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John Thompson: How the Federal Mandate for Testing Destroyed Teaching and Learning

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2024 //
24

John Thompson is a historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma. He remembers the time before George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” took control of the schools away from educators. Data-driven accountability, he writes, polluted the culture of learning. After more than two decades of failure, educators and students need a better way forward.

He writes in Oklahoma Voice:

When I first walked into John Marshall High School in 1992, I was stunned by the exceptional quality of so many teachers.

It had never occurred to me that such great teaching and learning was being done in high schools. Yes, there were problems, but each year, our school would make incremental improvements.

Then, the Oklahoma City Public Schools system (OKCPS) would bow to pressure and implement disastrous policies that would wipe out those gains — or worse.

I remember when OKCPS was first forced into policies that were later dubbed “corporate school reform.”

The No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed into law in 2002 by former Republican President George W. Bush, increased the federal government’s influence in holding schools accountable for student performance.

During the first years after the passage, local and state leaders often had some success in minimizing the damage done by school “choice” and high stakes testing. But, as in the rest of the nation, that resistance angered market-driven reformers who then doubled-down on harsher, more punitive policies.

They ordered everyone to “be on the same page,” and even today press educators to “teach to the test.”

I quickly discovered that this one-size-fits-all philosophy was disastrous for schools, teachers and students. And decades later, it still remains so.

It doesn’t take into account the difference between situational and generational poverty. It ignores that some students are seriously emotionally disturbed and/or burdened by multiple traumatic experiences, now known as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). And, it fails to factor in that children, who may have reading or math disabilities, have the potential to become student leaders.

The tipping point for me was when school staffing became driven by a primitive statistical model that could not distinguish between low income students and children of situational poverty receiving free and reduced price lunches as opposed to children living in extreme poverty with multiple ACEs.

Because of the additional costs of providing services for the most emotionally disturbed students, teachers in “regular” classrooms were assigned up to 250 students.

I had classes with 60 students.

Data-driven accountability pollutes our learning cultures.

School segregation by choice combined with test-driven accountability creates a culture of competition, winners and losers, and simplistic policies that ignore poverty and Adverse Childhood Experiences.

It is a policy imposed mostly by non-educators who ignore educational and cognitive scientific research.

As these quick fixes failed — just like educators and social scientists predicted they would — the “blame game” took off, fueling an exodus of teachers and driving out the joy of teaching and learning. The change in culture particularly affected the poorest children of color.

In order to improve our learning environment and our children’s outcomes, we must first get back to building on our strengths rather than weaknesses.

For instance, if we agree on a culture where we use tests for diagnostic purposes, rather than determining winners and losers, we could go back to the time when our curriculum committees included teachers, assistant principals, and parents.

Those meetings frequently ended in compromises that brought out the best in all sides and made our schools a desired place to learn and work.

Categories Accountability, Competition, Curriculum, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Oklahoma, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

Indiana: Most Private Schools Taking Vouchers Are Nearly All Tax-Subsidized

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2024 //
7

Indiana has followed the lead of Florida, Arizona, Ohio and other states, starting a small voucher program, expanding year by year until almost every child in the state is eligible for a voucher. Voucher advocates in Indiana hope that the only remaining limits are soon removed so that all students in the state, rich and poor alike, will qualify for a voucher.

Most of the students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. The same is true in every other state with vouchers. The voucher program creates an entitlement for parents who can already afford private school.

The cost of the voucher program is near $500 million. About 70,000 students use vouchers. The public schools of Indiana enroll one million students.

Chalkbeat reports:

Voucher use has soared in Indiana since lawmakers made nearly every student in the state eligible, with more than 90% of students at more than half of all participating schools using a voucher during the 2023-24 school year, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

That was true in just 11% of private schools before lawmakers made the Indiana Choice Scholarship available to nearly every student in Indiana by relaxing income eligibility and removing other requirements to participate in the program.

Since lawmakers approved the expansion last year, the number of schools where 100% of students receive a voucher rose from just one in 2022-23 to 28 in 2023-24. Last year, in 178 of the 349 private schools that accept vouchers, more than 90% of students enrolled used a voucher to pay for tuition.

The recent growth in the share of students using vouchers has remade the scope of Indiana’s school choice program. Instead of being limited initiatives allowing students to leave struggling public schools, it’s increasingly a means for all families to choose their preferred educational settings.

Among supporters of choice, there is disagreement about the shift. Some say it proves just how popular and justified vouchers are.

“It’s phenomenal. In some ways, it’s predictable,” said Betsy Wiley of the Institute for Quality Education, a school choice advocacy group in Indiana, about the growth in voucher use. “In the years where eligibility has been expanded, you’ve seen greater growth.”

But others worry about costs and say the program has moved too far from its original purpose.

“A few of us feel strongly that this movement is about leveling the playing field for low income kids and working class kids. There’s an argument that these are taxpayer funds and we should limit that to a purpose that’s necessary, for kids who could not make those choices without it,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank. “I do think I’ve lost that argument.”

Meanwhile, critics of vouchers say the result isn’t just that Indiana is subsidizing tuition for families who can afford it without state funds, but that the state is doing so at the expense of up to hundreds of millions in funding for public schools.

“It’s the legislature’s obligation to provide for the common school system,” said Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education. “You’re taking the pie and slicing it up.”

Another big change to Indiana school choice could be coming soon. Some Republican leaders are pushing to merge the state’s three voucher tracks into one universal program that would give parents free rein over where to spend state funding.

Universal education choice through incremental expansion

Data from the state released earlier this year indicated that voucher use grew faster than enrollment, suggesting that vouchers were going to families already enrolled at private schools.

A Chalkbeat analysis comparing enrollment data to voucher use data at individual schools shows voucher use has grown at a faster rate than enrollment at the vast majority of schools. (One caveat: Many private schools have populations of just a few dozen students, meaning changes in enrollment and voucher use lead to large jumps in percentages.)

Statewide, around 70,000 students out of the 92,000 enrolled at private schools used a voucher to attend, receiving either the cost of the tuition and fees at their school, or 90% of the per-pupil funding the state gives to their local public schools — whichever is less.

More students receive a voucher worth 90% of their public school funding rather than the full cost of tuition and fees.

At only 13 schools statewide, less than half of all students received a voucher in 2023-24. Not every private school in Indiana participates in the voucher program.

Though private school enrollment has grown, it remains far below that of public schools in Indiana, which enroll over 1 million students…

Average ILEARN scores for the last year show that students at private schools performed better on the tests than students in public schools. But several years of broader studies of vouchers’ effects on student achievement — and other outcomes — show mixed results.

Christopher Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University, said his research has shown that when socioeconomic factors are controlled, public school students outperform their private school peers…

But critics like Fuentes-Rohwer of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education say the $439 million price tag for the program in 2023-24 represented a costly diversion of public resources from public schools that the state is constitutionally obligated to fund.

According to the state’s 2023-24 voucher report, if all 70,000 students receiving vouchers had attended public schools, the state would have added over $500 million in public education funding. But most voucher students receiving vouchers have never attended a public school.

“There are so many things you have to go through as a public school system to be transparent,” Fuentes-Rohwer said. “We are very concerned that funding leaves public schools that have the obligation to educate everyone.”

With a rise in the number of schools that have a large voucher population, some predict that private schools may seek the same per-pupil funding as public schools in the future.

Lubienski noted that charter schools were once thought to be able to deliver greater achievement with less funding and regulation, but now are seeking equitable funding.

Petrilli of the Fordham Institute agreed: With less funding, charter schools ultimately couldn’t compete with traditional public schools on teacher salary.

Please open the link to finish reading the article.

Categories Education Reform

Jennifer Rubin: Kamala Defies Her Critics with Concrete Economic Plans

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2024 //
6

Jennifer Rubin is a columnist for The Washington Post. She was hired to be a conservative voice. Trump flipped her.

She writes here about Kamala’s specific economic proposals:

The media, political insiders, former Republicans and even members of Harris’s own party have underestimated her abilities to carve policy positions and reconsolidate the Democratic base.

Most prominently, she has been consistently criticized for failing to articulate her economic vision. However, in two speeches — one in Raleigh, N.C., last month and one in Pittsburg on Wednesday(where she identified herself as a capitalist seeking “bold, persistent experimentation”) — as well as numerous campaign events, she has delineated a set of serious, concrete policies. These include: restoring the child tax credit; creating a $6,000 credit for the parents of newborns in their baby’s first year; stimulating the housing market; subsidizing first-time home buyers; eliminating unnecessary college degree requirements for federal jobs; subsidizing child care (thereby limiting child-care costs to 7 percent of lower-wage earners’ income); raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent; and expanding the tax credit for start-up businesses to $50,000 (with the goal of 25 million new business applications by the end of her first term). In Pittsburgh, she added new economic policy positions: become the global leader in everything from artificial intelligence to clean energy to aerospace to biomanufacturing; double the number of paid apprenticeships; reform tax laws to allow more employee profit-sharing; incentivize investment in factory towns; and cut red tape in permitting for construction.

This week, the White House announced that “the economy has grown by 3.2 percent per year during Biden-Harris administration — even stronger than previously estimated — and better than the first three years of the previous administration.”

Harris has managed to reduce former president Donald Trump’s polling edge on the candidate most trusted with the economy. And frankly, she has left those complaining about her “lack of details” with egg on their faces.

Categories Education Reform

Tom Ultican: The Plutocrat Privatizers Target Delaware

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2024 //
9

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced math, is a close observer of the public school privatization movement. In this post, he reviews the situation in Delaware, where the big money for privatization is coming from the DuPont family. The school board of the Christina district recently fired its superintendent, who was named superintendent of the year only two years ago. The reason, Tultican writes, was his opposition to charter schools.

He begins:

July 10th the Christina school board voted, at 2:45 AM, to remove popular Superintendent Dan Shelton. The seven member board split 4 to 3. It seems that Shelton’s opposition to allowing charter schools to take over the district motivated the vote. The Christina school district serves the small Delaware cities of Wilmington, Newark and their outskirts. It is a modest sized district with about 14,000 students. The unseen force behind the ouster was the DuPont family.

The attack by billionaires on schools in Delaware is similar to harm visiting public education throughout the nation. The local rich guy sets up tax exempt “charities” and uses them to undermine local schools. The “charities” hire young ambitious and talented people to lead the effort. Looking behind the scenes in Delaware illuminates the undermining of public schools nationwide.

Board President Donald Patton was joined by Vice President Alethea Smith-Tucker, Y.F. Lou, and Dr. Naveed Baqir in voting to oust the Superintendent two months before the new school year begins. It is alleged that they are the compromised four. In a local pod cast, Highland Bunker, board member Doug Manley reported that Matt Clifford, who dropped out of the recent school board election, was offered support if he agreed to vote with Board President Patton. Manley also speculated that Y. F. Lou received the same offer.

Trustee Manley stated that in his view the only reason Shelton was removed from office was because of his opposition to letting charter schools parcel out the district. It is notable that in 2022, Shelton was named Delaware State Superintendent of the Year.

Longwood Foundation

The Longwood Foundation is not called the DuPont Foundation because it was originally established in 1937 by Pierre DuPont to support Longwood Gardens. A tax reform act in 1969 caused a change and Longwood Gardens Inc. was formed to finance the gardens. The Longwood Foundation remained in existence to “principally support charitable organizations” and push forward the DuPont agenda.

Over the last decade, the foundation has spent $1,812,200 to support Reading Assist Inc. whose web page says:

“Reading Assist provides high-dosage tutoring for students in grades K-3 in the lowest 25% for reading proficiency, with a focus on serving in schools where there is the highest need.

“We recruit, train, and embed AmeriCorps members – known as Reading Assist Fellows – willing to commit a school year of service to provide our accredited, one-on-one intervention program to struggling readers.”

Reading Assist is a science of reading (SoR) advocate whose founder has ties to the dyslexia community. AmeriCorps has helped provide Teach for America (TFA) training and recruits. In other words, these organizations come with privatization blemishes. Many researchers believe SoR is bad science promoted by wealthy people and publishing companies while TFA is their army.

Longwood is still a DuPont family run organization. According to the 2022 tax form 990PF (TIN: 51-0066734), John DuPont is the current president and Margaret DuPont is Vice President. The tax records also show that in the last decade they have provided the fake education graduate school, Relay Graduate School, $1,300,000.

The Foundation concentrates its spending into the Wilmington area and does very little spending nationally. So their spending of more than $15,000,000 on charter schools in the last decade has made a huge impact locally. Margaret and one other DuPont family member also sit on the board of the smaller Chelsea Foundation (TIN: 51-6015638) which also provides grants to charter schools. It is this drive to privatize the Christina School District that seems to have led to firing a respected and popular administrator.

In 2017, Indiana scholars Jim Scheurich, Gayle Cosby, and Nathanial Williams posted an article on Diane Ravitch’s blog that outlined the model used by billionaires to gain control of local schools.  Point five of their rich guy privatization model is, “Development of a network of local organizations or affiliates that all collaborate closely on the same local agenda.”

Please open the link to finish the article.

One other interesting point in Ultican’s post. Remember Julia Keleher? She was appointed to be the Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico when the island was in dire financial straits. She pushed charters and vouchers and was widely opposed by teachers, parents, and students. She ended her time on the island with a jail sentence:

While serving as Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico, Keleher who is not Puerto Rican, secured a new law allowing for charter schools and vouchers plus the closure of hundreds of schools.

On December 28, 2016, Keleher was appointed Puerto Rico Secretary of Education by Governor-elect Ricardo Rosselló who became so hated he was driven from office in 2019. The appointment was just a few months before hurricane Maria hit. Keleher also became disliked as was demonstrated by San Juan protesters loudly chanting, “Julia go home!”

Things went sideways for Keleher. December 17, 2021, a federal judge in Puerto Rico sentenced her with six months prison, 12 months house arrest and a $21,000 fine. She plead guilty in June to two felony counts involving conspiracies to commit fraud. Almost as soon as she finished her prison term, she was hired by First State Educate. Now she is the executive director.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Delaware, Education Reform, Teach for America

Brazil Banned Twitter; Three Weeks Later, Elon Musk Folded

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2024 //
7

On September 9, Lisa Dye of Public Notice wrote about why Brazilian authorities banished Twitter (or, as its proprietor calls it, X). She wrote that he sticks up for his rightwing buddies, not free speech. In 2022, Brazil’s strongman leader Bolsonaro bestowed a prestigious national award on Musk.

She writes:

As of this writing Brazil’s 215 million citizens cannot access X (or “twitter” as we’ll call it). And yet, they are still living in the dumbest timeline.

Elon Musk, the world’s foremost “free speech absolutist,” has picked a fight with the Brazilian government over its demand that he censor rightwing misinformation. It’s a classic situation of “why can’t they both lose?” But right now, the only ones losing are the Brazilian people.

The saga began with former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a rightwing conservative who lost his bid for reelection in 2022 to leftwing politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On January 8 of last year, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress and the Supreme Court in a failed attempt to keep him in power. 

The reaction of the Brazilian government to January 8 stands in stark contrast to official reaction to January 6 in the US. In Brazil, hundreds of people were immediately arrested, including some senior government officials. Bolsonaro was barred from running for office again. And Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes led an operation that was both investigatory and preventative. In short, they wanted to figure out why their government had been attacked, and they wanted to make damn sure that it never happened again. 

To that end, Judge de Moraes sought to banish rightwing incitement, the so-called “digital militias,” from social media. In sealed rulings, he ordered Meta, Instagram, and Telegram to remove posts and users who flogged misinformation about the attack on government and advocated for Bolonsaro’s return. 

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro fled to Florida, where he launched a second act as hero of the American right. The Brazilian leader spews the same jingoistic populism, fueled by hatred of minorities and LGBTQ+ people, that animates Trumpism. He even consulted Steve Bannon on his 2018 campaign. And perhaps most importantly, he reinforces their bedrock belief that election fraud is rampant.

As former congressman and current Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes told CNN, “The way his narrative is built, to a large extent, as a copy or a mirror image of the narrative that they have in the US is very useful in the sense of showing people this is happening in other places, too. This proves the whole idea that there is a global conspiracy, a global leftwing conspiracy to keep us, the people who represent the real people, out of power.”

However, Musk has 20 million Twitter subscribers in Brazil, and they were drifting to other platforms, like Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads. Worse, the Brazilian Supreme Court took $2 million from Musk’s Starlink to satisfy its claims against Musk’s X. What did Musk do when threatened with fines and the loss of market share?

The New York Times reported on September 21:

Elon Musk suddenly appears to be giving up.

After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.

The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.

Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.

Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves in a filing on Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.

The abrupt about-face from Mr. Musk in Brazil appeared to be a defeat for the outspoken businessman and his self-designed image as a warrior for free speech. Mr. Musk and his company had loudly and harshly criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court for months, even publicly releasing some of its sealed orders, but neither had publicly mentioned their reversal by Saturday morning.

The moment showed how, in the yearslong power struggle between tech giants and nation-states, governments have been able to keep the upper hand.

Mr. Musk has had to come to terms with that reality in other countries, including India and Turkey, where his social network complied with orders to censor certain posts. But in Brazil and Australia, he complained about government orders he disagreed with and accused local officials of censorship. His company’s responses to governments have often been in line with his personal politics.

In the U.S., where Musk will never be censored, he has restored accounts of neo-Nazis, election deniers, and COVID science deniers. His own Twitter feed is an advertising platform for Trump. He frequently highlights outrageous pro-Trump, anti-Harris messages.

It’s sad to think that this hateful, bigoted man “owns” the world’s town square, where no one ever fact-checks him or moderates his Tweets.

Just proves, as if proof were needed, that money is power.

Categories Censorship, Education Reform, International, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Trump

Network for Public Education Launches National Center on Charter School Accountability

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2024 //
14

Having spent years covering charter scandals and seeking accountability for charters, the Network for Public Education realized that it could not compete with the high-powered corporate public relations firms representing the charter school industry. So, we decided, the only way to get accountability is to do it ourselves.

So NPE established the National Center on Charter School Accountability, which will produce reviews of charter school performance.

Here it is:

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cheating, Closing schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Privatization

Trump ❤️ Laura Loomer

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2024 //
19

Trump’s weird attachment to far-right provocateur Laura Loomer is causing rifts among Republicans. Trump brought her to the 9/11 memorial event, even though she has posted conspiracy theories about what happened that day. Loomer likes to be shocking. She boasts on her website about how many social media sites have banned her. After Lindsey Graham criticized her, Loomer posted a tweet calling him out as disloyal to Trump and chiding him for not acknowledging that he is gay. Her Twitter feed is awash in racist comments by her.

One publication posted photographs of Trump and Loomer together that showed an unusual degree of familiarity. Actually, those photos and videos of Trump with his arm around her waist, and Loomer pressing her breast into his, are all over the Internet. The question arises: What would Melania say?

Joe Perticone and Marc Caputo wrote that Loomer has split MAGAworld, with some defending Trump’s attachment to Loomer and others telling Trump to ditch her. She seems to have a reserved seat on Trump’s campaign jet, right next to him.

Their post appeared on The Bulwark. They wrote:

TWO OF DONALD TRUMP’S top congressional surrogates are pleading with the former president to ostracize right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer from his ranks over incendiary comments she’s made on social media.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) fired off criticisms of Loomer after she was spotted twice with Trump in as many days, warning that her presence could trip up the ex-president’s election chances. Greene said she went so far as to bring up the matter with Trump on a phone call.

“I’ve spoken with President Trump, but I’m not going to go into the details of our personal conversation,” Greene said on Thursday.

In response, Loomer went nuclear, accusing both Greene and Graham of being insufficiently MAGA, questioning the senator’s sexuality, criticizing the congresswoman for having affairs that led to her divorce, and comparing her to a “hooker.”

The quarreling, visceral even by Trump world standards, was viewed with intense schadenfreude in Democratic circles. It brought to the surface some of the internal tensions that Trump’s team had successfully buried for much of the election season. And it left the ex-president’s campaign ducking for cover.

“We’re staying out of this,” said a Trump campaign adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A failed congressional candidate with a penchant for conspiracies and pot-stirring, Loomer has long been viewed by a faction of Trump land as a Rasputin-like figure. Last year, Trump offered her a job on the campaign, but her internal critics ultimately persuaded him to withdraw the offer. At issue was the controversy that surrounds her. Loomer has called Kamala Harris “a drug using prostitute.” As for why Harris doesn’t have biological children, she once said: “I’m willing to bet she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.” 

A more recent Loomer tweet said that the White House would smell of curry if Harris, who is of Indian-American descent, won the election. This week’s 9/11 commemorations led to the resurfacing of past posts made by Loomer in which she questioned whether the U.S. government had a role in, or forewarning of, the attacks on that day.

Loomer insists that she wasn’t questioning whether the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” noting that she never actually used that phrase (she shared a video in a lengthy post on X that did use the phrase). A self-identified Islamophobe (she was kicked off Twitter for it years ago before Elon Musk reinstated her), she re-stated her belief that al Qaeda was to blame for the attack.

But the rap sheet of Loomer’s controversial posts extends well beyond the aforementioned topics. And in comments on Wednesday and Thursday, Greene said that Trump was better off ditching Loomer, whose congressional campaign she had supported.

“I don’t think that [Loomer] has the experience or the right mentality to advise a very important president,” Greene said. “To me, many of the comments that she makes and how she attacks Republicans like me, many other Republicans that are strong supporters of President Trump, I think they’re a huge problem.”

Shortly thereafter, Graham weighed in too, telling HuffPost on Thursday that he believed Loomer was “just really toxic.” 

“I mean, she actually called for Kellyanne Conway’s daughter to hang herself,” Graham noted. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. I don’t say that a lot. I think what [Loomer] said about Kamala Harris and the White House is abhorrent, but it’s deeper than that. I mean, you know, some of the things she’s said about Republicans and others is disturbing.” 

Modern politics may be “really toxic.” But that’s worth covering. Support our reporting by becoming a free or paid subscriber.Join

LOOMER’S ASCENDANCE IN TRUMP WORLD comes at a particularly delicate point for the campaign, with a number of staffers being added to the ranks, and the president trying to recover from a poor debate performance. It has raised questions about who has Trump’s ear and what type of people and politics he and his team are willing to indulge. Vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s wife is also of Indian-American descent. A spokesman for the VP candidate did not respond to messages seeking comment on his reaction to the curry tweet.

Campaign insiders say that Loomer has no role, official or unofficial, and that Trump had merely invited her to travel with him, something he has repeatedly done in the past. They cautioned against overstating her influence on the ex-president. Despite social media chatter that she bore responsibility for the ex-president’s debate meltdown about Haitian immigrants eating pets in the Ohio town of Springfield, the issue was brought to the fore by Vance and other right-wing commentators and political figures. Loomer had no role in debate prep and didn’t spend much time speaking with Trump en route to the debate, said a source familiar with their relationship.

“Laura is one of his fiercest defenders. She’s ride-or-die, and Trump rewards that loyalty. She’s someone he trusts,” said the source. “She’s part of the entourage, and Trump loves an entourage.”

But Loomer’s role in Republican politics is clearly growing. The National Republican Senatorial Committee—the GOP’s official campaign arm for the upper chamber—has increasingly relied on the video content Loomer produces. Since July, the NRSC has promoted eight of Loomer’s videos featuring her “reporters” who shout loaded questions from the street at Democratic senators up for re-election in battleground races.

“Yesterday NRSC shared a video of a reporter asking Jon Tester why he voted to allow men to play in women’s sports, which is a major issue in Montana and across the country. We share content from left, right, and center reporters asking Democrats tough questions,” said NRSC spokesman Mike Bergh, adding that the organization will use any videos of anyone asking Tester tough questions.

Greene, on Thursday, continued to argue that Trump was not benefiting from his association with Loomer. And as she made that point, she also hinted that she believed the ex-president wasn’t being well served by others, either, including Vance and the almost never-ending litany of comments he’s made about childless women.

“We’re not a party of identity politics. We’re a party for all Americans, and I think that’s so important, and I think that that we need to be focused on our policies, the inflation, the economy and the border, and not attacking people for their race, not attacking them because they may not have children and they love their pets, and I don’t want to have anything to do with that, and neither do the people,” Greene said.

Categories Education Reform

John Merrow: Education and the 2024 Election

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2024 //
9

John Merrow spent many years as PBS’s education reporter. Now retired, he continues to be a well-informed and well-respected observer of education issues.

Merrow writes:

If Kamala Harris wins the Presidency, public education isn’t likely to be shaken up as much as it needs to be. If Donald Trump is elected and has his way, public education will be turned upside down. But no matter who wins, American higher education is in big trouble….although, as you will see, every crisis is also an opportunity.

If Trump wins in November, the world of education faces rough seas.  His “Project 2025” pledges to abolish the federal Department of Education, without specifying what agencies would be responsible for what the Department now does, such as enforcing civil rights laws in education.  “Project 2025” pledges to abolish Head Start, the preschool program that now serves about 833,000 low income children, send Title One money directly to states (while phasing it out over a 10-year period), and turn over Pell Grant administration to the Treasury Department.   While many in education want the Pell Grant cap of $7,395 per year to be raised (given the cost of a college education), “Project 2025” does not address this.

President Biden has made forgiving student debt a goal, but most of his efforts have been stymied by the courts. “Project 2025” would end the practice completely.

Trump and his team promise to advance “education freedom” by vigorously promoting “school choice.”  In practice, this would provide parents with cash vouchers that can be spent at private and religious schools, as well as federal tax credits for money spent on private school tuition. In simplest terms, Trump and his team want as much of the money that now goes to public schools to go to parents instead, and they want it to be tax-deductible, as it now is in Arizona. 

“Project 2025” calls for restricting free breakfast and lunch to low income students. Doing that would probably bring back separate lines and separate entrances for those paying and those eating ‘for free.’  That practice led some poor kids to skip meals entirely, to avoid humiliation, which is why many school districts have opted to feed all kids. (There’s some evidence that feeding everyone is actually cheaper, because it eliminates the need for special passes, separate accounting, and so forth. Ask Tim Walz about it.)

A significant change that I experienced as a reporter was the treatment of children with handicapping conditions.  Prior to 1975, many of those children were institutionalized or kept at home. “The Education of All Handicapped Children Act” (PL 94-142) moved the revolution that had begun in Massachusetts and Minnesota to the national level. While it’s not perfect today, the federal government contributes more than $14 Billion to pay for services for those youngsters.  “Project 2025” would distribute the money to states directly with few if any strings attached and would ask Congress to rewrite the law so that some money could go directly to parents. That doesn’t seem to me to be a step in the right direction.

All of these provisos and directives seem likely to do major damage to public education, as well as to the life chances of low income students.

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run schools, seem unlikely to fare well no matter who wins. They aren’t private enough for most Republicans, and they are too private for most Democrats.

What lies in store for education if Harris wins in November?  The Biden-Harris Administration promised far more than it delivered, particularly in higher education, and its Secretary of Education has been largely missing in action, as far as I could tell. The party’s platform calls for free pre-school, free public college for families earning under $125,000 per year, making college tuition tax-deductible, smaller classes, and more ‘character education,’ whatever that is.

My own wish list would be for an energetic Secretary of Education who would encourage and lead conversations about the purposes of education, and the roles that schools play.  Too often today public schools are merely rubber-stamping the status children arrive with; but schools are supposed to be ladders of opportunity, there to be climbed by anyone and everyone with ambition.

The federal government cannot change how schools operate, but its leadership could and should shine a bright light on what schools could be….and how they could get there.

If I am allowed one wish, it’s that President Harris and Vice President Walz propose National Service, a 2-year commitment for all, in return for two years of tuition/training.  It’s long past time to put the ‘me-me-me’ self-absorption of the Ronald Reagan era in our rear view mirror. Our young people need to be reminded that they live in a great country and ought to show our appreciation by serving it in some capacity.

Whoever wins, Harris or Trump, American higher education’s rough years will continue, because a growing number of young people are questioning the value of, and necessity for, a college education.  This is a genuine crisis, and American higher education is in the fight of its life: Last year nearly 100 colleges shut down, roughly two per week.  While we still have more than 4,000 higher education institutions, many of those may not make it to 2030.  The rising cost of college defies common sense, the rise of Artificial Intelligence threatens some professions that now require a college degree, and many young people seem inclined to opt out of the high-speed, high stakes chase for a credential.  How many of the 31,000,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 will continue to enroll in college this year and next is an open question.  

Of course, colleges aren’t standing pat. For example,  Community Colleges are reaching down into high schools to keep their enrollment up; about one-fifth of all current Community College students are also enrolled in high school. Those institutions also enroll lots of older students–the average age of a Community College student is 28.

Four-year colleges and universities are fighting to enroll the 40,000,000 Americans who have some college credits but not enough for a degree.  They are also doing their best to attract on-line learners of all ages, and the most ambitious institutions are working hard to enroll (full paying) students from all over the world.  

If Trump wins, his immigration policies might shut the door on foreign students, a cash cow for a large number of institutions.  If Harris wins, federal aid probably won’t be slashed, but that won’t stop the questioning.

Questioning is long overdue. For too long elitists in the Democratic and Republican parties have looked down their noses at those not going to college, ignoring the wisdom of the great John Gardner:  “An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

Every crisis is also an opportunity:Some of those shuttered college campuses might be repurposed for housing for senior citizens, or veterans.  Some of those facilities could become Head Start centers, hubs for small businesses, community hospitals, and so forth. I’d like to see a Harris-Walz Administration embrace the possiblities, with energy and imagination.

So please pay attention. Vote intelligently, and urge your friends and neighbors to vote.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Democrats, Deregulation, Education Reform, Elections, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Funding, Harris, Kamala, Higher Education, Republicans, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education

NYC Schools Chancellor: Immigrants Are a “Godsend”

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2024 //
8

In an interview with the New York Times. NYC Schools Chancellor spoke up for immigrants and the public schools. It was refreshing to see his refusal to fall into the traps set by naysayers who badmouth the schools.

Troy Closson interviewed Mr. Banks:

As the school year opens for an American education system facing multiple crises, one education leader is staking out a curious stance. He is sublimely optimistic.

Public schools in the United States lost more than one million students between 2019 and 2022. The deluge of cash relief distributed during the coronavirus pandemic is drying up. And in a politically polarized era, fresh fights over what students learn in class are continuing to emerge.

But David C. Banks, the New York City schools chancellor, whose national profile rose this spring after his unyielding testimony at a House hearing on antisemitism in schools, argues in a recent interview that the state of urban education is not so bad.

All the woes of urban school districts can be found in New York, a diverse city that is contending with a major influx of homeless migrants. But in a departure from Mayor Eric Adams’s warnings that the migrant crisis is upending city life, Mr. Banks described the arrival of immigrant children as a boon.

As many states retreat from the teaching of race and identity in schools amid rising controversies, the chancellor doubled down on the value of those lessons in New York.

And he said that the rise of artificial intelligence did not represent an alarming threat of chatbot-enabled cheating, but a chance to transform education for the better.

As half of American adults say the education system is heading in the wrong direction, Mr. Banks argued that the “No. 1 thing” his administration had achieved was starting to rebuild faith in public schools.

The interviewer’s question are printed in bold.

New York City has enrolled nearly 40,000 new migrant children since July 2022. Are schools feeling the strain?

For some of the schools, the migrants coming here has been a godsend because we’ve lost so many other kids. Some schools were being threatened with whether we’re going to be able to keep the doors open. 

I push back on a lot of the kind of negative politics that people talk about with migrants. This is a city of immigrants. I mean, that’s the uniqueness of New York. 

We never make it easy for immigrants who are coming. But they find their way. And the same thing is going to happen here.

Many schools spent the earliest stages of the migrant crisis meeting basic needs. Now what do teachers and principals tell you is their biggest challenge in supporting new arrivals?

We’ve got over 5,000 teachers who are either bilingual or English-as-a-new-language teachers who are doing everything that they can possibly do. We need more. 

If you want to see New York City schools at their best, look at how these teachers have responded to the migrant crisis. It’s incredible. They’ve partnered kids with other kids who are serving as buddies for them. They’ve got mentors from older grades.

So I don’t hear a major cry from schools.

This administration has championed expanding popular programs to win back families, and celebrated last year’s enrollment uptick. But New York City has 186,000 fewer children and teenagers today than it did in 2020, and birthrates are on the decline. What does that mean for the future of the school system?

New York City is a very expensive place to live in. But we didn’t go from one million to 100,000. We still have over 900,000 kids and families.

Some of these things are happening beyond anything that I can do. There was a huge migration of Black folks back to the South. It’s more affordable for them to be in a place like South Carolina. Nothing I can do about that.

A big part of my job is to make the case for why we think the public schools would be a great place for you and your family. For years, the Department of Education used to play defense on media, the narrative. And I think we’re doing a better job with getting that word out.

GOOD JOB, CHANCELLOR BANKS!

Categories Bigotry, Education Reform, Funding, Immigration, New York City, Supporting public schools

CNN: Musk’s Anti-Kamala Tweets Are Getting More Extreme

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2024 //
17

CNN called out Elon Musk for posting unhinged, misogynistic tweets about Kamala Harris. Twitter has been turned into a pro-Trump platform. Musk, the richest man in the world, is frightened that Kamala is a “communist” because she wants to lift up people who need housing, jobs, food security, a better quality of life. And, like JD Vance, he thinks that women are incapable of thinking or leading.

CNN wrote:

Elon Musk’s disdain for the Democratic Party was never subtle, but in recent weeks his commentary on the upcoming US presidential election and his attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris have intensified, aided by a crude use of burgeoning artificial intelligence technology.

On Monday, Musk posted an AI-generated image on his social media platform that depicted Harris as a communist, wearing a red uniform complete with hammer and sickle emblazoned hat.

Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump for president and poured millions into a super PAC supporting the Republican, captioned the image with the false assertion, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”

The image, which appeared to violate X’s policy on manipulated content, resembled an AI-generated image posted by Trump last month during the Democratic National Convention, envisioning Harris addressing a crowd under communist symbols.

Musk’s post came a day after he shared another post with a screenshot suggesting that only “high status males” should be able to participate in government because women (and men with “low testosterone”) are not capable of critical thought. Musk posted it to his 196 million followers with the comment, “interesting observation.”

To complete the article, open the link.

Categories Education Reform
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