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Trump Runs the Federal Government Like a Charter School

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2019 //
58

 

Mitchell Robinson, Professor at Michigan State University, has a brilliant insight. Donald Trump runs the federal government (to the extent that he runs anything other than his Twitter feed) like a Charter School.

He write:

“One of Trump’s major goals as president* has been to eliminate or weaken regulations in eight major categories: agriculture, education, environment, finances, health care, housing, labor, telecommunications, and transportation. And on this one issue, even his detractors have to admit he’s exceeded their expectations. As of 2018, the Trump administration was eliminating 22 regulations for every 1 new regulation approved, surpassing their stated goal of “2 out for every 1 in.” These actions represent nothing less than a wholesale dismantling of the federal government’s oversight responsibility for every major sector of the country’s economic and environmental enterprises, many of which have been in place for decades. Taken along with the dramatic number of judicial appointments that the administration has jammed through, Trump’s influence on the nation’s direction is hugely outsized when compared to his legislative impact, which has been negligible.

“This focus on rolling back regulations was, of course, the entire rationale for the existence of charter schools. That the “purpose” of charters has now morphed perversely into a profit seeking endeavor only reinforces the importance of a lack of oversight to the proliferation of charters across the country. Charter management corporations depend on this lack of governmental accountability to hire uncertified teachers, pay them less than teachers in traditional public schools, pay charter leaders more, and keep teachers unions out of their schools. And when forced to play by the same rules as public schools, they just can’t compete.”

In addition, he hires completely unqualified people and has high staff turnover.

What’s more, he is in it for the money, just like so many charter leaders.

Robinson’s hope is that Trump’s administration closes as quickly as most charter schools.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform

Oakland: A Must-Read Lexicon of Charter Frauds

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2019 //
16

 

Jane Nylund, a parent activist in Oakland, wrote this incisive overview of charter frauds in her district and submitted it to the Task Force reviewing the California charter law. Please copy and forward to the Task Force at:

chartertaskforce@cde.ca.gov

She writes:

For fifteen years as a parent, volunteer, and employee of Oakland Unified, I’ve been witness to what is now a full blown privatization movement in Oakland under our “portfolio district” model. A movement designed to crush our real public schools and privatize them; a movement to close our schools and gentrify our neighborhoods. A movement to allow outside interests and corporations to feed at the trough. And the current laws in California that allow this to happen, unchecked and unfettered. And the absolute failure of any of it to collectively improve the lives of our most vulnerable children. 

 The time for this damaging experiment on our children is over. Stop clutching at the billionaires’ purse strings, while at the same time declaring that more choice is the answer. Here’s why it isn’t.

 Choice in Oakland-Do you want fries with that?

What does choice in Oakland mean? The model here isn’t much different than saturating the poor neighborhoods with cheap fast food. Oh, there’s choice all right-McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, or Taco Bell. Plenty of choice, take your pick. How about a nice juicy steak? Forget it, you don’t need that choice, but here’s some other choices for you. Poor nutrition that fills you temporarily, but ends up starving you of any real sustenance. Saturating neighborhoods with charter schools is the same business model. I heard an East Oakland resident say, in a public meeting, that charter schools were like having drug dealers on every corner. Keepin’ it real….

 Scandals? You want ’em, we got ’em

 Scandal #1-American Indian Charter

The CEO of AIMS, Ben Chavis stole $3.8M from his schools in rent and paid it to his own leasing company which held the leases for his own schools. Self-dealing Gone Wild. He is in jail in North Carolina awaiting trial for money laundering and mail fraud. You’d think the school would be shut down after that? Nope, the school board wilted under the facade of those amazing test scores, gamed in part by shutting out African Americans and SPED from the AIMS schools, as well as having obscenely high rates of attrition. 

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/turmoil-returns-for-charter-schools/Content?oid=9074129  

 Scandal #2-Bay Area Technology School

A Gulen school run by Turkish teachers and a Turkish school board. In a squabble worthy of a B-rated movie, the principal was forced out but somehow managed to flee to Australia with $400,000 of our hard-earned tax dollars in his pocket. Nice gig if you can get it. 

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/former-principal-alleges-oaklands-baytech-school-was-source-of-funding-for-gulen-movement/Content?oid=19390167  

 Scandal #3-Oakland School for the Arts

Full disclosure-I’m a huge arts supporter, and I know plenty of parents who support the school and who have kids there. It’s not the program; it’s the enrollment policy. OSA is an experiment in what happens when a school supported by our former governor is allowed to select its own student body. OSA is now the second wealthiest school in Oakland and has virtually no ELL. How can that possibly happen when the school has a lottery? Easy. You have the kids do an audition and allow the kids into the lottery based on the results of the audition. Private schools do that. Is it discriminatory? Yes, the ACLU said as much.  Does it violate charter law? Yes. Has anyone done anything about it. No, because of big $$$ and the support of Jerry Brown and Friends. Alternatively, Jerry could have supported more arts funding in public schools instead of opening OSA. Food for thought….

 Scandal #4-Castlemont Junior Academy and Primary Academy

This was a script that practically wrote itself. Open charters right next door to the neighborhood elementary, Parker. Next, install a OUSD board member, James Harris on the charter board, as well as Yana Smith, the wife of former OUSD Chief of Schools Allen Smith. While it might have been legal, the perceived conflict of interest was breathtaking. Lastly, watch in amazement as the charters implode a few months later, due to low enrollment. Parker, the real public school has to enroll approx. 85 children from the elementary charter mid-year. It doesn’t get more disruptive than that. Startup funding? Gone….

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/two-highly-touted-oakland-charter-schools-quickly-closed-andmdash-and-now-owe-the-district-money/Content?oid=5091277  

 Scandal #5-Aspire Eres and the annexing of the Derby Parcel

When Reed Hastings says “Jump!”, Aspire says, “How high?” Aspire, in a bid to purchase city-owned public land for charter school expansion, tried to negotiate a backroom deal with the city. The expansion had not even been approved by the school board, but that’s okay because Reed Hastings doesn’t like elected school boards anyway. They just get in the way of his personal business. Public school activists found out, organized the public, pushed back hard, and thwarted the deal. 

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/oaklands-exclusive-deal-to-sell-city-owned-land-to-charter-school-draws-opposition/Content?oid=15872497  

 Scandal #6-the 100% Grad Rate myth

This is one of my personal favorites because of the inevitable comparison of district schools’ to charter schools’ performance. How many more times do we need to see grad rates/test scores stats tossed around on social media, popping up like so many toxic mushrooms. How can a charter school claim 100% (or close to it) grad rates when they lose 40, 50, or 60% of their children in high school? Easy, charters typically don’t backfill. Real public schools backfill; they fill that seat as soon as a student wants it, at any time. Any student, not just the easy ones.

 Scandal #7-Charters are superior to district schools because of their amazing test scores! (Marketing 101)

See Scandal #6. Until charters can claim that they educate the same number of FRPL, ELL, and SPED kids, and also have the same number of suspensions/attrition, there is no valid or fair comparison here. The student populations served (or not) are usually significantly different.

 Scandal #8-the “rightsizing” myth

Portfolio models “rightsize” (translation:downsize) by closing mostly district schools. But the schools don’t close; they are privatized into charters via Prop 39. Out of 18 of the last Oakland district school closures, 14 were converted to charters. This scandal illustrates the utter lack of local control on any charter openings/closings. Easy to open, nearly impossible to close, favoring charter growth by design. OUSD admitted that closing schools doesn’t save money, and yet they (Walton/Bloomberg-bought board) push the narrative constantly. It’s a mantra that’s growing stale but refuses to die.

 Scandal #9-the “high demand” for charters myth

See Scandal #8. How to create demand? Close your neighborhood elementary schools, which then feed into the middle schools (demand dries up there as well). Then, open a charter right near these same schools. Doesn’t take a genius to see how that will turn out. Ask the students at Roots International how they feel about their neighborhood school closure. But our charter-friendly ($$$) school board fully supports this portfolio model; there are charters right around the corner that former Roots students can attend instead. Instant charter demand creation.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11721015/the-big-fight-over-a-small-school-in-oakland-what-you-need-to-know  

 Scandal #10

The fact that all these scandals exist at all, and that public school advocates, as well as tenacious local reporters, have to do the important work of digging up the information and presenting it to the public. This is what accountability looks like in Oakland and the rest of California. We are getting tired of doing the job that the Office of Charter Schools is supposed to be doing, but doesn’t. And this list is far from exhaustive; it’s likely just the tip of the iceberg, because of the lack of transparency.

 Our school district loses $57M a year to unfettered charter expansion. It’s time to get back to some no-nonsense approaches to this problem such as real local control, as well as including impact to district finances. Charter schools don’t have the right to expand just because it’s what the Waltons and Reed Hastings want. The Waltons don’t send their children to Oakland public schools.  District schools aren’t offered the same expansion opportunity and if they were, Oakland Technical would be the size of a small college by now. This failed experiment on our most vulnerable children must end, and I implore the task force to make the recommendations that will serve the needs of ALL students and stop supporting an agenda that clearly favors charter expansion, the theft of taxpayers’ dollars, and not much else. The time is now, and if not now, when?

 Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Reform

Harold Meyerson: Will Trump Get Away with It?

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
44

 

 

ON TAP Today from the American Prospect
APRIL 25, 2019

Meyerson on TAP

Trump Did What Nixon Did, but Today’s GOP Won’t Convict. The story is told of the 19th-century Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, who was also a noted trial lawyer, that he once represented a plaintiff in a patent infringement suit. His client, an inventor, was suing a would-be inventor who’d come up with a small machine that was indistinguishable from the plaintiff’s own invention. As the trial ended, Webster’s opposing attorney delivered a long summation enumerating the ostensible differences between the two devices. When he finished, Webster arose, looked at the two machines, turned to the jury and said, “Well, if you can see any difference between them, that is more than I can see”—and sat down. The jury quickly ruled for Webster’s client.

This story (which, like many good stories, may be apocryphal) comes to mind when comparing Richard Nixon’s obstruction of justice—which, had he not resigned, would have resulted in his impeachment and conviction—with Donald Trump’s. And, as Webster supposedly said, if you can see any difference between them, that’s more than I can see.

What’s different today, however, is the Republican Party. In 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee voted for articles of impeachment, a number of committee Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to recommend impeachment to the full House. The most conservative Republicans on the committee, however, voted No on those motions. But a couple of weeks later, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Nixon had to release tapes including discussions of Watergate to the committee. On one of those tapes, Nixon said he’d order the CIA to tell the FBI to stop investigating the break-in because it would compromise national security (which, of course, it wouldn’t). When the tape reached the committee, all the Republicans who’d strenuously defended Nixon during its deliberations—including Mississippi’s Trent Lott—announced they were switching their vote to recommend impeachment. All 38 committee members—not just all the Democrats but all the Republicans, too—said Nixon had to go. And Nixon went.

Comes now the case of Donald Trump. Like Nixon, Trump repeatedly sought to stop the investigation of Russian involvement in his election and related matters. He fired the FBI director, who’d refused to pledge that he’d stop investigating possible ties and actual contacts Trump associates had with Russian officials. He ordered White House Counsel Donald McGahn to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller. He told Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order Mueller to drop the investigation and focus solely on measures to prevent future Russian interference in elections. That Trump’s underlings often refused to do what he’d ordered them to do doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t commit obstructions of justice. It just means that his underlings declined to do what McGahn told Reince Priebus, then White House chief of staff, was “crazy shit.”

So how does Trump’s obstruction differ from Nixon’s? That Nixon’s aides took their boss’s commands more seriously than Trump’s took his is a difference, but not a defense. The Judiciary Committee, like its 1974 predecessor, would have to have figures like McGahn and Priebus testify before it to elicit the same sworn testimony that they gave Mueller, just as the various congressional committees of 1973–1974 heard testimony from such figures as Nixon’s former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman. That’s why Trump is insisting that no present or former administration officials be allowed to testify—an issue sure to be decided by the courts.

Say, though, that they do end up testifying and confirming what they told Mueller’s investigators. Would today’s Republicans, confronted with a clear case of obstruction of justice, do what their predecessors unanimously did, and recommend impeachment?

Of course not. Today’s Republican Party—both its elected officials and its rank-and-file members—is a cult, cordoned off from reality by the walls it has erected against any information that doesn’t come from far-right media, which provides it not with information at all, but with propaganda as fictitious (though not as overtly murderous) as anything that the Josef Goebbels machine once churned out. No such media, save on the fringes, were around in 1974, but they’re certainly around now, bolstering the Republicans by creating an alternative universe where reality seldom impinges. Which is why today’s GOP is not a jury that Daniel Webster, with all the evidence in the world, could sway. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

Why Democrats Can’t Punt on Impeachment
Dems’ reluctance to take action is getting harder to justify. By PAUL WALDMAN
The Bad History Informing the Impeachment Debate
Cautious Democrats seeking to avoid impeaching Donald Trump are making a mangle of the past and misreading the present. By DAVID ATKINS
Most Devastating of All: Mueller’s Indictment of Trump’s Character
Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character. By ROBERT REICH

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Categories Education Reform

Bill Phillis: Repeal HB 70 Now!

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
5

 

School Bus
Facebook ‌ Twitter ‌LinkedIn ‌
Toledo Board of Education member: HB 70 is “possibly one of the most undemocratic, mean-spirited, cynical pieces of legislation ever passed in the state of Ohio”
Several state legislators are attempting to repeal or at least put a moratorium on HB 70. Other state officials, including the State Superintendent and Governor, want to repair it.
HB 70, enacted by the 131stGeneral Assembly in a 24-hour period with no public involvement, was a colossal mistake. It merely punishes school districts that serve a high concentration of poverty students.
Ohioans must call for a complete repeal of HB 70. A repair job on HB 70 would be like using chewing gum to repair a leak in the Hoover Dam. HB 70 must be replaced by legislation that provides services to poverty students.
Governance is not the issue. Poverty is.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
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Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Pastors for Florida Children Organizes to Support Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
3

 

A new organization has been launched in Florida to support the principle of public schooling and speak out against the diversion of public funds to private and religious schools. Florida’s State Constitution  explicitly prohibits the use of public funds for religious schools. The voters rejected an effort to change the state constitution in 2012. The Republicans who control state government continue to ignore both the state constitution and the will of the voters.

Readers, if you live in Florida and you are Jewish, please encourage your rabbi to join this group and speak out for the separation of church and state. Florida is funding voucher schools whose teachers are uncertified and that teach bigotry and creationism, not science. These schools should not receive public funds intended for public schools.

 

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 24, 2019

 

Pastors for Florida Children oppose the continued expansion of

private and religious voucher programs

Money is being drained from our traditional public schools that serve 90% of Florida’s children

This week in Tallahassee, the  Florida Senate appears poised to create a new voucher in Florida, the seventh one in recent years. The “Family Empowerment” voucher proposed in SB 7070 appears to be in direct violation of the Florida Supreme Court’s 2006 Bush v. Holmes decision in that public dollars from the general treasury are being diverted to separate, private systems that are parallel to, and in competition with, free public schools.

The Family Empowerment voucher also raises the threshold for who would be eligible. Unlike the Florida Tax Credit voucher (currently available for students from families with a household income that does not exceed 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or $47,638 for a family of four), the Family Empowerment voucher would be available for students who have a household income of 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $77,250 for a family of four beginning in the 2019-2020 school year. However, within four years, this voucher would be available for students with a family whose household income is 375 percent of the federal poverty level, or $96,572 for a family of four.

Attached is a letter to Florida elected officials that has been endorsed by 10 statewide denominational leaders and 45 church leaders.

Who We Are

Pastors for Florida Children is an organization of concerned pastors and faith leaders from all traditions that are focused on advocating for the needs of the nearly three-million public school children across the State of Florida.  Our mission is to provide “wrap-around” care and ministry to local schools, principals, teachers, staff and schoolchildren, and to advocate for children by supporting our free, public education system, to promote social justice for children, and to advance legislation that enriches Florida children, families, and communities.”

For more information contact Rev. Rachel Shapard, (904) 502-5158, rshapard12@floridacbf.org

This is the attached letter:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

To Florida’s Elected Officials:

We the undersigned are united in our belief that public education is an essential institution contributing to the common good in a democratic society. We believe government should be measured in part by its commitment to equip all children to be effective citizens capable of living full and meaningful lives and contributing to their society.

In his State of the State speech, Governor Ron DeSantis ostensibly addressed the need to eliminate a 14,000 student waiting list of children seeking to access the existing corporate tax credit voucher system. His call has been taken up by both the Florida House and Senate in the current legislative session (HB 7075 &
SB 7070).

Legislators are planning to take money directly out of the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) to fund private and religious schools.
Supporters say that this legislation will benefit students disproportionately affected by inadequate public school resources, but they ignore the harm done to the more than 90% of children who remain in our neighborhood public schools.

Supporters also claim that they are giving parents who are economically disadvantaged the opportunity to provide a high quality education for their children that they might not otherwise be able to afford. They overlook the fact that this system potentially exposes the children attending these private and religious schools to a parallel educational process with no accountability, no standards and no certification.

Supporters of both arguments are simply wolves in sheep’s clothing, devouring the public school system of education as we know it and of which we are products. This proposal will undermine and slowly dismantle public education, in that, academic programs will be cut; safety and security will be compromised, and educational support operations will become more inefficient and ineffective.

Public dollars designated for public schools should not be taken away from our already underfunded, traditional neighborhood schools and given to private and religious schools. Florida already ranks 46th in teacher salaries and is in the bottom 10 nationwide in overall funding for public schools.
The real wolves in the effort to privatize and individualize public education are those who have as their goal the overturning of the 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Holmes. This case fundamentally held that public school funds cannot be used for private and religious school purposes.

Our elected leaders have a duty to fund public schools for all of God’s children; not subsidize private and religious education for those who would gamble taxpayer money on a parallel educational system that will have virtually no oversight or accountability. Florida citizens should not be forced into a constitutional confrontation between those who choose private and religious schools and those who choose their neighborhood public schools.

We pray that you will not abdicate your duty, as an elected official, to provide a quality free public education for all. Let us learn from Esau. Do not exchange Florida’s future for a bowl of porridge.

DENOMINATIONAL SIGNATORIES
Rev. Bartholomew Banks, President
Progressive Missionary and Educational Florida Baptist Convention, Inc.
Rt. Rev. Kenneth H. Carter, Jr., Resident Bishop Florida Area, The United Methodist Church
Rt. Rev. Teresa Jefferson-Snorton, Presiding Bishop
5th Episcopal District, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Rev. Raymond Johnson, Ph.D., Coordinator Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Florida
Rev. Joyce Lieberman, Executive and Stated Clerk Synod of South Atlantic Presbyterian Church (USA)
Rt. Rev. Billy G. Newton, Presiding Bishop
29th Episcopal District, Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
Rt. Rev. Adam J. Richardson, Jr., Presiding Bishop,
11th Episcopal District, African Methodist Episcopal Church
Rt. Rev. Thomas Scott, Bishop Florida District, Church of God
Rev. Pedro Suarez, Bishop
Florida-Bahamas Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
Dr. Willie J. Williams, President
Florida State Primitive Baptist Convention

Church Leadership Signatories
Rev. Dr. Clint Akins, Seeker Fellowship, Ft. Walton Beach
Dr. Joan Averett, Memorial United Methodist Church, Fernandina Beach
Rev. Barbara Awoniyi, New Life United Methodist Church, Tallahassee
Nina Coe, Morrison United Methodist Church, Leesburg
Rev. Kevin Collison, Island View Baptist Church, Orange Park
Sarah Crawford, First United Methodist Church, Starke
Rev. Andy Creel, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Monticello
Martha Creel, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Florida District 1 Representative, Monticello
Christine Hyde DeNave, Sanlando, United Methodist Church, Longwood
Linda DeWolf, First United Methodist Church, Ocala
Rev. Dr. Jeffrey DeYoe, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Ft. Myers
Rev. Jimmie Dickey, 11th District African Methodist Episcopal Church, Tallahassee
Rev. Haley Eccles, Murray Hill United Methodist Church, Jacksonville
Rev. James T. Golden, 11th Episcopal District of the AME Church, Bradenton
Joyce Hanson, Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church, Jacksonville
Rev. Dr. Janes A. Harnidh, United Methodist Retired, Longwood
Rev. Dexter Lamar Harris, Mt. Olive Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Orlando
Elder Lee Harris, Mt. Olive Primitive Baptist Church, Jacksonville
Sue Hawthorne, Lake Gibson United Methodist Church, Lakeland
Rev. Britt Hester, Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church, Jacksonville
Britt Holdren, Hope United Methodist Church, Trinity
Margaret Hughes, Methodist, Lakeland
Betty Huber, First United Methodist, Orlando
Pamela Huffington, First United Methodist Church, Kissimmee
Elder Charlotta Ivy, Sowing Seeds Sewing Comfort Ministry, Tallahassee
Gloria Jones, Crestview
Rev. Tyron Jones, Williams Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Winter Haven
Cynthia Smyth Johnson, St. Peter’s United Methodist Church, Wellington
Jennifer Kelly, First United Methodist Church, Port Orange
Rev. Dr. Russell Meyer, Florida Council of Churches, Tampa
Rev. J. Phillip Miller-Evans, Church of the Beatitudes, St. Petersburg
Rev. Dr. James T. Morris, Central Florida District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Orlando Dorothy Nichols, First United Methodist Church, Port St. Lucie
Rev. Joe Parramore, New Journey Ministries, Quincy
April D. Penton, Trinity United Methodist Church, Tallahassee
Angel Pittman, Touching Miami with Love, Miami
Rev. John Powers, First United Methodist Church, Clearwater
Rev. Susan Rogers, The Well at Springfield, Jacksonville
Rev. Chris Sanders, Asbury United Methodist Church, Orange Park
Rev. Rachel Gunter Shapard, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Florida, Jacksonville
Rev. Earle F. Sickels, Calvin Presbyterian Church (USA), St. Augustine
Regina Simpson, The Heart Church, Tallahassee
Rebecca Stone, Anona United Methodist Church, Largo
Karen Suters, St. Matthew, Winter Haven
Nicki Taylor, Hyde Park United Methodist Church, Tampa
Judie Thomas, Hyde Park United Methodist Church, Tampa
June Townsend, St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, Tallahassee

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Florida

Ohio: Mark the Date! A Conversation Between Bill Phillis and Me

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2019 //
10

 

You are invited to a conversation between the legendary Bill Phillis, fearless fighter for equity in education, and me, at a very special event in Columbus, Ohio.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/moving-public-education-forward-tickets-59663258412

“The event will take place Thursday, May 16, 2019 from 4:30 to 8:00pm at the Sheraton Columbus Capitol Square, 75 E. State St, Columbus, OH 43215.

“Experience a conversation between two GIANTS in the world of public education advocacy: renowned education author and historian, Dr. Diane Ravitch, and Ohio’s own William L. Phillis, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding!

“Celebrate the successes gained through the combined efforts of individuals and groups affiliated with public school districts, as well as many grassroots organizations, and be inspired to continue moving public education forward in the Buckeye State.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Ohio

Civil Rights Legal Groups Defend Maine Decision Not to Fund Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2019 //
4
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AMICUS BRIEF SUPPORTS MAINE’S DECISION NOT TO USE PUBLIC FUNDING ON SECTARIAN SCHOOLS

Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) has joined the National Education Association (NEA) and the Maine Education Association (MEA) in filing an amicus curiae(“friend of the court”) briefsupporting Maine’s decision not to use public school funding on tuition at private religious schools.

PFPS, a joint initiative of Education Law Center (ELC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is a national campaign to ensure that public funds are used only to support and maintain public education and are not diverted to private schools.

Like other states, Maine’s constitution obligates the Legislature to maintain and support a system of public schools throughout the state available to all school-aged children. In carrying out this mandate, the Legislature allows local school administrative units (SAU) that do not operate their own public schools to provide education to resident students by paying tuition to certain approved, nonsectarian private schools. This limited mechanism has been in place since the nineteenth century.

Three Maine families filed a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the Legislature’s decision to limit the program to nonreligious schools. In Carson v. Makin, these families assert that the State’s exclusion of religious schools from the tuition program violates their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The plaintiffs are represented by the Institute for Justice, a pro-voucher group based in Arizona.

PFPS, NEA, and MEA submitted an amicus brief in support of the Maine Commissioner of Education’s defense of the law excluding sectarian schools. The brief emphasizes Maine’s compelling interest under the State Constitution to preserve the carefully regulated tuition program in its current, limited form. The brief urges the court to uphold Maine’s determination that sectarian schools should not be allowed to participate in the program in order to protect already limited public education funding and to avoid state entanglement with religion as well as public funding of discriminatory school policies.

The amicus brief explains that inclusion of sectarian schools in the tuition program would undermine the State’s careful construction of a limited program to fulfill its constitutional duty to provide publicly funded education in the narrow circumstances where a traditional public school is not available. Forcing the State to pay tuition to those schools would divert taxpayer dollars from an already underfunded public school system. It would also deeply enmesh the State in regulating matters of religion and effectively compel the State to fund discrimination because many private religious schools – including those identified by the plaintiffs as the preferred schools for their children – utilize policies that discriminate on the basis of religion, sexual orientation and/or disability.

“The people of Maine expect their tax dollars to go to fund public education, as their state constitution requires,” said Zoe Savitsky, SPLC deputy legal director. “The state has a duty, under both state and federal law, to only fund schools that serve all students, not schools that discriminate on the basis of, among other things, disability status, religion, or sexual orientation. We are urging the court, in this case, to uphold the law.”

“An expansion of Maine’s tuition program to schools with a religious education mission is contrary to the State’s affirmative constitutional duty to educate every school-aged child in adequately funded public schools and in a learning environment free from discrimination,” said Jessica Levin, ELC Senior Attorney and PFPS Director. “Our brief explains that forcing Maine to use public school funding to pay tuition to sectarian schools would undermine its compelling interest in providing high quality education to all students in well-resourced, nondiscriminatory schools.”

Motions for summary judgment in the case are currently being briefed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine.

Education Law Center Press Contact:

Sharon Krengel

Policy and Outreach Director

skrengel@edlawcenter.org

973-624-1815, x 24

 
Categories Education Reform

Capitalism Is in Crisis, and Billionaires Know It

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2019 //
52

 

 

This article in the Washington Post examines the alarming increase in inequality as a small number of billionaires take control of the economy and the future. The article does not mention the billionaires’ political efforts to gain control of state and local school boards so as to destroy the public schools by replacing them with privately managed charter schools.

The article mentions the deep concern of Seth Klarman, a hedge funder in Boston, but fails to note that he was a Dark Money contributor to the 2016 referendum in Massachusetts that was intended to add 12 charter schools every year wherever they wanted to open. Teachers,  parents, unions, and civil rights groups combined to defeat the billionaires—not only Klarman, but Bloomberg, the Waltons, and others.

My comments are in BOLD.

”PALO ALTO, Calif. —A perfect California day. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze was blowing and, at a Silicon Valley coffee shop, Rep. Ro Khanna was sitting across from one of his many billionaire constituents discussing an uncomfortable subject: the growing unpopularity of billionaires and their giant tech companies.

“There’s some more humility out here,” Khanna (D-Calif.) said.

The billionaire on the other side of the table let out a nervous laugh. Chris Larsen was on his third start-up and well on his way to being one of the wealthiest people in the valley, if not the world.

“Realizing people hate your guts has some value,” he joked.

“For decades, Democrats and Republicans have hailed America’s business elite, especially in Silicon Valley, as the country’s salvation. The government might be gridlocked, the electorate angry and divided, but America’s innovators seemed to promise a relatively pain-free way out of the mess. Their companies produced an endless series of products that kept the U.S. economy churning and its gross domestic product climbing. Their philanthropic efforts were aimed at fixing some of the country’s most vexing problems. Government’s role was to stay out of the way.

“Now that consensus is shattering. For the first time in decades, capitalism’s future is a subject of debate among presidential hopefuls and a source of growing angst for America’s business elite. In places such as Silicon Valley, the slopes of Davos, Switzerland, and the halls of Harvard Business School, there is a sense that the kind of capitalism that once made America an economic envy is responsible for the growing inequality and anger that is tearing the country apart.”

Something is terribly wrong, and even the billionaires know it. Some might want change, but they want to control the change. 

“The 2008 financial crisis may have revealed the weaknesses of American capitalism. But it was Donald Trump’s election and the pent-up anger it exposed that left America’s billionaire class fearful for capitalism’s future.

“Khanna was elected in 2016, just as the anxiety started to spread. In Europe, far-right nationalist parties were gaining ground. Closer to home, socialists and Trump-inspired nationalists were winning state and congressional elections.

“Conversations of the sort that Khanna was having with Larsen were now taking place in some of capitalism’s most rarefied circles including Harvard Business School, where last fall Seth Klarman, a highly influential billionaire investor, delivered what he described as a “plaintive wail” to the business community to fix capitalism before it was too late.

”The setting was the opening of Klarman Hall, a new $120 million conference center, built with his family’s donation. “It’s a choice to pay people as little as you can or work them as hard as you can,” he told the audience gathered in the 1,000-seat auditorium. “It’s a choice to maintain pleasant working conditions . . . or harsh ones; to offer good benefits or paltry ones.” If business leaders didn’t “ask hard questions about capitalism,” he warned that they would be asked by “ideologues seeking to point fingers, assign blame and make reckless changes to the system.”

No, no, we don’t want anyone making reckless changes to the system!

“Six months after that speech, Klarman was struck by how quickly his dire prediction was coming to pass. Leading politicians, such as Trump, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), were advocating positions on tariffs, wealth taxes and changes in corporate governance that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

“Klarman wasn’t opposed to more progressive taxation or regulation. But he worried that these new proposals went much too far. “I think we’re in the middle of a revolution — not a guns revolution — but a revolution where people on both extremes want to blow it up, and good things don’t happen to the vast majority of the population in a revolution,” he said.

Too bold no one asked Klarman why he wants to undermine public schools, one of the few institutions that billionaires don’t own. 

“He wasn’t the only one who felt a sense of alarm. One of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School, home to the next generation of Fortune 500 executives, was a class on “reimagining capitalism.” Seven years ago, the elective started with 28 students. Now there were nearly 300 taking it. During that period the students had grown increasingly cynical about corporations and the government, said Rebecca Henderson, the Harvard economist who teaches the course.

“What the trust surveys say is what I see,” she said. “They are really worried about the direction in which the U.S. and the world is heading.”

As Giriharadas says, the billionaires want to drive any changes in the economy, proclaiming their deep concern for the millions left behind by their success. Never forget that any changes they control will protect them and their billions.

”The billionaires in Khanna’s district, meanwhile, were consumed by a different worry. Mixed in with the valley’s usual frothy optimism about disruption and inventing the future was a growing sense that the tech economy had somehow broken capitalism. The digital revolution had allowed tech entrepreneurs to build massive global companies without the big job-producing factories or large workforces of the industrial era. The result was more and more wealth concentrated in fewer hands.

“As technology advanced, some feared things were only going to get worse. Robots were eliminating much factory work; online commerce was decimating retail; and self-driving cars were on the verge of phasing out truck drivers. The next step was computers that could learn and think.

“What happens if you can actually automate all human intellectual labor?” said Greg Brockman, chairman of OpenAI, a company backed by several Silicon Valley billionaires. Such thinking computers might be able to diagnose diseases better than doctors by drawing on superhuman amounts of clinical research, said Brockman, 30. They could displace a large number of office jobs. Eventually, he said, the job shortages would force the government to pay people to pursue their passions or simply live. Only Andrew Yang, a long-shot presidential candidate and tech entrepreneur, supported the idea of government paying citizens a regular income. But the idea of a “universal basic income” was discussed regularly in the valley.

“The prospect was both energizing and terrifying. OpenAI had recently added an ethicist — Brockman sometimes referred to her as a “philosopher” — to its staff of about 100 employees to help sort through the implications of its innovations.

“To Brockman, a future without work seemed just as likely as one without meat, a possibility that many in the valley viewed as a near certainty. “Once we have meat substitutes as good as the real thing, my expectation is that we’re going to look back at eating meat as this terrible, immoral thing,” he said. The same could be true of work in a future in an era of advanced artificial intelligence. “We’ll look back and say, ‘Wow, that was so crazy and almost immoral that people were forced to go and labor in order to be able to survive,’ ” he said.”

What kind of future are the billionaires imagining for the other 99.9%?

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, Technology

Robert Reich: Mueller Report Documents Trump’s Character

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2019 //
30

 

Robert Reich says that Americans usually look to their Presidents with an expectation that he is a model worthy of emulation. But the Mueller Report makes one thing clear: Trump’s vile character.

https://prospect.org/article/most-devastating-all-muellers-indictment-trumps-character

”Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.

“Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it.

“Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He lies to them. He yells at them. He instructs them to lie. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.

“He’s a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn—a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.

“Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller—threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are now gone. They resigned or were fired.”

He is an unethical and amoral thug.

He proves it day after day with his tweets. Threatening, boasting, bleating, berating, humiliating others. Disgusting.

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Harvard Attacks Single-Sex Sororities and Fraternities and Threatens Those Who Join Them

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2019 //
37

 

As a graduate of an excellent, life-changing women’s college, this story strikes me as bizarre.

Harvard is trying to stamp out single-sex fraternities and sororities. Students who belong to them will be banned  from no,ding campus leadership roles. National sororities and fraternities are suing the university for violating their freedom of association, as well they should.

The university says that it wants to stamp out exclusion.

See here.  And here.

Harvard is taking legal action to preserve its punitive policies towardsthose who join sororities or fraternities.

Nuts.

 

Categories Education Reform, Higher Education
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