Teresa Hanafin writes in the Boston Globe’s Fast Forward:

You have to hand it to Mitch McConnell:He is quite open about his devotional obeisance to Trump. Just look at the TPP he has unveiled (that’s Trump Protection Plan, not Trans-Pacific Partnership) and which the Senate will vote on today: His rules are very different from those in place for the Bill Clinton trial, which he had pledged to follow. (Wait, a Republican lied? I’m shocked, shocked to find that lying is going on in here!) A cynic would sum up the proposed rules as no evidence, no witnesses, no time, no sunshine.

Evidence. The material the House collected during its impeachment investigation will not be automatically entered into evidence, as it was at the Clinton trial. Instead, it will be subject to a vote of acceptance by the full Senate, a vote that won’t happen until after statements and arguments by both sides.

Witnesses. McConnell is opposed to calling witnesses who refused to testify in the House unless the Senate votes to call them — again, after the arguments by both sides.

Time. Like the Clinton trial, each side will have 24 hours to present its case. But McConnell is forcing those 24 hours into just two days each (Clinton’s opponents and supporters had four days each). Since the sessions can’t start until 1 p.m. because of Chief Justice John Roberts’s Supreme Court morning schedule, the trial arguments will go into the wee hours of the morning each day. That’s why the hashtags #MidnightMoscowMitch and #MidnightMitchand the phrase “Nobody likes him” are trending on Twitter. Oh, wait — that last one is about Bernie Sanders, not McConnell. Sorry about that.

Sunshine. That’s the nickname given to laws and acts that mandate openness and transparency on the part of government and businesses, designed to reassure the public that officials are acting ethically, to allow the public to bear witness to certain activities, and to prevent corruption. In fact, there is a federal sunshine statute that applies to Congress. McConnell looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in quite some time, so there’s that.

Let’s review what’s at issue here: The charges against Trump are that he abused the power of the presidency to help himself get re-elected, and then obstructed Congress when it tried to find out the truth by blocking all requests for testimony and documents.

Trump held up $391 million in congressionally approved and critical military aid for Ukraine, a US ally that is fighting off the Russians on its eastern border; refused to invite the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to the White House to demonstrate US resolve to help him clean up corruption; and canceled VP Mike Pence’s attendance at Zelensky’s inauguration, which would have signaled US support for Ukraine to the Russians.

He stands accused of doing all that to try to force Zelensky to publicly announce that he was investigating Trump’s chief political rival, former VP Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Testimony from multiple witnesses during the House impeachment investigation showed that Trump wasn’t the least bit interested in the widespread corruption in Ukraine that Zelensky was trying to tackle. Nor did he care whether Zelensky actually conducted a Biden investigation, witnesses said. All he wanted was an announcement that could be played on an endless loop on Fox News until November.

Of course, the whistleblower derailed that plan when he/she revealed the contents of a phone call in which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. After Trump found out about the whistleblower’s complaint, and after three House committees launched investigations into the scheme, Trump finally released the aid — after a delay of 84 days. (In other words, after he got caught.)

The Democrats released their 111-page trial argument, which says that Trump’s actions jeopardized national security, compromised the integrity of US elections, and undermined US democracy. The White House legal arguments read partly like a combination of Trump’s Twitter tirades and his rally rages: It’s a rigged process, Democrats are trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election, the charges are flimsy and dangerous, Chuck Schumer is ugly, etc. etc.

One of the White House’s main arguments is that Trump committed no crime, although first of all, most legal scholars say that’s not required for impeachment, and second, he actually did break the law. The Government Accountability Office ruled last week that he did so when he withheld the military aid to Ukraine, saying that the president cannot substitute his policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law. And obstruction of Congress is a federal criminal violation.

They also argue that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. Funny, it was when Nixon’s impeachment articles were being prepared, and it was again during the Clinton impeachment when independent counsel Kenneth Starrunsuccessfully tried to persuade the House to make that an article of impeachment. In fact, he argued that repeatedly invoking executive privilege is abuse of power. He’s now on Trump’s legal team, but apparently sees no contradictions.

Neither does Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz,who is on Trump’s team for one reason: to argue that abuse of power isn’t an impeachable offense under the Constitution because it isn’t a crime under federal law. Of course, in 1998 during the Bill Clinton trial, he argued the exact opposite.

Meanwhile, a panicked Trump and Senate Republicans are frantic over the possibility that the Senate will, indeed, vote to hear from witnesses, so they are pulling out all the stops, coming up with plans to keep former national security adviser John Bolton from testifying. Man, he must know a lot. But why he doesn’t just hold a press conference and spill his guts, or send House Democrats a document outlining what he knows, is beyond me. Another GOP drama king.

Ed Johnson, the conscience of education in Atlanta, fears that the school board is determined to unearth another Disrupter as its next superintendent.

He does not like the generic survey created by the professional search firm.

He offers a different example of the right way to find a worthy superintendent.

He writes:

Cita Cook: Suggestions for Hiring Next Atlanta Superintendent Atlanta Board of Education recently hired Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA), an executive search firm, to search for the next Atlanta superintendent.  HYA’s search process includes obtaining community input by way of its Superintendent Search Survey.  The school board has scheduled the survey to be available through 28 January 2020. One may easily perceive the survey is rather generic, embeds popular school reform language and ideology, can be used in a superintendent search process for any districts, and perhaps is not specifically germane to Atlanta needing to find a new superintendent.  When asked to clarify, an HYA team member confirmed yesterday the survey is HYA’s standard instrument that serves the firm’s superintendent search research interests, so is not specific and germane to APS alone. Instead of filling out the HYA Superintendent Search Survey, Dr. Cita Cook provided the school board the following suggestions as responses, including an explanation as to why she had to do so.  Cita Cook is an educator retired from teaching at the levels of high school, community college, and university.  She regularly attends school board and district public meetings and is known for taking copious notes. Cita offers: I have always (at least since I was a teenager) rebelled against answering surveys in the ways in which they are usually written, partly because they are usually too vague, ambiguous, and unwilling to accept nuanced and complex answers.  I could not possibly answer the most recent survey due on January 28 without writing a paragraph or more on each statement that we are supposed to agree or disagree with, as well as about each skill listed, including ones not listed. I hope this search will be much more flexible and creative than one based on a simplistic quantitative set of data that hides the sub-categories and disagreements within too many of the statements and survey answers.  I am, therefore, sending you a list of ideas about an APS Superintendent search that I first prepared in 2013 and have updated in recent months, including today.  If you have any questions for me, you can reach me at citacook@gmail.com. Suggestions for the search, partially in reaction to the original 2019 Position Profile: The Position Profile and other documents and processes (including surveys) should be clearly appropriate for an education position in an urban setting, not documents that could be used without much editing for a corporate CEO position or a non-education, non-profit leadership job. Make it clear that this district needs a Superintendent with a deep understanding of and commitment to the need to uncover and overcome all kinds of inequities, including an awareness of how difficult and yet necessary this is.  Ask, for example, how they might take realistic steps toward making the District and education more equitable. Do not make “transformative innovation” a priority or use the term “transformation” or “turnaround” because they are too categorical.  Since change can have negative, as well as positive, impacts, do not call for “change” or “innovation” just for the sake of change.  Raise, as well, the possibility that effective changes from the current practices might require undoing previous changes, including the possibility of returning to a version of what worked in the past or was not allowed to last long enough to show if it could work. Instead of calling for support of “achievement,” encourage support for “learning,” as in a candidate who has “demonstrated development and execution of strategies that increase learning for all students,” including the ability to learn in different contexts and throughout life. Rewordings of segments of an earlier standards for a Superintendent: “Demonstrated experience in managing and leading complex education and possibly other programs and organizations.”  “Demonstrated experience in acting with the highest levels of ethical and educational professional standards.”  Do NOT call for business or corporate standards or vocabulary (especially the term “talent management”), but you could suggest experience and ideas in how to educate business and corporate supporters in the basic principles of education, instead of the other way around. Both the 2013 and the 2019 Position Profiles call for “knowledge of current and future policy issues, including the complexities and varieties of schools choice, such as charter schools, turnaround models, alternative education, and online and blended learning.”  Instead of these approaches, I and others would prefer that you call for an expert in helping neighborhood schools develop their own strengths, including through the community school model.  Ideally, we would ask for someone ready to develop a process for ending the existence of most or all non-neighborhood schools over time.  My fantasy candidate would have a sense of how to oversee developments so that fewer and fewer people would see the need to put their children in either charter schools or regular schools with wealthier parents.  This could also mean that those on the north side of Atlanta would no longer feel a need to fuss if their cluster borders were changed to include a greater variety of students.  Calling for “School Choice” is really announcing either or both the District’s leadership’s inability and unwillingness to figure out and learn how each school can be best for its community. Expect the candidates to understand the social, political, economic, and educational history and complexities of Atlanta, its environs, and Georgia.  Someone who has not done enough homework to understand the different histories of North and South Atlanta should be removed from the list of candidates. Both versions of the Profiles also call for “experience in motivating faculty, staff, and external stakeholders.”  Please do not ask for or allow any behavior reminiscent of motivational speakers and cheerleaders.  Instead, call for experience and ideas about how to encourage and support mutually respectful collaboration between the superintendent, other administrators, faculty, staff, students, parents and community members for key decisions concerning policies and practices. Call for evidence of ability to have a respectful, collaborative relationship with employees at all levels and to create a district culture of Respectful Collaboration. The new Superintendent should have had enough experience as a classroom teacher to understand the ways in which teaching is an art as well as a science and how important it is to match each teacher to the kind of classroom and subject matter that can benefit from and enhance their individual capabilities and knowledge in both content and pedagogy. Instead of “An appreciation for the multi-cultural and diverse communities that comprise the APS District,” expect something more, possibly evidence of working well with communities in districts where most of the students were impoverished children of color, preferably in the South. The new Superintendent needs to communicate effectively with a variety of people at all levels, from a CEO to a parent without a high school education.  And make them feel heard.  Too often, those who can speak to people at the top cannot do so with those at the bottom.  Ask for evidence that the candidates are ready to show respect for, listen to, and learn from ANY parents, neighbors, and community members, not just from individuals considered leaders. Ed Johnson Advocate for Quality in Public Education Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Piet van Lier of Policy Matters Ohio has some proposals to “fix” Ohio’s disastrous voucher program.

The voucher program–called EdChoice–was recently amended to make 2/3 of the districts in the state liable to pay for vouchers for private and religious schools, many (or most) of which are not as good as the public schools. In addition, students who never attended a public school can apply for a voucher, meaning that the program is a subsidy for students already in private and religious schools.

His first suggestion is that the state should create a separate fund to pay for vouchers, instead of taking money away from public schools.

His second is that only students already in public schools should be eligible for vouchers.

He suggests that vouchers should be limited only to low-income students.

And he proposes that voucher-receiving schools should be required to meet the same academic standards and regulations as public schools.

I personally don’t believe that there should be any vouchers. Low-income students do not benefit by going to religious schools. Affluent families should pay for private and religious schools if they want them.

But all of these are good proposals to  limit the damage to the state’s public schools, which enroll 90% of students.