Lin-Manuel Miranda and the original cast of “Hamilton” (not all, but many) have made an excellent video to appeal to young people with this simple message: REGISTER AND VOTE.
The best way to vote is IN PERSON, so your vote is certain to be counted.
If you can’t get to the polling place in person, vote by mail but vote EARLY.
Larry Buhl of Capitol & Main explains the LAUSD school board elections. They are shaping up as the nastiest and most expensive in school board history.
As usual, the combatants are charter school billionaires, who want more charters, versus the United Teachers of Los Angeles, who are fighting for public schools and to protect the gains they made in the strikes of 2019.
The charter side has far outspent the UTLA and their allies. The charter lobby has been entirely responsible for the vicious attack ads, especially those against incumbent Scott Schmerelson, a veteran educator. Early charter flyers against him were anti-Semitic. He was falsely accused of inflating his salary as a board member (an independent commission sets the board’s pay). Schmerelson was targeted with a barrage of lies. He was endorsed by every Democratic Club and labor union in his district, as well as the Los Angeles Times.
The biggest edge of the pro-charter forces is money. With the support of billionaires, their candidates are amply funded.
A pricey proxy war between rival factions — charter school advocates and L.A.’s main teachers union — is playing out in two runoff races that could determine control of the Los Angeles Unified School District board. On one side is United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). On the other are California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) and charter allies Alice and Jim Walton; philanthropist and major charter backer Eli Broad; and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Because the two races could tip the balance of power on the board toward teachers unions and traditional schools, or to charter schools, both sides are spending an unprecedented amount of money on their candidates – and, in the case of the charter-friendly candidates, to attack their opponents.
Both sides have been spending increasingly larger amounts to influence the outcomes of LAUSD races, and this year’s race has now eclipsed 2017 as the most expensive in L.A. history. Most of the ads are created with money from independent expenditure groups, called IEs or just outside spenders. These groups face no fundraising limits, and the candidates, whose campaign money is dwarfed by the influx of IE cash, aren’t allowed to influence the IE ads or approve their content. Legally they can’t coordinate with IE groups at all.
In 2020, IEs have spent more than $13 million on just these two board races. That’s $10 million more than IE money spent on all 2020 Los Angeles City Council races combined. And charter school advocates have enjoyed a lopsided financial advantage. Pro-charter forces have already spent far more than they did in 2017. The total spent on negative ads by pro-charter IEs on all LA school board races this year tops $5 million, about ten times more than money spent by UTLA and allies. And the L.A. City Ethics Commission site shows that a new mailer has gone out nearly every day in October.
Since 2010, North Carolina has been controlled by radical Tea Party extremists intent on privatizing and monetizing every public service. They have passed numerous laws to authorize school privatization (charters and vouchers) and to punish public school teachers.
Stuart Egan, NBCT teacher in North Carolina, urges the vast majority of the public who send their children to public schools to vote for pro-public school candidates. He specifically urges a vote for Jen Mangrum, who is running for State Superintendent.
Stuart Egan describes what’s at stake in this post:
Long before Mark Johnson was elected state superintendent, people like Phil Berger and those he controlled began to institute “reforms” into public education without fear of reprisal.
Those reforms turned a once progressive state system of public education into one of regression. Eliminating longevity pay, taking away graduate degree pay and career status from newer teachers, revamping the salary scales, and cutting teacher assistants were just a few of the actions taken to “reform” public education.
What Berger and others also started in 2011 and continue to champion today is making North Carolina the literal working laboratory for ALEC-inspired reforms that are targeting the vitality of public schools and enabling a variety of privatization initiatives that are padding the pockets of many at the expense of taxpayers.
In fact, in under a decade, NC has become the nation’s Petri Dish for harmful educational reforms.
These “reforms” are not original – just maybe some adjustments to make them especially “effective” in North Carolina.
All of these so-called “reforms” have failed wherever they were implemented. It’s time to turn out the privatizers and entrepreneurs and vote for legislators who are dedicated to public schools.
Vote for Jen Mangrum for State Superintendent!
John Loflin of Indianapolis writes about the money flowing into the city’s school board elections from out-of-state billionaires and their usual front called Stand for Children.
Loflin writes:
To whom it may concern:
Just in case you have not seen this Recorder story, “Political groups give over $200,000 to Charter friendly candidates for IPS” here’s the link: Political Groups Give $200,000 To Some Candidates In IPS Board Race.
This inordinate, almost obscene, amount of money–notably from out of state donors–just to run for a board seat in a school district with just 31,000+ students, raises deep concerns about how democratic is the institution of public education in Indianapolis: http://vorcreatex.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Purchasing-the-2012-2014-and-2016-IPS-school-board-elections.pdf.
Who is flooding Indianapolis with such large amounts of money?
We know Stand for Children/Mind Trust are now spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, using a 501c4 in Oregon, to elect their candidates. We also know that Stand for Children, the Mind Trust, Rise Indy, and the Teachers Alliance for Equitable Public Schools (TAEPS) are all part of the same group of people out to buy and control IPS. They’re funded by conservative white billionaires like Michael Bloomberg or Alice Walton who will never step foot in Indianapolis. And they use state legislation created by the conservative/right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Check the diagram connecting all the dots “Out of state ed reform money floods into Indiana communities.”https://www.indianacoalitionforpubliced.org/2020/10/25/out-of-state-education-reform-money-floods-into-indiana-communities/?fbclid=IwAR0YlnDEXVJorGXk1It7xIpnRSlp9FBEtISSVZjZOh7r415toXBRF7DqlEY
Now Bart Peterson’s PAC, Hoosiers for Great Public Schools, is in the mix,
IPS candidate Mr. Kenneth Allen $$
https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/ips-school-board-candidates-biography-raises-questions
http://ofm.indy.gov/CampaignFinanceAPI/Document/Index?documentName=IPS+School+Board%5cAllen%2c+Kenneth_schbd-msdips_2020-10-14_CFA-11.pdf +$21,000=$123,333Search IPS candidate’s campaign finance records here:https://www.indy.gov/workflow/search-campaign-finance-records
A closer look at Bart Peterson’s Hoosiers for Great Public Schools PAC which has $400,000.00
Rise Indy PAC has $559,995.00https://campaignfinance.in.gov/INCF/TempDocs/7a1c3a86-0c53-419d-a8a0-efe4588f2660.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1Sew-TmY98x3s3ROeqd-ZE6Dd2AadxFzeKpYN9awQQp5vu2cGr4kuJrHUHere’s the article “Who paid to make IPS the 2nd most privatized school district in the US?”
https://dianeravitch.net/2020/04/30/tom-ultican-who-paid-to-make-indianapolis-the-second-most-privatized-school-district-in-the-nation/Here’s an essay I wrote, “Does Indianapolis actually want an entirely privatized school district?“http://vorcreatex.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Does-Indianapolis-actually-want-an-entire-privatized-school-system.pdf.
Let’s have a public conversation about why someone needs $123K to run for school board, and if we have a democracy or a corporatocracy.
John Harris Loflin
Parent Power–Indianapolis affiliate of Parents Across AmericaEducation-Community Action Team
317.998.1339
Please consider signing this Democracy Declaration, which is a simple affirmation of our belief in democracy, the rule of law, and the right to vote and have every vote counted.
I signed. I hope you will too.
This editorial was published yesterday.
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a horror show that is ending with a pandemic that is out of control, an economic recession and deepening political polarisation. Mr Trump is the author of this disastrous denouement. He is also the political leader least equipped to deal with it. Democracy in the United States has been damaged by Mr Trump’s first term. It may not survive four more years.
If the Guardian had a vote, it would be cast to elect Joe Biden as president next Tuesday. Mr Biden has what it takes to lead the United States. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden cares about his nation’s history, its people, its constitutional principles and its place in the world. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden wants to unite a divided country. Mr Trump stokes an anger that is wearing it down.
The Republican presidential nominee is not, and has never been, a fit and proper person for the presidency. He has been accused of rape. He displays a brazen disregard for legal norms. In office, he has propagated lies and ignorance. It is astonishing that his financial interests appear to sway his outlook on the national interest. His government is cruel and mean. It effectively sanctioned the kidnapping and orphaning of migrant children by detaining them and deporting their parents. He has vilified whistleblowers and venerated war criminals.
Mr Trump trades in racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Telling the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, to “stand back and stand by” was, in the words of Mr Biden, “a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn”. From the Muslim ban to building a wall on the Mexican border, the president is grounding his base in white supremacy. With an agenda of corporate deregulation and tax giveaways for the rich, Mr Trump is filling the swamp, not draining it.
A narcissist, Mr Trump seems incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Coronavirus has exposed a devastating lack of presidential empathy for those who have died and the families they left behind. Every day reveals the growing gap between the level of competence required to be president and Mr Trump’s ability. He is protected from the truth by cronies whose mob-like fealty to their boss has seen six former aides sentenced to prison. A post-shame politician, Mr Trump outrageously commuted the sentence of one of his favoured lackeys this summer. The idea that there is one rule for wealthy elites and another for the ordinary voter damages trust in the American system. Mr Trump couldn’t care less.
Like other aspiring autocrats, Mr Trump seeks to delegitimise his opposition as “enemies of the people” to mobilise his base. In 2016, the institutions that should have acted as a check on Mr Trump’s rise to power failed to stop him. This time there has been some pushback over a Trump disinformation campaign about Mr Biden’s son. It is an indictment of the Trump age that social media companies acted before politicians in the face of a clear and present danger to democracy.
Mr Biden has his flaws, but he understands what they are and how to temper them. Seen as too centrist in the Democratic primaries, his election platform has borrowed ideas from the progressive wing of his party and incorporated a “green new deal” and free college for the middle class. Mr Biden should not retreat into his comfort zone. The failures of capitalism have been thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. If elected, he will raise taxes on richer Americans and spend more on public services. This is the right and fair thing to do when a thin sliver of America has almost half the country’s wealth.
It’s not just Americans for whom Mr Biden is a better bet. The world could breathe easier with Mr Trump gone. The threat from Pyongyang and Tehran has grown thanks to President Trump. A new face in the White House would restore America’s historic alliances and present a tougher test to the authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing than the fawning Mr Trump. On climate change, Mr Biden would return the United States to the Paris agreement and give the world a fighting chance to keep global temperatures in check. With a President Biden there would be a glimmer of hope that the US would return as a guarantor of a rules-based international order.
Perhaps no country has so much to lose from Mr Biden’s victory as Britain. It has the misfortune of being led by Boris Johnson, whom Democrats bracket with Mr Trump as another rule-breaking populist. Mr Biden, a Catholic proud of his Irish roots, has already warned the Johnson government that it must not jeopardise the Good Friday agreement in its Brexit negotiations. Having left the EU, the UK can no longer be America’s bridge across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Britain has a prime minister who led the country out of Europe just when an incoming President Biden would be looking to partner with it.
Whether Mr Trump is defeated or not next week, Americans will have to learn to live with Trumpism for years to come. The first impeached president to run for re-election, Mr Trump avoided being the first to be removed from office because the Republican party has lost its moral compass. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become subsumed by the politics of grievance and entitlement. The GOP turns a blind eye to Mr Trump’s transgressions in return for preserving the privileged status of white Christian America.
The most obvious sign of this Faustian pact is the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court — Mr Trump’s third justice. Conservatives now have a 6-3 advantage in the highest court in the land. Compliant judges are key to retaining the status quo when Republicans face a shrinking electoral base. The Republican strategy is twofold: first is voter suppression; if that fails, Mr Trump appears ready to reject the result. He has spent years conditioning his supporters, especially those armed to the hilt, to mistrust elections and to see fraud where it doesn’t exist.
We have been here before. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million ballots. The election turned on a handful of votes needed to capture the electoral vote in Florida. But the votes that counted were not found in the Sunshine State. They were cast by the five supreme court justices named by Republican presidents who gave the election to George W Bush.
In the 2018 midterms, a coalition of millions marched into polling booths to disavow the president. It is heartening that more than 60 million people have cast their ballot in early voting at a time when the president is doing much to call US democracy into question amid baseless claims of a “rigged election”. Americans are busily embracing their democratic right, and a record turnout in this election may show that voters, worried about whether democracy would endure, strove to save it. Anything other than a vote for Mr Biden is a vote to unleash a supercharged Trumpism. All pretence of civility would be dropped. The divides of race, class and sex would become even wider. Mr Trump is a symptom of America’s decline. Finding a solution to this problem begins with a vote for Mr Biden.
In this post, Bill Moyers conducts an important interview with investigative journalist Anne Nelson, who talks about her new book, SHADOW NETWORK: MEDIA, MONEY, AND THE SECRET HUB OF THE RADICAL RIGHT.
Read this and you will understand the dark forces that are undermining our democracy and our democratic institutions, including our public schools.
BILL MOYERS: Let me begin with the most current part of the story, which comes just a little bit after your book is published when the conservative movement is facing a very decisive encounter with the very forces it’s been trying to defeat now for 40 years. How do you think the shadow network reads the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court? What are they making of it?
ANNE NELSON: Well, I think that they consider it a great triumph and a kind of culmination of 40 years of effort. And I demure a bit at the term conservative because this is, for me, the radical right. It is so far to the right of mainstream American public opinion that I feel that it’s in a different category both in terms of its ideology and its tactics. But they decided way back in the day of Paul Weyrich, one of the architects of the movement that they–
BILL MOYERS: In the early 1970s, right?
ANNE NELSON: We’re going back to the ’70s and even earlier, because he was active on the Barry Goldwater campaign. And he was frustrated time and again by moderates in the Republican Party and people who were willing to work with Democrats to advance policy and solutions to public problems. And he created organizations and tactics that he openly declared should destroy the regime, as he called it, which would be the U.S. government as we’ve known it for the last century.
BILL MOYERS: Paul Weyrich is the man I remember saying–
PAUL WEYRICH: I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populous goes down.
BILL MOYERS: He was essentially saying, as a newly anointed leader of the religious right, what their philosophy was. The fewer people vote, the better their chance.
ANNE NELSON: That’s right. And from the beginning, in terms of their electoral tactics, it has been a matter of weaponizing certain churches and pastors and really exerting tremendous pressure on them to use churches as instruments of a radical right ideology. And then using similar tactics to suppress votes for Democrats, especially in key battleground states.
BILL MOYERS: So that’s why you conclude in your book they were to the right of the Republican Party. They were not just an offshoot of the Republican Party. They were not just fundraisers for the Republican Party, but they were ideologically and organizationally taking the Republican Party far to the right.
ANNE NELSON: Absolutely, and somewhat to my surprise, I found that their prototype was the Southern Baptist Convention, where they decided that in order to move it to the right, they had to use questionable tactics to elevate their supporters to key positions of influence and purge the Southern Baptist Convention of moderates in the seminaries and in the colleges and among the pastors. And it was a fairly ruthless process, and once these tactics were developed, they applied it to the Republican Party. And you had the same kind of tactics going on of purging moderates, some of whom had been in office for years.
BILL MOYERS: I should point out to some of our younger listeners and readers that the Southern Baptist Convention at the time and still today was the largest Protestant denomination in America. You know, something like it eventually reached 16 and a half million members scattered throughout the South and the West. We’ll come back to them in a moment. What do you think about the NEW YORK TIMES’ assessment that Amy Coney Barrett represents a new conservativism rooted in faith. That’s how their headline described a three-page portrait of her life and career. Does that make sense to you?
ANNE NELSON: Not entirely, because as a conservative Catholic, she follows in the footsteps of others such as Brett Kavanaugh and Antonin Scalia. So that’s not very new. And what I look at in my book SHADOW NETWORK is how these interlocking organizations support each other. The book is about the Council for National Policy– a radical right-wing organization that is very secretive, and it brings together big donors like the DeVos family and oil interests from Texas and Oklahoma and political operatives. And, for example, members include the leadership of the Federalist Society. Well, Amy Coney Barrett was a member of the Federalist Society for a number of years and is still a speaker at their events. It includes the head of Hillsdale College, which is one of their campus partners. Amy Coney Barrett was commencement speaker for Hillsdale College this year. So, there are all of these organizations that have been turning their wheels to promote her really for several years going back. She appeared on previous lists of potential nominees for the Supreme Court, and I don’t believe she would have been included in those lists had she not confirmed to their traditional idea of an activist judge.
BILL MOYERS: They knew what they were looking for.
ANNE NELSON: And I should add that one of the most powerful components in the Council for National Policy is the anti-abortion movement. Organizations such as the Susan B. Anthony List and Concerned Women for America and other interests, which are anti-environmentalist interests from the fossil fuels industry. So, I think that we’ve seen a roadmap of what to expect moving forward.
BILL MOYERS: Tell me, who does make up the Council for National Policy?
ANNE NELSON: So, the Council for National Policy has traditionally been around 400 members. From the beginning, it’s included people with big money, a lot of them from the Texas and Oklahoma oil industries, but also the DeVos family of Michigan from the Amway fortune, and Betsy DeVos, of course. So, it has the big money to pay for things. It’s got the leaders of so-called grassroots organizations. Now, I say so-called, because they do not spring from the grassroots the way that you would expect from the name. They are organized with a great deal of money from the top down. So, for example, the National Rifle Association– their leadership is part of the CNP. They get money from the donors, they organize their millions of members, and you combine these with the strategists and the media owners. And I spend a lot of time in my book talking about the power of fundamentalist and conservative radio in swing states. Things that people on the East Coast overlook to a terrible degree. And the same thing with fundamentalist broadcasting, which has really several of these broadcasters — the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Trinity Broadcasting Network have really turned into outlets replicating the messaging from this organization. So, you have them interlocking and interacting and each supporting each other’s function. And I should explain something here, which is that they represent historically a white, Protestant, I’m sorry, but male-dominated patriarchy–
BILL MOYERS: No, that’s okay.
ANNE NELSON: And I have to say that demographically its time has passed. The United States has become more diverse religiously, ethnically, and racially. And they recognize that their core positions are not supported by the majority of Americans. So, they went to the limit, pulled out all the stops to get Trump elected by a tiny margin, but they doubt that they can do that again. The signs are not good. What they can do is make their hold on the federal courts concrete through the Supreme Court, and therefore, get majorities in cases like gerrymandering, voter suppression, and their political activation of the churches with tax-exempt status. And further their hold on power through the courts.
BILL MOYERS: So which part of the shadow network do you think chose, mentored, and groomed Amy Coney Barrett for this moment?
ANNE NELSON: Well, I have to speculate here. But I would see a fairly straight line from her position to Leonard Leo’s. Now, Leonard Leo is a very conservative Catholic. He was the operational figure of the Federalist Society for a number of years, and recently he shifted from that position to an even more activist position. Amy Coney Barrett was already a member of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society has a pipeline through the lower federal courts, which she benefited from. So, in terms of this Catholic interaction they would be quite close to each other. Another key figure is Carrie Severino, who is from the Judicial Crisis Network, which was co-founded by Leonard Leo. And again, very right-wing Catholics who have tended to be overlooked while people focus on the fundamentalist Protestants. But Ralph Reed, who has been somebody who’s been active with the fundamentalist politicization for decades declared openly years ago that the next step to their campaign was to enlist the Catholic vote. And they’ve been aggressively doing that in recent years.
BILL MOYERS: And then there’s Don McGahn who was for three years Donald Trump’s chief White House counsel, graduate of Notre Dame, admirer of Amy Coney Barrett, who was scouting himself for recruits to bring up, train, groom, and put into the mix for potential Supreme Court justices. And I read that he was highly enthusiastic about her, had talked to Leo and that they had you had both these White House and legal forces behind her, knowing that she was one of them.
[The interview continues. I urge you to open the link and read it in full to understand the secret network that is currently running the federal government and selecting justices for the Supreme Court.]
If you live in Sacramento, you have an opportunity to flip the board because four of seven seats are up for grabs.
Fortunately, there is an excellent pro-public school slate with four outstanding candidates, each of whom has been endorsed by Sacramento City Teachers Asociatuon, SEIU Local 1021, the Sacramento Central Labor Council and the Sacramento County Democratic Party.
The billionaire boys (and girls) club wants to buy the school board. Don’t let them.
Vote for :
Lavinia Grace Phillips for District 7
Lavinia Grace Phillips, a social worker for Sacramento’s Child Protective Services and the president of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association is running for SCUSD school board in Area 7. The incumbent is Jessie Ryan.
Jose Navarro for District 3
Jose Navarro, is an information technology specialist who works for California’s Franchise Tax Board. He is a member of SEIU Local 1000. He is running for the SCUSD school board in Area 3. The incumbent is Christina Pritchett.
Chinua Rhodes for District 5
Chinua Rhodes, is a community organizer with Mutual Housing California. He currently serves on the City of Sacramento’s Parks and Community Enrichment Commision and the SCUSD LCAP. He is running for the SCUSD school board in Area 5. The incumbent is not running.
Nailah Pope-Harden for Area 4
Nailah Pope-Harden, is a community organizer and statewide climate policy advocate. She is a Sac City schools graduate. She is running for the SCUSD school board in Area 4. The incumbent is not running.
If you live in Michigan and you want to stop the privatization of public school funding, the Network for Public Education Action urges you to support Sarah Schultz for the House of Representatives, District 98.
The Network for Public Education Action is proud to endorse Sarah Schultz for the Michigan state House District 98.
Sarah, who was born and raised in Flint, is married to a public school teacher. Sarah’s children attend public schools. She strongly supports increases in school funding.
Recently she quoted a Network for Public Education study while criticizing the charter sector, which she referred to as a “Wild West model where for-profit charters aren’t held accountable to the standards of public schools.”
She has also noted that her opponent has taken money from the DeVos family. Sarah is against school privatization.
We urge your support for Sarah Schultz when you vote on November 3.
No candidate authorized this ad. It is paid for by Network for Public Education Action, New York, New York.
Derek Black, Jack Schneider, and Jennifer Berkshire wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the future of public education is on the ballot on November 3 (for the record, I got a credit for doing some minor editing).
Should Trump be re-elected, you can count on him and Betsy DeVos to continue their brazen assault on public schools and to continue their demand to transfer public funds to private and religious schools as well as to pour hundreds of millions of federal dollars into charter school expansion. Draining public dollars away from public school has been Betsy DeVos’s life work and she would have four more years to staff the U.S. Department of Education with likeminded ideologues who hate public schools.
The authors write:
When Trump selected Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, many took it as a sign that he wasn’t serious. After all, DeVos seemed to know little about public schools. But that was a product of her extremism. Over the last four years, she has been crystal clear that her primary interest in the public education system lies in dismantling it. For evidence, look no further than her proposed Education Freedom Scholarships plan, which would redirect $5 billion in taxpayer dollars to private schools.
Unmaking public education is a long-standing goal of libertarians and the religious right. Conservative economist Milton Friedman conceived of private school vouchers in 1955, and four decades later was still making the case for “a transition from a government to a market system.” As they see it, public education is a tax burden on the wealthy, an obstacle to religious instruction, and a hotbed for unionism. Rather than a public system controlled by democratic values, they’d prefer a private one governed by the free market. If they had their way, schools would operate like a welfare program for the poor while the rich would get the best education money could buy. The result would be entrenched inequality and even more concentrated segregation than now exists.
This extreme view has never caught on, largely because public education is a bedrock American institution. Many states created public education systems before the nation even existed. Massachusetts, for instance, was educating children in public schools long before tea was dumped in Boston Harbor. In 1787, the federal government explicitly mandated that the center plot of land in every new town in the territories — land that would become states like Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois — be reserved for schools, and that other plots be used to support those schools. After the Civil War, Congress doubled down on that commitment, requiring readmitted Confederate states, and all new states, to guarantee access to public education in their constitutions. In each of these foundational periods, leaders positioned public education at the very center of our democratic project.
The founders and their successors recognized that public education is essential to citizens’ ability to govern themselves, not to mention protect themselves from charlatans and demagogues. Public education is the surest guarantee of individual liberty, the founders understood — no less essential than a well-trained army to the survival of the nation. That’s why they recognized that the education of American citizens couldn’t be left to chance...
We are here to sound an alarm to Republicans and Democrats. The future of our nation’s public schools is at stake. And insofar as that is the case, the democracy envisioned by our founders — one with universal, tax-supported schooling at its core — hangs in the balance.
