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Florida: Voting on the Amendments on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2024 //
4

Scott Maxwell, a regular columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, has some suggestions about how to vote in the referenda in Florida. From reading him for the past few years, I trust his judgment.

I don’t live in Florida, but the amendment I will watch closely is #4. That’s the amendment to roll back Florida’s harsh six-week ban on abortion. Very few, if any, women know that they are pregnant at the six-week mark. A six-week ban is, in reality, a total ban. Under this ban, women will die; young girls will be forced to become mothers. People like Ron DeSantis are not pro-life.

VOTE YES TO REPEAL THE SIX-WEEK BAN.

VOTE YES TO REPEAL THE BAN.

This is how Scott Maxwell is voting on state referenda:

Florida’s Constitutional amendments can be confusing, often by design.

So I’m going to try to break down the six amendments on this year’s ballot as simply as possible. I’ll give you the arguments for and against each one, tell you some of the supporters and opponents and share how I’m voting. Do whatever you want. It’s your constitution.

Amendment 1: Make school board races partisan

This would take school board races, which are now nonpartisan affairs, and turn them into partisan contests with closed primaries. The idea was backed by Republican state legislators — and one Democrat, Sen. Linda Stewart of Orlando — who believe partisanship should play a bigger and more transparent role in school issues. Opponents, including the League of Women Voters, say injecting more partisanship into school board races is a rotten idea and note that the closed primary system will prevent many of you from casting votes.

Vote yes: If you want more partisanship and party involvement in local school races, as well as closed primaries.

Vote no: If you think candidates should appeal to voters based on their platforms and credentials rather than their party affiliation.

How I’m voting: No. I think this is the worst amendment on this year’s ballot. The last thing our schools need is more politics and partisanship.

Amendment 2: Put hunting and fishing in the Constitution

This would add language to the Florida Constitution that says hunting and fishing is a constitutionally protected right. Hunting and fishing is already legal in Florida. Existing statutes even declare them as “preserved” activities. And no state has banned hunting and fishing. But advocates say they just want to be super-duper sure. Opponents say this is like asking voters to pass a constitutional amendment protecting the right to golf or play tennis. The Florida Bar Journal also published a lengthy piece that said this proposal could have unintended consequences, such as prohibiting local beach communities from closing stretches of beach to protect turtle eggs, for instance, if someone claimed that turtle protection got in the way of their “constitutional right to fish.”

Vote yes: If you want to enshrine hunting and fishing protections in the Florida Constitution.

Vote no: If you don’t.

How I’m voting: No. This one seems unnecessary and potentially fraught with unintended legal consequences.

Amendment 3: Legalize recreational marijuana

This would basically treat marijuana like cigarettes and booze, making the substance legal but subject to strict government regulation. Advocates note that marijuana is a natural substance, already widely used and argue that legalization would make it safer. Some law enforcement chiefs say it would also stop wasting their time. Opponents, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Chamber of Commerce, dispute the drug’s safety, say this amendment would primarily benefit a few large companies and generally argue that communities that allow marijuana are unpleasant.

Vote yes: If you want to legalize marijuana.

Vote no: If you don’t.

How I’m voting: I’ve been torn on this one. I don’t think marijuana is as harmless as some advocates claim and know companies like Trulieve hope to make billions off legalization. But I also believe adults should have the ability to make their own decisions and can’t make a good case for why alcohol and carcinogenic cigarettes should be legal and why this naturally grown plant shouldn’t be. So I ultimately decided yes, agreeing with the Sentinel editorial board’s summary: “We’re not going to pretend that legalizing recreational marijuana would be a 100% beneficial experience for Florida. But it does make sense — far more sense than the current situation, where some people use medical pot with no fear of prosecution while others still face arrest, jail steep fines or a lifelong criminal record for possessing it.”

Amendment 4: Prohibit Tallahassee-imposed restrictions on abortion

This is the abortion amendment. And it’s pretty simple. It would prohibit state lawmakers from imposing any laws that place restrictions on abortion “before viability” beyond what federal law says while preserving requirements for parental notification. Citizens placed this initiative on the ballot to combat Florida’s new restrictions, which are some of the strictest in the nation, banning abortion after 15 weeks without exceptions for rape or incest and effectively banning most abortions after six weeks. Supporters, including some doctors, say Florida’s law puts women’s lives in danger, is heartlessly cruel to victims of sexual crimes and that abortion decisions should be made by women and their doctors, not politicians. Opponents, including the governor and GOP lawmakers, generally oppose abortion and say they should have the right to decide what medical procedures pregnant women can undergo.

Vote yes: If you think Florida’s existing ban on abortions without many exceptions is too extreme.

Vote no: If you are opposed to abortion under most any circumstances and trust state politicians to make the rules.

How I’m voting: Yes. I believe thoughtful people can have different opinions on abortion. But Florida’s current laws are extreme and dangerous.

Amendment 5: Adjust homestead exemptions for inflation

State lawmakers want to offer homeowners a tiny tax break — maybe $10 a year — but force local governments to pay for it. This one’s a bit complicated. It would take half of the $50,000 homestead exemption homeowners get and tie it to inflation. So if inflation rose by 2.5% one year, your homestead exemption would be worth $50,625 the next, representing an increase of 2.5% on $25,000. Clear as mud, right? Opponents say this is political trickery, since state lawmakers aren’t offering to cut state taxes. They want to force local governments to take the hit. And the Florida League of Cities argues that tiny savings for homeowners would have a huge collective impact on local governments. The Tampa Bay Times editorial board supports this plan. The Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel oppose, noting this tax break would elude many Floridians, namely renters.

Vote yes: If you want to slightly increase the tax exemption homeowners get every year and decrease what local governments collect for services like fire and police.

Vote no: If you think the exemption is fine the way it is.

How I’m voting: No. I don’t really care much about this one either way. Sure, I’d like a few extra bucks. But this seems like political theater; a way for state lawmakers to say they provided a tiny tax break without cutting any of their own spending. If state lawmakers want to cut taxes, they should cut the taxes they collect.

Amendment 6: Repeal taxpayer financed campaigns

This would end the law that allows candidates for statewide office to use public money to finance their campaigns. Forty years ago, Floridians voted to create this program, hoping it would help grassroots candidates compete with politicians who suck up gobs of special-interest money. But now, thanks to political committees that can take unlimited donations, the candidates who take the most special interest money also collect the most tax dollars. Ron DeSantis set the record in 2022, collecting the most money ever from deep-pocketed donors and the most from taxpayers (more than $7 million). Supporters of this repeal include Florida legislators. Opponents include the League of Women Voters and the Sentinel editorial board.

Vote yes: If you don’t believe taxpayers should finance political campaigns.

Vote no: If you like the idea of tax dollars paying for campaigns and believe lesser-funded candidates deserve help, even if their better-funded opponents get more of it.

How I’m voting: Yes. Unlike my newspaper’s editorial board, I believe this subsidies-for-politicians program was a noble idea that has been warped beyond sense or salvation. It could’ve been fixed by requiring subsidy recipients to limit all their other contributions. But lawmakers have consistently refused such reforms.

Want more info?

Check out the League of Women Voters’ great voter-info site at Vote411.org

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Florida

Ohio: Vote YES on Issue 1 to De-politicize Gerrymandering

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2024 //
1

Jeanne Melvin is a public education activist in Ohio. She urges Ohio voters to vote YES on issue 1. This would put a bipartisan commission in charge of redistricting instead of the Legislature. It would block the Legislature from designing their own districts to assure a supermajority. Ohio’s Republican supermajority has passed numerous bills to privatize school funding, including a universal voucher bill that enables all parents to get public funding to subsidize their private school tuition. Vouchers. Most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. Like all universal vouchers programs, Ohio’s is welfare for the wealthy.

Melvin writes:

Public Education is on the ballot across our nation.

Americans must choose between two presidential candidates whose policies, strategies, and experience relating to issues in public education are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Voters in 10 states will decide 11 statewide education-related ballot measures– the most since 2018.

Ohio voters have the opportunity to elect state school board candidates and pro-public education candidates, along with approving or renewing tax levies or bond issues from over 100 school districts in the Buckeye State.

This November, Ohio voters will also decide if politicians should be left in charge of drawing our voting maps, or if the politicians should be removed from the process in favor of a citizens commission. 

According to Dr. Christina Collins, former State School Board member and current director of Honesty for Ohio Education, the lack of competitive districts brings “extreme” education policies like attempting to regulate curriculums to avoid what legislators call “critical race theory” from getting into schools, the anti-LGBTQ law keeping transgender students from playing sports in the teams that align with their gender identity, and active bills that would threaten funding and dictate the kind of materials allowed in school libraries.

As previously stated, Ohio’s gerrymandered GOP majority has brought forward some extreme education bills designed to benefit private schools and to defund and diminish public school districts. Public education advocates have responded with facts, logic, and common sense, but lawmakers and lobbyists have chosen not to listen. 

Why would they listen? Gerrymandering has guaranteed a GOP supermajority, and Senate President Matt Huffman said the quiet part out loud: “We can kind of do what we want.”  

Ohioans can VOTE YES on Issue 1 on or before November 5, a bipartisan effort to remove the politicians from legislative redistricting in favor of a 15-member citizens commission made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents. 

For education, this would mean that instead of Ohio lawmakers focusing on culture wars and EdChoice school voucher expansion, they could focus on more important issues, such as fair school funding to help our local public school districts.

If you don’t like legislative-district maps that have been deliberately drawn to ensure that one political party has a veto-proof supermajority, VOTE YES on Issue 1.

If you don’t like unreasonable education policies, VOTE YES on Issue 1.

If you don’t like paying for other peoples’ private school choices, VOTE YES on Issue 1. 

If you want to keep public tax dollars in public schools, VOTE YES on Issue 1.

That’s why I voted YES on Issue 1!

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Ohio, Privatization, Republicans

Massachusetts: Vote YES On Question 2 to Remove State Test as a Graduation Requirement

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
13

Massachusetts has one of the highest performing school systems in the nation on the national test called NAEP (National Assesmrnt of Educational Progress). Some attribute this success to the state’s testing and accountability program. Others believe that the state test–MCAS–is overused and misused as a high school graduation requirement. Critics of the high-stakes exam as graduation requirement say that it was not designed to be an exit exam, that it has no value for diagnostic purposes, and that the small number of students who don’t pass it are disproportionately made up of students with disabilities and students who are not native-English speakers.

More than 90% of tenth graders pass the MCAS on their first try. Ultimately only hundreds out of more than 65,000 students don’t pass the test, and 85% of those who fail either have disabilities or don’t speak English.

Opponents of MCAS as a high-stakes graduation requirement have placed a referendum on the ballot called Question 2.

I urge voters in Massachusetts to vote YES on Question 2.

Belief in standardized testing as a remedy for low test scores has been misplaced for decades. Some believe that facing a test compels students to study harder, but we now know that the results of the standardized tests reflect family income and education more than student effort and ability. Those at the bottom of the scores inevitably are students with disabilities, students who don’t read English, students living in high poverty.

If high-stakes standardized were the solution to poor academic performance, the U.S. would have no failure at all. We have been administering those tests for more than 20 years. After the initial increases that are associated with test prep, improvement ground to a halt and score gaps between racial and economic groups stubbornly persisted.

Massachusetts teachers know that good things happen to students when schools have ample resources, small classes, and time to help the students with the greatest needs.

The YES vote is supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, many local school boards, and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The NO vote is supported by Governor Maura Healey and the business community.

The campaign to keep the MCAS as a graduation requirement just received a donation of $2.5 million from former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg ran the New York City schools with a firm belief that high-stakes testing, charter schools, and firing professionals would fix the schools. They didn’t, but he hasn’t learned anything from his stewardship of the schools.

The Boston Globe reported:

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $2.5 million to the group trying to beat back a ballot question that would eliminate the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, offering a significant infusion into the heated campaign just ahead of Election Day.

Bloomberg’s seven-figure donation is the largest contribution the “Vote No on 2″ campaign has received, and accounts for more than half of the $4.8 million it has reported raising this election cycle, state data show.

It’s not the billionaire’s first time pouring money into a Massachusetts ballot campaign. Bloomberg donated $490,000 in 2016 to a failed ballot question that would have expanded charter schools in Massachusetts.

If approved by voters, Question 2 would repeal a provision of the state’s landmark 1993 education law that makes earning a high school diploma contingent on students passing MCAS exams in English, math, and science. In its place, the ballot measure would establish a new mandate: Students would need to complete coursework certified by their districts in those subjects that meet state academic standards. The state would be able to add new subjects to that list.

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, writes on his blog that the entry of Bloomberg clarifies the actors. He says it is capital vs. labor, the oligarchy vs. the teachers’ union.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Elections, Massachusetts, Standardized Testing

Kentucky Catholic School Student: Vote NO on Vouchers

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
4

This post appeared originally in the Louisville Courier-Journal. It has since been posted by The Network for Public Education, whose contents are curated by Peter Greene.

Liam Amick: Trinity won’t let me write about Amendment 2. Here’s why I’m against it.

Liam Amick is a senior at Trinity High School, a Catholic school in Kentucky, where vouchers are on the ballot next week in Amendment 2, a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would okay vouchers. Trinity has made support of the Amendment mandatory. Amick would like to disagree, and does so in the Courier Journal.

Every day when I drive into school, I’m greeted by yard signs blazing with the message “YES on 2!” To see these put up at Trinity, a school that generally requests little political discussion at school, was quite a shock.

I’m a “private school kid.” I went to St. Francis of Assisi for first through eighth grades, and I am now a senior at Trinity High School. I will always be indebted to those schools for providing me with fantastic educations and experiences in the most formative years of my life. But to say I am disappointed with Trinity’s stance on Amendment 2 — a Kentucky ballot measure that would allow public tax funding to be used for private schools — would be an understatement.

An even bigger disappointment has been Trinity’s and the Archdiocese of Louisville‘s responses to criticism of their position. When both Trinity’s Student Government and Faculty Senate asked if the “YES on 2!” signs could be taken down, they were told that the archdiocese had asked us to put them up and there was absolutely no chance of them being taken down. Also, the administration doesn’t allow our school journalism program to report on any political topics and or criticisms of Trinity and its policies, so I felt that to share my views I had to look outside of the school.

In my opinion, the desire of non-public schools to support Amendment 2 is logical, but closed-minded. What’s important to remember is that, in Kentucky, 65% of non-public schools are found in Louisville, Lexington and the general Northern Kentucky area. Out of 120 counties in Kentucky, 89 have no access to a non-public school, and well-run, accredited non-public schools aren’t going to magically appear in those counties after the passage of Amendment 2. So, the “school choice” amendment would in fact offer students in these areas no “choice” to go to a different school.

Supporters of Amendment 2 often bring up Kentucky’s 2023 $1 billion budget surplus, claiming that that money will be used to provide funding to public schools and said schools will lose no money. However, that surplus money already has a destination. According to House Appropriations and Revenue Chair Jason Petrie, the extra money has “provided the opportunity to invest more than $2.7 billion over the next two years to improve road, rail, river, air, and water infrastructure.” Although Petrie claims they are also making “targeted investments in school facilities,” the bottom line is that significantly fewer tax dollars would go to public schools, leaving no replacement funding in their wake.

Read the full op-ed here. You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/liam-amick-trinity-wont-let-me-write-about-amendment-2-heres-why-im-against-it/

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Religion, Separation of church and state, Students, Vouchers

Barbara Bush, Daughter of GW Bush, is Campaigning for Kamala

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

Barbara Bush, daughter and granddaughter of Republican presidents, endorsed Kamala Harris and is campaigning for her in Pennsylvania.

According to People magazine:

Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush, spent part of her weekend in Pennsylvania campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris with just days to go before the 2024 presidential election….

“Barbara’s Republican father served as president from 2001 to 2009. Her mother, former first lady Laura Bush, 77, broke with the party’s stance in 2010 by saying she supports same-sex marriage and abortion. At the time, Laura said abortion should “remain legal, because I think it’s important for people, for medical reasons and other reasons.”

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Gender, Harris, Kamala

Brookings Institution: What Project 2025 Means for Education

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

A group of scholars at the Brookings Institution analyzed Project 2025’s proposals for education and their implications.

What struck me as most bizarre about Project 2025 was not its efforts to block-grant all federal funding of schools, nor its emphasis on privatization of K-12 schools. (Block-granting means assigning federal funding to states as a lump sum, no strings attached, no federal oversight).

No, what amazed me most was the split screen between the report’s desire to hand all power over education to states and communities, and the report’s insistence on preserving enough power to punish LGBT students, especially trans students and to impose other far-right mandates, like stamping out critical race theory. You know, either you let the states decide or you don’t. The report wants it both ways.

It’s also astonishing to realize that the insidious goal of the report is eventually abandon federal funding of education. That’s a huge step backward, taking us to 1965, before Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose purpose was to raise spending in impoverished communities. I essence, P2025 says that decades of pursuing equitable funding “didn’t work,” so let’s abandon the goal and the spending.

Here is the Brookings analysis:

Project 2025 outlines a radical policy agenda that would dramatically reshape the federal government. The report was spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and represents the policy aims of a large coalition of conservative activists. While former President Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, many of the report’s authors worked in the previous Trump administration and could return for a second round. Trump, himself, said in 2022, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

In other words, Project 2025 warrants a close look, even if the Trump campaign would like Americans to avert their gaze.

Project 2025’s education agenda proposes a drastic overhaul of federal education policy, from early childhood through higher education. Here’s just a sample of the Project 2025 education-related recommendations:

  • Dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED)
  • Eliminate the Head Start program for young children in poverty
  • Discontinue the Title I program that provides federal funding to schools serving low-income children
  • Rescind federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
  • Undercut federal capacity to enforce civil rights law
  • Reduce federal funding for students with disabilities and remove guardrails designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools
  • Promote universal private school choice
  • Privatize the federal student loan portfolio

It’s an outrageous list, and that’s just the start of it.

We’ve reviewed the Project 2025 chapter on education (Chapter 11), along with other chapters with implications for students. We’ve come away with four main observations:

1. Most of the major policy proposals in Project 2025 would require an unlikely amount of congressional cooperation

Project 2025 is presented as a to-do list for an incoming Trump administration. However, most of its big-ticket education items would require a great deal of cooperation from Congress.

Proposals to create controversial, new laws or programs would require majority support in the House and, very likely, a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate. Ideas like a Parents’ Bill of Rights, the Department of Education Reorganization Act, and a federal tax-credit scholarship program fall into this category. Even if Republicans outperform expectations in this fall’s Senate races, they’d have to attract several Democratic votes to get to 60. That’s not happening for these types of proposals.  

The same goes for major changes to existing legislation. This includes, for example, a proposal to convert funding associated with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to no-strings-attached block grants and education savings accounts (with, presumably, much less accountability for spending those funds appropriately). It also includes a proposal to end the “negotiated rulemaking” (“neg-reg”) process that ED follows when developing regulations related to programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). The neg-reg requirement is written into HEA itself, which means that unwinding neg-reg would require Congress to amend the HEA. That’s unlikely given that HEA reauthorization is already more than a decade overdue—and that’s without the political baggage of Project 2025 weighing down the process.

The prospect of changing funding levels for existing programs is a little more complicated. Programs like Title I are permanently authorized. Eliminating Title I or changing the formulas it usesto allocate funds to local educational agencies would require new and unlikely legislation. Year-to-year funding levels can and do change, but the vast majority of ED’s budget consists of discretionary funding that’s provided through the regular, annual appropriations process and subject to a filibuster. This limits the ability of one party to make major, unilateral changes. (ED’s mandatoryfunding is more vulnerable.)

In sum, one limiting factor on what an incoming Trump administration could realistically enact from Project 2025 is that many of these proposals are too unpopular with Democrats to overcome their legislative hurdles.

2. Some Project 2025 proposals would disproportionately harm conservative, rural areas and likely encounter Republican opposition

Another limiting factor is that some of Project 2025’s most substantive proposals probably wouldn’t be all that popular with Republicans either.

Let’s take, for example, the proposed sunsetting of the Title I program. Project 2025 proposes to phase out federal spending on Title I over a 10-year period, with states left to decide whether and how to continue that funding. It justifies this with misleading suggestions that persistent test score gaps between wealthy and poor students indicate that investments like Title I funding aren’t paying off. (In fact, evidence from school finance reforms suggests real benefits from education spending, especially for students from low-income families.)

The phrase “Title I schools” might conjure up images of under-resourced schools in urban areas that predominantly serve students of color, and it’s true that these schools are major beneficiaries of Title I. However, many types of schools, across many types of communities, receive critical support through Title I. In fact, schools in Republican-leaning areas could be hit the hardest by major cuts or changes to Title I. In the map below, we show the share of total per-pupil funding coming from Title I by state. Note that many of the states that rely the most on Title I funds (darkest blue) are politically conservative.

[Open the link to see the map.]

Of course, the impact of shifting from federal to state control of Title I would depend on how states choose to handle their newfound decision-making power. Given that several red states are among the lowest spenders on education—and have skimped on programs like Summer EBT and Medicaid expansion—it’s hard to believe that low-income students in red states would benefit from a shift to state control.

What does that mean for the type of support that Project 2025 proposals might get from red-state Republicans in Congress? It’s hard to know. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that the GOP’s push for universal private school voucher programs has encountered some of its fiercest resistance from rural Republicans across several states.

3. Project 2025 also has significant proposals that a second Trump administration could enact unilaterally

While a second Trump administration couldn’t enact everything outlined in Project 2025 even if it wanted to, several consequential proposals wouldn’t require cooperation from Congress. This includes some actions that ED took during the first Trump administration and certainly could take again.

Here are a few of the Project 2025 proposals that the Trump administration could enact with the authority of the executive branch alone:

  • Roll back civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
  • Roll back Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination
  • Dismantle the federal civil rights enforcement apparatus
  • Eliminate current income-driven repayment plans and require higher monthly payments for low-income borrowers
  • Remove protections from predatory colleges that leave students with excessive debt

Federal education policy has suffered from regulatory whiplash over the last decade, with presidential administrations launching counter-regulations to undo the executive actions of the prior administration. Take, for example, “gainful employment” regulations that Democratic administrations have used to limit eligibility for federal financial aid for colleges that leave students with excessive loan debt. A second Trump administration would likely seek to reverse the Biden administration’s “gainful employment” regulations like the first Trump administration did to the Obama administration’s rules. (Then again, with the Supreme Court striking down Chevron, which provided deference to agency expertise in setting regulations, the Trump administration might not even need to formally undo regulations.)

Other Project 2025 proposals, not explicitly about education, also could wreak havoc. This includes a major overhaul of the federal civil service. Specifically, Project 2025 seeks to reinstate Schedule F, an executive order that Trump signed during his final weeks in office. Schedule F would reclassify thousands of civil service positions in the federal government to policy roles—a shift that would empower the president to fire civil servants and fill their positions with political appointees. Much has been written about the consequences of decimating the civil service, and the U.S. Department of Education, along with other federal agencies that serve students, would feel its effects.

4. Project 2025 reflects a white Christian nationalist agenda as much as it reflects a traditional conservative education policy agenda

If one were to read Project 2025’s appeals to principles such as local control and parental choice, they might think this is a standard conservative agenda for education policy. Republicans, after all, have been calling for the dismantling of ED since the Reagan administration, and every administration since has supported some types of school choice reforms.

But in many ways, Project 2025’s proposals really don’t look conservative at all. For example, a large-scale, tax-credit scholarship program would substantially increase the federal government’s role in K-12 education. A Parents’ Bill of Rights would require the construction of a massive federal oversight and enforcement function that does not currently exist. And a proposal that “states should require schools to post classroom materials online to provide maximum transparency to parents” would impose an enormous compliance burden on schools, districts, and teachers.

Much of Project 2025 is more easily interpretable through the lens of white Christian nationalism than traditional political conservatism. Scholars Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry describe white Christian nationalism as being “about ethno-traditionalism and protecting the freedoms of a very narrowly defined ‘us’.” The Project 2025 chapter on education is loaded with proposals fitting this description. That includes a stunning number of proposals focused on gender identity, with transgender students as a frequent target. Project 2025 seeks to secure rights for certain people (e.g., parents who support a particular vision of parental rights) while removing protections for many others (e.g., LGBTQ+ and racially minoritized children). Case in point, its proposal for “Safeguarding civil rights” says only, “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

These types of proposals don’t come from the traditional conservative playbook for education policy reform. They come from a white Christian nationalist playbook that has gained prominence in far-right politics in recent years.

At this point, it’s clear that the Trump campaign sees Project 2025 as a political liability that requires distance through the election season. Let’s not confuse that with what might happen during a second Trump administration.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Disruption, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Elections, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Equity, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Special Education, Vouchers

Tennessee: Governor Lee Demands Vouchers for All Students, Rich and Poor Alike

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
5

Marta W. Aldrich reported in Chalkbeat that Governor Bill Lee will make universal vouchers his top priority in education this coming year. Tennessee currently has a voucher program that is limited to three urban districts and is not fully enrolled. The Governor, who is a graduate of public schools, wants all students, rich and poor alike, to have a public subsidy to pay for private and religious schooling.

Republicans have made universal vouchers a high priority, knowing that it will drain students and funding from their local public schools.

Governor Lee’s effort to pass universal vouchers failed last year because of opposition by urban Democrats and rural Republicans. However, some of the Republican opponents were defeated with the help of out-of-state money spent to elect voucher-friendly Republicans who were willing to undercut their local public schools.

The extremist Republicans were funded by an organization called 1776 Project PAC, whose purpose is to elect school boards who will oppose “woke” policies and support privatization. Its leader is a GOP operative named Ryan James Gidursky. Here is a video where he discusses “the Marxist takeover of America’s schools.” Check out the merchandise on their website, which says more about their purposes than the other parts of the website. The 1776 Project PAC was funded by a rightwing billionaire, Richard Uihelein, who wants to destroy public schools because they are “woke.”

From what we already know about vouchers, we can predict that the great majority of them will be used by affluent families whose children are already enrolled in nonpublic schools. In his recently published book, The Privateers, Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has shown that the low-income students who transfer to nonpublic schools do not make academic gains and frequently experience “catastrophic” declines in their outcomes.

A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states….

Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters”.

Categories Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers

D.C.: Celebrated Charter School Closes Its Doors Abruptly

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2024 //
6

A charter school in D.C. that opened in 2003 and had a reputation built on its services to students with disabilities suddenly closed, with minimal notice to students, teachers, and parents.

Its finances had been shaky for a long time, and its enrollment had declined. Yet no one anticipated its sudden closure.

As it happens, the Network for Public Education reported only days ago on the frequency of charter school closures. Its report is called Doomed to Fail. It’s sad but true that charter schools have an unusually high record of transience. Parents can’t be sure that the charter school they chose will keep its doors open for more than a year, or three, or five.

The Washington Post reported:

On the day Eagle Academy abruptly closed, teachers at the D.C. charter school had been unpacking supplies, moving furniture and hanging bright posters covered with the names of students who were supposed to fill classrooms.

There had been rumblings of financial troubles, but the school’s leaders told families over the summer they had a plan: Another charter school had agreed to take over Eagle’s two campuses in Congress Heights and Capitol Riverfront.

But the D.C. Public Charter School Board, an independent city oversight body, blocked that plan. Eagle Academy unexpectedly was shuttered in August, less than a week before the new school year, leaving roughly 350 prekindergarten through third-grade students, plus their teachers, scrambling….

Eagle Academy had shown signs of financial shakiness as enrollment declined over several years, relying at times on credit cards to stay open and missing reporting deadlines, according to a staff report from D.C.’s charter school board.

While pandemic emergency funding gave the academy a temporary boost, Eagle made errors in budgeting, including overshooting student enrollment estimates and grant allocations, a Washington Post review shows. A promise to make significant cuts in spending and an effort to attract more students did not fully materialize.

Public records and more than a dozen interviews with Eagle families, school leaders and D.C. officials show that the city and Eagle’s own board lacked a clear picture of the school’s increasingly dire financial situation — leading to questions over whether more could have been done to stave off closure or allow for an easier transition for families. The city’s charter school board also said it would examine its oversight practices…

Eagle Academy opened its first campus in 2003. It was the dream of Cassandra S. Pinkney, who set out to build a school where Black children from underserved communities would learn to swim and kids like her son — who had special-education needs — could thrive. Pinkney founded the school with [Joe] Smith, a friend and charter-school advocate.


It was vaunted at the time as the District’s first “exclusively early childhood public charter school,” according to Eagle’s 2023 annual report. Two years after opening, the school had a special-education department with speech-language therapy, mental health services and other supports. It would later expand to enroll children through the third grade…

The enrollment problems caused financial ones. Schools are funded by the city largely based on the number of students who attend.

Eagle was spending close to $50,000 per student — higher than the citywide average of about $28,000 — according to data from the 2022-2023 school year, the most recent available. Most of Eagle’s student body came from lower-income homes, and the school had a higher-than-average share of children with disabilities, according to data published by the city, which are factors that bring in more funding.

The combination of declining enrollment and financial stress doomed the school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Failure

John Thompson: Is Oklahoma’s Governor Cruel or Dumb or Both?

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
5

I have learned so much about what’s happening in Oklahoma from John Thompson, retired teacher and historian. Recently I asked John if he could explain the question that is the title of this post. John responded with the following post. Thank you, John!

When Kevin Stitt was elected governor in 2018, Oklahomans knew he was an extreme conservative and a true believer in the “Free Market,” as THE solution to our problems. Stitt had been the CEO of Gateway Mortgage, which had a questionable reputation. And he knew little or nothing about how government operated; The Tulsa World reported that Stitt apparently hadn’t even voted for governor before he was elected.  Even so, the World explained, “Stitt wants the Legislature and the voters of Oklahoma to give him authority no previous governor has ever had — the power to hire and fire all state agency heads and boards.”

The first bill Gov. Stitt signed into law allowed individuals to carry firearms without a permit or training and then he  “expanded the number of public spaces where guns could be carried.”

Even more disturbing, as Oklahoma Watch explained, “In his first State of the State speech, Stitt said healthcare depends on personal responsibility.” And later, he opposed Medicaid expansion.

On the other hand, in 2019, I was active in the Justice for Julius campaign, which was fighting for the life of my former student who had been sentenced to death for murder, despite the lack of evidence against him, and the evidence that Julius Jones had been framed. We were told that Stitt’s religious beliefs were sincere. Stitt saved Julius from execution, but denied and banned any future efforts for parole or clemency.

Stitt also began his administration by listening to bipartisan efforts to curtail Oklahoma’s mass incarceration; our state had one of the world’s largest incarceration rates. But, a rightwing dark money group invested $160,000 on ads that said Stitt was soft on crime. Afterwards, the Oklahomanexplained, Stitt rejected Pardon and Parole Board recommendations, and replaced several board members. Moreover, “Oklahoma has executed 14 men during Stitt’s administration, second most among U.S. states. All but one were people of color or poor, or a combination thereof.”

Stitt ignored the Pardon and Parole recommendations when executing four of them.

Also, as Oklahoma Watch explains, Stitt’s belief that healthcare was a personal responsibility  “became his tagline throughout the (COVID) pandemic.” As the Washington Post reported, in the first few days of the pandemic,  Stitt was maskless when “he attracted national attention for tweeting a photo with his family at a ‘packed’ Oklahoma City restaurant,”  and saying “he would continue to dine out ‘without living in fear, and encourages Oklahomans to do the same.’”

Stitt soon caught COVID, and he also attended, without a mask, “Trump’s rally in Tulsa — the president’s first since the pandemic set in … Local health officials warned the indoor event at a 19,000-person arena could cause a dangerous spread of the virus in a county that was already seeing a spike.” That week, Oklahoma’s  weekly COVID deaths increased by more than 40%. Republican Herman Cain caught COVID after attending the rally maskless and died afterwards.

The Washington Post also reported how Stitt resisted the federal vaccination mandate for the Oklahoma National Guard, and fired the Guard’s adjutant general for supporting vaccinations.

The Frontier also reported that Stitt ordered $2 million of hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump touted. And as NPR reported, in 2020, Stitt refused to publish Oklahoma infection and death rates. 

So, it’s hard to estimate how many thousands of deaths were attributable to Stitt, but in 2022, Oklahoma’s death rate was 5th highest in the U.S.  In 2023, it was 2nd highest in the nation.

And Stitt continued to undermine governmental and legal institutions. After he ramped up attacks on established legal compacts with Oklahoma’s tribes, and invested $600,000 in state money in compacts  which the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled were illegal, the conservative Republican Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, said he was compelled to take “extraordinary action to put an end to the governor’s betrayal of his duty … [and] ‘cause the laws of the state to be faithfully executed.’” 

As the New York Times reported, Stitt also advocated for and signed a bill that “bans nearly all abortions starting at fertilization. The new law … is the most restrictive abortion ban in the country.”

And Stitt took the lead in campaigning against Critical Race Theory which was falsely said to be undermining public education. The Oklahoman reported: 

Stitt signed House Bill 1775 that would prohibit public schoolteachers from teaching that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another,” and that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.” 

Proponents of the bill say the measure is designed to prevent the teaching of critical race theory. 

Also, the Washington Post reported: 

Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill prohibiting nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates for people who don’t identify as male or female — the first law of its kind in the United States, according to legal experts. 

… Republican backers describe the new rules as reflecting their religious beliefs, arguing that gender is binary and immutable. “I believe that people are created by God to be male or female,” Stitt said when he issued the executive order. “There is no such thing as nonbinary sex.” 

The governor’s press release said: 

I am taking decisive executive action to ensure the true definition of the word woman, meaning a biological woman, is what guides the state as we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the safety, dignity, and sanctity of women across Oklahoma. As long as I’m governor, we will continue to protect women and ensure women-only spaces are reserved solely for biological women.

By the way, my House Representative, Mauree Turner, was the nation’s first Black, Muslim, nonbinary state legislator; As the Washington Post explained, Rep. Turner suffered through terrible abuse by Republican politicos. Their behavior was illustrative of a new norm where MAGAs seemed to compete over the ability to be cruel, and push out their colleagues who showed respect for their opponents.

Eventually, the extremism of Stitt et. al sowed division among Republicans. OpenSecrets.org was unable to locate the source of the money used by Stitt to fund primary candidates who opposed Republican incumbents who weren’t reactionary and confrontational enough, but it did “match up” expenditure from 46 Forward Inc. that funded 46 Action and Stitt’s “endorsements in the Republican state Senate primaries.”  

During Stitt’s second term, his ideology-driven policies continued to get weirder. For instance, the Oklahoma Voice reports, “Gov. Kevin Stitt has approved a controversial set of rules from the Oklahoma State Department of Education, as expected after the Legislature declined to take action on the regulations.” This gives Walters’ rules that expand test-driven accountability. The regulations also add “new ‘foundational values’ for the state Education Department that make multiple references to ‘the Creator.’” 

Other rules include potential punishment for schools that continue to employ educators under investigation for wrongdoing (as defined by the ideology-driven board), and permission to fire teachers who engage in acts that “promote sexuality” within view of a minor.

And, after the voters passed a state question calling for a vote on an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00 per hour, Stitt ordered the election be delayed until 2026.   

But the most noteworthy characteristics of Stitt’s recent policies have been their cruelty.

As the Oklahoman reported in 2024:

For the second year in a row, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt has rejected a federal program that would have provided additional funding for families to feed their children next summer.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer EBT program … would earmark about $40 per child per month on a card that families could then use at local grocery stores.

Oklahoma ranks fifth in the nation for child food insecurity.

The Washington Post added:

A new food program would have kicked in this summer, had Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt not turned down $48 million from a $2.5 billion initiative that the Biden administration calls “a giant step forward” in ending childhood hunger in the country. Though Oklahoma is one of the most food-insecure states, with surveys finding that more than 200,000 children are hungry at some point during a year, Stitt suggested the administration was “trying to push certain agenda items on kids.”

And as the Oklahoman reports, a new consent decree seeks to provide mental health services for  “scores of presumed-innocent Oklahomans who experience severe mental illness [and] are languishing in county jails awaiting competency restoration treatment for prolonged periods that far exceed constitutional limits.” But “Gov. Kevin Stitt, House Speaker Charles McCall and a top state mental health official are pushing back on a proposal.” 

Stitt sounds like he is resisting the funding that would be required, but I wonder if he’s also opposing the agreement because it is supported by his opponent, A.G. Gentner Drummond, who doesn’t want this injustice, which has “plagued” the criminal justice system to continue to “drag on for months or years.” 

By the way, A.G. Drummond was not at that meeting; he was arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court against the execution of Richard Glossip arguing that prosecutorial misconduct prevented him from receiving a fair trial.

And that brings us back to Stitt’s original intention to hire and fire all state agency heads and boards. During his second term, Stitt, rightwingers’, and their dark money donors have doubled down on a campaign to politicize the Oklahoma Supreme Court. I doubt Stitt knew much about the Court’s history, but it used to be the most corrupt Supreme Court in America. But a bipartisan team created the Judicial Nomination Commission which was often seen as the institution that started the process of making Oklahoma a real democracy. 

A rightwing dark money group is funding an effort to remove three justices who voted for abortion and voting rights, tribal contracts, and against the creation of a Catholic charter school. So, whether he knows what he is doing or not, Stitt is helping to lead an effort to dismantle the Nominating Commission, take control over the nomination process, and likely turn back the clock to the corruption of the 1950’s and before.

And that leads to the question as to whether Stitt is primarily motivated by a simplistic “Survival of the Fittest” ideology, and merely follows the lead of Big Money? Or are his policies simply born out of his ignorance and their propaganda? Or has he fully embraced the most disgusting components of Trumpism, and thus devoted himself to brutality? Fundamentally, is he now seeking a reputation for embracing the cruelty that the MAGAs admire? 

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Cruelty, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Oklahoma, Trump

ProPublica: Why Low-Income Parents in Arizona Are Not Using Vouchers

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
5

ProPublica published a story about which families benefit from Arizona’s universal voucher program. It is not low-income families.

The state’s so-called Education Savings Accounts (or Empowerment Scholarship Accounts) were enacted by the Legislature in 2011. Whatever they are called, they are vouchers, which violate Arizona’s Constitutional ban on public funds for religious schools. They initially contained restrictions as to which students qualified to receive a voucher. The usual claim for vouchers was that they would “save poor kids from failing public schools.” However, that never happened.

From the start, the Republicans in control wanted vouchers for all students, not just those from low-income families. Even though there was a state referendum in which voters overwhelmingly rejected voucher expansion in 2018, the Legislature ignored the vote and passed universal vouchers in 2022. Any student, whatever their family income, is entitled to use public money for tuition in a private or religious school or for home schooling.

The result: few students from low-income families use vouchers.

The article in ProPublica explains why.

Vouchers don’t cover the cost of most private schools.

Most private schools are not located in low-income neighborhoods.

Low-income families can’t afford the cost of transportation to and from private schools.

In Arizona, as in other states, most students who take vouchers were already enrolled in no public schools. Their parents can afford to pay the tuition. Now the state subsidizes them. And in many cases, the schools raise their tuition in response to the state subsidy.

Categories Arizona, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Parents, Vouchers
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