The Lincoln Project draws a historical parallel.
Watch it and worry.
Archives for category: Education Reform
Jewish leaders, both in synagogues and in public life, are taking a prominent role in opposing the abortion restrictions imposed by Governor DeSantis and the Republican-dominated legislature. Soon after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, a synagogue filed a lawsuit claiming that the state’s abortion restrictions violated their religious liberties. Now, DeSantis has suspended Andrew Warren, the Hillsborough County attorney, for saying that he would not enforce the abortion laws; Warren is Jewish.
The purpose of the First Amendment—which protects freedom of religion and forbids an “establishment” of religion—is to ensure that every American may practice his or her own faith (or none at all), and that no faith may use government to impose its beliefs on others.
Unfortunately, the current Trumpist Supreme Court takes the position that freedom of religion may be wielded to enable some to impose their views on others. The abortion issue is an example of that: Catholics, evangelical Christians, and fundamentalists of other religion oppose abortion. The Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Roe V Wade imposes the religious views of these groups on others who don’t share their views.
A just resolution would be to allow every woman to make decisions with her doctor. Those who oppose abortion should not have one. Those who disagree should follow their doctors’ advice.
In Florida, Jewish groups have actively fought for their beliefs, which are violated by the Dobbs decision.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ratcheted up the fight over the state’s looming 15-week abortion ban Thursday when he suspended a Tampa-area state attorney who had vowed not to prosecute violations.
The move also vaulted yet another Jewish figure into the fight’s foreground.
Andrew Warren, the state attorney for Hillsborough County, had joined more than 90 other attorneys nationwide in pledging not to prosecute individuals who seek or provide abortions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that had guaranteed abortion rights.
“Criminalizing and prosecuting individuals who seek or provide abortion care makes a mockery of justice,” the letter said. “Prosecutors should not be part of that.”
Warren, who has said that his Jewish identity has shaped his government career, joins other Florida Jews in prominent positions in the fight to protect access to abortion: A South Florida synagogue making a religious freedom argument spearheaded the first lawsuit filed against Florida’s abortion ban, and a Jewish political activist who came to prominence by protesting against DeSantis’ pandemic rules has signed on to represent the congregation.
DeSantis is betting that his alienation of Florida’s large Jewish population and its large LGBT population will be overcome by courting evangelicals, Catholics, and rednecks.
Perhaps you thought the voucher fight was over in Arizona in 2018 when voters rejected vouchers by a decisive margin of 65-35%.
But no, the clear and overwhelming decision of the state’s voters did not deter the Christofascists who are determined to destroy public schools by transferring funding away from them to any form of non public schooling, be it religious, private, homeschooling or a business run by a fraudster.
Governor Doug Ducey signed a law creating a universal voucher plan on July 6. The new law will subtract $1 billion from the state’s public schools.
SOS Arizona is once again leading the fight against universal vouchers, led by Governor Ducey and championed by the Republican legislators. The dark money behind the voucher campaign comes from the usual suspects: the Koch machine and the Betsy DeVos combine.
If Save Our Schools Arizona and its supporters can secure 118,823 valid signatures before September 24, the voucher expansion law will be placed on hold until November 2024, when voters get a chance to express their views, as they did in 2018.
The stakes could not be higher – this is a referendum to decide the future of education in Arizona and across the nation.
You can see more about the SOS Arizona signature drive here: teamsosarizona.com.
Beth Lewis, the director of SOS Arizona, wrote to provide the context for the battle over vouchers:
Universal voucher expansion is the KEY issue driving right-wing politics in the US, and hardly anyone is talking about the well-moneyed, dangerous forces driving it. The AZ legislature’s myopic focus on pushing private school voucher expansion over any other piece of legislation for the past 6 years is enough to tell us that — not to mention the massive focus FOX News has placed on vouchers since the bill’s passage here in Arizona. Recently, Christopher Rufo admitted he created the CRT furor in order to advance universal vouchers.
We desperately need folks to plug in – people all over the state can get petitions at our hubs: teamsosarizona.com or sign up to volunteer: bit.ly/SVEvolunteer.
As you know, we are truly the tip of the spear when it comes to privatization. Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children is mobilizing (somewhat ineffectively) against our efforts, and the battle lines are drawn. It is evident that universal voucher expansion will become a pattern across the US, as Republican Governors are all declaring that every red state should adopt this policy. We have seen the dangers of private school vouchers first-hand here in Arizona, and our public school system has been starved in order to give credence to those who wish to privatize our public education system.
Charlie Kirk is partnering with an incredibly rightwing Evangelical church (Dream City Church) to open Turning Point Academies across Arizona. Here is the June article from Newsweek describing their plans to proliferate campuses across AZ and then the nation. It is no coincidence this plan was announced the same month the AZ state legislature passed universal vouchers.
Kirk recently spoke at Freedom Night hosted by Dream City Church, and this expose in the AZ Republic shows the hateful ideology against LGBTQ and trans youth Kirk and the Church spread. It’s terrifying – and infuriating to think this is where our taxpayer dollars are headed.
It is abundantly clear that special interests who favor extremist Christian Nationalism are driving the bus on these issues – and it makes sense. Private school vouchers are the perfect solution for building a long-term, endlessly replenishing base of voters who also favor Christian Nationalism.
We only have 42 more days to collect the signatures to put this bill on the 2024 ballot. We expect massive legal battles, as dark money will pour in and the usual suspects will challenge every signature. We are confident we will push back successfully and get the measure on the ballot – we must, as goes Arizona, so goes the nation.
You can help these fearless, intrepid volunteers by sending a contribution to: sosarizona.org/donate.
Ryan Grim wrote this post before the final passage of the mini-Build Back Better Bill. But the point is still on target. The bill is good because it’s the best we can hope for in a Senate where Democrats have only 50 votes, and two of those votes are precarious. In a perfect world, the Democrats would have 62 votes in the Senate and could pass a perfect bill. But we don’t live in a perfect world. The Republicans are unanimously opposed to any legislation to address climate change or to curb the costs of health care. This, for now, is the best that can be done. Do not scoff at half-measures. They are way better than nothing, and the Republicans strongly prefer nothing. They want to go into the mid-terms with a battered Biden presidency that accomplished nothing. They are not thinking of the people they claim to represent. Biden needed this victory, but so do the American people. Think of it as a first step.
Mayor Eric Adams proposed budget cuts to the city’s public schools, and his chancellor David Banks tried to do an end-run around the city’s Panel on Education Policy (the Board of Education) by declaring an “emergency.” Two parents and two teachers sued to block the budget cuts, based on the flawed process, and won in court.
A Manhattan judge ruled Friday to throw out the New York City education department’s budget and allow the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams to reconsider how to fund schools this year.
Judge Lyle Frank ruled in favor of two teachers and two parents who filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court last month, claiming that the city violated state law when it approved the education department’s budget for this fiscal year.
The extraordinary ruling means that until the City Council revisits the budget, New York City must fund schools at the same levels it did last fiscal year. The city plans to appeal.
Like several of his predecessors, Schools Chancellor David Banks had used an “emergency declaration” to circumvent a vote on it by the Panel for Education Policy, a largely mayoral appointed board that approves spending and contracts.
Principals have been busy laying off staff in anticipation of the cuts. Now those layoffs are on hold.
Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters (and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education) has been deeply involved in fighting the budget cuts.
Robert Hubbell wrote on his blog that pundits predicted that the overturning of Roe v. Wade wouldn’t change anything. Team Red and Team Blue were locked into place. Dobbs wouldn’t make a difference.
Hubbell said: Kansas proved the pundits were wrong.
The old rules no longer apply. While it is still too early to understand the full ramifications of the resounding defeat suffered by anti-choice Republicans in Kansas, this much is clear: Polling models based on “historical data” are broken. Pundits rely on those models at their peril. Three months ago, after the leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs, Sarah Isgur published an op-ed in Politico, Opinion | Abortion Might Not Be the Wedge Issue It Used to Be. Isgur wrote,
After years of partisan sorting on abortion, there probably aren’t many voters motivated by that issue left to turn out.
Isgur was about as wrong as she could be in her prediction. In her defense, she was undoubtedly applying the “old rules”—the ones that applied before the Supreme Court gave states control over women’s reproductive choices. But Isgur’s failure of imagination prevented her from seeing that “this time is different.” Early data from Kansas proves just how different it is. See Vox, 4 charts that show just how big abortion won in Kansas.
The article in Vox illustrates the many ways in which Isgur (and other pundits) were wrong. The first relates to the mistaken notion that reproductive freedom will not motivate turnout. That myth was dispelled by the largest turnout in Kansas history in a primary election—nearly double the normal turnout. See Chart 1 in Vox. No polling model assumed a 100% increase in turnout. The old rules no longer apply.
The second myth destroyed in Kansas was that “partisan sorting” had divided America into a “red team” and a “blue team” on abortion. Wrong. One reason for the substantial margin of victory for choice in Kansas was that 90,000 Republicans switched from the “red team” to the “blue team” on the abortion issue. Only 25% of voters in Kansas are registered Democrats, but the measure was defeated by 59% to 41%. See Charts 2 and 3 in Vox. The old rules no longer apply.
The third myth destroyed in Kansas was that reproductive choice would not motivate women to register and vote in larger numbers. Wrong, again. The final chart in the Vox article shows that before the leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs, women accounted for 52% of new voter registrations. After the release of the draft, women accounted for 58% of new registrations, and after the release of the final opinion in Dobbs, women accounted for 68% of new voter registrations. It turns out that telling women they are second-class citizens gets their attention. The old rules no longer apply.
The pundit class has risen to its collective defense by dampening expectations that the result in Kansas will apply in the midterms. In pundit-speak, the vote in Kansas was an “issues vote,” while the vote in November will be an “electoral vote,” i.e, a vote on candidates, not on issues. As explained in a Washington Post analysis of the outcome in Kansas,
“There is a big difference between asking people to weigh in on an issue and asking them to weigh in on a candidate who embodies a range of issue positions.”
The WaPo analysis concludes with this assertion:
I have highlighted the key phrase in the WaPo analysis above: “Rarely”—an explicit invocation of history and the “old rules” governing turnout in midterms. Pundits were caught off-guard by what happened in Kansas and are busy tut-tutting and tsk-tsking those who believe that the firmament has shifted. Democrats don’t need a 17% margin of victory (as in Kansas) to overturn “conventional wisdom” in the midterms. A 3% uptick for Democrats will produce a seismic shock in the midterms, leaving the pundits sputtering a new round of excuses and post-facto rationalizations.
“For many on the left, the results in Kansas were a reminder of precisely that point: Turnout matters. But electoral politics are rarely downstream from views on one single issue.”
Here’s my point: The victory in Kansas guarantees Democrats nothing, but it gives us reason to hope and reminds us once again that we are in uncharted waters—where existing maps are useless. Conventional wisdom is dead. We are not prisoners of the past and our choices are not controlled by massive datasets that describe behavior before Dobbs, before Bruen, and before January 6th. We control our fate going forward. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Sue Legg, a retired faculty member at the University of Florida and a member of the board of directors at the Network for Public Education, published an article in The Gainesville Sun about Governor Ron DeSantis’s takeover of the state’s civics curriculum. The old-style Republicans believed in leaving teachers alone and letting them to their job. The new-style, Trumpist Republicans believe that they must tell teachers what to teach.
DeSantis is a busy guy, so he has outsourced the Florida civics curriculum to Hillsdale College, the go-to evangelical college that tells conservative leaders what to think and converts it into a school curriculum.
The state’s new civics curriculum is expected to be in place by 2024.
It is difficult to believe that a small college in Michigan could impact Florida’s students at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels, but it has. DeSantis’ measures to revise the state standards for civics (HB 5), K-12 social studies (SB 1108), and postsecondary requirements regarding diversity of opinions (HB 233) are indicators.
Teacher training workshops are held to make the curriculum “more patriotic.” These changes were reviewed and modified by Hillsdale College. A new University of Florida Hamilton Institutewas funded by the Florida Legislature to develop civics courses at the college level. DeSantis has announced the creation of three community college civics career academies to train students to work in local government.
Count on Ron DeSantis to encourage a “diversity of opinions,” not! When DeSantis gets involved, it is his way or the highway.
Chris Rufo is the rightwing propagandist who has made it his mission to lead the charge against America’s public schools, the schools that educated 90% of the American people, the schools that educated “the greatest generation,” the schools that have enabled people of different races, religions, and ethnic group to join together as one people.
Rufo wants to destroy public schools and replace them with publicly-funded school choice: religious schools, private schools, homeschooling–anything but community-owned and community-led public schools. He wants your public dollars to pay for religious schools that indoctrinate children, for private schools that discriminate against the children they don’t want, and for home schools where education is defined by the knowledge or ignorance of parents. He actually doesn’t care about education at all. He doesn’t want to see young people inspired by knowledgable teachers. His goal is destruction.
He wrote in a recent tweet (@realchrisrufo):
We’re building the narrative that public schools are translating the principles of academic Queer Theory into the K-12 curriculum. Our Portland story generated 25+ million media impressions this week—and we’re going to drop another story every Wednesday through September.
Rufo adds a graphic in which he accuses the Portland, Oregon, school district of indoctrinating students to become LGBT activists in kindergarten through fifth grade. Sample: “Latest: They’re Teaching Five Genders in Kindergarten.” And, “In Portland, the Sexual Revolution Begins in Kindergarten.” Rufo is quoted on the usual rightwing websites and has appeared on FOX News to spew his message of hatred for public schools.
Someone on Twitter referred to Rufo as “the American Goebbels.” I wonder if Rufo knows who that is? He was not well educated. Probably indoctrinated.
Jennifer Berkshire inquires into why so many Democratic leaders and pundits have refused to defend public schools, even though most parents are satisfied with their public schools. As the public schools are blamed for all the evils of modern life by extremists like Chris Rufo, Democrats refuse to stand up for the public schools. She explores why in this article.
Parents are not abandoning the public schools, but Democratic politicians are.
She begins:
Last spring, taking a break from waging conspiratorial campaigns against the republic, an assortment of luminaries associated with the Claremont Institute gathered to lay out a plan to foment a culture war against the nation’s schools. The Clubhouse event, entitled “Building A New Right: Red States vs. Wokeness,” featured a grab bag of Claremont fellows and friends. The star attraction was Manhattan Institute agitprop specialist Christopher Rufo, chief sower of the panics against critical race theory (CRT) and “grooming.”
In a now familiar exercise, Rufo sketched out his campaign to make CRT toxic as part of a larger propaganda war against public institutions. The ultimate goal, he explained, was essentially to do away with those institutions and redirect school funding to families and individuals based on their “values.” Rufo waxed apocalyptic about the scourge of “wokeness,” and yet he struck a hopeful note. After all, he reminded listeners, it had only taken the country a few years to go from the Black Panthers to Nixon.
In the ensuing months, Rufo’s propaganda campaign would grow increasingly lurid, but on this occasion, he urged his audience to raise the discussion to a higher level. Focus on “excellence,” he admonished them, and attack public schools for failing to meet that standard. Conservative communications guru David Reaboi, who helped seed a previous moral panic on the right against the sinister spread of Sharia law, weighed in with some messaging advice of his own: Go full bore against the teachers unions. Do damage.
Today, this coordinated plan to wage a public relations war against the nation’s public schools is an undeniable success. Forty-two states have moved to restrict teaching about oppression, race or gender. According to one estimate, more than one third of students in the country attend school in a state where educators are now subject to some kind of classroom gag order.
The achievement of Rufo and his allies is all the more astonishing, given the deep unpopularity of the policies they champion. Polls consistently show that voters across party lines are repelled by the GOP’s education extremism. Across the chasm of our current political divide, bipartisan majorities are largely in agreement that banning books and gagging teachers is bad.
And for all of the insurgent right’s bold rhetoric about mining parent outrage for electoral gold, the polls that matter most have shown remarkably poor results for candidates running on scorched-earth education platforms. In New Hampshire, New York, Montana, Georgia, Wisconsin and beyond, voters are rejectingright-wing culture warriors, often by wide margins—a movement that might be summed up as “keeping the crazy away from the kids.”
There’s just one problem, though: The leadership of the Democratic party doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
The Miami-Dade School Board voted to reject a sex-education textbook for middle- and high school students. The district will have no textbook for this subject for several months—until a new one is located or until the current one is stripped of all offending content.
In a narrowly divided vote, the Miami-Dade School Board Wednesday reversed its decision to adopt a new sex education textbook for the 2022-23 school year — a move that leaves the district with no sexual education curriculum for at least four to eight months.
The 5-4 vote followed an emotionally charged public comment period that included community members being escorted out of the building and a multi-hour board discussion that strongly paralleled the discussion it previously had in April, when members initially adopted the material in a 5-3 vote….
The book, “Comprehensive Health Skills,” which comes with a version for middle school and one for high school classes and offers research-based health education with topics such as nutrition, physical activity and sexually transmitted diseases, would have addressed the district’s units of study for Human Reproduction and Disease Education for grades six through 12.
But the materials soon came under fire from some parents and community members who argued the lessons were not age appropriate and violated the state’s parental rights law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in March and which critics have dubbed the ‘Don’t say gay’ bill. They also argued the district’s process lacked transparency.
The pushback included the filing of 278 petitions objecting to the materials and resulted in Miami-Dade Superintendent José Dotres selecting a hearing officer to conduct a public hearing to review the concerns and the materials in question…
That hearing, which was conducted on June 8, resulted in the hearing officer recommending the board “deny the petitions and proceed with the adoption process,” according to the district.
This is not the first time school textbooks have been questioned. Earlier this year, the Florida Department of Education announced it was rejecting 54 math textbooks in the state’s public schools, claiming the books contained “prohibited topics,’’ including critical race theory.
“I’m deeply disappointed by today’s decision. I hoped that Miami’s School Board would step up to protect youth in times of crisis,” said Kat Duesterhaus, a board member of Florida NOW and Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity. Not only does providing comprehensive sexual education help prevent sexually transmitted diseases, sexually transmitted infections and unwanted teen pregnancy, it’s also important to “building bodily autonomy,” which is important for teens to prevent and identify instances of sexual assault, Duesterhaus said. “We need to equip youth with the ability to navigate their own bodies and consensual situations,” Duesterhaus added. “We’re leaving them ill equipped to have agency of their sexuality and bodies.”
For those who opposed the adoption, the content under question was either inappropriate or “not scientifically factual,” such as vaccinations being the only proven method from viral disease, a notion they would challenge, Alex Serrano, the county director for County Citizens Defending Freedom, told reporters before the meeting Wednesday. Serrano has no children in the district and sends his children to Centner Academy, the Miami private school that last year said teachers and students who got vaccinated for COVID-19 could not interact with students and would risk losing their job.
“We are not against sexual education or human reproduction and sexual education books,” Serrano said. “We are for statutory compliance and age appropriateness in the content … and compliance with parental rights law.” Discussions regarding gender ideology “do not belong” in the books. “That is ideology,” he said. Others who spoke against the adoption also cited their contempt with the books’ discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation as reasons to oppose the materials. But in the board’s decision in April, members agreed to remove the chapter called “Understanding Sexuality” from both middle and high school textbooks, which would have discussed those topics.
More than 40 people — parents, students and community members — signed up to speak on Wednesday. Of those, 38 asked the board to adopt the recommendation given by the hearing officer, according to Vice Chair Steve Gallon III’s count. Just four urged against doing so. “That’s 90% of the speakers that spoke today. You do the math,” he said on the dais. “That data for me provides a greater opportunity to debunk and denounce this narrative that there’s this broad opposition to the board’s adoption of these materials.”
Most people in favor of the textbooks cited the urgent need to provide this information to students. Some pointed to research that found students who receive quality sexual health education choose abstinence longer and have fewer rates of unplanned pregnancies. Others said the materials provide a safe environment for students to learn factual, scientific information and give them the understanding to prevent instances of sexual violence.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/article263649763.html#storylink=cpy
The school board will meet again to reconsider the issue because the district is now out of compliance with state requirements.
The Miami-Dade County School Board is meeting on Thursday to “assess the potential impact” of its decision to reject the adoption of a comprehensive health and sex-education textbook for middle and high school students. The 5-4 vote effectively removed sexual education curriculum for middle and high school students for at least four to eight months and left the school district out of compliance with curriculum requirements and standards set by the Florida Department of Education….
“The issue at hand, as reflected in the item, is compliance with the Florida Department of Education,” Chairwoman Perla Tabares Hantman said in a statement. The requirements are different for each grade level and everything must be “grade-appropriate.”
Still, she added, “above everything, we must respect parental rights. Parents play an essential role in the education of their children. Parental rights are the bedrock of our school district. Rest assured that this School Board is committed to respecting the rights of parents to make decisions regarding the education of their children.”
The special meeting — scheduled for Thursday at noon — is expected to draw many more parents and community members than last week, said Gina Vinueza, a district parent and one of the organizers behind a petition, Save Sex-Ed in Miami-Dade.
Last week, more than 40 parents, community members and organization representatives flocked to the meeting to speak on the curriculum adoption. Of those who spoke, 38 urged the board to adopt the recommendation given by the hearing officer, according to Vice Chair Steve Gallon III’s count; just four spoke against doing so.
Here is the puzzle: which parent voices count? The board listened to parents opposed to the textbook. The board did not listen to the parents who support the textbook.
Why does the board decide to side with some parents while ignoring others?
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article263887237.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 