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Jan Resseger: Trump Guts Civil Rights Laws

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2025 //
6

Jan Resseger reviews Trump’s vigorous crusade to eliminate civil rights laws by inverting their meaning. These laws were passed to break the monopoly held by white men in hiring and promotions. But now, any program that favors women and nonwhites is treated as a crime. Universities and corporations that once featured their efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion are now warned by the federal government that these efforts discriminate against white men and must be abolished.

Resseger writes:

When it comes to President Trump’s threatened tariffs and his foreign policy demands, we have all been reading about the phrase coined by a Financial Times reporter: “Trump always chickens out—TACO.” But when it comes to Trump’s attack on civil rights and racial justice in the nation’s public schools, the President has been doggedly persistent.

On May 22nd, The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser mused about the President’s Oval Office ambush of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as capturing how things are going in “Washington a hundred and twenty-one days into Trump’s second term: a manufactured scene of outrage about a nonexistent ‘white genocide’ ” and “a reminder of how explicitly Trump has, in his second term, defined the goal of his Presidency as a sort of racial-justice quest for white people.” Glasser describes “a President who has terminated affirmative-action decrees that have been in place for the federal government since the nineteen-sixties, unleashed a wave of arrests and deportations aimed at illegal migrants of color, gutted federal civil-right-enforcement offices, and blamed D.E.I. for just about every evil at home and abroad.”

New York Times reporter Erica Green summarizes the Trump administration’s consistent work since the winter to attack racial justice and twist the meaning of the protection of civil rights: “In his drive to purge diversity efforts in the federal government and beyond, President Trump has expressed outright hostility to civil rights protections. He ordered federal agencies to abandon some of the core tenets of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on the basis that they represented a ‘pernicious’ attempt to make decisions based on diversity rather than merit. But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has turned to those same measures—not to help groups that have historically been discriminated against, but to remedy what he sees as the disenfranchisement of white men. The pattern fits into a broader trend… as Trump officials pick and choose which civil rights protections they want to enforce and for whom. Across the government, agencies that have historically worked to fight discrimination against Black people, women and other groups have pivoted to investigating institutions accused of favoring them.”

Beginning on Valentines Day,  when Trump’s Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Craig Trainor sent all public school officials a “Dear Colleague” letter threatening their federal funding if they did not remove all diversity, equity, and inclusion from their schools, the Trump Administration turned its sights on U.S. public schools. In March, the administration closed seven of the nation’s twelve regional Office for Civil Rights locations that have traditionally investigated complaints filed by parents and families. At the same time the Office for Civil Rights abandoned its traditional practice of carefully investigating complaints and working with school districts to end discriminatory practices. Trump’s OCR turned to directed investigations aimed at punishing school districts failing to comply with the administration’s priorities and threatening loss of federal funding. In early April, the Department of Education threatened K-12 public school districts’ Title I funding unless school leaders (and statewide officials) signed a certificate that they were in full compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act as well as in compliance with the administration’s broad, and many believe mistaken, interpretation of the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which specifically banned affirmation in college admissions. The Trump administration has declared that the Students for Fair Admissions decision instead bans all DEI programming and policy.

School districts and state departments of education, along with teachers unions and civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the ACLU, have put the consequences of almost all of these threats on hold by filing injunctions, which have yielded temporary stays in most of these cases, but Education Secretary, Linda McMahon and her Department of Education keep on persisting by conducting more investigations and threatening punitive consequences for school districts persisting in efforts to help particular groups of students.

In mid-May, by executive order, President Trump banned the use of disparate impact as a standard for investigating Civil Rights investigations.  For ProPublica, Jennifer Smith Richards and Judi Cohen reported: “Remaking the Office of Civil Rights isn’t just about increasing caseloads and reordering political priorities. The Trump administration now is taking steps to roll back OCR’s previous civil rights work. Last month, Trump issued an executive order that directs all federal agencies, including the Education Department, to stop enforcing cases involving policies that disproportionately affect certain groups—for example when Black students are disciplined more harshly than white students for the same infractions or when students with disabilities are suspended more than any other group even though they represent a small percentage of student enrollment.”

Smith Richards and Cohen examine how the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has reduced its capacity to process complaints and changed its procedures in ways that bias investigations to reflect the Trump administration’s priorities: “The OCR, historically one of the government’s largest enforcers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has been known for being a neutral fact-finder. Its investigators followed a process to determine whether complaints from the public met legal criteria for a civil rights claim, then carried out investigations methodically. The vast majority of investigations were based on discrimination complaints from students and families, and a large share of those were related to disability discrimination… Investigations being publicized now have largely bypassed the agency’s civil rights attorneys… McMahon and OCR head, Craig Trainor created what amounts to a shadow division. The Trump administration has ordered more than a dozen investigations in the past three months on its own, not initiated by an outside complainant. These ‘directed investigations’ are typically rare; there were none during President Joseph Biden’s administration. The investigations have targeted schools with transgender athletes, gender-neutral bathrooms and initiatives that the administration views as discriminatory to white students.”

The ProPublica reporters spoke with OCR attorneys who anonymously describe what they believe are serious violations of departmental protocol: “McMahon and Trainor created ways to divert complaints and investigations away from the OCR’s legal experts entirely. The administration made an ‘End DEI’ portal that bypasses the traditional online complaint system and seeks only grievances about diversity, equity and inclusion in schools. Unlike the regular complaint system, the diversity portal submissions are not routed to OCR staff. ‘We have no idea where that portal goes, who it goes to, how they review the cases… said the attorney who said he struggles with being unable to help families.”  In other instances, “Conservative groups with complaints about diversity or transgender students have been able to file complaints directly with Trainor and get quick results… America First Legal, a group founded by Trump deputy chief of staff, Steven Miller… emailed Trainor a few days after Trump’s… executive order… (that) directs schools to stop teaching about or supporting diversity, equity, and gender identity. ‘AFL respectfully requests that the Department of Education open investigations into the following public school districts in Northern Virginia for continuing violations of Title IX,’ the letter read, listing five districts that have policies welcoming to transgender students. Senior leadership in Washington opened the cases the following week. America First issued a press release headlined ‘VICTORY!’ “

Education Week‘s Brooke Schultz reports: “The U.S. Department of Education has announced or confirmed at least 100 investigations into school districts, colleges, and universities, and other entities as it emerges as a prime enforcer of President Donald Trump’s social agenda.” Here are some of Schultz’s examples: “(F)our school districts have drawn investigations from the department over a Black student success plan in Chicago, a students of color summit in New York, racial affinity groups in Illinois, and a selective Virginia high school’s admissions policy that the education Department says appears to be racially discriminatory… The first investigation Trump’s Education Department announced was a probe into the Denver district over a high school’s all-gender bathroom, which the agency suggested was a violation of Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds.”

Last Friday, in “Trump Administration Gives New York 10 Days to End Its Ban on Native American Mascots,” Education Week‘s Brooke Schultz reported on a Department of Education demand that clearly represents the Trump administration’s twisting and tangling the purpose and meaning of civil rights protection in public schools: an attack by the Trump Department of Education on a New York law banning Native American mascots in public schools. “The (U.S.) Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights argues that the state’s mascot policy, enacted in 2022, violates Title VI because it prohibits the use of Native American imagery but ‘allowed names, mascots, and logos that appear to have been derived from other racial or ethnic groups, such as the ‘Dutchmen’ and the ‘Huguenots.”… McMahon said in a statement Friday that the department would ‘not stand idly by as state leaders attempt to eliminate the history and culture of Native American tribes.”

Although McMahon seems to believe that the logo New York has banned in the Massapecqua School District connects with the history of American Indians in the region of the school district on Long Island, J.P. O’Hare of the New York Department of Education explained that neither the logo nor the term ‘Chief,’ was used by Native Americans in the area.

Schultz lets the president of the National Congress of American Indians, “the largest nonprofit representing Native nations which has long tracked and challenged the use of Native American mascots, Mark Macarro” correct Education Secretary McMahon’s bizarre misconception of racial justice and civil rights law: “Native people are not mascots… We have our own languages, cultures, and governments—our identities are not anyone’s mascot or costume.  No political endorsement or misguided notion of ‘honoring’ us will change the fact that these mascots demean our people, diminish the enduring vibrancy of our unique cultures, and have no place in our country.”

Schultz adds: “Research has found that, for Native students, exposure to Native American mascots reduces self-esteem, their ability to imagine future accomplishments, and their belief that Native American communities can make a difference. For non-Native people, research shows that mascots are associated with negative thoughts and stereotypes about Native Americans… The portrayals are often outdated, whitewashed stereotypes, and aren’t grounded in realistic portrayals of Native people.”

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Gender, Race, Racism, Trump

Thomas Ultican: Billionaires and Charter Schools in California: A Toxic Deal

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2025 //
5

Thomas Ultican reviews the current state of billionaire support for charter schools in California. Most people, certainly the charter industry, has long forgotten or never knew that the original charter school idea was that they would be created by teachers and operate under the aegis of local school boards. The reason for the linkage was that charter schools were supposed to be places that tried innovative practices, especially for the neediest students, and fed their results to their host district. They were supposed to be like R&D centers for local school districts.

They were not supposed to compete with public schools but to help public schools.

They were not supposed to undermine public schools. They were not supposed to be for-profit or operated as chains or entrepreneurs.

Here is Tom’s report on what’s happening today.

Categories Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Reform

Georgia: Brain-Dead Woman Kept on Life Support Because She Was 9 Weeks Pregnant

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2025 //
4

Several days ago, I posted this horrible story about a young woman in Georgia who is on life support. She is brain dead. Because she was nine weeks pregnant when her brain died, Georgia law requires that she be kept in a vegetative state until the fetus can be delivered at 36 weeks.

The political cartoonist Ann Telnaes posted this visual commentary on her Substack blog:

“The decision should have been left to us- not the state”, says her family

Telnaes quit her job at The Washington Post when her editor refused to publish a cartoon showing the tech billionaires bowing to Trump. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, was one of them. Telnaes won a Pulitzer Prize for that cartoon.

Categories Cruelty, Education Reform, Gender, Georgia, Health

Teachers! New York City Is Hiring to Reduce Class Sizes!

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2025 //
5

Thanks to the tireless work of Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, and her hardy band of parent advocates, New York City is reducing class sizes to meet the requirements of state law. After 25 years of failed “reforms” like high-stakes testing, competition, merit pay, and choice, the city is finally embarked on a reform that has a solid research base and actually helps students. Teachers can devote more time to each students. Discipline problems will be less.

New York City is hiring teachers!

Ahead of a key deadline to reduce class sizes, New York City’s sprawling school system will spend upwards of $400 million as it races to fill 3,700 new teaching positions by the fall, new data shows.

Under the state’s 2022 class size law, 60% of classrooms must comply next school year with caps between 20 and 25 students, depending on grade level. It’s expected to be the first time schools have to make real changes to abide by the regulation.

To meet that benchmark, principals developed and had approved 741 school-specific plans in exchange for more funding. Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos and her deputies revealed during a City Council hearing on Tuesday that costs associated with those plans will top $400 million, paid for with a combination of state and city funds.

While nearly all schools will use those dollars to bring on more teachers, some also expect to hire about 100 assistant principals or convert spaces into classrooms.

Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, New York City

Maurice Cunningham: DFER Moves into MAGA Orbit

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2025 //
2

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the university of Massachusetts and a specialist on dark money in education, exposes the rightward shift of Democrats for Education Reform, as well as its continuing disintegration. DFER spent years cheerleading for charter schools and test-based teacher evaluation, but its pretense has dissolved. Cunningham said it is now closely aligned with rightwing groups.

Cunningham writes:

Democrats for Education Reform, the front operation for billionaire privateering of public education, has gone all-in for right-wing policies. This likely reflects two factors: the collapse of DFER nationally, and an opportunistic pivot to Trump’s MAGA regime.

DFER was established upon the premise, according to its hedge fund co-founder Whitney Tilson, that it would spend lavishly as part of an “inside job” to turn the Democratic Party away from teachers unions and public education and toward charter schools. Its CEO Jorge Elorza has just announced the organization will race even further to the right: DFER will now “Explore innovative funding models such as education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tax credit programs.” (emphasis in original). This is the program of billionaires Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos–and Donald Trump.

Judging by the number of high-level staff fleeing from DFER, Elorza has been driving the operation into the ground. Jessical Giles, who served for six years as Washington, D.C. executive director recently resigned because DFER’s policies “no longer align with my values and vision.” 

Other DFER leaders have complained of the group’s gallop toward political extremism. In a complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, former Massachusetts executive director Mary Tamer wrote that Elorza retaliated against her for “inquiring about Mr. Elorza’s decision to join a Koch-funded right-wing coalition that seemed contrary to the organization’s best interests and mission.” The right-wing coalition seems to be the No More Lines Coalition, which includes not only Koch aligned organizations but Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Childrenand the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Elorza has been a guest speaker at the Charles Koch Institute. Tamer is seeking damages against  DFER, and the allied Education Reform Now and Education Reform Now Advocacy for gender and age discrimination.

Tamer’s complaint alleges a number of defections by key DFER leaders. Within months of Elorza’s arrival COO Shakira Petit left, and CFO Sheri Adebiyi was fired. Board Chair Marlon Marshall and Charles Ledley, a co-founder, resigned. The complaint further alleges that “Ms. Tamer is one of several women in leadership positions who have been terminated or pushed out by the Defendants.” That list includes Connecticut state director Amy Dowell and Jen Walmer of Colorado, a close adviser on education to Governor Jared Polis and one of DFER’s most effective advocates.

Despite the name, DFER has raised millions over the years from Republican-backing billionaires. The Walton Family Foundation, the non-profit corporation of the notoriously anti-union family that owns WalMart, has sustained DFER. Rupert Murchoch, who regards K-12 education as a $500 billion market gave DFER at least $1 million, apparently in the hopes the operation would help his ed tech company. 

Elorza’s announcement of DFER’s shift leans on the “market-based solutions” language of neo-liberal privateering, but the reality is that neo-liberalism is not where the action is in 2025. Families for Excellent Schools, at one time a privateering powerhouse, collapsed in 2018. In 2011 Stand for Children president Jonah Edelman boasted his organization had nine state affiliates and would grow to twenty states by the end of 2015. In 2025 Stand for Children is hanging on in seven states. 

Since its 2007 founding, DFER has claimedchapters in nineteen different states plus D.C. and a teachers group. By February 2025 only four chapters remained. In January 2023, DFER listed thirteen national staffers. By February 2025, it had only four. As of May 2025, the “States” and “National Staff” links on DFER’s webpage have disappeared. An Elorza biography lives on. 

The action now is with extremist organizations like the Koch and Leonard Leo aligned Parents Defending Education and Heritage Foundation offspring Moms for Liberty. 

Self-described “school choice evangelist” Corey DeAngelis accurately sees that DFER has joined with the far right on education privateering.  DeAngelis was the face of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children  until he was fired after revelations he had starred in gay sex porn films. He is now a “senior fellow” at the American Culture Project, which is tied to the Koch network through the Franklin News Foundation. DeAngelis is cheering DFER’s embrace of the Republican education privateering platform. 

What has DFER really joined here? The end game was spelled out in a 2017 memorandumfrom the secretive Council for National Policy to Trump and DeVos: abandon public education in favor of “free-market private schools, church schools and home schools.” 

That is your “choice.” 

DFER has never been a membership organization—there are few real Democrats involved. To be sure, it has gotten donations from charter favoring Democratic billionaires as well as an array of Republican privateers, plus millions of dollars in untraceable dark money. DFER’s organizational drift and rank political opportunism have now cemented its bond with Trump’s MAGA regime.

Maurice T. Cunningham is a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization(2021).

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Dark Money, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Hoax, Koch Brothers

Judge Tosses Lawsuit Against Reading Reseacher Lucy Calkins, Other Reading Researchets

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2025 //
28

For many years, “Balanced Literacy ” was considered the gold standard of reading instruction; it encouraged students to use context clues, Then came the fervor for the “Science of Reading,” which emphasized phonics. The reading wars dominated the education world for nearly two decades. Reading instruction across the nation changed to reflect the pro-phonics emphasis.

But then a group of parents went to court to close down the teaching of Balanced Literacy, and they sued Dr. Calkins. They blamed her for students’ test scores and their poor reading skills.

Sarah Schwartz of Education Week reported:

A first-of-its-kind lawsuit against three influential reading professors and their controversial literacy curricula has been dismissed, after a U.S. District Court declined to wade into the murky landscape of curriculum quality and education research. 

Last year, a group of parents filed the lawsuit, which alleged that the professors and their publishers used “deceptive and fraudulent marketing” to sell their popular reading materials.

The case, brought by two parents from separate families in Massachusetts, centers on two sets of reading programs, one created by Lucy Calkins, an education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the other by reading researchers Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, of Lesley University and The Ohio State University, respectively. 

The parents argued that the creators, publishers, and promoters of the curricula—Calkins’ Units of Study for Teaching Reading and a suite of Fountas & Pinnell branded materials—violated consumer protection law in the state by making false claims about the research supporting their programs.

Publishers said that the programs were backed by research even though, the plaintiffs claimed, they omitted or diminished the role of phonics instruction, which decades of reading research has demonstrated is a key component of teaching young children how to decode print.

On Thursday, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts determined that the court could not grant a decision in the case, because it would require passing judgement on the quality of the reading programs in question—a task that the court said it is not equipped to perform.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Education Reform, John King, Librarians

What Can the Federal Government Do to Promote Learning?

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2025 //
12

On May 10, Dana Goldstein wrote a long article in The New York Times about how education disappeared as a national or federal issue. Why, she wondered, did the two major parties ignore education in the 2024 campaign? Kamala Harris supported public schools and welcomed the support of the two big teachers’ unions, but she did not offer a flashy new program to raise test scores. Trump campaigned on a promise to privatize public funding, promote vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, home schooling–anything but public schools, which he regularly attacked as dens of iniquity, indoctrination, and DEI.

Goldstein is the best education writer at The Times, and her reflections are worth considering.

She started:

What happened to learning as a national priority?

For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility, it was potentially a winning electoral strategy.

At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even a single major political figure, is vying to claim that mantle.

President Trump has been fixated in his second term on imposing ideological obedience on schools.

On the campaign trail, he vowed to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”Since taking office, he has pursued this goal with startling energy — assaulting higher education while adopting a strategy of neglect toward the federal government’s traditional role in primary and secondary schools. He has canceled federal exams that measure student progress, and ended efforts to share knowledge with schools about which teaching strategies lead to the best results. A spokeswoman for the administration said that low test scores justify cuts in federal spending. “What we are doing right now with education is clearly not working,” she said.

Mr. Trump has begun a bevy of investigations into how schools handle race and transgender issues, and has demanded that the curriculum be “patriotic” — a priority he does not have the power to enact, since curriculum is set by states and school districts.

Actually, federal law explicitly forbids any federal official from attempting to influence the curriculum or textbooks in schools.

Education lawyer Dan Gordon wrote about the multiple laws that prevent any federal official from trying to dictate, supervise, control or interfere with curriculum. There is no sterner prohibition in federal law than the one that keeps federal officials from trying to dictate what schools teach.

Of course, Trump never worries about the limits imposed by laws. He does what he wants and leaves the courts to decide whether he went too far.

Goldstein continued:

Democrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one. Governors and congressional leaders are defending the Department of Education as Mr. Trump has threatened to abolish it. Liberal groups are suing to block funding cuts. When Kamala Harris was running for president last year, she spoke about student loan forgiveness and resisting right-wing book bans. But none of that amounts to an agenda on learning, either.

All of this is true despite the fact that reading scores are the lowest they have been in decades, after a pandemic that devastated children by shuttering their schools and sending them deeper and deeper into the realm of screens and social media. And it is no wonder Americans are increasingly cynical about higher education. Forty percent of students who start college do not graduate, often leaving with debt and few concrete skills.

“Right now, there are no education goals for the country,” said Arne Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of education after running Chicago’s public school system. “There are no metrics to measure goals, there are no strategies to achieve those goals and there is no public transparency.”

I have been writing about federal education policy for almost fifty years. There are things we have learned since Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. That law was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s agenda. Its purpose was to send federal funds to the schools enrolling the poorest students. Its purpose was not to raise test scores but to provide greater equity of resources.

Over time, the federal government took on an assertive role in defending the rights of students to an education: students with disabilities; students who did not speak English; and students attending illegally segregated schools.

In 1983, a commission appointed by President Reagan’s Secretary of Education Terrell Bell declared that American schools were in crisis because of low academic standards. Many states began implementing state tests and raising standards for promotion and graduation.

President George H.W. Bush convened a meeting of the nation’s governors, and they endorsed an ambitious set of “national goals” for the year 2000. E.g., the U.S. will be first in the world by the year 2000; all children will start school ready to learn by 2000. None of the goals–other than the rise of the high school graduation rate to 90%–was met.

The Clinton administration endorsed the national goals and passed legislation (“Goals 2000”) to encourages states to create their own standards and tests. President Clinton made clear, however, that he hoped for national standards and tests.

President George W. Bush came to office with a far-reaching, unprecedented plan called “No Child Left Behind” to reform education by a heavy emphasis on annual testing of reading and math. He claimed that because of his test-based policy, there had been a “Texas Miracle,” which could be replicated on a national scale. NCLB set unreachable goals, saying that every school would have 100% of their students reach proficiency by the year 2014. And if they were not on track to meet that impossible goals, the schools would face increasingly harsh punishments.

In no nation in the world have 100% of all students ever reached proficiency.

Scores rose, as did test-prep. Many untested subjects lost time in the curriculum or disappeared. Reading and math were tested every year from grades 3-8, as the law prescribed. What didn’t matter were science, history, civics, the arts, even recess.

Some schools were sanctioned or even closed for falling behind. Schools were dominated by the all-important reading and math tests. Some districts cheated. Some superintendents were jailed.

In 2001, there were scholars who warned that the “Texas Miracle” was a hoax. Congress didn’t listen. In time the nation learned that there was no Texas Miracle, never had been. But Congress clung to NCLB because they had no other ideas.

When Obama took office in 2009, educators hoped for relief from the annual testing mandates but they were soon disappointed. Obama chose Arne Duncan, who had led the Chicago schools but had never been a teacher. Duncan worked with consultants from the Gates and Broad Foundations and created a national competition for the states called Race to the Top. Duncan had a pot of $5 billion that Congress had given him for education reform.

Race to the Top offered big rewards to states that applied and won. To be eligible, states had to authorize the creation of charter schools (almost every state did); they had to agree to adopt common national standards (that meant the Common Core standards, funded wholly by the Gates Foundation and not yet completed); sign up for one of two federally funded standardized tests (PARCC or Smarter Balanced) ; and agree to evaluate their teachers by the test scores of their students. Eighteen states won huge rewards. There were other conditions but these were the most consequential.

Tennessee won $500 million. It is hard to see what, if anything, is better in Tennessee because of that audacious prize. The state put $100 million into an “Achievement School District,” which gathered the state’s lowest performing schools into a new district and turned them into charters. Chris Barbic, leader of the YES Prep charter chain in Houston was hired to run it. He pledged that within five years, the lowest-performing schools in the state would rank among the top 20% in the state. None of them did. The ASD was ultimately closed down.

Duncan had a great fondness for charter schools because they were the latest thing in Chicago; while superintendent, he had launched a program he called Renaissance 2010, in which he pledged to close 80 public schools and open 100 charter schools. Duncan viewed charters as miraculous. Ultimately Chicago’s charter sector produced numerous scandals but no miracles.

I have written a lot about Race to the Top over the years. It was layered on top of Bush’s NCLB, but it was even more punitive. It targeted teachers and blamed them if students got low scores. Its requirement that states evaluate teachers by student test scores was a dismal failure. The American Statistical Association warned against it from the outset, pointing out that students’ home life affected test scores more than their teachers.

Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 failed. It destroyed communities. Its strategy of closing neighborhood schools and dispersing students encountered growing resistance. The first schools that Duncan launched as his exemplars were eventually closed. In 2021, the Chicago Board of Education voted unanimously to end its largest “school turnaround” program, managed by a private group, and return its 31 campuses to district control. Duncan’s fervent belief in “turnaround” schools was derided as a historical relic.

Race to the Top failed. The proliferation of charter schools, aided by a hefty federal subsidy, drained students and resources from public schools. Charter schools close their doors at a rapid pace: 26% are gone in their first five years; 39% in their first ten years. In addition, due to lax accountability, charters have demonstrated egregious examples of waste, fraud, and abuse.

The Common Core was supposed to lift test scores and reduce achievement gaps, but it did neither. Conservative commentator Mike Petrilli referred to 2007-2017 as “the lost decade.” Scores stagnated and achievement gaps barely budged.

So what have we learned?

This is what I have learned: politicians are not good at telling educators how to teach. The Department of Education (which barely exists as of now) is not made up of educators. It was not in a position to lead school reform. Nor is the Secretary of Education. Nor is the President. Would you want the State legislature or Congress telling surgeons how to do their job?

The most important thing that the national government can do is to ensure that schools have the funding they need to pay their staff, reduce class sizes, and update their facilities.

The federal government should have a robust program of data collection, so we have accurate information about students, teachers, and schools.

The federal government should not replicate its past failures.

What Congress can do very effectively is to ensure that the nation’s schools have the resources they need; that children have access to nutrition and medical care; and that pregnant women get prenatal care so that their babies are born healthy.

Categories Civil Rights, Closing schools, Curriculum, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), For-Profit, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Graduation rates, Health, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Poverty, Privatization, Race to the Top, Republicans, Segregation, Special Education, Standardized Testing, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education, Vouchers

LA Times: Trump Claims Harris Campaign Paid Celebrities to Endorse Her

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2025 //
9

Trump ranted against the celebrities who endorsed Kamala Harris in her failed Presidential campaign, singling out Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen. He said they had been paid by the Harris campaign, and he threatened to investigate them. He insisted that Harris paid Beyoncé $11 million for her endorsement.

Trump is a sore winner.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

President Trump is very much still hung up on the star power that boosted former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

In a pair of posts shared to his Truth Social platform Sunday night and Monday morning, Trump criticized several celebrities who publicly endorsed Harris in her months-long bid. Among the stars fueling the former “Apprentice” host’s ire were Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Bono. In his caps-lock-laden tirades, Trump accused the Harris camp of illegally paying Springsteen, Beyoncé and other stars to appear at campaign events and throw their support behind the Biden-era VP.

“I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” Trump wrote on Sunday, before accusing Harris and her team of paying for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”

Springsteen attacked Trump again as he performs in England.

The Boss did not back down on his fiery rhetoric against Trump on the second night of his “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour in Manchester, England, on Saturday — a day after Trump lashed out against the legendary singer on Truth Social, calling him an “obnoxious jerk,” a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker,” and writing that he should “keep his mouth shut.”

Springsteen didn’t oblige. In a resolute three-minute speech from the Co-op Live venue, Springsteen thanked his cheering audience for indulging him in a speech about the state of America: “Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore.”

He then repeated many of the lines that he used during his first Manchester show — the same words that upset Trump to begin with, including the administration defunding American universities, the rolling back of civil rights legislation and siding with dictators, “against those who are struggling for their freedoms…”

“In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.”
In a steady voice, he listed the many concerns of those who oppose Trump, his enablers and his policies.

“They are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers as prisoners. That’s happening now. The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government,” Springsteen said as the crowd applauded and yelled its support. “They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
He finished on a positive note.

“The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with a great people, and we will survive this moment. Well, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ ”

Categories Education Reform, Harris, Kamala, Insane, Politics, Trump

Leonie Haimson: How States Can Inspire One Another to Fight for Successful Policies

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2025 //
3

Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters in New York City, is a tireless advocate for reform policies that work. She has spent years collecting research about the benefits of class size reduction and prodding legislators to take action.

She wrote recently about the cross-pollination between New York State and Michigan, where state school board leaders used her research to advocate for lower class sizes.

She wrote:

On April 5 and 6, the Network for Public Education, on whose board I sit, held its annual conference in Columbus, Ohio.  More than 400 parents, teachers, advocates, school board members, and other elected officials gathered to learn from each other’s work and be re-energized for the challenges of protecting our public schools from the ravages of budget cuts, right-wing censorship, and privatization.  

It was a great weekend to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, hear from eloquent education leaders, and participate in eye-opening workshops.  I led a workshop on the risks of using AI in the classroom, along with Cassie Creswell of Illinois Families for Public Schools, and retired teacher/blogger extraordinaire, Peter Greene. You can take a look at our collective power point presentation here.

At one point, Diane Ravitch, the chair and founder of NPE,introduced each of the board members from the floor.  When she told me to stand, I asked her to inform the attendees about the law we helped pass for class size reduction in NYC.  She responded, you tell it –and so I briefly recounted how smaller class sizes are supposed to be phased in over the next three yearsin our schools, hoping this might lend encouragement to others in the room to advocate for similar measures in their own states and districts.

Perhaps the personal high point for me was the thrill of meeting Tim Walz, on his birthday no less,  who said to me that indeed class size does matter.  Here are videos  with excerpts from some of the other terrific speeches at the conference. 

Then, just four days ago, Prof. Julian Heilig Vasquez, another NPE board member, texted me a link to this news story from the Detroit News:

State Board of Education calls for smaller class sizes after Detroit News investigation

Lansing — Michigan’s State Board of Education approved a resolution Tuesday calling for limits on class sizes to be put in place by the 2030-31 school year, including a cap of 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade.

The proposal, if enacted by state lawmakers, would represent a sea change for Michigan schools as leaders look to boost struggling literacy rates. Across the state, elementary school classes featuring more than 20 students have been widespread.

Mitchell Robinson, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education, authored the resolution and said action on class sizes was “overdue.”

“Smaller class sizes are going to be a better learning situation for kids and a better teaching situation for teachers,” said Robinson of Okemos, a former music teacher.

A months-long Detroit News investigation published in April found 206 elementary classes — ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade — across 49 schools over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 years that had at least 30 students in them. Among them was a kindergarten class at Bennett Elementary, where the Detroit Public Schools Community District said 30 students were enrolled.

Less than a month after The News’ probe, the Democratic-led State Board of Education, which advises state policymakers on education standards, voted 6-1 on Tuesday in favor of Robinson’s resolution. The resolution said lawmakers should provide funding in the next state budget for school districts with high rates of poverty to lower their student-to-teacher ratios in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.

By the 2030-31 school year, the resolution said, limits should be instituted to cap class sizes at 20 students per class in kindergarten through third grade, at 23 students per class in fourth grade through eighth grade, and at 25 students per class in high school.

“Many studies show that class size reduction leads to better student outcomes in every way that can be measured, including better grades and test scores, fewer behavior problems, greater likelihood to graduate from high school on time and subsequently enroll in college,” the resolution said.

The resolution added that the Legislature should increase funding to ensure schools are “able to lower class sizes to the mandated levels.”

In an interview, Pamela Pugh, the president of the state board, labeled the resolution an “urgent call” for action. Pugh said the board hasn’t made a similar request in the decade she’s served on the panel.

…Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for action on class sizes after the reporting from The News and as Michigan’s reading scores have fallen behind other states.

During her State of the State address in February, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were able to read proficiently. Michigan invests more per student than most states but achieves “bottom 10 results,” the governor said.

Asked, in April, if she thought having 30 students in a kindergarten class was appropriate, Whitmer, a Democrat, said, “No. Of course, I don’t.”

“I think the science would tell us that we’ve got to bring down class sizes,” Whitmer said in April.

On Wednesday, state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, said he was open to a conversation about timelines for implementing class size limits and about how schools could achieve the proposed standards with staffing and physical space.

He noted the Senate Democrats’ budget proposal for next year features nearly $500 million that could be used by school districts to lower class sizes. “I think it’s going to be a culture change,” Camilleri said.

As I read the story, I was delighted, of course; and noticed that the class size caps cited in the resolution were identical to those required to be phased in for NYC schools.  I also noted language in the resolution that echoed the words in some of our research summaries. 

I reached out to Diane to ask her if she knew whether Mitchell Robinson had attended the NPE conference, and she confirmed that indeed he had.  I then emailed him to ask if our New Yorklaw had played any role in his decision to introduce the resolution, and he immediately responded,

“Leonie, your work in NYC was the direct model and inspiration for this resolution! I was in your session in Columbus, and went home motivated to put together the resolution, using the figures from your bill and the research base on the website.”

He cautioned me that the proposal still has to be enacted into law, and that it would be “an uphill battle,” as Republicans hadretaken the state House. 

Then he added: “But that doesn’t mean we sit on our hands for another 2 years—we need to stay on offense and advance good ideas whenever we can.”

I wholeheartedly agree.  This resolution and what may hopefully follow for Michigan students reveals just how importantgatherings like the NPE conference are to enable the exchangeof ideas and positive examples of what’s occurring elsewhere.  This sort of interaction can be vital to our collective struggle,not just to defend our public schools from the attempts of Trump et.al. to undermine them, but also to push for the sort of positive changes that will allow all our kids to receive the high qualityeducation they deserve.

 

Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, Michigan, New York, New York City, Research

Trump’s Amazing Accomplishments in the Middle East

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2025 //
7

Donald Trump has had a remarkably successful trip through the Middle East in recent days. Incredibly successful, that is, for the Trump Organization.

He has been offered a $400 million jet by the government of Dubai. It is a “gift to the nation,” but only Trump will be able to use it. Not everyone is thrilled because the cost of turning it into Air Force 1 will be hundreds of millions, some estimates as high as $1 billion. The mammoth plane has been on the market since 2020, with no bidders.

The Trump Organization will be building two high-rise luxury buildings (Trump Towers) in Saudi Arabia.

The Trump Organization will be building a luxury golf resort in Qatar.

The Trump family made a deal with an Emeriti-backed firm, which invested $2 billion in Trump’s stablecoin.

The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai just opened.

Trump met with the new leader of Syria, who previously served as the chief of Al Queda in Syria, and the first Trump administration had a $10 billion bounty on his head. Trump agreed to cancel All US sanctions on Syria, and Syria granted the Trump Organizatuon permission to build a Trump Hotel in Damascus. A win-win!

Trump says that the Arab nations will be investing in the U.S. The details will be revealed later.

This has been a great week for the Trump family.

Meanwhile, Trump did not schedule a visit to Israel, did not use his influence with Netanyahu to demand an end to the three-month blockade of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. Trump showed no interest in this tragedy.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform
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