Archives for category: Education Reform
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

John Thompson: The Carnegie Unit in the Line of Fire

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2023 //
14

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, noticed that the Carnegie Unit is under fire. Do you know what a Carnegie Unit is? It’s a measure of time spent learning a subject. Here’s the definition on the website of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching:

The unit was developed in 1906 as a measure of the amount of time a student has studied a subject. For example, a total of 120 hours in one subject—meeting 4 or 5 times a week for 40 to 60 minutes, for 36 to 40 weeks each year—earns the student one “unit” of high school credit. Fourteen units were deemed to constitute the minimum amount of preparation that could be interpreted as “four years of academic or high school preparation.”

Why is this controversial?

John Thompson explains:

I was stunned when reading the opening paragraph of Mike Petrilli’s “Replacing Carnegie Unit Will Spark Battle Royale.” Petrilli is the president of the corporate reform-funded Thomas B. Fordham Institute, with a history of fervent support for Common Core. But now, Petrilli warns of the ways that the Carnegie Foundation’s and Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ Institute’s competency-based model could open a “Pandora’s Box.” He writes:

The scant coverage of this initiative—and the limited number of players involved—implies that many see this as just a technocratic reform, one that merely seeks to replace “credit hours” with mastery-based approaches to learning. Don’t be mistaken: If it gets traction, this move is likely to spark a battle royale that will make the Common Core wars look like child’s play.

While recognizing the Carnegie Unit – where graduation standards are driven by time in class and credits earned – is flawed, Petrilli correctly argues “we can’t just focus on ‘disrupting’ the current system.”  Moreover, he says the heart of this disruptive model would be “a lot more high-stakes testing.”

Petrilli notes that a rapid, digital transformation of schooling “has huge potential upsides for high-achieving students.”  Even though Petrilli was one of the true believers in college-readiness who pushed Common Core without, I believe, adequately thinking ahead, he now asks whether they should set the graduation bar “at the ‘college-ready’ level” if that “means denying a diploma to millions of young people who are nowhere near that bar today and not likely to clear it tomorrow?” For instance:

How do we deal with the enormous variation in student readiness upon arrival in high school? Will the new system allow students prepared to tackle advanced material to do so, even if it means further stratification along line(s) of achievement, race, and/or class?

In 2019, Chalkbeat reported on the slow growth and mixed successes and setbacks of Jobs’ innovation schools. Back then, Matt Barnum wrote, “what kinds of change, exactly, XQ wants people to get behind remains unclear to some.” And he quoted Larry Cuban on the number of schools that abandoned the effort, “To have that kind of mortality rate at the end of three years — that would strike me as high given that huge amount of money.”

And, I’d certainly worry about transformative changes, such as those pioneered in Rhode Island, that are “driven” by XQ’s Educational Opportunity Audit (EOA). Given the failure of data-driven reformers’ efforts to create reliable and valid metrics for measuring classroom learning “outputs,” it’s hard to imagine how they could evaluate the learning produced by the large (perhaps limitless?) number of their untested approaches.

I followed the few links to Tulsa’s experiment, under Deborah Gist, to “re-imagine” high schools.” In 2019, the district received $3.5 million for three schools for “Tulsa Beyond,” using a “nationwide high school redesign model,” which was “funded through Bloomberg Philanthropies and XQ Super Schools.”  It would be hard to evaluate any reforms’ outcomes during the Covid years and today’s rightwing attacks. But, then again, those reforms were based on the claim that data-driven accountability can do more measurable good than harm.

Only two of the three Tulsa schools have published state “grades” before and after their experiment.  Daniel Webster H.S received a “D” in both 2017-2018, and a “D” in 2021-2022. Nathan Hale H.S received an “F” in both years. Again, I don’t have data to make a serious evaluation of the Tulsa reforms, but it is the corporate reformers who have promised a method of evaluating them. And they should carry the burden of proof, as opposed to dumping the costs of failed gambles on students.

Petrilli’s article, and the sources he cited, convinced me that the push to replace the current system without learning the lessons of edu-political history and adequately planning for a post-Carnegie Unit era is extremely worrisome. I checked with another corporate reformer who I have opposed, but also respect, about the lessons of history that mastery-learning advocates should consider. He said, “Nothing ever gets learned.” Given the failed track record of the disruptive change, as well as Petrilli’s advocacy for it, we need to pay attention when he goes on record saying that the under-reported story of “‘multiple pathways’—via multiple diplomas” could create “multiple pitfalls.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Deregulation, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Massachusetts, Top State on NAEP, Discovers a “Serious Literacy Crisis” Among Youngest Children

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2023 //
28

This is the most bizarre story I have read in many a day. The Boston Globe reported on a study showing a “serious literacy crisis” among the state’s youngest children. This is strange because Massachusetts regularly performs at the top of NAEP reading assessments.

The study was conducted by WestEd, a research group based in California. Apparently the researchers assessed the literacy skills of children in kindergarten, first and second grades. It is not surprising that most children in K and 1 and even 2 can’t read. They are only beginning to read.

The story starts:

A new state-commissioned study of young elementary students found that more than half showed early signs of reading difficulties — more evidence that the state has a serious literacy crisis, despite its reputation for educational excellence.

The report, released Friday, provides a first-of-its kind look at the reading skills of the state’s youngest children, whose reading prowess is not assessed by the state until the first MCAS exam in third grade.

The results are troubling: Nearly 30 percent of students in grades K-3 were at high risk of reading failure, and as many as 20 percent showed signs of having dyslexia, a language processing disorder that must be addressed with specialized reading instruction. Low-income students, those learning English or receiving special education services, Latino students, and Black students were most likely to experience reading struggles, according to researchers with WestEd, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that conducted the analysis.

The report suggests schools are not helping most struggling readers catch up: 60 percent of students who began the school year at risk of reading difficulties ended the school year in the same concerning position. But it found that younger students are much more likely to improve with extra help than older students are, a powerful argument for early intervention…

The extent of the state’s early literacy struggles have been laid bare annually in MCAS results, which, as the Globe’s Great Divide team previously reported, regularly show tens of thousands of students advancing from grade to grade without the reading skills they need to be successful.

The Globe investigation found nearly half of the state’s school districts last school year were using a reading curriculum the state considered “low quality.” A national nonprofit ranked Massachusetts this year in the bottom half of the nation in preparing educators to teach reading.

Massachusetts has not, as other states have, required evidence-based methods of reading instruction.

The “national nonprofit” that gave low scores to teacher education programs in the state is the National Council on Teacher Quality, a conservative group created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the George W. Bush administration. Its goal is to promote phonics. When NCTQ ranks Ed schools, it doesn’t visit them; it reads their catalogues.

If Massachusetts has a “serious literacy crisis,” the rest of the nation is a dumpster fire.

On NAEP, fourth grade students in Massachusetts typically score at or near the top in the nation. The percentage of students in Massachusetts who performed at or above NAEP Proficient in 2022 was 43%.

NAEP Proficient is equivalent to an A.

The only jurisdiction with higher scores in fourth grade was the Department of Defense schools. Five states had scores that were not significantly different from Massachusetts. Those six states outperformed 45 states and jurisdictions in fourth grade.

The point of the WestEd study seems to be that the state must push through a greater emphasis on phonics in teacher education programs, and that MCAS testing in grade 3 should start sooner.

The children who need extra help are low-income, limited-English, or in need of special services, etc. This is not news.

The “serious literacy crisis” looks and smells like a manufactured crisis. This report looks like a hit job on the state’s teachers and colleges of education. If the rest of the nation’s children matched the performance of those in Massachusetts, that would be cause for a national celebration.

Categories Childhood, Education Reform, Literacy, Massachusetts, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Politico: Most Vouchers Are Used by Students Who Never Attended Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2023 //
8

How many times have we heard the claim that “vouchers will save poor kids from failing public schools”? That claim is plainly false. As we have seen voucher programs scale up, it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of students who take vouchers never attended public schools.

Now, even Politico has noticed that the main beneficiaries of vouchers are rich kids. Maybe that was the goal all along. The headline of a piece Politico ran recently was: “GOP States Are Embracing Vouchers. Wealthy Parents Are Benefitting.”

In Arkansas, where vouchers were just initiated, 95% were claimed by students never in public school. Florida, with its long-established voucher program, recently made vouchers available to all, regardless of income. Only 13% of vouchers were claimed by public school students.

Those of us who follow education politics closely have known these facts for a long time. Veteran voucher researcher Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has broadcast this finding in TIME, in The Hechinger Report, in daily newspaper columns.

But when POLITICO notices that vouchers are subsidizing those who never attended public schools, it means that the news is spreading beyond the choir of voucher critics.

With enrollment surging in these programs — which Republicans say shows how desperate families are for more education choices — early data shows that students in some of these states aren’t leaving their public schools for private options. Instead, most scholarships are going to incoming kindergarteners and students already enrolled in private schools…

School choice expansions are fueled, in part, by groups like the American Federation for Children — founded by former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — sending millions of dollars to candidates who support them. For the 2022 election cycle, the organization boasted donating $9 million to candidates backing school choice with reportedly solid success — winning 277 out of 368 races.

DeVos and the GOP are not known for their devotion to poor kids, unless you believe voucher propaganda.

More than half of the voucher funding in Arizona is going to students previously enrolled in private school, homeschooling or other non-public options, according to a memo circulated by the Hobbs administration. In 2022 in Arizona, 45 percent of scholarship applicants came from the wealthiest quarter of students in the state, according to an analysisfrom one think tank.

Vouchers divert funding from the public schools to pay the partial tuition of rich kids. We now know?

Was that the plan all along?

Categories Education Reform

Thom Hartmann: The GOP Plan to Kill Social Security

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
14

This may be the most important article you read today. The Republicans have made it a practice to promote culture-war issues in order to obscure their real goals: cutting or eliminating entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare. Because the entitlement programs are wildly popular, the GOP can’t admit publicly that they oppose them. So the GOP elevates issues that they oppose like “woke,” critical race theory, diversity-equity-inclusion, drag queens, and gay marriage. Forget the smokescreen and see what their real agenda is.

Thom Hartmann writes.

Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed Social Security through Congress, signing it into law on August 14th 1935, and Republicans opposed it then and have hated it ever since.

Next week, they’re planning to do something about it with a House hearing designed to set up a closed-door commission to “reform” the program. They figure when government funding runs out in January they’ll be able use the fiscal crisis they intend to create to force Democrats to go along with what the Biden administration calls a “Death Panel for Medicare and Social Security.”

There is an incredibly long history here.

Back in 1935 during the debate on Social Security, New York Republican Congressman James Wadsworth rose to warn America that the program to end poverty among the elderly was an effort by Roosevelt to establish a dictatorship in America. It would be, he said:

“[A] power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.”

Echoing Wadsworth, fellow New Yorker Republican Daniel Reed, imagining himself a modern-day Paul Revere, declared, “The lash of the dictator will [soon] be felt!”

The next year was a presidential election, and the 1936 Republican presidential candidate, Alf Landon, campaigned on ending Social Security’s “cruel hoax” and “fraud on the working man”; four years later, the GOP’s 1940 presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie, promised Americans that “you will never collect a dollar of your Social Security.”

It hasn’t quite worked out that way: Social Security has never missed a payment, never bounced a check, and pretty much ended the widespread deaths by poverty-associated hunger and freezing to death in the winter that were widespread among the elderly before its adoption.

Nonetheless, Republicans still hate the program. As do the fat-cat bankers who fund them and think those trillions in the Social Security Trust Fund should be in their money bins where they can skim a few billion a month off in administrative fees for themselves and the politicians they own.

Over the past two decades, Republicans in Congress have done everything they can to sour Americans on Social Security, mostly by repeatedly gutting funding for its administration every time they have control of the budget process.

The GOP’s plan has been to so overburden workers at the Social Security Administration that it takes absurd amounts of time and effort for people turning 65 to sign up, or for seniors on Social Security to find anybody to talk with about problems with or confusion about their claims.

In this, they’ve been spectacularly successful, forcing cut after cut into must-pass budget bills under the threat of government shutdowns.

As the economists at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) note:

“Congress has cut SSA’s core operating budget by 17 percent since 2010, after adjusting for inflation. These cuts hurt SSA’s service to the public in every state. The agency has been forced to shutter field offices and shrink its staff, leading to longer waits for service and growing backlogs. While the overall effect is a decline in service nationwide, the effects of the cuts vary considerably by state.

“SSA’s staff shrank by 15 percent nationwide between 2010 and 2021, so there are fewer people to take appointments, answer phones, and process applications for Social Security’s vital retirement, survivors, and disability benefits.

“As a result, workers and beneficiaries must wait longer to be served. Four states — Alaska, Iowa, Virginia, and West Virginia — and Puerto Rico have each lost more than 25 percent of their staff since 2010. …

“DDS (disability) staff shrank by 16 percent nationwide between 2010 and 2021. Eight states — Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia — each lost over 30 percent of their DDS staff.”

Congressional Republicans’ hope, of course, is to make the administration of Social Security so clunky that frustrated Americans will go along with turning the program over to the giant banks who own the Republican Party (and more than a few Democrats).

And now House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson is keeping his promise to his banking industry donors, making one of his first orders of business to push forward the further immiseration — and ultimate privatization — of Social Security.

He’s not the first.

When Ronald Reagan had a chance, he jumped at the opportunity to avoid political heat by passing the buck to a 1981 commission headed up by Libertarian/Republican Alan Greenspan (a former member of Ayn Rand’s cult, who brought a dollar-shaped floral wreath to her funeral).

To “save” Social Security and avoid lifting the cap on Social Security taxes (today set at $160,200: if you make more than that, you and every millionaire and billionaire in America don’t pay an additional penny to support Social Security), Reagan’s commission made benefits taxable for the first time, nearly doubled the Social Security part of the FICA tax rate working-class people paid, and raised the retirement/eligibility age from 65 to 67.

That, though, wasn’t nearly enough for Republicans who still consider Social Security “tyranny,” “socialism,” “fraud,” a “Ponzi scheme,” and a “hoax.”

— Senator Rick Scott, before being called out by President Biden, pushed a plan to require the very existence of the entire Social Security program to be reauthorized by Congress every 5 years or it would automatically expire.

— Senator Ron Johnson demanded it become part of annual budget negotiations that could be held hostage to the debt ceiling.

— Lindsey Graham called “entitlement reform” a “must” and the largest caucus in the GOP, the Republican Study Committee, published a proposal that would turn Social Security into a welfare program as an initial step toward full privatization.

— Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio has called for raising the retirement age even higher than Reagan’s 67, and Senator Mike Lee called for a total “phase out” of Social Security.

— Florida Republican Congressman Mike Waltz told Fox Business, “If we really want to talk about the debt and spending, it’s the entitlements programs.”

— Senators John Thune and Mitt Romney have floated similar proposals. The list could go on for pages, particularly if we go back through previous decades.

And it’s not just Republicans in Congress who have worked for years to destroy Social Security: so have GOP presidents.

In 2005, after winning reelection based on his 2003 “wartime president” scheme to lie America into attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, George W. Bush (who campaigned for Congress in 1978 on turning Social Security over to the big banks like the one his grandfather ran) began a tour of America touting full privatization of Social Security.

“I earned capital in this campaign,” he said, “political capital, and now I intend to spend it [on privatizing Social Security].”

In that, he was simply trying to fulfill his campaign promise that banks, instead of the government, should administer “private” Social Security accounts for seniors. As he said in his 2004 State of the Union address:

“Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account. We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people.”

Back in 2010, President Obama established a bipartisan commission by executive order to look at ways to reduce the national debt, but Republicans on the commission demanded it focus instead on cutting Social Security (which has nothing to do with the nation’s debt, as SS is self-funding).

Because of the GOP’s obsession with using the commission as an opportunity to try to cut the program, Democrats began calling it the “Catfood Commission”: the GOPs’ proposed cuts in benefits would force seniors to eat cheap cat food to survive. The commission died an ignominious death.

Now Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson wants to revive the Catfood Commission, only this time behind closed doors where the capitol police can keep out those pesky members of the press and the public.

Its first meeting will be tomorrow, headed up by Republican Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington. (The announcement is here.)

Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson asked Representative Arrington if Republicans were planning to cut benefits to seniors with their proposed commission and, as Lawson noted in a viral Twitter video, Arrington:

“REFUSES to tax the ultra-wealthy to protect Social Security. Instead, he plans to create a death panel to cut Social Security behind closed doors.”

Republicans now think they have the wind at their backs in this effort, which banks have poured hundreds of millions of lobbying and campaign contribution dollars into over the years.

Fully 10,000 people become eligible for Social Security every day, and these new retirees are increasingly frustrated with the time delays at the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the difficulty even reaching a real person to speak with.

This, of course, is the intended outcome of more than a decade of GOP cuts to the program’s administrative staff.

As CPBB notes:

“SSA lost roughly 11,000 employees between 2010 and 2021 and expects to lose another 4,500 front-line employees this year. State DDSs lost roughly 2,500 employees between 2010 and 2021 and attrition over the past year is over 25 percent. Inevitably, understaffing means that beneficiaries must wait longer to be served.

“The average processing time for an initial disability claim had held fairly steady in recent years at three to four months, but has been rising and reached over six months in April 2022. One million applicants awaited a decision on their disability benefit applications as of April 1, 2022.”

Tomorrow’s hearing will be behind closed doors, and, if mainstream media’s historic reluctance to highlight the GOP’s hatred of Social Security is any indication, it’s unlikely it’ll even be covered by the press in any significant way.

But keep an eye on this and tell everyone you know about it. Social Security Works is leading the charge to notify the public, noting that over 100 national organizations have already spoken out against this latest Republican attack on the program.

Both the MAGA faction and the old-line “conservative” corporate shill members of the GOP are dead serious about killing off this vital and important part of FDR’s legacy: it’s going to take grassroots outrage to stop them.

Forget the culture wars: They are a distraction. A vote for a Republican is a vote to eliminate Social Security.

Categories Education Reform

The Network for Public Education Needs YOU!

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
7

The Network for Public Education is the largest organization of volunteers and a tiny staff working every day to stop privatization of our public schools. The following is a message from our executive director, Carol Burris. Unlike the billionaire-funded advocacy groups for charters and vouchers, we need you! Contributions of any size are welcome!

What keeps NPE going are donors like you–friends of public education who are willing to make a one-time or monthly donation to invest in the continuance of our public schools.

We operate on a shoestring. But our reports, action alerts, advocacy, conferences, and webinars with Diane put us at the forefront of saving public education. Behind the scenes in fighting vouchers in Texas or making the case for Charter School Programs reform, NPE is the organization with a tiny budget but a mighty voice.

So please give to NPE this holiday season. You can make an online donation here, or, if you prefer to send a check, our address is:

The Network for Public Education, PO BOX 227, New York City, NY 10156.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

John Thompson: What Do School Report Cards Mean?

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
7

John Thompson, historian and retired history teacher, analyzes the use and misuse of Oklahoma’s school report cards.

He writes:

As usual, the 2023 Oklahoma school Report Card prompted headlines about “struggling” students. But counter-intuitively, State Superintendent Ryan Walters stressed the declines during his time in office!?!?

Two tales of the Report Card are being told. As the Tulsa World reports, Walters “claimed that the data was from ‘previous years,’ even though all of the academic achievement indicators are from state tests administered just seven months ago.” Yes, taking office as State Superintendent in January 2023, Walters hasn’t had time to achieve many gains in learning, even if he’d really tried to. But the chaos during 2023, combined with the disruption he’d spread since 2020 as head of the Education Department, provided plenty of time for disruption.

As the Oklahoman reports, Walters cited the greatest decline under his watch, 8th grade reading proficiency which saw “a 5.7 percent decrease,” although “No other grade had more than a 0.4 percent decrease in reading scores, and some others “saw a very small uptick in reading scores.” Walters then promised “we are taking a Back to Basics approach,” which is the opposite of what it takes to increase proficiency.

The wisest narrative, illustrated by the Education Watch’s Jennifer Palmer, places the 2023 Report Card within the context of the massive decline of scores due to Covid, and the 2022 report. The 2023 report saw “no big swings in proficiency rates in any of the three tested subjects content,” while noting the overlooked fact that “a score of basic means a student demonstrated foundational knowledge and skills.”

Then Palmer tweeted background information on the differences between what basic means, as opposed to the widely misunderstood grade of proficiency which, I must add, has been misrepresented since the Reagan administration in order to denigrate public education. Oklahoma’s 8th grade reading proficiency grade requires that “students demonstrate mastery over even the most challenging grade-level content and are ready for the next grade, course or level of education.” It requires mastery of grade level skills that include interpretation, evaluation, analysis across multiple texts, and critical thinking. Mastery in requires use of evidence, argumentative response and synthesis of to create “written works for multiple purposes.”

As Palmer tweeted, we need a more nuanced” understanding of “reading.” And “the 8th graders who didn’t score proficient, but are in the ‘basic’ category, can still do all this” and then she linked to the challenging goals that are required for that grade, which include: partial mastery of interpretation, evaluation, analysis across multiple texts, critical thinking, use of evidence, argumentative response and synthesis.

Granted, these definitions are not necessarily the same as the more reliable NAEP scores. But as Jan Resseger explains, the nation’s NAEP proficiency grade “represents A level work, at worst an A-” and, basically, the same applies to Oklahoma’s tests. She asks, “Would you be upset to learn that “only” 40% of 8th graders are at an A level in math and “only” 1/3rd scored an A in reading?”

Ressenger also cites the huge body of research explaining why School Report Cards aren’t a reliable tool for measuring school effectiveness. We need a better understanding why the proficiency has been weaponized against schools, but we also need to master the huge body of research which explains why Report Cards aren’t a fair, reliable, and valid measure of how well schools are performing.

I’ll just cite one of the scholars that Ressenger draws upon. Stanford’s Sean Reardon’s 2022 research explained why “test score gaps may result from unequal opportunities either in or out of school; [but] they are not necessarily the result of differences in school quality, resources, or experience.” Reardon documented:

The socioeconomic profile of a district is a powerful predictor of the average test score performance of students in that district. The most and least socioeconomically advantaged districts have average performance levels more than four grade levels apart. … Achievement gaps are larger in districts where black and Hispanic students attend higher poverty schools than their white peers… and where large racial/ethnic gaps exist in parents’ educational attainment. The size of the gaps has little or no association with average class size, a district’s per capita student spending or charter school enrollment.

And that brings us to chronic absenteeism. As the New York Times reports, across the nation, “nearly 70 percent of the highest poverty schools experienced widespread, chronic absenteeism in the 2021-22 school year,” and “in these schools, about a third or more of the student body was considered chronically absent.” Of course, the Times notes, “Students cannot learn if they are not in school, and they cannot benefit from interventions, such as tutoring, that are supposed to help them make up pandemic losses.”

And Palmer reports:

Across the state, 20% of students were chronically absent last year, a half a percent increase over 2022. Some student groups were even higher: 24% of Hispanic students, 25% of economically disadvantaged and 31% of Black students were chronically absent …” Moreover, excessive absences are more prevalent now than before the pandemic. In 2019, 14% of Oklahoma students were chronically absent.

Tulsa World had previously reported that “About half of the Tulsa high school students are chronically absent” and explained why this complex and serious problem is “showing no signs of improvement.” The World cited the work of Georgetown’s Phyllis Jordan who explained the need to reconnect “what’s going on in the school and what’s going on outside the school.”

On one hand, that is why Patrick Forsyth, a University of Oklahoma professor who had analyzed the state’s A-F report card system, said “using attendance to measure school effectiveness is like using rates of tobacco use to measure hospital effectiveness.” On the other hand, as the Oklahoman reported, the Attendance Works’ Hedy Chang said, chronic absenteeism is an “all-hands-on-deck moment.” She also called on schools to “learn the specific barriers to attendance that their students experience before crafting a response to those unique challenges.”

That gets us back to the tragedy of two tales about what the Report Card means. Sadly, Ryan Walters uses it as one more weapon for disrupting public education. The other side must use these flawed metrics not to punish but for diagnostic purposes.

Categories Education Reform, NAEP, Oklahoma, Standardized Testing

Florida: Conservative State Supreme Court May Block Referendum on Abortion

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2023 //
7

Supporters of reproductive rights are gathering signatures to put a referendum on the ballot in November 2024. However, the state Supreme Court must approve the language of the referendum or block it. Anti-abortion advocates have criticized the proposed referendum because it does not define “viability,” the point at which the fetus is able to survive outside the woman’s body.

Opponents of abortion know that referenda to protect abortion have been approved in other red states, like Kansas and Ohio. They have to find a way to block the vote. First, they raised the vote needed to change the state constitution from 50.1% to 60%. Now, they are counting on a hyper-conservative state Supreme Court to disqualify the referendum on technical grounds.

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Floridians are signing petitions to put abortion rights to a vote of the people next fall, but they could meet an insurmountable setback from the state’s conservative Supreme Court.

The high court must approve the ballot initiative’s language, and if it doesn’t, the amendment won’t be on the 2024 ballot.

The amendment’s backers also still need to gather more than 400,000 signatures to get on the ballot, counter an anti-abortion ad campaign already taking shape and win at least 60% of the vote to secure passage.

Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody is fighting to keep the measure protecting abortion rights off the ballot, arguing it is misleading because it doesn’t define “viability.” The public has differing interpretations of what that term means, she wrote in a legal brief.

It’s an argument that could carry weight with the court given its “extremely conservative makeup,” said Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University.

One justice is married to a sponsor of Florida’s six-week abortion ban and pushed anti-abortion bills when he served in Congress. GOP presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed five of the seven justices.

Categories Education Reform

Ohio: GOP Politicians Try to Undo Voters’ Will on Abortion Rights

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2023 //
6

Barbara McQuade, experienced prosecutor and lawyer, posted this disturbing commentary at Cafe Insider. Republican legislators in Ohio are trying to overturn the recent state referendum on abortion, where 57% of voters chose to protect reproductive rights by writing them into the state constitution.

Elections, as they say, have consequences. Last week in Ohio, voters approved an amendment to their state constitution that protects reproductive rights. But some GOP lawmakers apparently would rather damage democratic institutions than accept election results that they strongly oppose. 

Ohio recently became the seventh state to enshrine the right to abortion into their state constitutions following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Dobbsopinion, of course, overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that had recognized abortion rights under the U.S. Constitution since 1973. But despite the election result, some Ohio Republican legislators are refusing to accept the will of the people of their state. 

Two days after the election, attacks on the democratic process came on three different bases. First, GOP Representative Jennifer Gross claimed, without evidence, that the amendment was passed as the result of “foreign election interference” with the money of “foreign billionaires.” If true, such outside influence would violate election laws. But there is nothing to suggest that the claim is true. This claim was made not by an extremist activist, but by an elected member of the Ohio legislature. A public official’s claim of foreign influence can undermine public confidence in elections, which, in turn, leads to voter apathy, and discourages them from casting ballots. Such cynicism erodes the strength of our democracy. 

And Gross didn’t stop there. She joined three other GOP lawmakers in a second attack, announcing an audacious plan to strip their state courts of authority to interpret the new amendment. “Issue 1,” the name of the ballot proposal, ensures the right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” regarding birth control, miscarriage, and abortion. The amendment, which goes into effect in December, retains the state’s ability to regulate abortions after a fetus is able to survive outside the womb. The amendment locks into the state constitution the current law permitting abortions up to 22 weeks, but it conflicts with a number of other state laws on the books that regulate reproductive rights, such as one that imposes a 24-hour waiting period and another that prohibits abortions after detection of certain fetal conditions. A “heartbeat” law, passed in 2019, that prohibits abortions after six weeks with no exception for rape or incest, had been tied up in courts before the election. 

Ohio House Democrats have proposed a bill to repeal the existing laws that conflict with the new amendment, but GOP majorities in both houses will likely block their efforts. Instead, litigants will need to challenge these laws in court to get them off the books. 

But that’s where Gross and her team come in. They said they would shift power over interpreting the amendment from the courts to the GOP-controlled legislature. According to their public statement, “Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative.” They explained that this move was necessary, “[t]o prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts.” Instead, they propose that “the Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.” Draft legislation would vacate all court orders and even expose judges to criminal prosecution and impeachment for handling cases involving the amendment. 

Except that’s not how it works. One of the first cases law students read in Constitutional Law class is Marbury v. Madison. The case stands for the proposition that it is the role of courts to review laws and to decide whether they are unconstitutional. And while Marbury v. Madison dealt with federal courts, the proposition is no less true in the states. Ohio’s constitution creates a judicial branch, composed of courts that are vested with “the judicial power of the state.” Interpreting the law is the fundamental role of courts. Legislatures write the laws; courts interpret them and decide whether they violate the state or federal constitutions. By seeking to wrest control of judicial review from the courts, the legislators are corrupting the structure of government and the separation of powers. This attempted power grab is a dangerous affront to our democratic institutions. We can’t simply deconstruct the apparatus of government whenever we fear the outcome of its work. Such attacks would render our judiciary toothless and unrecognizable.

But that’s not the end of it. A third affront to our democratic process came in the remarks of one of the four GOP legislators behind the effort, who appeared to put her own religious views ahead of the will of the people. Representative Beth Lear stated in support of the legislation, “No amendment can overturn the God-given rights with which we were born.” She no doubt genuinely believes the truth of her comments, but the First Amendment entitles her to practice her own religion, not to impose it on others. 

Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, opponents of abortion rights frequently argued that the issue should be left to the states to decide. Now that voters in the states are consistently approving abortion rights, those who oppose reproductive rights are looking for new ways to fight for bans, even if it means supplanting the will of the people. 

Regardless of the convictions of one’s views on any issue, a power grab to override the results of an election is destructive to democracy. 

Stay Informed, 

Barb

Categories Education Reform

Politico: House Republicans Want Deep Cuts to Education Funding

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2023 //
4

Political parties show their true colors when they offer a budget. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives just showed that they don’t care about funding education. They especially don’t care about funding schools attended by poor kids. They want to slash Title I—the most important federal funding for poor kids—by 80%. Remember that the next time that Republicans cry crocodile tears for poor kids.

Politico reported:

HOUSE TAKES UP EDUCATION FUNDING AS SHUTDOWN LOOMS: As House leaders wrangle votes for a stopgap measure to head off a shutdown at the end of the week, House Republicans are also turning to longer-term appropriations for education programs. The House is set to consider on the floor this week Republicans’ education funding bill that would make deep cuts to federal education programs, including drastic reductions to aid for low-income schools.

— What’s in the bill: The GOP bill to fund the Education Department for the 2024 fiscal year would provide $67.4 billion of new discretionary funding, a reduction of about 15 percent compared with 2023. But the bill would also rescind more than $10 billion of funding for K-12 education that was already approved by Congress, bringing the overall cut to the Education Department to about 28 percent from fiscal 2023.

— Among the most drastic proposed GOP cuts would be the $14.7 billion reduction to federal spending on low-income school districts under Title I, an 80 percent reduction. Democrats say that funding level would translate into 220,000 fewer teachers in classrooms across the country.

— The bill also includes policy riders that would block a slew of Biden administration education policies, such as its overhaul of Title IX rules and new student loan repayment program known as SAVE. The bill would also end the administration’s safety net program that eliminates most penalties for borrowers who miss their monthly payment for the next year.

— The GOP’s top-line funding levels for education won’t survive negotiations with the Democrat-led Senate and White House. A bipartisan proposal by Senate appropriators calls for keeping overall spending on education at roughly the same level as 2023. Biden’s budget requested a 13.6 percent increase.

— But the vote on making deep cuts to funding for schools could put some moderate House Republicans in a tough spot and hand Democrats some election-year messaging fodder.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Poverty, U.S. Department of Education

Florida: How Koch Industries Closed a Mill, Laid off 500+ Workers, and Got in Line for a Tax Break

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2023 //
6

Some stories are too outrageous to be true, and yet they are. This is one of them, as reported by Jason Garcia on his blog “Seeking Rents.”

Koch Industries owns a major pulp mill in Taylor County, Florida, where one of five people lives in poverty. Koch recently announced that it was shutting down the mill and laying off all of its 500+ workers. At the same time, the closed mill might receive a large tax break because some of its machinery was damaged by a hurricane. This is not helpful to the workers who will be unemployed but will be a nice gift to Koch Industries, a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. Always annoying to see our tax dollars flow to needy billionaires, instead of laid-off workers.

Garcia, a journalist who exposes corporate corruption, writes:

In mid-September, just three weeks after Hurricane Idalia tore through Taylor County in North Florida, the tiny community suffered a second disaster.

The company that operates a large pulp-and-fiber mill in the area — a 69-year-old factory known locally as the “Foley mill” that has long been one of the region’s most important employers — announced that it would shut the facility down and lay off all 500-plus people who work there.

It’s a devastating blow to Taylor County, a timber-dependent community with a shrinking population of fewer than 22,000 people where one-in-five families live in poverty. A report by the University of Florida estimates the Foley mill closure will lead to the loss of approximately 2,000 jobs in total, including the truckers and loggers who supply the mill with slash pine.

And now Florida might hand a farewell tax break to the fleeing company — which is part of Koch Industries, the global conglomerate led by billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch.

The potential tax break for Koch Industries is included in a roughly $420 million hurricane aid package that Florida’s Republican-controlled state Legislature is expected to approve this week, during a four-day special session in Tallahassee.

The same tax-break legislation meant to ease the damage wrought by Hurricane Idalia showers benefits on another multi-billionaire.

Garcia writes:

The problem is that most of the timberland in this particular area is owned by one person: Billionaire investor Thomas Peterffy, one of the 100 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Peterffy owns Florida’s Big Bend. He purchased more than 500,000 acres in the region about eight years ago — an enormous tract of land that was believed the largest contiguous piece of undeveloped property in private hands east of the Mississippi River.

Property records show that Peterffy owns about 380,000 acres in Taylor County alone, through his company, Four Rivers Land & Timber. That’s more than half the land in the entire county. And virtually all of it is in timber production.

And while there’s little doubt that Peterffy’s timber lands were hit hard by Hurricane Idalia, a land baron worth an estimated $25.3 billion probably doesn’t need help from taxpayers to deal with it.

To be clear: I’m not suggesting that Florida lawmakers drew up these tax breaks specifically to help Koch Industries or Thomas Peterffy — both of whom have been big donors to DeSantis during his time as governor.

But it is reasonable to ask, as Garcia does, why tax breaks are being doled out to billionaires who don’t need the money, while there are so many people in Taylor County who do.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Economy, Education Reform, Ethics, Florida
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »