Archives for category: Ethics

Republicans have grown frustrated by their inability to get their views represented on college campuses, so they have grown more assertive in passing laws to ban ideas they don’t like (such as “critical race theory” or gender studies or diversity/equity/inclusion or “divisive concepts).

Indiana is imposing a different approach. Instead of banning what it does not like, the Legislature is requiring professors to teach different points of view.

A new law in Indiana requires professors in public universities to foster a culture of “intellectual diversity” or face disciplinary actions, including termination for even those with tenure, the latest in an effort by Republicans to assert more control over what is taught in classrooms.

The law connects the job status of faculty members, regardless of whether they are tenured, to whether, in the eyes of a university’s board of trustees, they promote “free inquiry” and “free expression.” State Senator Spencer Deery, who sponsored the bill, made clear in a statement that this would entail the inclusion of more conservative viewpoints on campus.

The backlash to the legislation, which Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, signed March 13, has been substantial. Hundreds wrote letters or testified at hearings, and faculty senates at multiple institutions had urged the legislature to reject the bill, condemning it as government overreach and a blow to academic free speech.

“The whole point of tenure is to protect academic freedom,” said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, who described the law as “thought policing.”

Under the Indiana law, which goes into effect in July, university trustees may not grant tenure or a promotion to faculty members who are deemed “unlikely” to promote “intellectual diversity” or to expose students to works from a range of political views. Trustees also may withhold tenure or promotion from those who are found “likely” to bring unrelated political views into the courses they are teaching.

Faculty members who already have tenure would be subject to regular reviews to determine if they are meeting all of these criteria, and if the board concludes they are not, they could be demoted or fired. The law also requires colleges to set up a procedure for students or other employees to file complaints about faculty members considered to be falling short on these requirements.

Boards are not, under the law, allowed to penalize faculty for criticizing the institution or engaging in political activity outside of their teaching duties. The restrictions do not apply to private university faculty members.

Will professors of science be allowed to teach about climate change or evolution without giving equal time to “the other side?”

Will professors of American history be allowed to teach about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow and institutional racism without introducing the Confederate point of view?

This law is a serious attack on academic freedom.

Categories Academic Freedom, Curriculum, Ethics, Higher Education, Indiana

Some of Trump’s Biggest Failures in the Business World

By dianeravitch

March 23, 2024 //

This is a video listing some of Trump’s biggest business failures.

What’s especially amusing about the video is the archival footage of Trump, boasting about the success of a venture he just launched and praising himself for his latest venture. It’s the best, the most, the greatest. Then it goes bust. As you watch, you realize that his greatest talent is as a pitchman, the guy who gets you to buy or invest in his latest moneymaking scheme. He is the guy selling snake oil to cure everything that ails you. They did not include “Trump University,” surely a major fraud and a financial disaster. Trump claimed that those who enrolled in his online “university” would learn how to get rich, learning his secrets. He hoodwinked widows and vets. Trump was ordered to repay $25 million to people who registered for his fake university.

Categories Character, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Fake, Fraud, Humor, Trump

The Atlantic: Private Equity Eyes Child-Care Industry as Profit Center

By dianeravitch

March 23, 2024 //

As the research has built up on the value of early childhood education, more states are directing money towards expanding access. Wherever money flows, the private equity industry turns its gaze and seeks to do what it does best: privatize and profit. In this age, private equity figures out how to maximize profit from services that used to be public.

The Atlantic has a story about private equity’s interest in childcare.

Last June, years of organizing in Vermont paid off when the state’s House and Senate passed landmark legislation—overriding a governor’s earlier veto—that invests $125 million a year into its child-care system. The bill expanded eligibility for state assistance to 575 percent of the federal poverty level, meaning that more than 7,000 new families are expected to receive money for child-care expenses. Funding will also become available to help day-care centers recruit and retain teachers and expand capacity; centers will also receive additional money for providing nonstandard hours of care.

But now advocates are worried that the wrong people stand to benefit from the program’s generosity. Any time there is a windfall of public money, with few strings attached, unintended consequences are nearly certain to follow. Thanks to the new law, more Vermont families will have more to spend on child care, and centers will receive additional money without explicit rules around how to spend it. Both of those facts will make child care an attractive target for private-equity groups looking for an industry with lots of incoming revenue.

Private equity’s interest in child care has been growing in recent years. “While there has been corporate for-profit child care since the 1970s, private equity only got in starting in the early 2000s,” Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow who studies early childhood education at the nonpartisan think tank Capita, told me. Now four of the top five for-profit child-care chains—KinderCare, Learning Care Group, the Goddard School, and Primrose Schools—are controlled by private-equity funds, and private-equity-backed centers represent 10 to 12 percent of the market.

Private investors are intrigued by child care for the same reasons they became interested in nursing homes and other health-care services: intense demand, government money, and relatively low start-up costs. “Their goal is not long-term sustainability; their goal is to try to turn a profit,” Haspel said.

Private equity’s foray into child care could go a number of ways, but its introduction has largely not worked out well for other sectors—and certainly not for many people who rely on those sectors’ services. In his book, Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, Brendan Ballou, who investigated private-equity firms at the Department of Justice, posits that the private-equity business model has three basic problems. First, these firms buy a business with the intention of flipping it for a profit, not long-term sustainability, meaning that they are trying to maximize value in the short term and are less likely to invest in staff or facilities. Second, they tend to load businesses up with debt and extract a lot of fees, such as charging child-care providers for the privilege of being managed by the firm. And perhaps most important, their business structure insulates firms from liability.

In 2009, Annie Salley, a resident of a nursing-home chain purchased by the private-equity group Carlyle, died after an injury she sustained while going to the bathroom. Her family sued Carlyle, but a judge dismissed the case after the firm argued that it didn’t own the chain—instead, it said it advised a series of investment funds, such as Carlyle Partners V MC, L.P., that were the lone shareholders in the chain. Children get hurt in child care; children occasionally go missing from a care facility; every year, some children die in day cares. If private-equity firms can structure their relationship to day-care centers as they have nursing homes, families may have little recourse should they encounter a serious problem.

Though private-equity-backed child-care providers can—and often do—offer good services to families, their business model can also prove ruinous. In other sectors, private-equity groups have been notorious for extracting exorbitant fees from businesses they’ve acquired in leveraged buyouts; when they’ve had a chance to raise wages for workers or pay down their private-equity debts, they’ve regularly opted for the latter. Although Vermont’s bill sought to improve the wages of educators, it does not include a salary floor—which means that money that flows into centers may not necessarily go directly to staff—and without such a safeguard, what is stopping outside firms from taking the first, significant cut?

Miriam Calderón, the chief policy officer at Zero to Three, a nonprofit focused on babies, toddlers, and their families, hopes federal lawmakers consider these concerns as they begin to reimagine the federal footprint in child care. Calderón worked in the Biden administration during its first year and helped conceive the early-childhood-education components of the Build Back Better Act, which would have established a child-care entitlement program for a majority of families. Congress isn’t moving on the issue now, but Calderón and advocates told me it would be foolish to wait until Congress was working again to think about protections around public dollars. Private-equity-backed chains will likely continue to grow as a share of the market, and if they gain too much of it, they would have the power to fight back against policies that ensure that staff are fairly compensated and families aren’t paying even more exorbitant fees than they already are. “The work now is to really think through the right guardrails and the right policies so when we get to a moment, again, we’re ready,” Calderón said.

Open the link to finish the article. Or subscribe to The Atlantic.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit

NYC: Charter School of Dr. Steve Perry and Rapper “Diddy” Mired in Controversy

By dianeravitch

March 22, 2024 //

The Capital Prep Charter chain was created by Dr. Steve Perry. Dr. Perry hates teachers’ unions. He boasts that all the students in his charters graduate and go to college. His chain won the Yass Prize as a semi-finalist for its accomplishments. Jeff Yass is a billionaire in Pennsylvania who supports Trump, opposes abortion, and funds charter schools and vouchers. You may recall that Yass gave Texas Governor Greg Abbott $6 million to pass voucher legislation.

Capital Prep in Harlem is a Perry school that had the partnership and financial support of rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs. Things are not going so well for the students.

Students and families affiliated with Capital Prep, co-founded by Diddy, claim the entertainment mogul’s charter school did a disservice to children who attended.

Diddy co-launched the East Harlem school with Dr. Steve Perry in 2016, and in 2018 pledged $1 million for its expansion into the Bronx. However, last November Capital Prep cut ties with him amid his ongoing sexual assault lawsuits.

Now adding to the mounting controversy around the Bad Boy Records founder, a new report from The Cut reveals many issues with Capital Prep, including the accusation that Diddy had no involvement with the school beyond photo ops, guest appearances, and the school’s grand opening in 2016.

Fourteen sources told The Cut about alleged frequent violence at Capital Prep, along with “unstable” leadership, and frequent teacher resignation. These issues were most apparent at the height of the pandemic during both virtual learning and when students, including those who were unhoused, returned for in-person classes in 2021. According to The Cut, teachers began to not show up for virtual classes, and by the end of 2020, 80 percent of teachers had left Capital Prep altogether.

When students did return to school after quarantine, some were enrolled in courses they had previously taken, or were “sitting in the cafeteria receiving no instruction for hours.” Dysfunction among teachers reflected on the student body, especially upperclassmen who were unable to transfer their credits or enroll in college due to ineligible transcripts.

“Darnell’s transcripts had classes he’d never taken, passing classes that he never took, failing classes that he was never in,” one parent, Shirley Payne, said about inaccuracies found on her son’s transcripts.

“I thought if Diddy is funding and attaching his name to something, it would be run very tightly, that he was going to give our kids what he didn’t have at that age,” parent Shakemia Harris said. Harris’ daughter Madison was enrolled at Capital Prep as an 11-year-old in 2017.

In addition to the many academic issues, violence during the school day was reportedly ongoing. Fights were rampant when the school nearly doubled in size, expanding to include a tenth grade, and again when Capital Prep relocated to 129th and Madison. Not only was the area more violent than its previous East 104th Street address, but Capital Prep began locking out students who were late, ultimately causing families to protest the disorderly conditions. In addition it violence between students, cops were called on students for things like uniform violations.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Hoax, New York City

Deconstructing Trump’s Fascist Speech: Victim, Martyr, Liar

By dianeravitch

March 21, 2024 //

Anand Giridharadas is a brilliant thinker who has a blog called The Ink. In his latest post, he prints whole sections of Trump’s incendiary campaign speech in Vandalia, Ohio, and gives a close reading to his language. (Something oddly appropriate about the location since Trump is the King of Vandals.)

Anand’s parsing of Trump’s words is incisive. I’m posting only part of it, and Anand has made this post available for free. I urge you to open the link and read it all.

He writes:

Former President Donald Trump’s fascist performance art this past weekend in Vandalia, Ohio, was ostensibly a stump speech for someone else. But you could be forgiven for forgetting that. In what was effectively his first real rally since clinching the GOP nomination, Trump offered a grim vision of America and a patchwork of unhinged tirades against his usual targets. Yet there was more to it than that.

There is little value in fact-checking the former president’s words, given that the great majority of them bore so little relationship to reality that you quickly realize their purpose could only be to destabilize reality altogether. They simply restate dozens of well-worn lies, from birtherism up through the Big Lie, interspersed with a smattering of playground insults, projection, and a stew of misunderstood economic schemes and xenophobic delusions that do the work of standing in for policy ideas. This is a hole of lies that cannot be filled with facts.

But that doesn’t mean the speech wasn’t worth paying attention to. And, being of the reading sort, we suggest there is value in reading the text, not just rage-consuming the viral videos everyone has been rehashing.

We think all Americans need to take Trump’s speech both seriously and literally as the what-you-see-is-what-you’ll-get messaging of a would-be dictator. These are things that are actually being said, in public, by a person who has already occupied the world’s most powerful position and seeks to occupy it again. It’s an advertisement for autocracy that — give it this at least — complies with the notion of truth in advertising. And as Masha Gessen has reminded us, “Rule no. 1 is to listen to and believe the autocrat.”

What we look at below is how Trump’s rhetorical performance works, how it functions. In many of these examples, the “meaning” isn’t important, and that’s why the goal here isn’t to question his command of the facts. He’s making these statements without much pretense to knowing the facts in the first place; rather, he’s looking for maximum emotional impact. He fights entirely on the battleground of emotion, and that, Ruth Ben-Ghiat has reminded us, is pretty much what autocrats have always done.

Trump’s language here — from stabs in the back to dystopian visions of foreign nations seeking to flood the American body politic with their unwanted criminals — has plenty of precedent in the words of the strongmen of the past and present. He goes out of his way to praise Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, perhaps returning thefavor for Orban’s snub of the sitting U.S. government on his recent visit to the U.S.

And it’s the fact that this speech follows that well-established playbook that demands we pay attention. His words may be murky. What he plans to do to us is clear.

We’ve made this piece free and open to all. We hope it will make you think about these critical issues in new ways, and give you a glimpse of the posts that go out to our supporting subscribers each week. We encourage you to join our community, and to share our work with yours! And we have a rare special offer to entice you: 20% off forever!

The Victim King

Because I’m being indicted for you and never forget our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom.

I’m being persecuted. I think more than anybody, but who the hell knows? You know, all my life…you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson. He was actually a great general and a very good president. They say that he was persecuted as president more than anybody else. Second was Abraham Lincoln. This is just what they said. This is in the history books. They were brutal. Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died over it, they say, died of a broken heart, but she died over it. He was never quite the same.

But they say Andrew Jackson, they say Abraham Lincoln was second, but he had a, you know, in all fairness, he did have a civil war. So you would think that would cause a problem, right? So you could understand it. But nobody comes close to Trump.

Elementary school historical analysis aside, this passage is a reminder that, more than anything, Trump relishes playing the role of the Victim King. He’s casting attacks on him as attacks on his subjects, and valiantly stepping into the breach to block the slings and arrows so his loyal supporters won’t suffer. It’s part of the personalization of leadership that’s always been at the center of cults of personality — the devotional, movement-building side of authoritarianism.

The notion that the leader acts as both weapon and human shield is a central rhetorical tool in the arsenal of autocrats. And of course he’s done this better — or maybe just “more” — than anybody. More than Lincoln; more than Jackson.

Trump’s victimhood here is absolute. He’s devoted himself entirely to protecting his flock. An attack on him is an attack on them; a win for him a win for them.

We dig here more deeply into Trump’s pursuit of absolute power through his performance of weakness.

The Horst Wessel song

And you see the spirit from the hostages, and that’s what they are, is hostages. They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly. And you know that. And everybody knows that. And we’re going to be working on that soon. The first day we get into office, we’re going to save our country, and we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots, and they were unbelievable patriots and are. You see the spirit, this cheering. They’re cheering while they’re doing that. And they did that in prison. And it’s a disgrace, in my opinion.

Here Trump returns the favor, in a sense, to his shock troops. The speech opened with a playback of “Justice for All,” the MAGA fundraising release by the “J6 Prison Choir” that interpolates Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over a backing track of the inmates singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The track is meant as a legal defense effort for the January 6 insurrectionists, but the role it plays here is to define those insurrectionists as true patriots, and to link Trump’s own persecution with that endured by his most devoted followers — the ones who’ve demonstrated their willingness to go into battle on his account. It’s a barter of martyrdoms.

This, as with the rest of the rhetoric here, is a classic authoritarian strategy. If you consider the insurrectionists cast in the role of Sturmabteilung(“SA,” the original paramilitary forces of the Nazi Party) martyr Horst Wessel (Ashli Babbitt specifically, though the group as a whole plays the same part generally here), this patriotic mashup recalls the Nazi anthem.

The Big Lie

I happen to think we won most of the country. You want to know the truth. If the voting…if the voting were real, I actually think we won most of the country.

Central to Trump’s identity is infallibility, and, given that, his mass popularity is without question. Again, this is classic autocratic positioning. Thus his obsessions with ratings, with polls, with casting primary victories that were never in doubt as fantastic triumphs.

Jokes about huge numbers aside (and the speech is rife with riffs on poll results), there is simply no way that he could have lost a legitimate electoral contest, and any such contest he might have lost would be, by definition, illegitimate. One need only look to Vladimir Putin’s “landslide” victory this week for an example of the way elections function in an authoritarian state.

The Big Lie is Trump’s truth, and it’s not just a boast. It’s key to the story he’s trying desperately to sell to the crowd, the story of a guy who can’t lose.

I was asking Jim Jordan about it because he was commenting that we have the largest crowds in the history of politics. Nobody comes close. If Ronald Reagan came to a place called Dayton, Ohio — have you heard of it? If he came to Dayton, Ohio, honestly, J.D., if he had three or 400 people in a ballroom, that would be great. We get 25-30,000 people for a small rally…We had 88,000 people show up in South Carolina.

An addendum: In his bid for recognition as the greatest of all Republicans, Trump is even willing to throw Ronald Reagan under the bus if it helps make the case.

Not even people

They’re very smart, very streetwise. And I would do the same thing. If I had prisons that were teeming with MS-13 and all sorts of people that they’ve got to take care of for the next 50 years, right? Young people, they’re in jail for years. If you call them people, I don’t know if you call them people. In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say…

We have so many people being hurt so badly and being killed. They’re sending their prisoners to see us. They’re sending and they’re bringing them right to the border and they’re dropping them off and we’re allowing them to come in. And these are tougher than anybody we’ve got in the country. These are hardened criminals. And we’ve got hundreds of thousands of them.

If you take Trump at his word here — and we think you should — the leaders of countries around the world are conspiring to conduct an organized invasion, deploying their criminals to the United States in order to submerge it in violence. On one level, there’s nothing here but racism and xenophobia, but this works on the level of the conspiratorial ideas of mysterious foreign threats to the body politic that have long been part and parcel of the autocrat’s appeal.

Migrants, in this account, aren’t fleeing refugees or people looking for a better life against all odds, but have been mobilized and directed against the U.S., a superhuman and yet subhuman army, “dropped off” by a shadowy cabal of foreign interests who aren’t content merely to sell us cheaper cars and fentanyl precursors.

Just insert “bankers” or “Jews” or “capitalist roaders” or even “globalists” here and you’re on the right track towards understanding what Trump’s trying to do.

Migrant crime

These are the roughest people you’ve ever seen. You know, now we have a new form of crime. I call it Biden migrant crime, but it’s too long. So let’s just call it migrant crime. We have a new category. You know, you have vicious crimes. You have violent crimes. You have all these. Now we have migrant crimes, and they’re rough. They’re rough. And it’s going to double up. And you see what’s happening.

You know, throughout the world right now, I don’t know if you know this. Crime is way, way down. You know why? Because they sent us their criminals. That’s why. It’s true. It’s true. They sent, you know, Venezuela is down 66 percent because they sent us their gang members and gangsters. They sent us their drug dealers and their murderers. They’re all coming into our country. And Venezuela now, their crime is down 66 percent.

The supposed statistics here are just a “gish gallop,” in which the speaker simply overwhelms the opponent (or in this case the audience) with a flurry of inaccurate statements, knowing that the very attempt to correct them will both derail any reasonable argument and delay a response until the time has run out.

But this, again, is the story of the alien threat, here described as entering at the behest of their domestic collaborator, Joe Biden. It’s a “stab-in-the-back” accusation (there are several in the speech), in which a leader is identified as a secret traitor, betraying the nation to foreign interests.

The truth is that crime rates are down worldwide, and these statistics are pulled out of the air. The fear people have of the loss of control of the border, and of what it means to be “American” is real, however — even if Trump’s helped in its creation — and that’s what he’s playing to so effectively.

Please open the link and continue reading this insightful exegesis of Trump’s rhetoric. He is a talented orator. So was Hitler.

Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fascism, Fraud, Ignorance, Immigration, Lies, Trump

Ohio: The Facts are In. Vouchers Should Not Subsidize the Affluent

By dianeravitch

March 20, 2024 //

The editorial board of Cleveland.com and the Plain-Dealer were taken aback by the facts reported about vouchers by their reporter Laura Hancock (posted in previous time slot). The Ohio legislature expanded vouchers so almost every family is eligible, even if they never sent their child to public school. The editorial board believed that vouchers were supposed to help poor kids escape low-performing schools, and they urge the legislature to return to the original purpose.

What is disappointing about this editorial is that it fails to recognize that the original purpose of vouchers has already proven to be a disaster. In the only statewide evaluation of vouchers, sponsored by the choice-friendly Thomas B. Fordham Institute, poor children who took vouchers fell even farther behind their peers in the public schools they left. (See summary, on p. 7, concluding that students who left public schools for voucher schools performed worse than if they had remained in their public school).

This finding—that voucher students who leave public schools perform worse—has been replicated in every voucher program. Voucher students don’t go to elite private schools. Typically they go to voucher schools that do not have certified teachers and that are allowed to discriminate on any grounds.

Voucher scholar Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has assembled the powerful negative effects of vouchers on kids who transfer from public schools. The results in Ohio are the worst.

I wish the editorial board of Cleveland.com and the Plain-Dealer had seen these data before they wrote the following editorial. The facts are in: Vouchers don’t help poor kids who leave struggling public schools.

The editorialists wrote:

Last June, when the Ohio House passed Amended Substitute House Bill 33, the two-year state budget, sending it to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature, House Majority leadership celebrated the “landmark” expansion of EdChoice school vouchers, loosening income caps to make voucher benefits available to all Ohio families.

“Along with funding public education, the budget makes a landmark investment in school choice with a universal voucher program,” the statement from House Republican leadership said. “This program is designed to safeguard lower-income families and offers options beyond traditional public schools. By expanding access to vouchers, Ohio ensures parents can make the best decisions for their children’s education.”

But data from implementation of this “landmark investment in school choice … designed to safeguard lower-income families” suggest it did very little to provide school choice or to help low-income families.

Instead, parents in affluent communities like Rocky River, Westlake and Bay Village with kids already in private and parochial schools appear to have taken immediate advantage of the new eligibility rules. Families of four up to 450% of poverty levels (that is, earning up to $135,000 a year) now qualify for full taxpayer-funded vouchers, and those making more money qualify for partial vouchers.

Ohio’s legislature, to be true to its stated school-choice motive, should rewrite the rules to guarantee that this money goes to children in underperforming schools, possibly relying on state report cards to set the standard.

Cleveland.com’s Laura Hancock looked at before-and-after numbers and found that students on EdChoice vouchers shot up from 16 to 309 in the Rocky River school district; 41 to 581 in Westlake; and 13 to 229 in Bay Village.

Hancock then compared public-school enrollment trends to judge if this was primarily a move out of public schools, or a subsidy for kids already in private and parochial schools.

The evidence points strongly to the latter. Rocky River public school enrollment dropped by only 22 students, not 309. Bay Village enrollment dropped by 30 students, not 229. Westlake schools recorded 19 fewer students this year compared with last academic year — not 581. Similar patterns were seen in other affluent school districts, from Strongsville and North Royalton to Brecksville-Broadview Heights.

By contrast, in the Cleveland public schools, where more than 8,000 students now get school vouchers through the much-older Cleveland school voucher program, which dates to 1996, those on EdChoice vouchers increased only slightly, from 9 to 28.

In even more impoverished East Cleveland, EdChoice recipients dropped from 12 last academic year to less than 10 this year.

And the money is now almost gone.

“The legislature budgeted $397.8 million for EdChoice-Expansion this year,” Hancock reports. “As of Feb. 26, the state had spent $387.5 million.”

Advocates of the universal voucher program suggested to Hancock that, as word gets out, more people will use the vouchers as intended next school year, to switch from low-performing public schools to a private or parochial option.

But it seems unlikely those now on the EdChoice expansion vouchers would be displaced to make room for lower-income students.

In other words, lacking conscious, targeted efforts to make sure low-income Ohioans in poor-performing schools primarily benefited, Ohio’s EdChoice expansion as implemented was not the school-choice program Statehouse leaders promised.

The data suggest instead it became just a big taxpayer subsidy for those students already in private schools.

That should outrage every Ohio taxpayer — and every parent of students in struggling districts who were supposed to benefit.

Also raising red flags were the absence of reciprocal obligations on the part of private and parochial schools taking these taxpayer-funded vouchers to show they are a higher-quality alternative to public schools.

The lack of transparency and data-reporting guardrails forces parents making “school choice” for academic reasons, rather than out of religious or other motivations, to blindly assume that a private or parochial school is the best choice, without actual data on educational performance.

This is particularly troubling given Ohio’s history of funding for-profit charter schools without such guardrails. That’s how the now-shuttered Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow managed to make off with $117 million in wrongly paid taxpayer funds, based on a 2022 state audit — mostly for falsely reporting students ECOT never had.

The General Assembly needs to revisit its universal vouchers program to ensure that this nearly $400 million in Ohio taxpayer money is buying true school choice as promised for students mired in poor-performing public schools who most need quality alternatives.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, Fake, Fraud, Hoax, Ohio, Vouchers

Ohio’s Multi-Million $$$$ Voucher Scam

By dianeravitch

March 20, 2024 //

Laura Hancock wrote at Cleveland.com about the expansion of Ohio’s voucher program. The state now offers a voucher to everyone, but most vouchers are claimed by students who never attended public schools.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The number of Cuyahoga County students receiving state-funded scholarships to attend private schools has skyrocketed this year after state lawmakers expanded a voucher program, but state data suggests that doesn’t necessarily mean more kids have opted out of public schools.

Across the county’s 31 districts, the number of students receiving tuition payments in the EdChoice-Expansion scholarship — one of five school voucher programs run by the state, and the one lawmakers expanded over the summer to give at least partial tuition payments to families of all income levels— has increased nearly four-fold, from about 2,500 students last year to nearly 9,200 this year.

Those districts, however, have not seen a corresponding loss in student population, indicating that most of the families newly benefitting from the vouchers were already enrolled in private schools, rather than fleeing a school district besieged by violence or bullying, mediocre test scores or other problems.

The data cut against arguments lawmakers and advocates have made over the years that vouchers are necessary to give families a chance to choose private schools over the public school district where they live.

In Rocky River, EdChoice-Expansion scholarships were nearly 20 times higher on Feb. 1 than last year. In Bay Village, they increased 17 times. Westlake’s increase is 14 times higher, according to an analysis of state data by The Plain Dealer / cleveland.com.

The number of students across Ohio who are attending private schools on state-funded scholarships spiked this year because the legislature — in the two-year budget bill signed by Gov. Mike DeWine — removed income eligibility caps for EdChoice-Expansion. Last year, the cap was 250% of the federal poverty level for a scholarship, or $75,000 for a family of four. Now, there are no income caps, although families only get partial scholarships when they earn above 450% of the poverty level, or above $135,000 for a family of four.

Full scholarship amounts are $6,167 for grades K-8 and $8,407 for grades K-12.

Enrollment losses in Cuyahoga County district classrooms, however, are more modest than the jump in private school vouchers. State data shows that families that live in the boundaries of suburban district schools— some of which are among the best performing in the state — but may have never set foot in a public school now are receiving vouchers.

Enrollment in Rocky River City School District fell by just 22 students between last year and this year, even though the number of kids receiving vouchers shot up from 16 to 309. In Bay Village City School District, there are 30 fewer students, despite a voucher jump from 13 to 229. Westlake City School District has 19 fewer students; vouchers in the district spiked from 41 to 581.

In the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, the number of kids receiving EdChoice Expansion vouchers increased from nine to 28 this year, a miniscule number compared against its student population of more than 32,000. But students in Cleveland also are eligible for the Cleveland Scholarship, which has no income caps, and is the oldest in the state, having been established in 1995. As of Feb. 26, there were 8,218 students in the Cleveland Scholarship program.

Open the link to finish the article.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig: The Supreme Court Should Not Have Ignored the Constitution

By dianeravitch

March 19, 2024 //

Laurence H. Tribe, the eminent professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School (Democrat), and Judge Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge (Republican), co-authored a lengthy article in The Atlantic, condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overrule the Colorado Supreme Court, which removed Trump from the 2024 ballot.

It seemed, after the Court’s decision, that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendnent had been excised from the Constitution. But just yesterday the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a New Mexico man who was convicted for taking part in the January 6 insurrection.

Couy Griffin was convicted for his role as a member of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol. Because he previously served as a member of the Otero County board of commissioners, the courts in New Mexico said he was ineligible to hold office ever again. Griffin was a founder of Cowboys for Trump and an outspoken purveyor of lies about election fraud.

The Supreme Court concluded that states could disqualify persons from attempting to hold state offices, but Congress had to enact legislation to implement the disqualification of federal officials.

Since Congress is unlikely to muster a majority of both Houses—or 60 votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster—oath-breaking insurrectionists will not be barred from seeking or holding federal offices.

One good thing: the Griffin decision implicitly agreed that the mob action of January 6 was an insurrection.

Last week, before the Griffin decision, Tribe and Littig wrote in The Atlantic:

The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson.

In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. Despite disagreement within the Court that led to a 5–4 split among the justices over momentous but tangential issues that it had no need to reach in order to resolve the controversy before it, the Court was disappointingly unanimous in permitting oath-breaking insurrectionists, including former President Donald Trump, to return to power. In doing so, all nine justices denied “We the People” the very power that those who wrote and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment presciently secured to us to save the republic from future insurrectionists—reflecting a lesson hard-learned from the devastation wrought by the Civil War.

For a century and a half before the Court’s decision, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy, promising to automatically disqualify from public office all oath-breaking insurrectionists against the Constitution, deeming them too dangerous to entrust with power unless supermajorities of both houses of Congress formally remove their disability. This provision has been mistakenly described by some as “undemocratic” because it limits who may be elected to particular positions of power. But disqualification is not what is antidemocratic; rather, it is the insurrection that is antidemocratic, as the Constitution emphatically tells us.

In any event, all qualifications for office set by the Constitution limit who may be elected to particular positions of power. And no other of these disqualifications requires congressional legislation to become operative, as the Court now insists this one does. To be sure, the other qualifications—age, residence, natural-born citizenship—appear outside the Fourteenth Amendment, whose fifth section specifically makes congressional action to enforce its provisions available. But no such action is needed to enforce the rights secured to individuals by Section 1 of the same amendment, so deeming congressional action necessary to enforce Section 3 creates a constitutional anomaly in this case that the majority could not and did not explain. For that matter, no other provision of the other two Reconstruction amendments requires congressional enforcement either. As the concurring justices explained, the majority “simply [created] a special rule for the insurrection disability in Section 3.”

To read the rest of this brilliant article, open the link or subscribe to The Atlantic.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Injustice, Trump

Arizona: Grand Canyon Institute On Voucher Ripoff

By dianeravitch

March 19, 2024 //

The Grand Canyon Institute is a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization in Arizona. Its latest report concludes that charter schools are more accountable than vouchers. Vouchers suck up nearly $1 billion a year in public money and are completely unaccountable. Oucher schools are subject to no financial audits, do not have to comply with the state curriculum, and are not audited for academic performance.

Step right up and get your free money, grifters! Courtesy of Arizona taxpayers and GOP legislators!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Charters are Accountable, Independent Private Schools are Not Yet nearly a billion public dollars flow to unaccountable private schools

Phoenix —On Monday, the State Board for Charter Schools, a public body, voted unanimously to issue a notice of intent to revoke the charter contract for ARCHES Academy, currently located in Apache Junction.

The school appears to have both academic and financial problems and recently addressed an issue with a fire marshal. This action represents the kind of responsible oversight of charter schools that serves to protect the interests of students, parents and taxpayers.

In sharp contrast, independent private schools are required to have no such oversight, even though they currently receive nearly $1 billion in state public funding. That nearly matches the state general fund support for the state university system. Public funds that support private schools come from redirected general fund dollars through tax credit donations to Student Tuition Organizations and by funds from Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA)/vouchers directly from the General Fund. Last year GCI estimates private school tax credits cost $285 million (the formal report is due by March 31) and ESA/vouchers cost $592 million, so, collectively, nearly $900 million in public support for unaccountable private schools (note: this figure includes an amount for ESA homeschooling).

The table below uses the case of ARCHES Academy to contrast charter schools (which are privately owned public schools) with private schools that operate independently with the level of oversight and accountability required.

Please open the link to see the table comparing Arches charter school and private schools receiving vouchers.

For more information, contact:

Dave Wells, Ph.D., Research Director

602.595.1025, Ext. 2, dwells@azgci.org

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Curriculum, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Vouchers

Maine: Federal Court Says Religious Schools Must Obey State Bias Law if They Get State Money

By dianeravitch

March 18, 2024 //

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Maine must pay the tuition of children at religious schools if it pays any private school tuition. Maine has a historic system of paying for students to go to private high schools if their own district does not have a public high school.

The state of Maine insisted that it would not pay tuition to schools that violate the state’s anti-discrimination. The two Christian schools that won the case did not accept LGBT students or students who practice a religion different from that of the church.

The state refused to pay Bangor Christian Academy for violating its human rights law. BCA sued. The court barred then from receiving public funds.

The Christian Post reported:

A Christian school in Maine must adhere to the state’s LGBT antidiscrimination policy to qualify for a state tuition assistance program while the lawsuit against the state continues, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee, denied a preliminary injunction Tuesday requested by Bangor Christian Schools run by Crosspoint Church, concluding that the church’s lawsuit against assorted state officials is not likely to succeed.

He ruled that Bangor Christian Schools must follow all the Maine Human Rights Act provisions.

“The Court determines that the educational antidiscrimination provisions do not violate the Free Exercise Clause because they are neutral, generally applicable, and rationally related to a legitimate government interest,” wrote Woodcock.

“The Court concludes further that the educational provisions do not violate the Free Speech Clause because they regulate conduct, not speech. Finally, the Court concludes that the employment provisions do not proscribe any constitutionally protected conduct.”

First Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Lea Patterson, who represents Crosspoint, denounced the decision and expressed plans to appeal the ruling.

“Government punishing religious schools for living out their religious beliefs is not only unconstitutional, it is wrong,” said Patterson, as quoted by Bangor Daily News.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Carson v. Makin that Maine cannot lawfully stop parents from using a state tuition program to send their children to Christian private schools.

The lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court ruling was driven by parents from Bangor Christian School who sued Maine over the ban on state tuition assistance for families sending their children to a private school that includes sectarian aspects in its curriculum.

Categories Bigotry, Ethics, Maine, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

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