Archives for category: Education Reform
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NEPC Interview of the Month: Frank Adamson on Privatization Internationally

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2020 //
2

Chris Saldana of the National Education Policy Center interviewed Frank Adamson on privatization of education in an international context. If you have 30 minutes in your busy day, this is definitely worth listening to.

BOULDER, CO (May 19, 2020) – In this month’s NEPC Education Interview of the Month, NEPC Researcher Christopher Saldaña interviews Frank Adamson, Assistant Professor of Education Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University, Sacramento. Adamson is an expert in education privatization in the United States and international contexts and the editor of Global Education Reform: How Privatization and Public Investment Influence Education Outcomes.

Adamson argues that the foundation for privatizing schools has been laid over many decades through federal policies such as No Child Left Behind. He points out that with this foundation in place, crises have been used to promote privatization in cities such as Oakland and New Orleans, just as the COVID-19 pandemic is now being used to promote the use of virtual education and private digital platforms in public schools.

He notes that alternatives to privatization exist. The Abidjan Principles, developed by experts in law, human rights, and education, for example, outline the responsibility of countries to provide high-quality, free public education to all children. According to Adamson, if policymakers were guided by these principles, they could craft policies that fostered a more equitable educational system in the United States and other international contexts.

It is important, Adamson argues, that community members inform themselves and engage in educational policy discussions in their communities, especially because the decentralized system of public education in the United States requires an engaged and informed public to ensure that students receive the best possible public education.
A new NEPC Education Interview of the Month, hosted by NEPC Researcher Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through June.

Don’t worry if you miss a month. All NEPC Education Interview of the Month podcasts are archived on the NEPC website and can be found here.

Frank Adamson was a co-author of the most devastating critique of the privatization of the New Orleans public schools that I have ever read.

Categories Education Reform

Trump Regime May Conduct First Nuclear Test Since 1992

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2020 //
46

To distract from the pandemic, the Trump administration has decided to revive fears of nuclear war. A few days ago, it announced it would end an arms control agreement with Russia.

Now it is hinting at conducting a nuclear bomb test, the first since 1992.

The Trump administration has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992 in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions, said a senior administration official and two former officials familiar with the deliberations.

The matter came up at a meeting of senior officials representing the top national security agencies May 15, following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests — an assertion that has not been substantiated by publicly available evidence and that both countries have denied.

A senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive nuclear discussions, said that demonstrating to Moscow and Beijing that the United States could “rapid test” could prove useful from a negotiating standpoint as Washington seeks a trilateral deal to regulate the arsenals of the biggest nuclear powers.

Categories Education Reform

Los Angeles: After Long Battle, 5 Charter Schools Join UTLA

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2020 //
7

Yesterday, the United Teachers of Los Angeles scores a big victory, and so did the teachers in five charter schools, who won the right to unionize.

For Immediate Release

May 22, 2020

Media Contact:

Anna Bakalis, 213-305-9654

PERB rules in UTLA’s favor, the union will now represent all educators at five Alliance charter schools

After a two-year legal battle, on Thursday, May 21, the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) certified UTLA as the exclusive collective bargaining representative of educators at the five Alliance charter schools that filed for union recognition:

Alliance College-Ready Middle Academy 5
Alliance Judy Ivie Burton Technology Academy High School
Alliance Gertz-Ressler/Richard Merkin 6-12 Complex
Alliance Leichtman Levine Family Foundation Environmental Science High School
Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School…

“Now that PERB has made it clear that we filed appropriately at our schools, we’re ready to sit down at the bargaining table,” said Kemberlee Hooper, a Physical Education teacher at Gertz-Merkin. “ I’m excited that we’ll have an equal voice in decision making, and I look forward to bargaining over issues like professional developments and a fair and meaningful evaluation process.”

Alliance has been fighting PERB certification since educators at three schools filed for union recognition in May 2018, with two more filing in 2019. But now with this decision, Alliance educators have prevailed after a two-year legal delay intended by Alliance to deny educators their right to bargain and to organize with UTLA. Alliance educators are ready to move forward. They urge Alliance to start setting a better example for their students and the Alliance community by respecting PERB’s decision and its own educators.

Particularly in this unprecedented time, it’s more important than ever that educators have an equal voice in decisions impacting their students, their schools, and their profession. Alliance educators simply want to sit down with Alliance as real decision-making partners and together decide what will make their schools the best place to work and learn.

Alliance educators look forward to bargaining at five union schools and are committed to organizing at all Alliance schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Teachers, Unions

Peter Greene Reviews the CDC Guidance for Reopening Schools During the Pandemic

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2020 //
29

Peter Greene explains the CDC guidance for schools. He does so in his inimitable style.

He links to the official guidelines and reviews them.
Bear in mind that most parents, teachers, and students want to return to real school, but with precautions in place.

Categories Education Reform, Health, Safety, Science

Chicago Public Schools Decides to Kick Out Privatized Custodial Services

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2020 //
5

The Chicago Board of Education voted to end their relationships with two private companies that received hundreds of millions of dollars for custodial services but did a lousy job. The companies got a one-year renewal while the school system prepares to restore their own custodians.

Chicago Public Schools plans to end its maligned relationship worth hundreds of millions of dollars with two facility management companies, one of which for years has maintained filthy schools, in an effort to regain control over the cleaning and maintenance of its hundreds of buildings.

CPS officials are renewing contracts with Aramark and Sodexo for one more year to give themselves time to come up with an alternative, then they’re calling it quits after a turbulent stretch of outsourced work that includes oversight of janitorial, landscaping, snow removal and pest control services.

CPS first tried that model, called integrated facilities management, in 2014 as a pilot program at a few dozen schools. More buildings were then added to Aramark’s and Sodexo’s control each year through 2018 until management of all CPS facilities fell under the two companies’ control. Prior to 2014, school engineers and principals managed their own facilities.

The change comes as schools remain closed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Parents and teachers have long lamented CPS’ ability to keep its buildings sanitized, concerns that are heightened while there is no cure or vaccine for the highly-contagious novel coronavirus.

A Chicago Sun-Times series in 2018 revealed disgusting, pest-filled conditions at dozens of schools managed by Aramark that failed surprise inspections, even as the district signed rich contracts to expand the company’s work.

Categories Chicago, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization

Paul Tough: Kill the SAT, and Good Riddance

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2020 //
43

Paul Tough has written several books, including most recently, “The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us.” He also wrote a book about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone, and the best-selling “How Children Succeed.”

In this article in the New York Times, Tough explains that the decision by the University of California to drop the SAT may be the beginning of the end for that test. And it’s a good thing.

He writes:

If you’re a college student (or an aspiring one) from a financially struggling family, the coronavirus pandemic has brought with it a steady downpour of bad news: closed campuses, slashed financial-aid budgets and, coming soon, big cuts in state funding for public colleges and universities. But through these dark clouds one ray of more hopeful news has shone. Standardized admissions tests, which many aspiring low-income students see as the greatest barrier to their college goals, are being eliminated this spring as entrance requirements by one institution after another.

At first, the list of colleges deciding during the pandemic to go “test-optional” (meaning that applicants can choose whether or not to submit test scores) included mostly small private institutions — Williams, Amherst, Tufts, Vassar — and the decisions were often presented merely as temporary changes or pilot projects.

But last week brought much bigger news: Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California, recommended to the system’s Board of Regents that the entire U.C. system go test-optional for the next two years, followed by two years during which the university would become not just test-optional but “test-blind.” In 2023 and 2024, Ms. Napolitano proposed, Berkeley and U.C.L.A. and every other U.C. school wouldn’t consider SAT or ACT scores at all in their admissions decisions.

The university administration, Ms. Napolitano explained, would spend these years trying to come up with its own better and fairer standardized admission test. If it failed, U.C. wouldn’t go back to accepting the SAT and ACT; instead, it would eliminate the consideration of standardized tests in admissions for California students once and for all.

This was a sweeping proposal, especially for such an influential institution as the University of California. And what was so surprising about Ms. Napolitano’s recommendations — which will be put to a vote by the Board of Regents on Thursday — was that they came less than a month after the university’s faculty senate had unanimously accepted the report of a task force supporting the continued use of the tests and proposing to keep them in place for at least the next nine years.

If the Regents concur with Ms. Napolitano this week, it will be a crucial turning point in a national debate about standardized testing that has been going on for decades. Do standardized tests help smart, underprivileged college applicants? Or do they hurt them?

Proponents of standardized tests often make the case that the tests are the least unfair measure in a deeply unfair system. It’s certainly true that the system is unfair from start to finish. Rich kids enjoy advantages over poor kids that begin in prenatal yoga sessions and continue through summer tennis camps, after-school robotics classes and high-priced college-essay coaching sessions. But the data show that standardized tests don’t level that playing field; they skew it even further.

The best predictor of college success overall is a simple one: high school grades. This makes a certain sense. An impressive high school G.P.A. reflects a combination of innate talent and dedicated hard work, and that’s exactly what you need to excel in college. And while standardized test scores have long been found to be highly correlated with students’ financial status, that’s much less true with high school G.P.A. In a recent study, Saul Geiser, a researcher at Berkeley, found that the correlation between family income and SAT scores among University of California applicants is three times as strong as the correlation between their family income and their high school G.P.A.

You can see the same pattern when you look at applicants by race. When Mr. Geiser used high school G.P.A. to identify the top 10 percent of Californians applying for admission to the U.C. system, 23 percent of the pool was black or Latino. When he used SAT scores to identify the top 10 percent, 5 percent was black or Latino.

Here’s another way to look at the numbers: The students who are most likely to benefit from any university’s decision to eliminate the use of standardized tests are those who have high G.P.A.s in high school but comparatively low standardized test scores. These are, by definition, hard-working and diligent students, but they don’t perform as well on standardized tests. Let’s call them the strivers.

A few years ago, researchers with the College Board, the organization that administers the SAT, analyzed students in that cohort and compared them with their mirror opposites: those with relatively high test scores and relatively low high school G.P.A.s. Let’s call them the slackers: self-assured test takers who for one reason or another didn’t put as much effort into high school.

The College Board’s researchers made two important discoveries about these groups. First, there were big demographic differences between them. The slackers with the elevated SAT scores were much more likely to be white, male and well-off. And the strivers with the elevated high school G.P.A.s were much more likely to be female, black or Latina, and working-class or poor.

The researchers’ second discovery was that students in the striver cohort, despite their significant financial disadvantages, actually did a bit better in college. They had slightly higher freshman grades and slightly better retention rates than the more affluent, higher-scoring slackers.

Despite the persistent and compelling evidence that standardized tests penalize low-income students, a lot of us want to believe the opposite: that standardized tests are the tool that can help selective colleges pluck brilliant low-income students out of low-performing high schools. These Cinderella stories do sometimes happen, and when they do, they’re inspiring. But these anecdotal exceptions are overwhelmed by the experience of a large majority of ambitious low-income students, for whom standardized tests have the opposite effect: They construct a wall that separates them from prestigious universities, a wall with a narrow doorway that only well-off kids seem to know how to squeeze through.

If the Board of Regents approves Ms. Napolitano’s recommendations, it won’t get rid of all the structural barriers standing in the way of California’s striving low-income students. Not by a long shot. But it will have taken an important step toward making that wall a little lower and that doorway a little wider.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Higher Education, Race, Testing

Stan Karp: Betsy DeVos Uses the Pandemic to Pursue Her War Against Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
5

Stan Karp has written a brilliant critique of federal policy and Betsy DeVos’s audacious and vicious assault on our nation’s public schools and their students. Don’t believe those who say that Congress has blocked her most horrendous actions. She has used her authority and exceeded the intent of Congress to advance her single-minded and narrow-minded pursuit of privatization. When Congress tries to blunt or control her actions, she simply ignores Congress. She is out of control. She treats members of Congress like her household help.

Karp reviews the failures of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Then he shows how the pandemic has given DeVos the tools to wreak havoc on our public schools, which enroll the vast majority of children.

He writes:

The emergency CARES Act, passed without a single dissenting vote and signed in March, was the first of several massive pieces of federal legislation rushed through Congress in response to the pandemic. While the CARES Act didn’t include the same kind of signature federal initiative that RTTT represented for Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, it did give Duncan’s successor, the wildly unpopular, right-wing billionaire Betsy DeVos, extraordinary powers in a host of important policy areas.

There will be additional federal action affecting schools in the months ahead, including attempts to address the financial tsunami that is already engulfing school budgets. But even a cursory comparison between the federal response in 2009 and the initial response to the current crisis provides some clues about the extended emergency ahead for public education.

The CARES Act included $13.5 billion for K–12 schools, $14 billion for higher education, and another $3 billion that governors can split between the two as part of $31 billion in “stabilization aid” for state budgets. But while the total $2.2 trillion legislative package was several times larger than the $800 billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, the initial amounts provided for education in the CARES Act were much smaller.

The Recovery Act sent $54 billion in education aid to states primarily for K–12 programs and the implementation of RTTT. Moreover, as noted by Education Week, the “2009 stimulus didn’t just shore up education budgets; its unprecedented windfall of education aid also helped the Obama administration put financial muscle behind its priorities. Those priorities focused on areas like standards and accountability.” To promote those policies, the funds came with prescriptive regulations about their use, including provisions that drove an expansion of charters, standardized testing, and test-based teacher evaluation. States and school districts desperate for federal dollars had to commit to this agenda to receive RTTT’s “competitive grants.”

“The CARES Act doesn’t take the same approach,” Education Week’s analysis concluded. “It’s hard to see discrete elements of a Trump education policy agenda driving current coronavirus aid — although U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos indicated last week she wants to change that.”

DeVos Given Tools of Destruction

The CARES Act gives DeVos multiple tools to do so. It gives the secretary of education authority to waive many requirements outlined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the omnibus federal education legislation that replaced NCLB. The first — and undoubtedly most popular — use of this authority came when all 50 states sought and received in a matter of weeks a waiver to suspend federally required annual standardized testing for the current school year. The educational irrelevance of these tests and their existence as an obstacle to serving the real needs of students was one of the first lessons of the pandemic.

But DeVos’ new authority has much more sinister potential. The CARES Act gives her the power to waive Title I funding regulations, which govern the largest federal education program supporting children from low-income families. It also allows her to suspend Title II rules defining professional development and Title IV requirements to “provide students with a well-rounded education” including the arts, mental health services, and training on trauma-informed practices — all crucially important in the current crisis. The CARES Act specifically allows schools to shift money from these areas to purchase “digital devices.” By early April, 28 states had received waivers to reallocate ESSA spending.

In the guidelines for distributing the first pot of CARES funding, the $3 billion Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, DeVos blocked any use of funds to support DACA recipients or international students. She also said any monies awarded to teacher unions to provide services defined in the CARES Act would be “inconsistent with statutory requirements,” although last year she authorized church and religious groups to receive federal funds to provide similar services.

DeVos has a long and notorious record of using agency guidance and regulatory action to undermine equity. One of her first acts after being confirmed as secretary was to support the repeal of protections for transgender students, including their right to choose restrooms. She was sued for rolling back protections against predatory lenders at for-profit colleges and threatened with jail by a federal judge for “intentionally flouting” a court order to stop collection proceedings for such loans. DeVos rescinded sexual assault guidance issued under Title IX, a move the National Women’s Law Center said would have a “devastating” impact, and in May released new guidance that weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment and assault. She proposed allowing schools to use federal “student enrichment funds” to purchase guns and used a school safety commission formed in the wake of the Parkland school shootings to recommend repeal of regulations on school discipline practices that were rooted in civil rights concerns. Similarly, DeVos tried to rescind Obama-era rules that required districts to track racial disparities in special education classification rates, an effort a federal judge blocked as “arbitrary and capricious.” In April, DeVos relaxed oversight and accreditation rules for higher education online programs at a time when the pandemic was massively expanding the scale of such programs.

Trump and DeVos on Feb 14, 2017 in Washington D.C. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Pool
Beyond putting her very rich thumb on the wrong side of the scales of justice, DeVos is now in position to be a key gatekeeper for a new and crushing era of austerity for school budgets. To access the CARES Act’s stabilization funds, states must nominally commit to maintaining recent levels of education funding for fiscal years 2021 and 2022. But DeVos can waive that requirement and no doubt will. Already, she has issued guidelines for distributing CARES Act funds that drive more dollars to private schools and wealthier students by circumventing requirements to allocate the funds according to more progressive Title I formulas.

DeVos undermines equity. She flouts the Will of Congress. She seeks to dismantle civil rights protections.

Unlike Trump, she is not incompetent. She is not stupid. She is very clever. She is diabolical. Trump will never fire her because she sows chaos as surely as he does, but without bluster and braggadocio.

If you need a reason to vote for Joe Biden, think about Betsy DeVos.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Bill Phillis: Ohio Supreme Court Strikes Down Local Control of Schools

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2020 //
10

Perhaps you recall that Republicans used to favor local control of public schools by elected boards. That time is now gone, since Republicans bought into the idea of privatization of public funds. Now they support state takeovers, even though there is no evidence that state takeovers have ever been successful, and a good deal of evidence (see the Michigan “Education Achievement Authority” and the Tennessee “Achievement School District”) that they have failed.

In Ohio, as Bill Phillis reports here, the state Supreme Court just approved a state takeover of school districts where test scores are low.

Ohio Supreme Court strikes a major blow to local community control of school districts and the rule of law

On May 13 the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the egregious HB 70 of the 131st General Assembly. HB 70 removes the control of certain school district from the elected board of education to an appointed entity. HB 70 was enacted in a short timeframe in violation of Article II section 15(c) which requires, “Every bill shall be considered by each house on three different days, unless two-thirds of the members elected to the house in which it is pending suspend this requirement, and every individual consideration of a bill or action suspending the requirement shall be recorded in the journal of the respective house.” Additionally, the enactment of HB 70 violated Article II section 15(d) which requires that “No bill shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title.”

HB 70, as introduced, provided for wraparound services as a means to help low-performing districts to improve student outcomes. The amendment, which was void of public input and the opportunity for public input, is totally antithetical to the purpose of the original bill.

Justice Donnelly, in a dissent, clearly shows how the legislature violated the Constitution. The dissent provided a chronology of events that led to the unlawful enactment of HB 70.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee

Arthur Camins: Why We Must Support Biden

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2020 //
30

Arthur Camins, retired science teacher and former director of innovation in engineering and science at Stevens Institute of Technology, intends to vote for Joe Biden.

He explains why:

I supported Bernie Sanders for president. I also would have been thrilled if Elizabeth Warren was nominated. I will now vote for Joe Biden. He is the only potential Democratic nominee at this point. So, either he will be the next president or Trump.

To those who say they cannot bring themselves to vote for him:

To which women, whose right to an abortion are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”

To which deported asylum seekers are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”

To which fellow citizens, denied the right to vote, are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”

To which fellow progressive whose right to organize are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”

To which fellow humans whose climate continues to warm uncontrollably are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”

To which fellow breathers inhaling dirtier air are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”

Biden is very far from ideal but he would do none of the above things listed above, nor would he encourage violence.

Make no mistake, as bad as everything is right now, is can get way worse. History shows us, worse is usually worse and not necessarily “a wake up call” without unimaginable death and suffering. People often rise up, not in times of terror, but i times of rising expectation when things are looking up and with hope they say, “I want more.”

Do you want to preserve your (our) right to organize to set the stage for hope?

Please think about this.

Categories Education Reform

Trump Attacks Medical Researchers Who Cast Doubt on His Favorite Anti-COVID 19 Drug

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2020 //
60

The Washington Post published a remarkable story by Philip Bump about Trump’s ongoing battle with medical research. Any researcher who challenges the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, he believes, is a political enemy, a “Never Trumper.”

Trump doesn’t believe in science.

He says he is taking the drug to prove that it works. How does he know it works? People have told him so.

He is a very stupid, narcissistic man.

There was a specific reason for President Trump’s sudden announcement on Monday that he was taking the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine. His goal was to undermine a whistleblower who had raised questions about the administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, a whistleblower who claimed that it was his skepticism about the utility of the drug that led to his firing.

How could hydroxychloroquine be as dangerous as former top vaccine official Rick Bright suggested, Trump offered, given that he himself was using it?


The revelation quickly prompted reporters to ask what evidence Trump had that the drug was at all efficacious in addressing the virus and disease it causes, covid-19.

Simple, Trump replied: Lots of people called him and said it worked.
“

The only negative I’ve heard was the study where they gave it — was it the VA?” Trump said, referring to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “With, you know, people that aren’t big Trump fans gave it.”

He then went on to express surprise at this perceived disloyalty from VA, given the legislation he had signed to support it. (The legislation he mentioned was in fact first signed by President Barack Obama.)


This idea that there was this study undercutting the utility of the drug Trump has been championing for two months clearly stuck with the president.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon after a meeting with Republican senators, he again disparaged the study.
“If you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape. They were very old. Almost dead,” Trump said. He described the study as “a Trump-enemy statement.”


A few hours later, again pressed on his use of the drug for an unproven purpose, Trump again suggested that opposition to it was simply political.
“There was a false study done where they gave it to very sick people, extremely sick people, people that were ready to die,” he said.

“It was given by obviously not friends of the administration.” He later added that it “was a phony study and it’s very dangerous to do it.”


As is often the case, Trump is repeating one of his go-to lines even in a situation where it doesn’t really make sense. Every time someone on television criticizes him, that person is necessarily a never-Trumper.

When administration officials raise questions about his actions or leadership? Never-Trumpers. The people who testified against him in his impeachment inquiry were never-Trumpers, even when they were apolitical or Republican. And, now, this study — necessarily a product of opposition to him and his administration.


It’s a bizarre claim in general, that a team of seven doctors would conspire to study the efficacy of an antimalarial drug to undermine the president politically.

But it’s an even more ridiculous claim when you consider how the study was completed.
The team of researchers from various institutions including the University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia used data on every person admitted to a VA hospital with covid-19 until April 11. They assessed whether the patients had been administered hydroxychloroquine, with or without the accompanying drug azithromycin. What they determined was that there was no identifiable improvement in outcome for those who received the drug and, in fact, that the drug was associated with an increased risk of death.


In other words, there was no cherry-picking of specific patients to identify those most likely to succumb to the illness.

As VA Secretary Robert Wilkie pointed out during the Cabinet meeting, it was also not the case that this was a VA study.
“Researchers took VA numbers and they did not clinically review them. They were not peer-reviewed,” Wilkie said. “They did not even look at what the president just mentioned — the various co-morbidities that the patients that were referenced in that study had.”
That’s true, because the research was an after-the-fact assessment of outcomes. (Wilkie did not suggest that bias motivated the results.)

It was also not the only study to find no obvious benefit from the drug.


Another study, looking at more than 1,400 patients in New York, also determined that hydroxychloroquine had no significant effect on improving patients’ conditions.

A study in Brazil found an associated increase in deaths from the use of chloroquine, a drug related to hydroxychloroquine.

Late last month, the Food and Drug Administration warned against the use of the drugs outside of a clinical setting, given concerns about dangerous heart-related side effects. (Asked Tuesday about the FDA’s guidance about use in hospitals, Trump said that was “not what I was told.”)


Again, there’s no evidence at all that the study was spurred by opposition to Trump. What’s more, there’s no evidence that the study was structured in a way that the results would reflect poorly on the medications. It is also not the case that this was the only study that failed to demonstrate efficacy of the medication.


However, Trump has decided the result is indicative of how opposition to his repeated promotion of hydroxychloroquine is somehow politically motivated.

Because for this president, anyone who doesn’t agree with Trump completely almost necessarily opposes him entirely.

Categories Education Reform, Science, Trump
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