in whole or in part on “equine-assisted therapy” services for people with disabilities or trauma. Others appear to simply offer kids the opportunity to ride, interact with and care for horses. But all of them have been given the go-ahead by the Arkansas Department of Education to receive taxpayer dollars at a time when the state has cut inflation-adjusted spending in other areas.
Relatively speaking, equestrian centers are unlikely to eat up too much of the overall voucher pie. Each LEARNS voucher costs the public about $6,856 in the current 2024-25 school year, and there are about 14,000 students in the program this year, most of whom attend private schools. (About 3,000 are homeschooled.) The majority of the roughly $96 million that Arkansas spends on vouchers is flowing to private schools, such as Little Rock Christian Academy or Shiloh Christian School in Springdale.
The idea of publicly subsidizing horseback riding seems to be striking a nerve in a way that paying private school tuition does not. But one could argue there’s not a lot of difference between the two.
There are no income-eligibility requirements for either homeschool or private school households to receive a voucher. Well-off homeschool families who already paid out of pocket for riding lessons before Arkansas LEARNS can now get them comped by the state. In the same vein, families who paid private school tuition before LEARNS are now getting a taxpayer-funded boost to their bank accounts, freeing them to spend that money on whatever else they please (including horseback riding, if they wish).
Diane Ravitch's blog 