Archives for category: Education Reform
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James Risen: Prigozhin Told the Truth About Ukraine

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2023 //
34

James Risen of The Intercept writes about the remarkable thing that the leader of the Wagner Group did when he led a short-lived mutiny: he told the truth about why Putin invaded Ukraine.

Risen writes:


ONE OF THE most subversive things that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin did during his brief rebellion last weekend was to tell the truth.

Prigozhin is a pathological liar, a professional disinformation artist who was indicted in the United States in connection with the internet troll farm he ran, which was at the forefront of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win.

But as the mercenary boss began his mutiny in late June, he experienced a brief and surprising bout of honesty when he launched into an online tirade against what he said were the lies used by Moscow to justify the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech meant for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The invasion was nothing more than a massive land grab by the Russian oligarchy, Prigozhin charged, designed to enrich the country’s powerful elites while poor Russians served as cannon fodder. Russian claims that a Nazi regime in Ukraine, backed by NATO, was about to attack Russia were lies, Prigozhin said. The war was started by the Russian oligarchy to benefit themselves and gain power. In his rant, Prigozhin did not criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin by name, focusing instead on the broader Russian elite, and specifically on his personal enemy Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO bloc,” Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel on June 23. The truth, he said, was that “there was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24,” the day last year when Russian invaded. Ukraine was not planning any kind of attack against Russia, he added.

Russia’s invasion “was started for a completely different reason,” Prigozhin said. “What was the war for? The war was needed for Shoigu to receive a hero star. … The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war,” he said. “The mentally ill scumbags decided: ‘It’s OK, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as cannon fodder. They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want.’”

“Shoigu killed thousands of the most combat-ready Russian soldiers in the first days of the war,” Prigozhin said, adding that the invasion began even as Zelenskyy and Ukraine were eager for peace. The Ukrainian leader “was ready for agreements. All that needed to be done was to get off Mount Olympus and negotiate with him.”

Prigozhin thus punctured the main argument used by Russian propagandists and their Western lackeys: that NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War caused the war in Ukraine. Putin has constantly railed against NATO, and his misleading narrative that the U.S. caused the war in Ukraine by pushing for alliance’s expansion has resonated widely among pro-Putin right-wing extremists in the West.

Kremlin lies. Open the link to finish the article.

Categories Education Reform

The Onion Explains the Test Questions That Stump Students Today

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2023 //
18

We can always count on The Inion to find the funny side of the news.

Here are the test questions that show how far behind American students are.

Categories Education Reform, Humor, NAEP

Colorado Web Designer Who Won Supreme Court Victory Has Not Opened Her Business

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
46

The web designer who won her case today in the Supreme Court has not yet opened her business and has not been asked to design a wedding website for a gay couple. I’m not sure why she had standing to overturn the state’s anti-discrimination law when she has no business.

The case, though framed as a clash between free speech and gay rights, was the latest in a series of decisions in favor of religious people and groups, notably conservative Christians, who celebrated the ruling on Friday as a victory for religious freedom.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling “profoundly wrong,” arguing that the Colorado anti-discrimination law “targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment. Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group.”

The designer, Lorie Smith, said her Christian faith requires her to turn away customers seeking wedding-related services to celebrate same-sex unions. She added that she intends to post a message saying the company’s policy is a product of her religious convictions.

A Colorado law forbids discrimination against gay people by businesses open to the public as well as statements announcing such discrimination. Ms. Smith, who has not begun the wedding business or posted the proposed statement for fear of running afoul of the law, sued to challenge it, saying it violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.

But when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, 303 Creative L.L.C. v. Elenis, No. 21-476, it agreed to decide only one question: “whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.”

In a news conference Friday in Washington, Ms. Smith said she was grateful to the court, who “affirmed today that Colorado can’t force me or anyone to say something we don’t believe.”

Here’s what else to know:

  • Progressive interfaith groups and L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organizations around the country condemned the ruling. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement that the ruling was “a deeply troubling crack in our progress and should be alarming to us all.”
  • Both sides have said that the consequences of the court’s ruling could be enormous, though for different reasons. Ms. Smith’s supporters said a decision for the state would allow the government to force all sorts of artists to state things at odds with their beliefs. Her opponents said a ruling in her favor would blow a hole through anti-discrimination laws and allow businesses engaged in expression to refuse service to, for example, Black people or Muslims based on odious but sincerely held convictions.
  • The decision appeared to suggest that the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people, including to same-sex marriage, are on more vulnerable legal footing, particularly when they are at odds with claims of religious freedom. At the same time, the ruling limited the ability of the governments to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
  • Lower courts have generally sided with gay and lesbian couples who were refused service by bakeries, florists and others, ruling that potential customers are entitled to equal treatment, at least in parts of the country with laws forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation.

On her dissent, Justice Sotomayer wrote:

The unattractive lesson of the maiority opinion is this: What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. The lesson of the history of public accommodations laws is altogether different. It is that in a free and democratic society, there can be no social castes. And for that to be true, it must be true in the public market. For the “promise of freedom” is an empty one if the Government is “powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of lone person] will purchase the
same thing as a dollar in the hands of another].” Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 443 (1968). Because the Court today retreats from that promise, I dissent.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Colorado, Democracy, Education Reform, Gender

Michigan Passes Historic Increases for Education

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
2

Michigan is in track to make record investments in the quality of life for children and schools.

My friend Mitchell Robinson, a member of the State board of education, shared the following good news:

The State of Michigan passed a third consecutive historic education budget last night—and did so with bipartisan support, meaning the changes included in this budget can go into effect immediately.

It’s amazing to see what a state education budget can look like when you have pro-education legislators in charge–and teachers chairing the House and Senate Education Committees and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on PreK-12.

The budget includes:

•universal school meals

•foundation allowance increase of 5% — the largest in state history

•fully funded special education programs

•expanded Pre-K programs

•student teacher stipends for K-12

The budget also appropriates $11 million to a K-5 Music Education Pilot Program that provides funding to school districts that currently do not have elementary music instruction to hire certified music teachers.

Budgets are about more than dollars—they are moral documents; and in Michigan we are showing that we value our children, our families, and our future by directing funding to programs and initiatives that strengthen our schools and communities.

edbudget2023.jpeg
Categories Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Early Childhood Education, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Michigan, Supporting public schools

U.S. Supreme Court Bans Affirmative Action in College Admissions. Will It Matter?

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2023 //
154

In a decision handed down today, the United States Supreme Court banned the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The six conservative justices voted for the decision, the three moderate-liberal justices voted against it.

The media coverage stresses the likelihood that entrants to elite universities will become more Asian and more white, because of reliance on standardized tests, where those two groups typically have higher scores.

But we do not yet know how much it matters to eliminate official policies of affirmative action.

Most colleges in this country admit everyone who applies, so the elimination of affirmative action won’t change anything for them.

The elite colleges have many more applicants than openings. This is where the elimination of affirmative action is expected to matter. The top colleges often have five or ten times more applicants than spaces.

But selective colleges don’t rely solely on standardized test scores to fill their freshman class. They consider a variety of factors, including grade point average, the student’s participation in non-academic activities, students’ essays, and other factors. They may give preferences to fill their athletic teams, to provide enrollment for all majors, to recruit talented musicians, to accept “legacy” students, the children of alums.

In addition, growing numbers of selective colleges are test-optional, so the tests don’t matter for them.

After nearly 50 years of affirmative action, most elite colleges have internalized the norms of equity, diversion and inclusion. They have welcomed the diversification of faculty, students, and staff. How likely are they to abandon those norms? Not likely, in my view.

My own undergraduate college is led by a very respected African American woman; the director of admissions is also an African American woman. Harvard University has a new president, an African American woman. I doubt that the ethnic profiles of such institutions will change much if at all.

Conservatives have forgotten that President Richard Nixon started affirmative action. That decision was hotly debated but never abandoned until now. At the time, in the late 1970s, I questioned a system that gave points for skin color but in retrospect, I think Nixon’s policy was a great success. It generated a significant number of Black professional. That’s good for Anerican society.

I doubt that the decision today will curtail access to higher education for Black students, not even in the elite colleges that are the target of today’s decision. Diversity, equity and inclusion have become the norm.

Categories Education Reform, Higher Education, Race

Philadelphia: Historians Protest M4L at Museum of American Revolution

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2023 //
33

News from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Can you strengthen democracy by dialogue with hate groups? The Museum of the American Revolution thinks so. I agree. But when will the dialogue occur? Not at this event.

The newspaper reports:

What you should know:

  • The Museum of American Revolution is hosting a welcome event for the controversial “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty, which is holding a four-day summit in Philadelphia this weekqqRep PPP featuring former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and other speakers.
  • Seven historian groups have written their members and the museum denouncing the event and the organization.
  • Moms for Liberty is best known for its book ban efforts and calls to limit conversations about race, sexuality, and gender identity in classrooms.

Seven groups of historians have now denounced an upcoming welcome reception at the Museum of American Revolution for “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty. They’ve written their members, the museum, and one group has canceled an event they had planned at the Old City institution.

Moms for Liberty, or M4L, has made national headlines since its founding in 2021 for its efforts to lift pandemic precautions, ban books, and limit conversations about race, sexuality, and gender identity in classrooms. Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the group an “antigovernment extremist organization.”

The group is scheduled to hold a four-day sold-out summit in Philadelphia starting Thursday where aspiring school board candidates can receive training and hear from guests, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The group says Pennsylvania has one of its largest membership bases, second only to Florida.

The museum has defended its decision to host the controversial group, arguing its mission is to share diverse and inclusive stories about the country’s history with as broad of an audience as possible and that it hopes to strengthen democracy through dialogue.

But dozens of the museum’s staffers have pushed back. The historian groups are the latest to repudiate the museum’s rationale for hosting the event, acknowledging it’s unusual for them to try to intervene in what’s essentially a space rental. Still, the groups said Moms for Liberty was not a group simply espousing different points of view. They said it has encouraged the harassment of teachers and librarians.

“This organization consistently spreads harmful, hateful rhetoric about the LGBTQIA+ community, including popularizing the use of the term ‘groomer’ to refer to queer people and attacking the mere existence of trans youth,” read a statement from The Committee on LGBT History, the first historian affinity group to condemn the museum.

Categories Education Reform

Paul Bonner: The Democratic Party Should Defend Our Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2023 //
62

Paul Bonner is a retired public school leader.

He has an idea for the Democratic Party that would resonate with the 90% of Americans who went to public schools and whose children attend public schools.

Here’s an ad I would run if I were a PAC supporting the Democratic Party:

Narrator: (As numerous images of schools, students, and teachers engaged in learning are shown across the screen)

“In the early twentieth century the United States of America reinforced a universal commitment to Public Schools. This resulted in an economic powerhouse that generated more wealth than at any time in the history of the world. The alumni of these schools led Democratic governments in the defeat of tyranny in World War II and resulted in the establishment of universities that are the envy of the world. Industry and finance thrived. Yes, the public schools did this.”

(Pan to politicians advocating privatization and attacking teachers)

“Today, there are those who would like to pretend that the public schools have been a failure. That government efforts to educate our children could never produce the work force that would result from subsidies for private efforts. They are wrong!”

(Show closed charter buildings and parents seeking help for their children)

“Any implementation of vouchers has resulted in subsidies for those who already attend private schools, charters have not outperformed public schools academically, and closing public schools with unfulfilled promises of better results has resulted in decimated communities.”


(Pan to schools and parents who are engaged with their public schools in the myriad of ways this happens every day).

The only way to improve educational opportunity in America is to vigorously fund our Public Schools. To support teachers through greater resources, district support, and higher pay. To provide facilities that are equally great in all communities. America has thrived through our support of public schools. We as citizens, need to recommit to Public Schools with our purse and our fervor.”

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Education Reform, Elections, Funding, Supporting public schools

Join a Zoom to Meet an Exciting Candidate for Congress in Rhode Island

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2023 //
0

Aaron Regunburg is running for Congress in Rhode Island this fall, in a special election. I have followed his path since he was the organizer of the Providence Student Union and led a series of creative protests against the use of standardized test scores as a graduation requirement. If he wins, as seems likely, he will be a strong voice in Congress for public schools and against federally-mandated standardized testing.

He is holding a Zoom event on June 27. He asked me to invite you to attend.

Dear Friends,

I want to invite you to an exciting event in support of Aaron Regunberg, my friend who is running for Congress in a special election this year in Rhode Island (it’s the only Congressional election happening in 2023).

I support Aaron because I know he will be a fearless, principled progressive fighting for working families around the country. He will bring the energy we need to combat the climate crisis, stand up for the labor movement, fight for public education, take on corporate power, and work to defend our rights. I know this because he’s done it before — while in the Rhode Island state legislature, he helped pass paid sick days legislation, raise the state’s tipped minimum wage for the first time in 20 years, reform the use of solitary confinement, expand harm reduction strategies, and enact new renewable energy programs. And since then, he has worked with the Sierra Club and the Center for Climate Integrity on climate litigation.

Aaron is running for Congress on a strong progressive platform. He’s been endorsed by the Working Families Party, Our Revolution, labor and environmental orgs, and progressive leaders like Congressman Jamie Raskin. Here’s a video with some more background on his work.

Aaron is holding an end-of-quarter Zoom fundraiser event with some awesome progressive leaders like Steven Donziger and Maurice Mitchell, and I wanted to extend an invitation. We think this race has some national impact — as the only Congressional primary of 2023, a win here could give us some strong progressive momentum going into 2024! So, if you feel so moved, you can sign up to attend the event and support Aaron’s campaign here. Thanks again for your consideration!

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Elections, Rhode Island, Standardized Testing

Florida: Judge Tosses Out Law Targeting Drag Queens

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2023 //
47

“If the come for me in the morning, they’ll come for you at night.” I heard that phrase recently and eventually found it attributed to Angela Davis. I was never in her fan club, but the statement is profound, not unlike the famous quote “First they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionists so I didn’t care.” Translation: when anyone’s freedom is curtailed, we are all endangered.

It’s easy for hateful politicians like Ron DeSantis to target trans kids and deny them the treatment recommended by their doctors, because transgender people are a tiny number and have few defenders. Drag queens are also a target for those who want to restrict freedom because they too are a tiny minority without a political constituency to defend them.

Closet fascists experienced a setback in Florida, when a federal judge put a temporary block on the state’s law meant to make drag queens disappear. Drag queens are performers; their acts are meant to entertain. Drag has been on the stage for hundreds of years, maybe longer.

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked a Florida law that he says is aimed at limiting the rights of drag performers.


U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell of Orlando wrote in his order that “this statute is specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers.”


“In the words of the bill’s sponsor in the House, State Representative Randy Fine: “…HB 1423…will protect our children by ending the gateway propaganda to this evil — ‘Drag Queen Story Time,’” Presnell’s ruling said.


Fine, a Republican from Brevard County, declined to comment.

The court battle was initiated by the Hamburger Mary’s restaurant in Orlando over a law that contains penalties for any venue allowing children into a sexually explicit “adult live performance.” The law includes potential first-degree misdemeanor charges for violators.


“Of course, it’s constitutional to prevent the sexualization of children by limiting access to adult live performances,” said Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the law in May. “We believe the judge’s opinion is dead wrong and look forward to prevailing on appeal.”

Hamburger Mary’s filed a lawsuit in May against DeSantis, the state, and Melanie Griffin, secretary of Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation. DeSantis and the state have since been dropped as defendants, with Griffin remaining.


The downtown restaurant’s lawsuit argued the law would have a “chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of the citizens of Florida.”

Hamburger Mary’s, which opened in 2008, has hosted drag performances that include bingo, trivia and comedy. After the law was signed, the restaurant restricted children from drag shows and then lost 20% of its bookings, according to the lawsuit.


Presnell’s order prevents the state agency from enforcing the law pending the outcome of a trial. He also denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Reform, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Humor

NAEP Scores Show Effects of Pandemic: Duh.

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2023 //
125

The release of the NAEP Long-Term Trend data yesterday set off the usual hysterical reaction. The scores fell as a consequence of the pandemic, when most kids did not get in-school instruction.

These are not secrets but they bear repeating:

*Students don’t learn what is tested when they are not in school for long periods of time.

*Learning online is inferior to learning in-person from a qualified teacher.

*It’s better to lose points on a test than to risk serious illness or death or infecting a family member or teacher or other member of the school staff.

During the depths of the pandemic, no one knew for sure whether it was better to keep schools open or closed. A superintendent in Florida—Rocky Hanna of Leon County— was threatened with loss of his license after he closed the schools, following the death of a third-grader from COVID. Teachers died of COVID. Some children lived with elderly grandparents at risk of getting COVID. Which matters most: lives or test scores?

Whatever was lost can be regained if students have good instruction and stability.

It is not surprising that test scores went down after a once-in-a-century pandemic.

This is not a “Sputnik moment.”

The Washington Post reported, under a ridiculous scare headline “National test scores plunge, with still no sign of pandemic recovery” (Patience needed!):

National test scores plummeted for 13-year-olds, according to new data that shows the single largest drop in math in 50 years and no signs of academic recovery following the disruptions of the pandemic.

Student scores plunged nine points in math and four points in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often regarded as the nation’s report card. The release Wednesday reflected testing in fall 2022, comparing it to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic began.

“These results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers the tests. The new data, she said, “reinforces the fact that recovery is going to take some time.”

The average math score is now the same as it was in 1990, while the average reading score is the same as it was in 2004.

Hardest hit were the lowest-performing students. In math, their scores showed declines of 12 to 14 points, while their highest-performing peers fell just six points. The pattern for reading was similar, with lowest performers seeing twice the decline of the highest ones.

Students from all regions of the country and of all races and ethnicities lost ground in math. Reading was more split. Scores dropped for Black, multiracial and White students. But Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native students were described as “not measurably different.”

Most of those tested were 10 years old, in fourth or fifth grade, at the onset of the pandemic. They were in seventh or eighth grade as they took the tests.

Will politicians whip up a panicked response and demand more of what is already failing, like charter schools, vouchers, high-stakes testing, and Cybercharters? or will they invest in reduced class sizes and higher teacher pay?

Categories Education Reform, Health, Hope, NAEP, Science, Standardized Testing
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