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Secretary Cardona, NAEP Proficient Is NOT Grade Level!

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2023 //
45

For the past dozen years, since the attack on public schools went into high gear, the same lie has been trotted out again and again to defame public schools. The slanderers say that 2/3 of American students are reading “below grade level.”

At Congressional hearings on the education budget on Tuesday April 18, the same ridiculous claim was made by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. He said that only 33% are reading at proficiency. He said this is “appalling and not acceptable for the United States. 33% of our students are reading on Grade level.” (At about 45:00).

This is nonsense. Its’s frankly appalling to hear Secretary Cardona repeating the lie spread by rightwing public school haters. He really should be briefed by officials from the National Assessment Governing Board before he testifies again.

On the NAEP (National Assessment of Educationsl Progress) tests, “proficient” does not represent grade level. Proficient is a high bar. Although the federal testing agency does not equate its achievement levels to letter grades, I would estimate (based on my seven years of experience as a member of the NAEP Governing Board) that “proficient” is about the same as an A or an A-. Do we really expect that every student merits an A? I don’t think so.

The website of the National Center on Education Statistics states clearly:

Achievement Levels

NAEP student achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three NAEP achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and NAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments).

Could it be any plainer? Students who score at or above NAEP Proficent “demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter.” Furthermore, the NAEP Proficient level “does not represent grade level proficiency.”

Would someone please tell Secretary Cardona? When he repeats the lies of the rightwing propagandists, he maligns every teacher and student in the nation.

Someone should also inform Secretary Cardona that the NAEP achievement levels are set by panels of educators and non-educators; as such, they are subjective judgments. They have been used on a trial basis for 30 years without getting definitive clearance by testing experts commissioned by Congress to review their validity. “The latest evaluation of the NAEP achievement levels was conducted by a committee convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2016. The evaluation concluded that further evidence should be gathered to determine whether the NAEP achievement levels are reasonable, valid, and informative. Accordingly, the NCES commissioner determined that the trial status of the NAEP achievement levels should be maintained at this time.”

Please, Secretary Cardona, stop saying that “only 33% of American students can read proficiently” and that “only 33% are reading at grade level.”

It’s not true.

When asked about vouchers, Secretary Cardona said he opposes them because they take money away from public schools. That’s true, but far from the whole truth. 75-80% of vouchers subsidize students who already attend private schools. They are a transfer from the public to the affluent. Kids who leave public schools to use vouchers lose academic ground, and most return to their public school within two-three years in need of help catching up. Vouchers fund religious schools that may discriminate against students, families, and staff who do not share their religion or who are gay or who have disabilities. They choose the students they want.


Furthermore, religious schools indoctrinate. Some religious schools teach fake science and history. Religious schools force taxpayers to pay for religious views they do not share.

There are many reasons to oppose vouchers but Secretary Cardona seems unaware of them. I recommend that he invite veteran voucher researcher Joshua Cowen of Michigan State University to brief him on why vouchers for religious and private schools are a pernicious and ineffective policy.

Categories Data, Education Reform, Fake News, Fraud, Hoax, Lies, NAEP, Propaganda, Rhee, Michelle, Standardized Testing

ProPublica: Idaho Schools Are Crumbling. Help Is Not on the Way.

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2023 //
4

ProPublica, in conjunction with the Idaho Statesman, took a close at schools in Idaho, which spends less on education than any other state. Conditions for teaching and learning are terrible, in large part because the state requires a 2/3 majority to pass a bond issue. Does Idaho care about the rising generation? Does it care about its future?

Jan Bayer sank into the couch in the family room of her Bonners Ferry, Idaho, home and stared at her phone, nervously awaiting a call. Her twin teenage daughters were nearby, equally anxious.

It was election night in March 2022, and Bayer, the superintendent of the Boundary County School District in a remote part of Idaho on the Canadian border, had spent months educating voters about a bond that would raise property taxes to replace one of her district’s oldest and most dangerous buildings: Valley View Elementary School. Built just after World War II, the school was falling apart.

The walls were cracked. The pipes were disintegrating. The ceilings were water-stained. The electrical system was maxed out and the insulation was nearly nonexistent. Classrooms froze in the winter and baked in the summer. The roof, part of which had already collapsed once, was nearing the end of its lifespan. Outside, potholes pocked the parking lot and deep splits formed in warped sidewalks. The kindergarten playground, weathered from decades of brutal winters, had turned hazardous; at times, sharp screws protruded from some of the equipment, and kids routinely got splinters from the wooden crossbeams.

Most worrisome to Bayer and her staff: Kindergarten students had to cross a street multiple times a day just to navigate the sprawling six-building campus, a piecemeal attempt to add much-needed classroom space.

The bond promised to fix all that — if voters approved it.

“You’re just honestly praying for a miracle,” Bayer said. “I said a lot of prayers all day long, saying, ‘OK, we can do this. We can do this.’”

At about 8:30 p.m., a call came in from the county clerk. More than 2,000 people voted, and about 54% of them supported the bond, the clerk said. Bayer’s heart sank and she broke into tears. In Idaho, a majority wasn’t enough. The state is one of just two in the nation that require support from two-thirds of voters to pass a bond.

Bayer shared the results with the school board, school staff and the facilities committee. Over the next several hours, she received calls and messages from community members. They told her to keep fighting. So she did. The district put another bond on the ballot in August, and students rallied to support it. On Election Day, the high school football team even stood on the bridge over the Kootenai River and held yellow signs that read “Vote Yes for Kids,” hoping to persuade voters as they drove to the Boundary County Fairgrounds to cast their votes. But the second bond fared worse. Just over 40% of voters backed the new measure, which hit the ballot as residents received a notice that their property assessments were going to rise and voters were worried about tax increases. “It went down in a ball of flames,” Bayer wrote to the school board.

Boundary County School District Superintendent Jan Bayer points out that part of an exterior wall of a school building is made of glass blocks painted blue, which are not efficient for heating and cooling. The rest of the building is made of cinder blocks that came from a naval training station that was decommissioned in the 1940s.

No other state spends less on education per student than Idaho, according to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, which surveys and ranks school finance systems. It also ranks last in the nation in terms of school infrastructure spending per pupil, a state report shows. So over the past several decades, rural districts across the state have faced the same challenge as Bayer: To improve or replace aging — and sometimes dangerous — facilities, they must appeal to local taxpayers and clear some of the nation’s most restrictive thresholds for school funding. Despite urgent needs, most of these efforts fail, an investigation by the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica has found. As a result, students across the state must learn amid dire conditions.

In one Idaho school, the foundation is crumbling. In another, so few bathrooms serve hundreds of kids that students have soiled themselves, according to school officials and local media. And in yet another, a portion of a roof recently failed during off-hours, sending water flooding into a classroom and bathrooms, destroying books and temporarily limiting learning space.

Since 2006, districts have mounted 217 bond attempts to remedy these types of problems and accommodate growing student populations. Had Idaho required only a majority of voters to support the measures — the threshold in most states — 83% of them would have passed. Instead, just 44% were approved, according to an analysis of bond measures and election data by the news organizations.

Please open the link and read this story. It makes you wonder whether the public cares about education and students. People complain about test scores but all too often they are unwilling to pay for an up-to-date school system. Charters and vouchers are a pointless diversion. They guarantee that the public schools attended by most students will be impoverished and under-resources.

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Education Reform, Failure, Funding, Idaho

Nancy Bailey: Why Does PBS Interview Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings About the Problems They Created?

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2023 //
80

Nancy Bailey is a retired teacher with long experience in the classroom. She has a talent for picking out charlatans from the pundits who make a living telling teachers what to do, despite their lack of experience. She gets irritated by purveyors of doom and gloom, especially when it is not warranted. Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings inflicted irreparable harm on America’s public schools by their imposition of the failed No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs; these federal mandates continue to erode what’s left of the joy of learning by their emphasis on standardized testing and pressure to close public schools and open privatized charter schools.

Nancy and I collaborated on a book published by Teachers College Press called Edspeak and Doublespeak: A Glossary to Decipher Hypocrisy and Save Public Schooling. It names names and calls out the privatizers who call themselves “reformers.”

She wrote on her latest blog:

Arne Duncan (Obama) and Margaret Spellings (G. W. Bush), noneducators and former education secretaries, recently appeared on PBS News Hour, “Study shows parents overestimate their student’s academic progress” to dash any hope parents might have that their children are doing well in school. Who’s behind such gloomy reporting?

Here’s how PBS begins, and here’s the survey:

A survey conducted in March of 2023 for the group Learning Heroes found 90 percent of parents think their kids are doing fine, but standardized test scores show otherwise. Among eighth graders, for example, just 29 percent were proficient in reading either at or above their grade level. In math, just 26 percent were considered proficient. This sheds light on what’s being called the parent perception gap.

Learning Heroes? They’re a group called a campaign, seemingly to create divisiveness, sowing distrust in teachers and public schools, to tell parents about so-called gaps in student learning. They call parents learning heroes. They appear to be critical of grades and a teacher’s evaluation of the student, and they focus on standardized test scores.

Gaps have been the focus for 22 years since No Child Left Behind, and Duncan and Spellings had their chance to reduce the learning and opportunity gaps they speak about. They never discuss or seem to reflect on their accountability for public school problems, especially their emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing.

Learning gaps are the difference or disparities between what students learn and grade-level expectations. Adults create expectations with standardized tests. Few raise questions about whether such expectations could be developmentally inappropriate, and even when they do, they’re ignored.

Opportunity gaps are life factors children struggle with surrounding ethnicity, race, gender, disability, and income. Many children facing opportunity gaps attend poor schools without resources or quality curricula.

Learning Heroes receives support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Charles and Lynn Shusterman Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

None of the above champion public schools. Most promote school privatization and, for years, have praised charter schools, which continue to do poorly in many places.

Looking closer at the learning heroes team, many come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The PBS report also references Go Beyond the Grades, connected to the Chamber of Commerce, which has never been optimistic about public education either. Remember their state-by-state report called Leaders and Laggards?

What’s ironic is that these same individuals helped put high-stakes standardized testing and Common Core State Standards in place years ago, along with other bad reforms, and they still complain that public schools are failing. They’re criticizing their own failed ideology in the name of school privatization!

This is a wonderful post. Please open the link and read it all!

Inspired by Nancy’s post, I wrote a letter to PBS Newshour. I hope you will too. Write to: viewermail@newshour.org

Dear Newshour Staff, 

I was disappointed to see that you invited the overseers of the past two decades to discuss the situation of American education. 

No Child Left Behind (Spellings) and Race to the Top (Duncan) were both disasters. Both inflicted and intensified the overuse and abuse of standardized testing in America’s public schools. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of schools were closed based on these invalid and unreliable measures. 

Spellings and Duncan spent years promoting failed policies and are now called upon by PBS to comment on the outcomes of their punitive and ineffective ideas. They are in no position to say where we went wrong, because they were the architects of the disaster. 

You really should invite dispassionate experts to review their record, rather than invite those who imposed bad ideas. 

Can anyone honestly say that “no child was left behind” after more than a dozen years of NCLB? Can anyone say that the $500 billion spent on Race to the Top was successful in any respect? The answer to both questions is no. 

NCLB and RTTT have demoralized a generation of teachers; destroyed the joy of learning; and produced no improvement. Worse, they created a canard about “failing schools” that completely ignores the root causes of poor student performance. 

What if those billions had been spent on reducing class sizes; raising teachers’ salaries; upgrading obsolete facilities; ensuring that every child had access to nutrition and medical check-ups? 

It boggles my mind that the Newshour would buy into the myths of the past 20 years instead of digging deeper to understand the underlying issues. 

Diane Ravitch 

Author and Historian 

Categories Education Reform

Did Alvarez & Marsal Give Pricey Advice to Your School District? They Are Living in Luxury Now

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2023 //
16

Back a few years, the business restructuring company Alvarez & Marsal became deeply involved in reorganizing school districts, despite their lack of any educational experience. As a reflection of the corporate mindset of the early 2000s, A&M’s corporate experience was thought to be a major asset in rearranging school districts.

The president of A&M, Bill Roberti, who had previously been CEO of the elite menswear company Brooks Brothers was hired to take charge of the St. Louis school district, at $5 million a year.

During his 13 months as superintendent of St. Louis public schools, former Brooks Brothers chief executive William V. Roberti closed 21 schools, lopped $79 million off the school budget, privatized many school services and laid off more than 1,000 employees. He stepped down in June at the end of his contract….

The basic assumption behind the Roberti reforms was that a school district operates in much the same way as a retail business. Both systems rely on “supply chain management,” he said. “Many people talk as if there’s some magic to education. But the job of getting supplies from a warehouse to a building is the same in schools as it is in business as it is in the federal government.”

To slash costs, Roberti outsourced many operations to private contractors. He also cut hundreds of positions, including supervisors, counselors and department coordinators. He is proud of the fact that he did not fire a single teacher — dozens of teachers were permitted to retire without being replaced, which resulted in larger classes in many schools.

He left after 13 months, and the firm was hired in June 2005 (three months before the Hurricane) to take part in the restructuring of New Orleans public schools. Roberti was in charge of finance, purchasing, accounting and human resources for $16.8 million for two years. In light of the added duties after the Hurricane, A&M’s fee for three years was double the original proposal.

Then came a nice gig in New York City, where Joel Klein paid A&M $15.8 million to reorganize the school bus routes and save money. That was a fiasco, launched on the coldest day of the year, many students left stranded.

ProPublica investigated how the super-rich avoid taxes by buying super-yachts and private jets. It’s first example: the very wealthy Alvarez & Marsal.

Over the past two years, ProPublica has documented the many ways that the ultrawealthy avoid taxes. The biggest or most daring maneuvers scale in the billions of dollars, and while the tax deductibility of private jets isn’t the most important feature of U.S. tax law, the fact that billionaires’ luxury rides come with millions in tax savings says a lot about how the system really works.

There are dozens of examples of wealthy Americans taking these sorts of deductions, which are premised on the notion that the planes are used mainly for business, in the massive trove of tax records that have formed the basis for ProPublica’s “Secret IRS Files” series. The ultrawealthy, however, can easily blur business and pleasure. And when they purport to make their planes available for leasing, to fulfill one definition of using the planes for business, they tend to be more adept at generating tax deductions than revenue.

Flying to Ireland to inhale the seaside air as you drive a golf ball into the scenic distance. Crossing the country to reach your enormous yacht, which is ready for your Hudson River pleasure cruise. Hosting a governor’s wife on your very own aircraft. These are only a few of the joys that the richest Americans have experienced in recent years through their private jets. And what made them all the sweeter is that they came with a tax write-off.

Tony Alvarez and Bryan Marsal built a successful consulting firm specializing in restructuring — advising struggling or bankrupt companies on what to sell and whom to lay off. It can be a grim business: Marsal has been known to announce to prone firms that they were now a “community of pain.” But the partners, who are also close friends, own another enterprise, the Hogs Head Golf Club (“Built by Friends, for Friends, for Fun”), on the southwest coast of Ireland. It boasts views of the nearby mountains and bay.

In 2016, before opening their new course, the pair teamed up, via an LLC they named after their golf club, to buy a 2001 Gulfstream IV jet. The next year, President Donald Trump signed his big tax cut into law. It made buying a plane even more attractive: The full price of the plane could be deducted in the first year, a perk called “bonus depreciation.” Before, depreciation was typically only partially front-loaded, with the full balance spread over five years. The law also for the first time made pre-owned planes eligible for this treatment.

As a result, when Alvarez and Marsal sprang for their second plane in 2018, this one a Gulfstream V, the entire cost was deductible. That year, the pair’s two planes netted them a tax deduction of $14 million.

Last August, their Gulfstream V took off from Westchester County Airport in New York state for Ireland. About an hour later, their Gulfstream IV left for the same destination, a small airport in County Kerry near their club. Both planes can comfortably seat over a dozen passengers, but flight records don’t show who was on board. Over the coming month and a half, the two planes crisscrossed the Atlantic several times.

Were these business trips? Possibly, yes. (ProPublica’s records do not indicate whether specific trips were taken as deductions.) If so, operating expenses — including crew, fuel and other costs — from the partners’ trips to oversee the course would be fully deductible. These deductions would come in addition to depreciation.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Reform, New Orleans, New York City, St. Louis

Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick Will Speak at Wellesley College on April 11, 4 p.m.

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2023 //
21

I am thrilled to announce that Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick will speak at Wellesley College in the annual lecture series that I endowed. Admission to the lecture is free and open to the public. If you live within driving distance, be there.

The lecture will be held in the auditorium of Jewett Arts Center. Be there!

For a real treat, watch Dr. Fenwick’s lecture “Looking Behind the Veil of Education Reform.”

The Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 Lecture

Living with Histories That We Do Not Know with Leslie Fenwick

Tuesday, April 11, 4 p.m. ET Dr. Fenwick will draw on her sustained contribution to education policy research and groundbreaking findings from her recently published award-winning and bestselling book, Jim Crow’s Pink Slip. Dr. Fenwick’s research upends what we know and understand about Brown vs. Board of Education and details why the newly excavated history she shares is important to the nation’s racial justice and educational equity goals.

Livestreamed at www.wellesley.edu/live.

Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick, PhD, is a nationally-known education policy and leadership studies scholar who served as Dean of the Howard University School of Education for nearly a decade. A former Visiting Scholar and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, Fenwick holds an invited appointment as a MCLC Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where she occasionally lectures about character leadership and ethics. Additionally, Fenwick served as an appointed member of the National Academy of Sciences committee that produced the first study about mayoral control of Washington DC Public Schools. Fenwick (who is a former urban school teacher and adminstrator) is regularly called upon to testify about educational equity and college access to the U.S. Senate, National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Urban League, Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Education Writers Association (EWA), National Education Association (NEA), National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), and the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE). Additionally, she has been an invited speaker at the National Press Club, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and the Washington Policy Seminar.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, History, Principals, Race, Racism, Segregation

Indiana: Join the Pastors in a Day of Action for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2023 //
3

YOU ARE INVITED TO A “DAY OF ACTION” AT THE STATEHOUSE

Pastors for Indiana Children is a nonpartisan, independent ministry, not beholden to any special interest group, political party, or church office. We believe in local democracy, cooperation across lines of difference, and organizing to support public education opportunities for Indiana children.

WHO: Any Pastor, Community Leader, Parent, Student, Advocate who wants to keep public schools public, fully funded, and equitably meet the needs of ALL students. Pastor Charles Johnson, Executive Director of Pastors for Texas Children is planning to join us.

WHAT: Pastors for Indiana Children is hosting an Day of Action. We will be speaking with State Legislators directly about HB 1001, HB 1002 and HB 1591. These bills threaten the further destroy public education.

WHEN: Thursday, April 13th, 2023 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Press Conference to follow at 12:30PM

WHERE: Indiana State Capitol Building
200 W Washington St, Indianapolis, IN 46204

WHY SHOULD PASTORS STAND UP FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION:

There are several reasons why pastors should stand up for public education:

  1. Public education is a common good: Public education is a fundamental pillar of a healthy and just society. It provides all children, regardless of their background, with the opportunity to learn and develop the skills they need to succeed in life.
  2. Equity and access: Public education is essential for promoting equity and access for all students. It provides a level playing field for students of different socio-economic backgrounds, and helps to reduce disparities in educational opportunities.
  3. Moral imperative: As leaders in our/your communities, Pastors have a moral obligation to support the common good and to advocate for justice and equality. Standing up for public education is one way to fulfill this obligation.
  4. Community engagement: Public schools are often the hub of their communities, serving not just as places of learning, but also as gathering places for community events and activities. Pastors can help to strengthen their communities by supporting public schools and advocating for their improvement.
  5. Shared values: Public education is consistent with many of the values that Pastors hold dear, such as the value of education, the importance of social justice, and the idea that we are all called to work for the common good.

By standing up for public education, Pastors can help to promote equity, justice, and the common good, while also strengthening our communities and living out our values.

Pastors, Ministers and Congregants please take the opportunity to share with other Pastors who may not know what is going on. Although, I have listed 3 bills that are a problem, there are many bills floating through and being passed in our statehouse. We must stand together to push back on this attack of public education and in specific the most vulnerable, OUR CHILDREN.

See you at the State House on April 13, 2023!

Sincerely,


Dr. Ramon L. Batts
State Director
Pastors for Indiana Children
www.PastorsForIndianaChildren.org

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Hope, Indiana, Resistance, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools

Robert B. Hubbell: Our Democracy Is Not a Theocracy…Yet

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2023 //
49

Robert B. Hubbell is a daily blogger whose reflections on the news are consistently interesting:

Religious extremists have continued their assault on the status of women as equal citizens under the law and full participants in the liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. After the Supreme Court’s reactionary majority engaged in the charade of “returning the question” of reproductive liberty “to the people’s representatives,” a rogue federal judge in Texas has issued a nationwide ban on mifepristone because of his personal disagreement with the FDA’s scientific conclusions regarding safety of the drug. The opinion is equal parts junk science and religious screed. It is an insult to the rule of law and the dignity of women as human beings with control over their bodies and reproductive choices.

The opinion is even more pernicious because mifepristone is frequently prescribed to help women safely manage miscarriages. In the absence of mifepristone and because of dozens of laws criminalizing abortion, a single federal judge with no science or medical training has ordered millions of women to risk infection, sepsis, and death before they can receive medical intervention in a miscarriage.

The DOJ has announced that it will appeal the ruling to the arch-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which may uphold the ruling. A competing and contrary ruling in Washington state suggests that the US Supreme Court will be forced to intervene soon.

The religious extremists who successfully took down Roe are now using that victory as a roving license to attack fundamental liberties everywhere. They have misread Dobbs, their limited mandate, the will of the electorate, and the rule of law. Whatever Dobbs stands for, it did not convert our democracy into a theocracy—which is the premise of Judge Kacsmaryk’s first in our nation’s history ruling by a federal judge overturning the scientific judgments of the FDA.

Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling is not only wrong, but it is also dangerous in its implications. Under the reasoning adopted by Judge Kacsmaryk, the next logical step is a ruling declaring fetal personhood under the Constitution and an order mandating every state to criminalize abortion. I am not being hyperbolic. I urge you to reach this superb analysis by Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling against mifepristone will force the Supreme Court to act fast. Stern writes:

[Kacsmaryk] deemed fetuses to “arguably” be “people” who are killed by mifepristone, seeking to establish the “fetal personhood” that has always been the end goal of the movement. For support, he cited a brief by anti-abortion advocate Robert P. George asserting that the Constitution compels every state to outlaw abortion. 

There are more dangerous statements in Kacsmaryk’s opinion, which are detailed in Stern’s analysis. While we should not surrender to alarmism (not a comment directed to Stern), we must be realistic about the path to victory. Republican leaders know they have overstepped; editorials in conservative newspapers and conservative commentators are raising the alarm that Republicans have overstepped the advantage granted in Dobbs. See op-ed by Michele Golberg in NYTimes, The Abortion Ban Backlash Is Starting to Freak Out Republicans

But the Republican Party is captive to the religious extremists whose endorsements are now the price of election in Republican primaries. In other words, there is no going back for the GOP, and things may get worse for us before they get better. But Republicans have locked themselves into irreversible losing trajectory and are already paying the price. But we must step our efforts as they ratchet theirs. We can do that; we have begun to do that; we must continue, and most not lose hope. We will win; they will lose. It is just a matter of time.

Tennessee.

The anti-democratic, racially based expulsion of two young Black representatives from the Tennessee House by the GOP has attracted worldwide condemnation. People outside of America who had never heard the name “Tennessee” now associate it with the historical birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan and the modern home for the most virulent strains of racism in America. A reader (“CC”) posted selected citations in the Comments section, with a brief comment:

Justin Jones told the Tennessee legislature that the whole world was watching. Looks like he could be right.

FRANCE: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/04/07/tennessee-republicans-expel-two-democratic-lawmakers-for-gun-control-protest_6021973_4.html

GREAT BRITAIN: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65206459

CANADA: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/us/2023/04/06/gop-lawmakers-consider-expelling-democrats-over-gun-protest.html

SPAIN: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-04-06/tennessees-house-expels-first-of-three-democrats-for-protest.html

GERMANY: https://www.dw.com/en/us-republicans-in-tennessee-vote-to-expel-2-democrats/a-65255635

Should Tennessee legislators care what the world media thinks about Tennessee? Only if Tennessee aspires to be part of the global, interconnected business community that will drive commerce in the future (like Nissan and Volkswagen, which both have plants in Tennessee). If Tennessee wants to rely on its other leading industry—entertainment—for future growth, it should consider whether most performers in the entertainment industry want to be associated with a state whose current top export is hate.

And my apologies and sympathy for Democrats and Independents in Tennessee who are fighting the good fight. We need you and will continue to support you. Everyone understands that the hate is coming from the GOP leadership, not from the good people of Tennessee who are struggling to create a more perfect democracy.

But Tennessee Republicans have not learned their lesson. Despite universal condemnation, major media outlets are reporting that Republican leaders are threatening the county commissions that might re-appoint Justin Pearson and Justin Jones—as they are legally entitled to do. Worse, Republicans are threatening not to seat Jones and Pearson if they are re-elected. It simply doesn’t get more totalitarian than that.

The reaction from the business community has been muted because the events occurred late in a week that included observances for Easter and Passover. But it is hard to fathom that the Memphis Grizzlies NBA playoff games next week will not be affected by Black athletes speaking their views on the events of Thursday. It is difficult to see why a nearly all-Black University of Tennessee football team would play in the face of such blatant racism. It is difficult to see why FedEx, Jack Daniels, Tractor Supply, and Nissan would want to support GOP legislators who committed one of the most overtly racist acts in a generation.

The state of Tennessee has yet to feel the business backlash that will follow the legislature’s action on Thursday. When it does, Tennessee Republicans will realize they have roused a sleeping giant.

Clarence Thomas.

Clarence Thomas issued a dissembling non-denial of his grotesque violation of judicial norms over two decades. Let’s set the quibbling aside and focus on the essence: The scale of Thomas’s corruption shocks the conscience. It appears that in some years, Thomas received more free travel by jet and luxury yacht that exceeded his salary by a significant percentage. Whatever the rules are, when someone is bestowing economic benefits on you that exceed your salary, it does not matter whether those benefits are hospitality, gifts, travel, or bribes—the amount of the benefit is corrupt. Period.

Thomas’s evasive non-denial studiously avoided any mention of free travel on a private jet—the clearest violation of the pre-existing rules. Despite his denial, Thomas was dishonest when he claimed that he understood—based on conversations with others—that he was not required to report “hospitality” in the range of a half-million-dollars. Thomas did not believe his own denial because in 2004, he was reporting “hospitality” in the from Harlan Crowe—and then suddenly stopped reporting gifts from Crow after the LATimers article. See After an L.A. Times story on Thomas’ gifts, he stopped disclosing – Los Angeles Times.com) [Behind a paywall.]

In other words, when Thomas’s compliance with the rules attracted attention from the media, he simply stopped reporting. There was no “misunderstanding,” just an intent to conceal corrupt benefits from a conservative mega-donor. Thomas’s flouting of the rules and norms of judicial conduct is entirely out of step with the conduct of most judges in the federal judiciary.

Here’s a personal story: I clerked for a federal court of appeals judge before cell phones were widely available. The federal court system participated in the federal WATS phone utility (“wide area telephone system”) that effectively allowed you to call toll-free anywhere in the US. At the time most landline calls outside of the immediate exchange area cost a dime for the first ten minutes, and then a nickel for each five minutes thereafter. Because the federal WATS system effectively conferred an economic benefit, personal use was prohibited.

The judge for whom I clerked was married to a leader in the civil rights community. Because of that fact and to avoid any appearances of impropriety by using the WATS line for personal communications, the judge installed a personal land line in chambers at great cost to him (about which he complained vociferously; he was complainer by nature).

Having spent countless hours in the judge’s interior office helping to draft opinions, I can attest that 99% of his conversations on his personal land line went something like this: “I’ll be working late again, tonight. . . . I love you, too.”

I don’t mean to hold up my judge as a hero; I mean to say that his attitude about avoiding the appearance of conflicts is emblematic of the high ethical standards followed by most federal judges. Against that backdrop, Thomas’s manifest disregard of judicial ethics is shocking.

You undoubtedly noticed that the federal judicial center issued guidelines a few weeks ago that now explicitly require Thomas to report most of the largesse he received from Crow. As Yogi Berra never said, “That’s too much of coincidence to be a coincidence.” Thomas (or Roberts) obviously got wind of the investigative work by Pro Publica and decided to provide a fig leaf of deniability for Thomas. There is more to this story. It will only take enterprising journalists and Supreme Court practitioners to speak up for the full story to emerge. It won’t be pretty. It isn’t now.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Education Reform

Heather Cox Richardson: The GOP Is Counting on Voter Suppression to Hold Power

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2023 //
3

Heather Cox Richardson writes that the Republican Party has tied itself to unpopular issues—like banning abortion—and their only strategy now is to suppress the vote, not only the Black vote but the youth vote. The fact that they are defending other unpopular issues—like vouchers, tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, and eliminating any kind of gun control—also explains why they are blowing up “culture war” issues of litttle consequence, like their demonizing of trans youth and their faux outrage about drag queens. It’s all a smoke screen for their real agenda.

Yesterday’s vote in Wisconsin reinforces the polling numbers that show how overwhelmingly popular abortion rights and fair voting are, and it seems likely to throw the Republican push to suppress voting into hyperdrive before the 2024 election.

Since the 1980s, Republicans have pushed the idea of “ballot integrity” or, later, “voter fraud” to justify voter suppression. That cry began in 1986, when Republican operatives, realizing that voters opposed Reagan’s tax cuts, launched a “ballot integrity” initiative that they privately noted “could keep the black vote down considerably.”

That effort to restrict the vote is now a central part of Republican policy. Together with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project, The Guardian today published the story of the attempt by three leading right-wing election denial groups to restrict voting rights in Republican-dominated states by continuing the lie that voting fraud is rampant.

The Guardian’s story, by Ed Pilkington and Jamie Corey, explores a two-day February meeting in Washington organized by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and attended by officials from 13 states, including the chief election officials of Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. At the meeting, participants learned about auditing election results, litigation, and funding to challenge election results. Many of the attendees and speakers are associated with election denial.

Since the 2020 election, Republican-dominated states have passed “election reform” measures that restrict the vote; those efforts are ongoing. On Thursday alone, the Texas Senate advanced a number of new restrictions. In the wake of high turnout among Generation Z Americans, who were born after 1996 and are more racially and ethnically diverse than their elders, care deeply about reproductive and LGBTQ rights, and want the government to do more to address society’s ills, Republican legislatures are singling out the youth vote to hamstring.

That determination to silence younger Americans is playing out today in Tennessee, where a school shooting on March 28 in Nashville killed six people, including three 9-year-olds. The shooting has prompted protesters to demand that the legislature honor the will of the people by addressing gun safety, but instead, Republicans in the legislature have moved to expel three Democratic lawmakers who approached the podium without being recognized to speak—a breach of House rules—and led protesters in chants calling for gun reform. As Republicans decried the breach by Representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson, protestors in the galleries called out, “Fascists!”

Republican efforts to gain control did not end there. On Twitter today, Johnson noted that she had “just had a visit from the head of HR and the House ethics lawyer,” who told her “that if I am expelled, I will lose my health benefits,” but the ethics lawyer went on to explain “that in one case, a member who was potentially up for expulsion decided to resign because if you resign, you maintain your health benefits.”

The echoes of Reconstruction in that conversation are deafening. In that era, when the positions of the parties were reversed, southern Democrats used similar “persuasion” to chase Republican legislators out of office. When that didn’t work, of course, they also threatened the physical safety of those who stood in the way of their absolute control of politics.

On Saturday night, someone fired shots into the home of the man who founded and runs the Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site. Justin Kanew was covering the gun safety struggle in Tennessee. He wrote: “This violence has no place in a civilized society and we are thankful no one was physically hurt. The authorities have not completed their investigation and right now we do not know for sure the reason for this attack. We urge the Williamson County Sheriff’s office to continue to investigate this crime and help shed light on Saturday’s unfortunate events and bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice. In the meantime, our family remains focused on keeping our children healthy and safe.”

The anger coming from losing candidate Kelly last night, and his warning that “this does not end well….[a]nd I wish Wisconsin the best of luck because I think it’s going to need it,” sure sounded like those lawmakers in the Reconstruction years who were convinced that only people like them should govern. The goal of voter suppression, control of statehouses, and violence—then and now—is minority rule.

Today’s Republican Party has fallen under the sway of MAGA Republicans who advocate Christian nationalism despite its general unpopularity; on April 3, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who has destroyed true democracy in favor of “Christian democracy” in his own country, cheered Trump on and told him to “keep on fighting.” Like Orbán, today’s Republicans reject the principles that underpin democracy, including the ideas of equality before the law and separation of church and state, and instead want to impose Christian rule on the American majority.

Their conviction that American “tradition” focuses on patriarchy rather than equality is a dramatic rewriting of our history, and it has led to recent attacks on LGBTQ Americans. In Kansas today, the legislature overrode Democratic governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill banning transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth from participating in women’s sports. Kansas is the twentieth state to enact such a policy, and when it goes into effect, it will affect just one youth in the state.

Yesterday, Idaho governor Brad Little signed a law banning gender-affirming care for people under 18, and today Indiana governor Eric Holcomb did the same.

Meanwhile, Republican-dominated states are so determined to ignore the majority they are also trying to make it harder for voters to challenge state laws through ballot initiatives. Alice MIranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly of Politico recently wrote about how, after voters in a number of states overrode abortion bans through ballot initiatives, legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma are now debating ways to make it harder for voters to get measures on the ballot, sometimes even specifying that abortion-related measures are not eligible for ballot challenges.

And yet, in the face of the open attempt of a minority to seize control, replacing our democracy with Christian nationalism, the majority is reasserting its power. In Michigan, after an independent redistricting commission redrew maps to end the same sort of gerrymandering that is currently in place in Wisconsin and Tennessee, Democrats in 2022 won a slim majority to control the state government. And today, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a bill revoking a 1931 law that criminalized abortion without exception for rape or incest.

Please open the link to see the sources.

Categories Education Reform

Nevada: Vouchers Are a Very Bad, Useless Idea

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2023 //
3

Educate Nevada Now is a pro-student, pro-public school organization funded by the Rogers Foundation.

It released its positions—support or oppose—on bills under consideration by the state legislature.

Its statement about vouchers is clear and strong:

Expanding Private School Vouchers

ENN opposes any bill that seeks to expand controversial private school vouchers. These schemes go by various names, “Choice Scholarships,” “Opportunity Scholarships” or “Education Savings Accounts.” Regardless of their name, voucher measures rely on taxpayer dollars but have little to no accountability, and they permit schools to discriminate for almost any reason (religion or lack thereof, LGBTQ status, inability to pay, student needs or outcomes). In other states that closely track student outcomes, voucher students often perform the same or worse than their public school peers. We OPPOSE any effort to expand access or spend taxpayer funds on these harmful programs because public dollars should go to public schools.

We urge you to speak up and OPPOSE:

AB 385 – (Assem. Hafen) Allocates $60 million to private school vouchers and expands eligibility.

SB 200 – (Sen. Hammond) Re-enacts a recently repealed universal voucher program, which would eventually result in every private school student eligible for taxpayer dollars, even the wealthiest.

SB 220 (Sen. Gansert, et al) Expanding funding and eligibility for private school vouchers, expanding the tax credit sources.

About Educate Nevada Now

The Rogers Foundation, a Nevada leader in support of public education, joined with local, state and national partners to launch Educate Nevada Now (ENN) in 2015. The organization is committed to school finance reform and improved educational opportunities and outcomes for all Nevada public school children, especially English language learners, gifted and talented students, students with disabilities or other special needs, and low-income students.

More information about ENN can be found at www.educatenevadanow.com

Categories Education Reform, Nevada, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Who Funded the Mayoral Candidates in Chicago?

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2023 //
10

Full accounts of fundraising and sources are not yet available, but here’s what we know so far:

NBC said a few days before the election that Paul Vallas raised $19 million, while Brandon Johnson raised “nearly $11 million.”

https://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/high-dollar-donations-fueling-johnson-and-vallas-in-chicago-election-how-might-that-influence-the-next-mayor/3109471/?amp=1

Chalkbeat Chicago reviewed the donors. Johnson’s money came mainly from unions (CTU gave him $2.2 million) and 8,000 individual contributions. Vallas’ funding came mainly from financiers and supporters of charters, vouchers, and TFA.

https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2023/3/31/23665374/chicago-mayors-race-campaign-donations-paul-vallas-brandon-johnson-teachers-union-betsy-devos?_amp=true

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Education Reform, Elections, Funding, Unions, Vouchers
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