Archives for category: Ethics
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Democracy: How Florida’s Supreme Court Built an Escape Hatch on Abortion Referendum

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2024 //
16

I was thrilled when I learned that the Supreme Court of Florida decided to allow a referendum on abortion this fall. Many people, including me, feared that the Court would throw out the referendum on grounds that the term “viability” is vague, that the referendum should call for a certain number of weeks.

Shouldn’t the public have the right to judge its laws?

But our reader, self-named Democracy, says it’s too soon to celebrate. The Court ‘s decision. It turns out, on close reading, that the Court inserted a barely noticed escape hatch if the referendum passes.

DeSantis appointed five of the seven justices on the Supreme Court.

Democracy wrote:

The Florida Supreme Court didn’t just do a “two-step” on abortion, they did a three-step.

First, the conservative Republican Supremes ruled 6-1 that the state constitution’s privacy protection(s) did NOT apply to abortion. They cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) decision that REJECTED Roe v. Wade’s finding that “the constitutional right to privacy was broad enough to protect an abortion choice made by a ‘woman and her responsible physician.’ “ And, in so doing, the conservative Republican Supremes REJECTED what a previous state Supreme Court had found in interpreting Florida’s 1980 voter-approved Privacy Clause that “few decisions are more personal and intimate, more properly private, or more basic to individual dignity and autonomy, than a woman’s decision … whether to end her pregnancy.”

The conservative majority complained that when voters approved the Privacy Clause, they did not understand it to apply to abortion, an absolutely astounding claim.

As Justice Jorge Labarga wrote in dissent,

“I lament that what the majority has done today supplants Florida voters’ understanding — then and now — that the right of privacy includes the right to an abortion. The majority concludes that the public understanding of the right of privacy did not encompass the right to an abortion. However, the dominance of Roe in the public discourse makes it inconceivable that in 1980, Florida voters did not associate abortion with the right of privacy.” 

Second, the conservative Republican Supremes ruled 4-3 that a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights CAN be placed on the ballot in Florida in November. The per curiam ballot decision said this:

“We decline to adopt a standard that would effectively vest us with the power to bar an amendment from the ballot because of a supposed ambiguity in the text of the amendment.”

Republican governor Ron DeSantis and Republican Attorney General — who is a Trumper and a seditionist — were opposed to voters deciding the abortion issue. The Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion will need 60 percent of the vote to be passed.

Third, the conservative Florida Supremes hedged their bets. In oral arguments and in writing, several of the justices raised the issue of fetal personhood, questioning how an amendment protecting the right to an abortion would square with the state constitution’s guarantee that all “‘natural persons’ have a right to life and liberty.” The Chief Justice wrote that an abortion protection amendment “would constitutionalize restrictions on the people’s authority to use law to protect an entire class of human beings from private harm.”

Thus, the conservative Republican majority wrote, yes, voters CAN get to decide if they want to pass The Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion amendment, BUT it may well be in direct opposition to “personhood rights as applied to the unborn child.”

And guess who gets to decide THAT question?

As University of California-Davis law professor Mary Ziegler put it,

“They’re saying the constitution may still protect the fetus and unborn child, and that question is still alive.”

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Injustice

Peter Greene: A Voucher By Any Other Name Is Still a Voucher and a Hoax

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2024 //
11

Peter Greene writes here about two basic facts: 1) vouchers are unpopular; and 2) because they are unpopular, their supporters call them something else, not vouchers. There have been more than 20 state referenda on vouchers. None passed. So voucher advocates had to become creative and come up with new names for them.

In Florida, the state constitution forbids spending public money on religious schools. So Jeb Bush, a fervent voucher guy, became creative. He proposed a referendum to remove that wording from the state constitution in 2012. The referendum was titled “The Religious Freedom Amendment.” Opponents of vouchers cried foul, but the misleading title remained. Others had to vote against “religious freedom” to oppose vouchers. Some were undoubtedly fooled, but the Religious Freedom Amendment was defeated anyway; only 44% supported it. Nonetheless, the Florida legislature enacted vouchers, ignoring the referendum failure, and in the past year, removed all income limits. As in every other state with universal vouchers, the majority of students applying for vouchers were already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Peter Greene writes:

Voucher supporters have one major problem: school vouchers are unpopular.

The term doesn’t test well. Measure of public support is iffy– if you ask people if they would like every student to have the chance to ride to a great school on their own pony, people say yes, but if you ask a more reality-based framing (“should we spend education dollars on public schools or subsidies for some private schools”) the results look a bit different. 

But one clear measure of public support for vouchers is this; despite all the insistence that the public just loves the idea, no voucher measure has ever been passed by the voters in a state. All voucher laws have been passed by legislators, not voted in by the public. 

Voucher supporters have developed one clear strategy– call them something else.

The basic school voucher idea is simple– the state takes money that it was going to spend on public education (either after that money has been paid in taxes, or by having someone trade a “contribution” to a voucher fund in exchange for tax credit) and giving it to parents, who in turn can go out and buy education services on their own. 

They’re not taxpayer-funded vouchers–they’re “tax credit scholarships.” They’re not vouchers– they’re an Education Freedom Account. And if you want to get in a twitter battle, go ahead and call education savings accounts “vouchers,” because part of the whole point of education savings account was to create an instrument that was both a super-voucher and not-something-we’ll-call-a-voucher-at-all-so-stop-doing-that-dammit.

I expect that behind the curtain there have been folks fervently doing messaging testing on other names for vouchers, and from the results around the nation, we can deduce that words that tested well were “education” and “freedom” and “scholarship.” Also, “empowerment” is coming on strong. States with education savings accounts have the chance to play with the initials ESA. 

So what pops out of the branding machine is Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (Arizona), Education Freedom Account (Arkansas, New Hampshire), Family Empowerment Scholarship Program (Florida), Choice Scholarship Program(Indiana), Opportunity Scholarship Program (North Carolina), Education Choice Scholarship (Ohio), and, of course, who could forget Betsy DeVos’s national tax credit scholarship voucher program, the Education Freedom Plan. 

You can mad lib your way to a voucher program of your own. Education Freedom Scholarship Opportunity Program! Family Freedom Education Scholarships! Family Freedom Empowerment Education Scholarship Opportunity Choice Program Plan! Just don’t call it a voucher.

Bonus credits to Louisianna, where someone took the trouble to write a bill pushing the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise– LA GATOR. And in California, legislature voucherfiles are trying “Education Flex Account” for their latest attempt to pass an ESA voucher.

But a voucher by any other name still smells the same. It’s a payoff to parents so that they’ll exit public education, a false promise of education choice, a redirection of public taxpayer dollars into private pockets, an outsourcing of discrimination, a public subsidy for private religious choices, a means of defunding and dismantling public education as we understand it in this country, a transformation of a public good into a market-based commodity. Call it what you like. There isn’t enough air freshener in the world to make it smell like a rose.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Ethics, Fake, Florida, Hoax, Vouchers

David C. Berliner and Gene V. Glass Review “Slaying Goliath”

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2024 //
15

I am almost four years late in discovering this review by two scholars for whom I have the greatest respect: David C. Berliner and Gene V. Glass.

I was happy to read this review because Slaying Goliath had a checkered fate. It was published in mid-January 2020. I went on a book tour, starting in Seattle. By mid-February, I made my last stop in West Virginia, where I met with teachers and celebrated the two-year anniversary of their strike, which shut down every school in the state.

As I traveled, news emerged of a dangerous “flu” that was rapidly spreading. It was COVID; by mid-March, the country was shutting down. No one wanted to read about the fight to save public schools or about its heroes. The news shifted, as it should have, to the panicked response to COVID, to the deaths of good people, to the overwhelmed hospitals and their overworked staff.

To make matters worse, the New York Times Book Review published a very negative review by someone who admired the “education reform” movement that I criticized. I thought of writing a letter to the editor but quickly dropped the idea. I wrote and rewrote my response to the review in my head, but not on paper.

Then, again by happenstance, I discovered that Bob Shepherd had reviewed the review of my book in The New York Times. He said everything that I wish I could have said but didn’t. His review was balm for my soul. Shepherd lacerated the tone and substance of the review, calling it an “uniformed, vituperative, shallow, amateurish ‘review.’” Which it was. His review of the review was so powerful that I will post it next.

Then, a few weeks ago, I found this review by Berliner and Glass.

The review begins:

Reviewed by Gene V Glass and David C. Berliner Arizona State University, United States

They wrote:

In a Post-Truth era, one must consider the source. 

In this case, the source is Diane Rose Silvers, the third of eight children of Walter Silverstein, a high school drop-out, and Ann Katz, a high school graduate. The Silvers were a middle-class Houston family, proprietors of a liquor store, and loyal supporters of FDR.

After graduation from San Jacinto High School, she enrolled in Wellesley College in September, 1956. Working as a “copy boy”for the Washington Post, Diane met Richard Ravitch, a lawyer working in the federal government and son of a prominent New York City family. They married on June 26,1960, in Houston, two weeks after Diane’s graduation from Wellesley. The couple settled in New York City, where Richard took employment in the family construction business. He eventually served as head of the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Lieutenant Governor in the 2000s, having been appointed by Democratic Governor David Paterson.

 Diane bore three sons, two of whom survived to adulthood. Diane and Richard ended their 26-year marriage in 1986. She had not been idle. For a period starting in 1961, Diane was employed by The New Leader, a liberal, anti-communist journal. She later earned a PhD in history of education from Columbia in 1975 under the mentorship of Lawrence Cremin.

Diane was appointed to the office of Assistant Secretary of Education, in the Department of Education by George H. W. Bush and later by Bill Clinton. In 1997, Clinton appointed her to the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), on which she served until 2004. 

Ravitch worked “… for many years in some of the nation’s leading conservative think tanks.

Read the full pdf here.

ravitch-reviewDownload
Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, History, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Parents, Privatization, Ravitch, Diane, Resistance, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Walton Foundation

Houston: Democratic Legislators Demand an Investigation of Mike Miles’ Tactics

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2024 //
2

The Texas Education Agency, under Republican control, took over the entire Houston Independent School district last year because one high school—with disproportionate numbers of at-risk students—had low test scores for several years in a row. Even though that school, Wheatley High School, was showing marked signs of progress, State Commissioner Mike Morath, fired the elected school board and hired Mike Miles as superintendent with expansive powers and selected a hand-picked “board of managers.”

Morath, a software executive, was appointed by Governor Gregg Abbott, who surely enjoys punishing a mostly Black and Hispanic district that did not vote for him. Of course, Morath must know that state takeovers seldom lead to improvement. This is especially the case in a hostile takeover, like this one.

Houston Democrats are waking up and taking action. At last. How can they allow Gregg Abbott to do a hostile takeover of HISD and install a man with a grandiose sense of his own importance, a man who previously failed in Dallas? Given the Republican super-majority in the state and Abbott’s vengeful nature, there’s probably not much that can change his stranglehold over Houston’s public school students and teachers. But it’s always good to protest and make noise.

Several Houston-area Democratic legislators are calling for a formal hearing to address “potential violations of state law” in Houston ISD in the aftermath of the Texas Education Agency stripping elected leaders from the school district.

The lawmakers asked in a letter sent Friday that the House Committee on Public Education host a hearing to address reports of “unqualified, non-degree holding teachers” working in classrooms and a lack of accommodations for students with disabilities. They also requested independent research proving the benefits of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles’ New Education System. 

The request comes after the state takeover of HISD in March 2023 and the Texas Education Agency’s appointment of the Superintendent and nine members of the Board of Managers. Due to the takeover, the nine lawmakers who signed the letter said it is “imperative that the state assume full responsibility for HISD students and hold the board of managers accountable”

“As their duly elected State Representatives, we must hold a hearing to learn more about these concerning reports and efforts to subvert state laws and requirements,” the letter states.

Reps. Christina Morales, Ann Johnson, Jarvis Johnson, Penny Morales Shaw, Mary Ann Perez, Jon Rosentahl, Shawn Thierry, Hubert Vo and Gene Wu all signed the letter, which was addressed to Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan and the House education committee. Phelan and TEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter. 

“Teacher reports and parent concerns are uncovering troubling developments at our schools,” Morales wrote in a statement. “The community can no longer vote on who represents us on the school board, so we as the state representatives must hold the appointed board accountable.”

In a response to the letter, HISD said it was going to stay focused on “the critical work of serving students and families,” and it had already seen positive impacts for kids after implementing reforms.

“HISD has invited dozens of elected and community leaders into our schools to see the work happening first-hand,” the district wrote. “We are pleased to share our progress with any other leaders who want to better understand what’s happening in the schools.”

Miles has implemented the New Education System program, a controversial model that includes standardized curriculum, the conversion of libraries to Team Centers and courses focused on critical thinking and the “Science of Reading,” at 85 schools this year. The campuses also have longer hours, timed lessons, higher pay for educators and additional staff who support teachers.

“Teachers have expressed that some of our most at-risk students are not receiving the services and support that they legally have the right to receive,” lawmakers wrote. “They have also shared with us that their students feel discouraged and constantly berated by the continuous assessments and instructional method prescribed in the New Education System.”

According to the letter, the district has circumvented the law requiring teachers to obtain a bachelor’s degree, a certification and other requirements to work in a classroom by assigning certified teachers as the teacher of record for more than one classroom.

“These efforts are not only detrimental to the continued learning and development of our students, but also a violation of state law,” lawmakers said.

The Democratic lawmakers also said the district has shared plans with teachers and administrators to address a teacher shortage by hiring community college students as teacher apprentices and learning coaches. 

Under the NES model, teacher apprentices work with teachers to plan and implement lesson plans, provide instruction and support classroom management, and they can serve as the teacher when the primary instructor is absent. Learning coaches provide support to teachers by supervising students, making copies, grading papers and completing paperwork.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Democrats, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Houston, State Takeover, Texas

Frank G. Splitt Reviews Liz Cheney’s “Oath and Honor”

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2024 //
5

Frank G. Splitt is a regular reader of the blog and a retired engineer of great distinction. He sent me his Amazon review of Liz Cheney’s best-selling book about the Congressional hearings conducted by the January 6 Select Committee. I have been meaning to review the book myself but put it off and am glad to print Frank’s review, as I agree with him.

I found the book to be absorbing, revealing what Congressional leaders said to one another on the day of the insurrection, as well as the inner workings of the January 6 Committee. Cheney doesn’t pull her punches. She was appalled by Trump’s disrespect for the Constitution and his egregious lying. She is contemptuous of Congressionals leaders like Kevin McCarthy who first condemned the violent attack, then turned on a dime to bend his knee to Trump.

Liz Cheney gave up her leadership role because of strong principles. Chief among these was her oath to the Constitution. She refused to betray it, and by doing so, she gave up the likelihood that she would one day be Speaker of the House. Very few Republicans were willing to follow her lead. I have immense respect for her.

Frank G. Splitt writes:

Liz Cheney wrote the book with purpose in mind: to assure that the January 6 Select Committee’s work that revealed the culpability of former president Donald Trump in the January 6.2021, attack on the U.S. Capital would not only be thoroughly documented for posterity, but would also illuminate in detail his criminal behavior backed by solid evidence via trustworthy testimony, mostly from members of his own administration.


The book is fact-based and well organized—providing the author’s first-hand beginning-to-end account of the January 6th, 2021, insurrection from outside and inside the halls of the Capital. She tells in consummate detail how, in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violently egregious attack on our Capitol. Cheney goes on to tell how Trump and his congressional enablers broke their oaths of office— betraying the American people and the Constitution in their attempt to prevent the counting of electoral votes and so keep Trump in office.


Liz Cheney helped organize and lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In her book she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history—exposing those who helped Trump spread his stolen-election lie while forsaking her promising political career in the process.


In the end, I am disappointed not only with the gullibility of so many American citizens who buy into Trump‘s lies, but even more so with craven politicians who keep silent for fear of losing their positions in Congress. No doubt, Cheney would have been near the top of the list of courageous U. S, Senators in John Kennedy’s 1956 book Profiles in Courage.


I am also somewhat disappointed that Trump did not respond to the Select Committee’s subpoena to testify before the committee. By not appearing, Cheney was denied the opportunity to emulate Senate lawyer Joseph Welch’s admonition of lying Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy at the 1953 Army-McCarthy hearing by saying: Mr. Former President, you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?


This should be a must-read book for every American voter as Cheney’s warning concerning the likely consequences of Trump’s return to office is indeed chilling.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cheating, Corruption, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Lies, Republicans, Shame, Trump

What Conservative Justices Said about Roe v. Wade Under Oath at Their Hearings

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2024 //
11

Six conservative Supreme Court justices overruled Roe v. Wade, discrediting a decision that had been in force for half a century. Before the Dobbs decision, American women were able to get an abortion. Today one of every three American women lives in states where abortion has been banned.

Here is what the six Justices said about Roe v.Wade at their Senate confirmation hearings.

Categories Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Justice, Lies

Michael Tomasky: Trump is the P.T. Barnum of Our Times

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2024 //
26

If you look back at old photos and videos of Trump, you are likely to see one of two scenarios. Either Trump with a beautiful babe on his arm, entering a restaurant or nightclub, or Trump selling something to the naive, whether it’s his “university” (where you will learn Trump’s secrets to getting rich), his wines, his steaks, or now his gold sneakers or his Trump-branded USA Bible. It must have been Trump-lovers who rushed to invest in the new DJT stock, because no one understands how a company could be valued at $8 billion when it reported $3.3 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2023 and a loss of $49 million. The stock opened at $70.90 a share, rose to $79.38, and settled two days later at $61.96. USA Today quoted a stock observer who predicted that the vanity stock might sink to $2 a share or less.

Michael Tomasky of The New Republic is betting that the people who buy Trump schlock are wising up to the con and realizing that they have been conned and should stop sending money to help a billionaire.

Tomasky writes:

The standard commentary on Donald Trump’s “God Bless the USA Bible” is that while of course it’s cynical and twisted and borderline sacrilegious, there’s also no doubt that his people are going to buy it by the carload, because these people would buy a bag of Trump Dogshit from the guy (“from the bowels of the best dogs, everybody says so”). Some people are just that, well, let us say easily taken in. 

Trump’s dark penchant for hucksterism is endless, and P.T. Barnum’s dictum is as true today as it was when he said it.* You could take slips of paper on which you write the names of 25 things these Americans like, pull out three or four, conjure up some physical manifestation of it, and Trump would sell it: NASCAR-Branson’s Famous Baldknobbers Beer, in limited-edition cans that show Trump as Rambo.

It’s endless. Or is it? Trump’s fundraising has taken a nosedive. His small-donor numbers are below where they once were. NBC News recently reported that donations to Trump of $200 or less are down 62.5 percent against 2019. He’s still raised a lot; I don’t want to mislead you here. The New York Times recently reported that Trump has more small donors than Joe Biden in some key swing states. But Biden has raised more from small donors overall, according to OpenSecrets. And in the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Trump had $33.5 million cash on hand and Biden reported having $71 million. That was March 20, before Thursday night’s Radio City Music Hall event with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, where Biden raked in $26 million.

All this is a shock to no one because, as we all know, Trump is spending a good chunk of his donations on his legal bills. The Times ran an amazing report about this on Wednesday. Of nearly $85 million in donations, almost a third, $27 million, has gone to legal bills. Hey, at least this time around, he’s apparently actually paying them.

Trump will have money. There’s no use pretending he won’t. But $400 sneakers and $60 Bibles are not signs of strength. They’re signs of weakness. Panic. Desperation. A guy who’ll sell anything that isn’t nailed to the floor.

And: He damn well should be panicked. Liberals and Democrats always impute to Republicans and right-wingers a strength they neither have nor deserve. Just because Trump tries to act like a tough guy and appeals to tough guys, liberals tend to concede he’s a tough guy. Nonsense. He’s a very weak and insecure man, as Mary Trump is always pointing out. 

Physically, he’s horribly out of shape: probably couldn’t climb a 20-step flight of stairs without stopping halfway up and, Rambo iconography notwithstanding, couldn’t throw a punch that would crush a grape. A few months ago, I saw a photo of Biden biking around Rehoboth Beach, and it struck me: Has Trump even ever been on a bicycle in his life? I’d be shocked. Biden may be older, but really, who’s the more likely stroke victim here, the guy who still rides the occasional bike or the guy who eats well-done steaks and whose four major food groups are McDonald’s, KFC, pizza, and Diet Coke?

Psychically, he’s in far, far worse shape. He knows very well in some corner of his brain that he’s guilty of everything he’s accused of. He knows that if he doesn’t win the presidency, there’s a very serious chance that he ends up convicted of one of those crimes and in prison. It won’t be Angola Penitentiary, but there won’t be chandeliers in the bathroom or an 18-hole golf course for him to win phony championships on, either. 

He would never admit any of this publicly, but privately Trump is surely terrified of this possible future. He knows that if he loses, the cases go forward, and he’s going to have to fight them as long as he possibly can, and it’s going to cost untold millions. Hence the sneakers and the Bible. And there’s surely more in store.

Some people will buy these things, there’s no question of that. But I’ll bet you that if we look hard six months from now, we’ll see that sales did not meet expectations. Of course, we’ll never know that because Trump will have full control of that narrative, and he’ll insist that sales were off the charts, and the press will print it. But we’ve seen this movie and heard this b.s. Trump Steaks were moving faster than they could cut them. Trump University was making millionaires out of many, many people. Right.

So let’s avert our gaze from the people who’d walk across hot coals for Donald Trump (while he stood off to the side, pleading bone spurs) and think instead about the ones who are slowly peeling off. They’re out there too. And they’re starting to see what you and I have so obviously seen for years: a twisted, desperate huckster who’s never cracked a Bible in his life and whose only religion is hustling the suckers who are born every minute.

*Apparently Barnum never said that famous oft-quoted line about a sucker born every minute, but he did believe in selling frauds to the gullible. https://www.thedailybeast.com/pt-barnum-makes-trump-look-like-a-clown

Categories Elections, Ethics, For-Profit, Fraud, Trump

“Cabrini”: A Wonderful Film

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2024 //
17

I recently went to see “Cabrini,” the story of America’s first saint. It’s a wonderful film, and I highly recommend it.

Mother Cabrini, as she was known, founded an order of sisters in Italy that created orphanages and homes for poor children. She longed to launch a mission to China but the Pope denied her request and told her to go to America instead, where there were large numbers of impoverished Italian immigrants.

She and several of her sisters traveled by ship to New York City in 1889 and immediately established residence in the Five Points, a congested and dirty neighborhood teeming with indigent Italian immigrants. The sisters opened a home and school for vagrant children living in squalid conditions.

Mother Cabrini was always in frail health but she had an iron will and surmounted every obstacle that blocked her desire to serve. She was a fearless feminist. The Archbishop of New York was not welcoming but she overcame his opposition. The Mayor of the city tried to close down her orphanage and frustrate her plans to grow, but she persisted.

She was ingenious. She sought out a reporter for The New York Times, brought him to see the living conditions of her district, and he wrote about her work. Children were “living worse than rats,” in sewers under the streets, he wrote. Anything to stay alive. Mother Cabrini ran a school where they learned English but sang songs in Italian. She wanted them to fit into their new homeland but not to lose touch with their ancestral home.

Let me emphasize that while the story centers on a nun with an iron will, there is no religious propagandizing. None. It’s a movie about courage, dedication, kindness, and a fierce desire to help the neediest. Mother Cabrini eventually established orphanages and hospitals around the world.

The lesson that I took away from the film was about the hard life of immigrants and the valor of those who reached out to help them survive. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were no government services. People came pouring in and had to make it in their own or die from hunger and disease.

Mother Cabrini’s love for the immigrants of her time stand in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric of today, when they are vilified as rapists, drug dealers, murderers, invaders. Even the children.

As I watched the film, I found myself wishing that Trump might see it. I know he never will. Its message is not religious. It’s about kindness, compassion, dedication, and selflessness. He would say that Mother Cabrini was a radical socialist, a Communist, a sucker, a fool, and not his type.

In addition to the story line, I loved the depiction of early New York City (even though the credits say the film was made in Buffalo).

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Ethics, History, Media, Religion

John Merrow Confers the TAMPU Awards!

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2024 //
9

John Merrow was the PBS correspondent on education for many years. Since he stepped down from this important role, I have discovered that he is quite a wonderful person. I didn’t think so when he burnished Michelle Rhee’s reputation, but he redeemed himself when his last hour-long segment on her delved into the cheating scandal that consumed her final year as chancellor of the DC schools.

But now I know John as a generous friend. When I was suffering in the aftermath of knee surgery, he printed out “Dr. Merrow’s Advice.” Every year, he is committed to riding the same number of miles as his age and thus far he has kept his pledge. He very kindly recommends organizations to receive donations in support of his bike ride, and NPE has been among them. We were very gratified by his recognition and support.

And now he has created an award he calls “TAMPU”—Towards a More Perfect Union. I love the award because its first recipient is Peter Greene, who is one of the best educational thinkers and writers of our time.

He writes at his blog, The Merrow Report:

I’ve always loved the elegant, aspirational phrase, “Toward a More Perfect Union,” found in the opening sentence of our Constitution.  It was our Founding Fathers’ first priority, ahead of establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

I think it’s time to do more to honor those who in their daily lives attempt to move us “Toward a More Perfect Union.” To that end, and only slightly with tongue in cheek, I suggest we create an award–call it the TAMPU Prize–acknowledging those who are attempting to push the envelope forward.  

While someone else works out the rules and timing, I am jumping the gun and awarding the TAMPU Prize to three remarkable people who are on my mind this week.  Please read on, and please add your own names.

The first TAMPU recipient is from the world of education, Peter Greene. Mr. Greene, whom I do not know, spent 39 years teaching English and now devotes his time to turning over rocks to expose wrong-doing in public education, to celebrate accomplishments, and to make us think.  You can find a lot of his well-researched columns here on Forbes Magazine, but he also blogs regularly at ‘Curmudgucation,’ a word I assume he made up.  

Here’s how Mr. Greene describes himself:  I started out life in New Hampshire and finished growing up in Northwest Pennsylvania. I attended a non-traditional education program that no longer exists at Allegheny College, a small liberal arts college, student taught in Cleveland Heights, and landed my first job in Lorain, Ohio. The year started with a strike and ended with a large workforce layoff, so I came back home, bought a mobile home, and lived in a trailer court while I subbed in three districts.

After a year, I started landing year-long sub jobs with the same school district I had graduated from in the mid-seventies. It was not the plan, but there was a woman… After thirty-some years in that district, I’ve taught pretty much every brand of English we have here, 7-12. But high school is my home; middle schoolers are, as I said back when I taught them, the emotional equivalent of having someone scream in your ears all day. God bless, MS teachers. And now, after thirty-nine total years in the classroom, I’ve retired.

My second recipient is Jessica Craven, a veritable ‘Energizer Bunny’ who’s working to help our democracy survive extremism of all sorts, but particularly MAGA.  She blogs almost every day, with a newsletter she calls “Chop Wood, Carry Water,” a title that carries a message: This is what you do when the chips are down–Get to work!

Click here to begin the “Chop Wood, Carry Water” experience.  Here’s how she introduces herself and her newsletter: 

What goes on here? Well, this newsletter is dedicated to saving democracy, addressing the climate crisis, preserving our freedoms, electing better lawmakers, and, in general, creating a better country—one simple action at a time. As the author, I’m essentially a bundler. Not of donations, but of easy things each of us can do to make a difference. I do these things, too—because I want my kid to grow up in a democracy AND because doing them makes me feel less anxious. My motto? Hope is an action.

I have no idea where Ms Craven lives with her husband, child, cat, and dog. Ms Craven publishes at least six times a week and always tells readers how to get involved.  She makes activism easy, no small feat.   “Chop Wood, Carry Water” is free, but I hope you will do as I do and subscribe ($60 per year). 

My final TAMPU recipient (this time around) is National Book Award recipient Jonathan Kozol, whose new book, “An End to Inequality,” is the 12th in his illustrious career. Now 87, Jonathan burst on the scene in 1967 with “Death at an Early Age,” which I can remember devouring.  His new book–which he says will be his last–is a passionate call for racial justice in education and the larger society.  Never one to call for compromise, he rejects all forms of tokenism.  “There is no such thing as perfectible apartheid. It’s all a grand delusion,” he writes. “Apartheid education isn’t something you can ‘fix.’ It needs to be dismantled.”  For more, see Dana Goldstein’s recent profile of Jonathan in the New York Times.

(Digression: I’ve known Jonathan for a long time, and he kindly wrote a glowing preface to a book of mine, “Choosing Excellence,” back in 2001. Unfortunately, my (inept) publisher misspelled his first name. Jonathon!  When they sent me an advance copy, I saw the error and immediately called the publisher.  “Sorry,” they said, “But the initial printing is only 5,000 copies. We will correct it on the next printing.” 

I explained very calmly that I would sue their asses if they released that printing, and I suggested that they shred those 5,000 copies and reprint it.  Instead, they hired people to paste over the error with a small sticker that spelled his name correctly. Somewhere I have the uncorrected version and a pasted-over version, as well as a clean copy from the second printing.)

So those three, Jessica Craven, Peter Greene, and Jonathan Kozol, are pushing and pulling us toward A More Perfect Union.  Who else deserves our attention?  Make your suggestions here.  

Thanks, 

John

Categories Character, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Ethics, Joy

Dan Rather: What Was NBC Thinking When It Hired Trump Apologist Ronna McDaniel?

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
21

The commentators at NBC and MSNBC are furious that NBC top brass hired Ronna Romney McDaniel as a paid commentator for the network. Presumably, the executives thought it would broaden their audience to bring on someone who had led the Republican National Committee for the past eight years.

They now face an internal rebellion. As Dan Rather explains on his blog Steady, prominent newscasters at NBC were apoplectic. The commentators at MSNBC—where Trump is despised—were assured that they did not have to invite her onto their programs.

Last night, I watched MSNBC, and every commentator lashed out against the hire. Joy Reid, Jen Psaki, Rachel Maddow, and Laurence O’Donnell expressed their outrage. They did not care that she was a Republican. They did not care that she was a conservative. They cared that she was an election denier and a liar. She did whatever Trump wanted, and he booted her anyway. She was actively involved in the fake electors scheme in Michigan. She even dropped her middle name (Romney) to please Trump. She lacks integrity. She insulted the media, as Trump did. As Jen Psaki said, she is not honest.

Dan Rather shared their views:

Journalism Lesson #1 for 2024:

The mainstream media should not normalize Donald Trump’s behavior, nor should they give a platform to his lies or those of his sycophants, who for years have spread disastrous untruths that may have irreparably damaged our nation.

But in one fell swoop, NBC News has managed to do both. By hiring former Republican National Committee chief Ronna McDaniel, NBC has given credence and legitimacy to a Republican who has been in lockstep with the lies, helping spread plenty of the former president’s falsehoods. Allowing McDaniel to be in the same area code as NBC News is a huge mistake and will only further shred the small amount of trust Americans still have in the mainstream media. I don’t blame journalists at NBC. They have long been some of the finest in the business. But one wonders what the hell executives at the network were thinking.

Before she sold her soul, Ronna McDaniel was considered Republican royalty. She’s the granddaughter of George Romney, former GOP governor of Michigan, and niece of Senator Mitt Romney, former Republican presidential nominee and former governor of Massachusetts. She has been the chair of the RNC since the day Donald Trump took office in 2017. And she has been loyal to him at all costs, especially the truth.

During her tenure, she was a prolific fundraiser yet oversaw the net losses of Republican governorships and congressional seats. But her biggest claim to fame during her seven years on the job is that she was a Trump supporter, loyalist, and apologist above all else.

One could argue that this is the role of the head of a political party: to support the highest-ranking member of said party. Yes, that is typically true. But McDaniel spent years repeating Trump’s disinformation, making cases for his lies and paying his legal bills. Here are just a few of her misdeeds:

  • Told CNN’s Chris Wallace of Joe Biden’s election win, “I don’t think he won it fair.”
  • Characterized the January 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.”
  • Orchestrated the censure of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican January 6 Committee members.
  • Encouraged Michigan canvassers not to certify the 2020 election results, promising them lawyers.
  • Took part in Trump’s scheme to assemble fake electors.
  • Refused to condemn QAnon to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.
  • Mocked Senator John Fetterman and President Biden for speech impediments.
  • Warned that those Republicans who didn’t embrace Trump’s policies “will be making a mistake.”

McDaniel made her NBC News debut on this Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” At the top of the broadcast, host Kristen Welker disclosed McDaniel’s new role. She said, “This interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor. This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.”

During the interview, McDaniel defended her time as chair with what may be the quote of the year. “When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team. Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right?”

No, Ms. McDaniel, you don’t get to have it both ways. The truth does not change depending on who signs your paycheck. Whom are we supposed to believe, your RNC or NBC self?

McDaniel walked back some of her more outrageous statements, sort of. As of yesterday, she now admits that Joe Biden won the election “fair and square.” However, she continued to insist there were issues with the election. When pushed, she mentioned the huge increase in mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and suggested voter fraud. Reminder: No significant fraud of any kind was found in any state in the 2020 election.

In defending their hire, NBC News’s Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of politics, said, “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.”

Many on the NBC team vehemently disagreed. “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but, if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons,” Joe Scarborough, the “Morning Joe” co-host, said at the top of the broadcast Monday. Mika Brzezinski added, “We hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor.”

Chuck Todd, NBC’s chief political analyst, could barely contain his anger and disbelief on “Meet the Press.”. “She [McDaniel] wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for it. So she has — she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?”

He continued, “There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News who are uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination.”

Now we come to the why. Why would NBC News hire someone as controversial as Ronna McDaniel? 

News gathering is a business, as unfortunate as that is. As a business, it needs to make money. In television news, more viewers equals more money. So news organizations feel they need to appeal to the broadest spectrum of viewers possible. We will exempt Fox, which calls itself a news organization but is more of a propaganda outfit for the GOP.  

The mainstream middle is a much more crowded field that is bombarded by accusations of bias and liberalism. So they feel the need to show their Republican bona fides by hiring conservative voices.

But that is the crux of the problem. Which Republicans? Trump loyalists who are election deniers and January 6 apologists? Never-Trumpers who are as likely to appeal to many Republican viewers as progressives? How do they represent the political right without alienating their loyal viewers and their correspondents? These are the new political realities ushered in by Donald Trump. And another reason independent journalism is essential right now, essential to provide unvarnished coverage in one of the most important elections in American history and to hold the mainstream media accountable.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Character, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Lies, Media, Republicans, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »