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Arizona: Grand Canyon Institute On Voucher Ripoff

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2024 //
3

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

Fabiola Santiago: Say Gay, Florida! DeSantis Loses!

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2024 //
3

One of my favorite columnists is Fabiola Santiagonof the Miami Herald. She is smart, principled, and fearless. She has stood strong against Governor DeSantis’s mean-spirited, hateful culture wars. And she rejoiced when the state agreed to eviscerate the so-called “Parental Rights in Education” law, better known as “Don’t Say Gay.” DeSantis called it a “victory,” and it was a victory, but not for him.

Santiago wrote:

Take a victory lap, Floridians.

For a change, good news on the culture wars front arrives in Florida by way of successful activism, a less sycophantic Legislature — and a significant court settlement reached in a constitutional challenge to the state’s “Don’t Say Gay law.”

Students and teachers will be able to discuss LGBTQ+ issues in the classroom — as long as it’s not in the lesson plans. New, detailed guidelines from the state Department of Education about what can and can’t be said regarding sexual orientation and gender identity are supposed to be coming soon to school districts. 

One can only hope these spelled-out rules focus on helping kids understand — and respect — all kinds of families that aren’t going away just because religious zealots desire it. And that they leave out the political hysterics of past years.

In other words, the rules need to be useful.

In addition to the court settlement, there were positive developments in the Legislature: Harmful censorship and rights bills infringing on free speech and a free press, and to ban abortion in the state, were left to die on the floor or in committees.

To save face and ego, the discriminatory “Don’t say gay” law’s chief instigator, Gov. Ron DeSantis, claimed the settlement as a victory over “activists and extremists.” As if we’re all blind to the fact that the activists at work spinning rage-provoking misinformation were, among right-wingers, the Moms for Liberty he heralded, a group now losing ground here and all over the country. 

As for the state’s chief extremist, it’s DeSantis himself.

It bears repeating: Gender identity and sexual orientation was never part of the curriculum in kindergarten through third grade in Florida. As the legal challenge made clear, the overblown outrage created by falsehoods and exaggerations about “pornographic” books available to children was circulated by Republicans to set the stage to pass legislation. 

They used the first ban on elementary school-aged kids as the conduit to extend anti-gay laws to prohibit the free speech of mature high school students. The courts saw that for what it was: an attempt to send back to the closet an entire community by silencing it.

Didn’t ‘stay the course’

Voters are tired of dogmatic hogwash hijacking educational institutions.

From the offensively watered-down teaching of Black history to the redefinition of subjects areas like civics — only patriotism allowed — plus, the more recent attempt to wipe out sociology the way diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs were, all these initiatives have brought negative, world-wide attention to Florida.

To add insult to the injury, the free-speech restrictions in public education are happening at a time when a voucher system allows parents to afford whatever private education they choose for their children. But it’s never enough. Republicans want to impose conservative ideology on the rest of us.

“Stay the course,” a buoyant DeSantis urged legislators on the winter session’s opening day.

Some eager-beaver legislators heard him. But key players like Senate President Kathleen Passidomo of Naples and House Speaker Paul Renner of Palm Harbor didn’t follow his mandates this time like bobble-heads.

Perhaps they took their cues from Iowa caucus results: DeSantis pitched his “Make America Florida” — and got a no, thanks.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, DeSantis, Extremism, Failure, Florida

Vouchers Fuel Revival of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2024 //
109

The adoption of voucher programs has been a boon for religious schools. Schools that were financially troubled are now thriving with public subsidies for their students as well as an influx of new students.

This article by reporter Holly Meyer on the Associated Press newswire describes the good fortune of religious schools but does not mention the copious research demonstrating the failure of vouchers.

The Miami Archdiocese’s superintendent of schools says Catholic education is increasingly in demand in South Florida, now that all K-12 students regardless of income are allowed to use taxpayer-funded programs to pay for private school tuition.

Against the backdrop of favorable decisions by the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, Florida was among nine states that expanded school voucher programs last year. So many families have signed up for the taxpayer-funded tuition reimbursements, some states are already exceeding their budgets….

The movement gained momentum amid fallout from pandemic-era school restrictions, debates on how transgender students should participate in school life, and wars over books and curriculum related to race and LGBTQ+ issues….

Some long-running religious schools are now planning for a fuller future after the wave of policy wins for the so-called school choice movement. Others hope voucher expansion comes to their state.

“We are moving into growth mode,” said Jim Rigg, superintendent of the Miami Archdiocese’s 64 schools. Accelerated by the state’s private school scholarship program, enrollment has risen for the last four years, reaching its highest peak in over a decade, he said….

Nearly 80% of private school families choose religious ones, according to P. George Tryfiates, public policy and legal affairs vice president for the Association of Christian Schools International. The association represents about 2,200 U.S. schools.

In a statement, he said Christian schools are, among other things, “a refuge from the cultural wars over sexuality.”

Voucher programs do not include accountability measures nor do they ban discrimination. Religious Scholls are not required to comply with federal laws so they may ban students with disabilities and students of religions different from the sponsor.

Most vouchers are used by students already enrolled in religious schools.

The voucher movement is a not subtle way of gutting civil rights protections.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Miami, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Vouchers in Ohio Benefit the Affluent

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2024 //
4

Jan Resseger reports that the wild expansion of vouchers in Ohio has worked as predicted: they confer public money on students who already attend private and religious schools. They do not benefit children who are poor. The claim that they would “help poor children escape failing schools” was a hoax.

Maybe voucher advocates believed it thirty years ago, when no one knew how vouchers would work. But now we know. The evidence from every state with vouchers shows the same result: the overwhelming majority of vouchers are used by students who never attended public schools. The more states expand vouchers, the more they subsidize affluent families. And the poor kids who take vouchers fall behind their peers in public schools.

She writes:

The Cleveland Plain Dealer placed Laura Hancock’s expose about Ohio’s wildly expanded school voucher program on the front page above the fold in Sunday’s paper. It is good to see this dangerous threat to public schooling—inserted into the state budget with minimal public discussion—receiving the attention it deserves.

Hancock’s message? Ohio isn’t helping poor kids in public schools, the original promise of Ohio’s first voucher program in Cleveland in the 1990s. Instead, the new vouchers are a gift to middle income and wealthy families whose children are already enrolled in private and parochial schools:

“The number of Cuyahoga County students (students in greater Cleveland) 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… has increased nearly four-fold, from 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 benefiting from the vouchers were already enrolled in private schools rather than fleeing a school district.”

Hancock profiles, for example, three of Cleveland’s middle and upper income suburbs where the vouchers now serve as a tuition-reimbursement entitlement for families of students already paying private school tuition: “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.”

Hancock lists the ten Ohio public school districts with the largest growth in students accepting a voucher under Ohio’s huge expansion of school vouchers this year.  Three are exurbs of Cleveland; one is a shared exurb of Cleveland and Akron; one is an exurb of Akron; one is an exurb of Columbus, and four are exurbs of Cincinnati. In every one of these districts, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education, the median income is far above the state’s median of $41,132.59. In Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb, the median income is $96,508.50. Median income in Hudson, part of suburban Cleveland and Akron, is $82,183.00, and in Olentangy, a Columbus exurb, median income is $79,892.50.

Why are the ten school districts with so many students taking vouchers for the first time all wealthy suburbs? Hancock explains: “because the legislature… 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.”

Hancock adds that the state is giving away a whole lot of money in each voucher: $6,167 for grades K-8 and $8,407 for grades 9-12. Thomas S. Poetter, a professor at Miami University of Ohio, who recently edited the new Vouch for This!, adds that the vouchers are worth more than the state school funding formula has established as the base cost public schools are expected to spend per student—the amount that includes the state and local contributions required by the school funding formula. Poetter writes: “(T)he fact remains that the state will be spending more per pupil on individual children in private high schools with its voucher program… than it will for individual public school students across the state… That has been the case for nearly the entire life of the EdChoice ‘Scholarship’ program (it’s a voucher program) but it really hits home with the high figures coming at us in the new budget. And just think of all that could be done in our public schools to better our offerings… if we weren’t sending more than $1 billion a year into private hands to be used in ways that none of us would ever approve of in public education….” (Vouch for This!, pp. 130-131)

Hancock quotes Troy McIntosh from the Ohio Christian Education Network and the Center for Christian Virtue enthusing about the new voucher expansion. She quotes Senator Andy Brenner, Chair of the Ohio Senate Education Committee, explaining that families ought to get the vouchers because they are paying taxes and therefore ought to get a personal reward for their children. She adds that after the voucher expansion, “the Catholic Diocese of Columbus is looking to potentially build schools in areas that currently don’t have a Catholic school.”

Hancock’s article omits one urgently important issue with Ohio’s new voucher expansion: over half the state’s counties are rural and entirely lack a private school where students might potentially carry a voucher. The expansion of private school tuition vouchers will shift the distribution of money from the state’s school foundation budget away from the state’s rural school districts because private school tuition vouchers can be used only by students in areas where private schools exist—places with larger and more concentrated populations.  In a report last year for the Ohio League of Women Voters (You should scroll down and then download report.), Susan Kaeser explains: “Most of the public school population is concentrated in Ohio’s 8 largest urban counties, and so is the private school population. The 8 largest counties have 46% of the public school population and 71% of the private school students…  Public education is the only consistently available education choice in Ohio’s 46 small counties, those with less than 8,000 public school students… Private schools across these 46 counties serve a total of only about 7,000 students.” “Rural taxpayers underwrite private choice in the state—but not where they live.”

Hancock reminds readers that “over 130 public school districts… are suing the state over the constitutionality of the vouchers.”  Coincidentally on Sunday, the Plain Dealer also published a commentary by William Phillis, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, which is a co-plaintiff with the public school districts in the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit.  Phillis provides the history, beginning in 1819, of Ohio’s efforts to establish and support public education.  Our system of public common schools, Phillis reminds us, is protected by the language of the 1851 Ohio Constitution in Article VI, section 2: “Convention delegates crafted language that required the legislature to secure, by taxation, a thorough and efficient system of common schools and clarified that religious sects or other sects shall not control any part of school funds of the state.”

The school voucher explosion for the wealthy that was slipped into Ohio’s FY 2024-2025 state budget last summer epitomizes what we were warned about last year in the conclusion to The School Voucher Illusion, edited by experts Kevin Welner, Gary Orfield, and Luis A. Huerta and published by the Teachers College Press: “As currently structured, voucher policies in the United States are unlikely to help the students they claim to support. Instead, these policies have often served as a facade for the far less popular reality of funding relatively advantaged (and largely White) families, many of whom already attended—or would attend—private schools without subsidies. Although vouchers are presented as helping parents choose schools, often the arrangements permit the private schools to do the choosing… Advocacy that began with a focus on equity must not become a justification for increasing inequity. Today’s voucher policies have, by design, created growing financial commitments of taxpayer money to serve a constituency of the relatively advantaged that is redefining their subsidies as rights—often in jurisdictions where neighborhood public schools do not have the resources they need.” (The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, p. 290)

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Hoax, Lies, Ohio, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Robert Hubbell: The Supreme Court’s Latest Decision Was a Disgrace: Vote!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2024 //
47

Robert Hubbell is outraged by the Supreme Court’s latest decision regarding the insurrection clause (Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment). The conservative majority on the Court usually claim to be “originalists” who scrutinize the language in the Constitution and divine the intent of those who wrote it.

In this case, the language was crystal clear. Any officer of the federal government who swore an oath to defend the Constitution and then participated in an insurrection against the Constitution was disqualified from running again for office. But the majority said that the official who had engaged in insurrection must first be subject to a Congressional vote; that language is not in the Constitution although there is specific language about the vote needed to remove the disqualification.

Hubbell was furious that Clarence Thomas was allowed to vote in this case since his wife was an active participant in the plot to overturn the election. He should have recused himself but that would require an ethical compass that the justice lacks.

Here is an excerpt from Hubbell’s post. You should open the link and read it in full.

He writes:

The most important lesson from Monday’s disqualification ruling is that the Supreme Court is broken beyond repair. The reactionary majority made that fact abundantly clear by unilaterally amending the Constitution to remove the Insurrection Clause from the 14th Amendment. 

Those sworn to protect the Constitution are dismantling it. The protectors of the Constitution have become its adversary in order to protect a failed insurrectionist who has promised a second effort to overthrow the Constitution. (“I said I want to be a dictator for one day.”)

There are many reasons to ensure that Donald Trump is not elected to the presidency in 2024. Rehabilitating and reforming the Court is chief among them. Sadly, reforming the Court is below the radar for most voters. But the lawless reactionary majority has already denied women the full protection of the liberty clause of the 14th amendment; it is refusing to enforce the clear intent of the 14th to ensure that descendants of enslaved people have a meaningful right to vote and equal protection under law. And the logical force of the Dobbs opinion strongly suggests that the Court will withdraw existing protections for same-sex marriage, contraception, and “inter-racial” marriages.

Monday’s opinion is a clear warning to all Americans that the threat to their liberties is immediate and real. Those who seek to protect existing liberties (and reclaim those already abrogated Court) must vote as if their freedoms depend on the outcome of the 2024 election—because they do! 

The Court has abandoned the Constitution; the last line of defense is the American people exercising their most fundamental right—the right to elect their representatives, who can (in turn) enlarge the Court and limit its jurisdiction.

There is abundant evidence that many Americans are not inspired by either presidential candidate or feel betrayed, forgotten, or ignored by the political process. But one candidate will seek to defend their freedoms by preserving and enforcing the Constitution (in part, by reforming the Court). The other has promised to overturn the Constitution “for one day”—which means “overturn the Constitution” period. The duration of a suspension of the Constitution is irrelevant.

Feelings of anger and upset over Monday’s ruling are understandable and warranted. But the most appropriate response is to redouble our efforts to defeat Trump. Nothing else matters. If we achieve that goal, we can work to advance all other goals. If we do not, we will be at the mercy of a renegade majority on the Court and an out-of-control, aspiring dictator for four years.

What happened?

On Monday, the Court overruled the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision removing Trump from the Colorado primary ballot. The opinion is here: 23-719 Trump v. Anderson (03/04/2024).

The ruling was ostensibly 9-0 with three justices writing a concurring opinion that reads like a dissent and a concurrence by Amy Coney Barrett that criticized the overreach of reactionary majority. In fact, as explained below, the ruling was 5-4, meaning that Justice Thomas’s refusal to recuse himself (as required by statute and rule) was outcome-determinative. Justice Thomas’s corruption saved Donald Trump’s slot on the Colorado ballot.

Distilled to its essence, the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson removed the Insurrection Clause from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

How did the Court effectively remove the Insurrection Clause from the 14th Amendment?

The 14th Amendment creates a self-executing disqualification for insurrectionists who previously took an oath to support the Constitution. The self-executing nature of that disqualification is consistent with other provisions of the 14th Amendment (equal protection, due process) that are likewise self-executing—as are other qualifications on the presidency (such as age, citizenship, and tenure of residency in the US).

Despite the plain language of the 14th Amendment—which creates a bar to holding federal office based on the conduct of the insurrectionist standing alone—the Court ruled that the Insurrection Clause is ineffective unless Congress affirmatively passes legislation that conforms to narrow prescriptions of the Court’s opinion in Trump v. Anderson.

The reactionary majority ignores that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment speaks to the role of Congress in enforcing the Insurrection Clause. It says that Congress can remove an insurrectionist’s disqualification by a two-thirds vote. But under the Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson, Congress can prevent any disqualifications of insurrectionists by simply refusing to pass the enabling legislation prescribed by the reactionary majority.

As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her concurring opinion,

It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by . . . declining to pass implementing legislation.

As George Conway noted on Monday on MSNBC, the reactionary majority arrived at its conclusion by simply ignoring the language of the Constitution. The reactionary majority regularly uses the text of the Constitution as a cudgel when they want to deny liberties embraced by the language of the Constitution. But when they seek to ensure that a failed insurrectionist and aspiring dictator remains on the ballot, they act as if the text of the Constitution does not exist.

A reader wrote to me after the issuance of the opinion and asked, “What can we do?” My answer is this:

Elect Democrats. Reform the Court. Defend the Constitution. Preserve Democracy.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, History, Justice, Trump

Arizona: Parent Learns That “School Choice” Means “Schools Choose”

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2024 //
35

Pamela Lang, a journalist and graduate student in Arizona, wrote for The Hechinger Report about her futile search for a school that would enroll her son, who has special needs. Despite Arizona’s budget-busting voucher program, she and he were turned away again and again. It’s time for her to check out her local public school, where her son would get the services he needs and he could not be rejected.

Please read her account.

If you live in Arizona, school choice may be coming to your neighborhood soon. As someone who has had more school choice than I know what to do with, I can tell you what may feel like a shocking surprise: Private schools have the power to choose, not parents.

I live in Phoenix, where the nearby town of Paradise Valley is getting ready to offer the privatization movement’s brand of choice to families. The district has indicated that it will likely vote to close four public schools due to insufficient funds. If this happens, other districts will probably follow: The state’s recent universal voucher expansion has predictably accelerated the diversion of money from public to private schools.

Arizona approved use of school choice vouchers, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESAs, in 2011 on the promise that they were strictly for children with special needs who were not being adequately served in the public school system. The amount of funds awarded to qualified students was based on a tiered system, according to type of disability.

Over the years, the state incrementally made more students eligible, until full expansion was finally achieved in 2022. For some students, the amount of voucher money they qualify for is only a few thousand dollars, nowhere near enough to cover tuition at a private school. Often, their parents can’t afford to supplement the balance. However, my son, who is autistic, qualified for enough to cover full tuition.

I took him out of public school in 4th grade. Every school I applied to seemed to have the capability to accommodate his intellectual disability needs but lacked the willingness. Eventually, I found a special education school willing to accept him. It was over an hour from our home, but I hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it ultimately was not a good fit.

I then thought Catholic schools would welcome my son, but none of them did. One Catholic school principal who did admit him quickly rescinded the offer after a teacher objected to having him in her class.

The long list of general, special-ed, Catholic and charter schools that turned my son away indicate how little choice actually exists, despite the marketing of ESA proponents.

There was a two-year period where I gave up and he was home without social opportunities. I was not able to homeschool, so a reading tutor and his iPad became his only access to education.

I then tried to enroll him in private schools for students with disabilities.

These schools were almost always located in former office suites in strip malls with no outdoor access. My son’s current school shares space with a dialysis center in a medical building, while a former school was located in a small second-floor suite in a Target plaza.

Once a private school admits your child, they can rescind admission without cause. Private schools are at leisure to act as virtual dictatorships, and special-ed schools in particular are notorious for keeping parents at a distance…

Education is a human right, and public schools, open to all, are the guardians of this right. What privatizers call choice does not really exist.

Please open the link and read the article in full.

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Hoax, Parents, School Choice, Special Education, Students, Vouchers

Jennifer Rubin: Blame Merrick Garland for Appointing Hur

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2024 //
32

Jennifer Rubin is one of my favorite columnists at The Washington Post. She is both a journalist and a lawyer. She cuts to the heart of whatever matter she examines. She was hired to be the conservative commentator on the opinion page; she had Sterling credentials. But Trump pushed her out of the conservative bubble and into the center.

Here she pins the blame for the Hur fiasco where it belongs: on Merrick Garland, who appointed Hur knowing he was a loyal Republican.

She wrote:

Special counsel Robert K. Hur had a single task: determine if President Biden illegally retained sensitive documents after his vice presidency. The answer should not have taken nearly 13 months or a more than 300-page report. Hur also should have avoided trashing “the fundamental ethos of a prosecutor to avoid gratuitous smears,” as former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen told me.

Hur found that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” and that prosecution was “also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors.” He seemed to intentionally disguise that conclusion with contradictory and misleading language that “Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” He conceded that was not legally provable. (As Just Security pointed out, the media predictably and widely misreported this: “The press incorrectly and repeatedly blast out that the Hur report found Biden willfully retained classified documents, in other words, that Biden committed a felony; with some in the news media further trumpeting that the Special Counsel decided only as a matter of discretion not to recommend charges.”)

Hur acknowledged that Biden’s cooperation, “including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage,” leaves the impression he made “an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully — that is, with intent to break the law — as the statute requires.” Moreover, Hur conceded that the documents “could have been stored, by mistake and without his knowledge, at his Delaware home since the time he was vice president, as were other classified documents recovered during our investigation.”

The body of the report refutes the element of willfulness — noting a variety of factors (e.g., a good-faith belief the Afghanistan memo was no longer classified, presidents’ practice of taking notes with them). Hur also distinguished Biden’s behavior from four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump:

Several material distinctions between Mr. Trump’s case and Mr. Biden’s are clear. Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.

That should have been the end of the matter.
But it was Hur’s gratuitous smear about Biden’s age and memory — most egregiously, his far-fetched allegation that Biden could not recall the date of his son Beau’s death — that transformed a snide report into a political screed. Speculating about how a jury might have perceived the president years after the incidents took place was entirely irrelevant because the lack of evidence meant there would be no case.

Former prosecutors were almost uniformly outraged. Jeffrey Toobin remarked, “It was outrageous that Hur put in some of that stuff in this report. That had no place in it.” He added, “There is no reason this report had to be 300 pages. There is no reason this fairly straightforward case had to be treated this way. … The job of prosecutors is to put up or shut up.”

Former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann called Hur’s jabs “entirely inappropriate.” He tweeted, “Of course, no crime was committed by Biden, but as anticipated, Hur takes the opportunity to make a gratuitous political swipe at Biden. … [Attorney General Merrick] Garland was right to have appointed a Special Counsel but wrong to pick Hur and to think only a Republican could fit the bill.” (Weissmann analogized to former FBI chief James B. Comey, who exonerated Hillary Clinton of crimes but savaged her conduct just days before the 2016 election.)

Likewise, ethics guru Matthew Seligman told me, “What Hur should have written — and all he should have written — is that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that President Biden’s level of intent rose to the willfulness standard required by the statute.” Eisen argues that Hur violated the Justice Department’s prosecutorial principles. (“Federal prosecutors should remain sensitive to the privacy and reputation interests of uncharged parties,” the rules say.)
Hur is not solely to blame for going beyond his mandate and introducing smears. Garland erred in appointing and giving free rein to a Republican loyalist. He should have anticipated that a rock-ribbed Republican such as Hur would echo GOP campaign smears attacking Biden’s memory and age. Garland’s lousy judgment wound up sullying and politicizing the Justice Department.

As former prosecutor Shan Wu wrote, “It was Garland’s responsibility to ensure that Hur’s report did not stray from proper Justice Department standards. Garland should have known the risks when he picked Hur — who had clerked for conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist, served as the top aide to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who assisted [Attorney General] Bill Barr’s distortion of the Mueller Report, and who was a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney.” (Hur also clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski, a right-wing icon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit who was forced to resign over accusations of decades-long egregious sexual harassment.) Unlike Barr, Garland did not even release a summary to focus on the salient facts. This blunder, coupled with his unconscionable delay in investigating Trump, bolsters criticism that Garland has been the wrong man for the job.

Finally, the media — which made a spectacle of itself hollering at and interrupting Biden in his news conference after the report was released — certainly amplified the GOP talking point. Many outlets failed to explain that there was insufficient evidence of willfulness. For days, headlines focused on the memory smear rather than on Biden’s exoneration. Worse, Sunday news shows misreported the report.

The Biden-Harris campaign decried the media’s obsession with Biden’s age while virtually ignoring another rambling, incoherent Trump speech in which he insisted Pennsylvania would be renamed if he lost. (In South Carolina on Saturday, he was at it again, inviting Russia to invade NATO countries and insulting Nikki Haley’s deployed husband.) By habitually and artificially leveling the playing field, much of the media enables MAGA propaganda and neglects Trump’s obvious mental and emotional infirmities.

Still, facts matter. Biden acted responsibly and committed no crime. Trump faces multiple felony counts, including intentionally withholding top-secret documents and obstructing an investigation. Three years separate Biden and Trump in age, but the distance between their mental and emotional fitness remains incalculable — as is the chasm between the media we have and the media democracy requires.

Categories Bias, Biden, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Trump

New York City: End Mayoral Control of the Schools!

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2024 //
21

Politico reported recently that Mayor Eric Adams is pulling out all the stops in his campaign to persuade the legislature to extend mayoral control of New York Ciry’s public schools.

That’s understandable. Every mayor wants as much power as he can gather. Guiliani wanted mayoral control. The legislature turned him down. Michael Bloomberg got it after he won the mayoralty in 2001, pledging to make the schools run efficiently and successfully after years of political squabbling and disappointing academic results.

A historical note: the last time that the independent Board of Education was abolished was in 1871, when Boss Tweed pushed through state legislation to create a Department of Education, in charge of the schools. The new Department immediately banned purchase of any textbooks published by Harper Bros., to retaliate for the publication of Thomas Nast cartoons ridiculing the Tweed Ring in Harper’s magazine. The new Department steered lucrative contracts to Tweed cronies, for furniture and all supplies for the schools.

Two years later, the corruption of the Tweed Ring was exposed, and criminal prosecutions ensued. In short order, the Department of Education was dissolved and the independent Board of Education was revived.

In the 2001 race for Mayor, billionaire Mike Bloomberg campaigned on promises to rebuild the city’s economy after the devastating attacks of 9/11/2001. He also promised to take over the school system, make it more efficient, improve student performance, and able to live within its budget of $12 billion plus. He won, and many people were excited by the prospect of a successful businessman taking over the city and the schools.

In 2002, the State Legislature gave Mayor Bloomberg control of the schools in New York City. It replaced the independent Board of Education, whose seven members were appointed by the five borough presidents and the mayor. Bloomberg had complete control of the school system, with its more than 1,000 schools and more than one million students. The new law allowed him to appoint the majority of “the Panel on Education Policy,” a sham substitute for the old Board of Education.

The new law still referred to “the Board of Education,” but the new PEP was a shell of its former self. It was toothless, as Bloomberg wanted. He picked the Chancellor, and he had the policymaking powers. Early on, in 2004, he decided that third graders should be held back based on their reading scores. Some of his appointees on the PEP opposed the idea and he fired them before the vote was taken. He wanted all his appointees to know that he appointed them to carry out his decisions, not to question them. The retention policy was later expanded through eighth grade but quietly abandoned in 2014 because it failed.

I won’t go into all the missteps of the Bloomberg regime, which lasted 12 years, but will offer a few generalizations:

1. The mayor should not control the schools because they will never be his first priority. The mayor juggles a large portfolio: public safety, the economy, transportation, infrastructure, public health, sanitation, and much more. On any given day, he/she might have 30 minutes to think about the schools; more some days, none at all on others.

2. Mayoral control concentrates too much power in the hands of one person. One person, especially a non-educator, gets an idea into his head and imposes it, no need to talk to experienced educators or review research.

3. Mayoral control marginalizes parents and community members, whose concerns deserve to be heard. At public hearings of the PEP, parents testified but rightly thought that no one listened to them. In the “bad old days,” they could speak to someone in their borough president’s office; now the borough presidents have no power. No one does, Except the mayor.

4. The Mayor picked three non-educators as Chancellor. Joel Klein disdained educators and public schools, even though he was a graduate of the NYC public schools. He created a “Leadership Academy” to train non-educators and teachers to bypass the usual path to becoming a principal by serving for years as an assistant principal. Klein surrounded himself with B-school graduates and looked to Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and Jack Welch for advice. Large numbers of experienced teachers and principals retired.

5. Bloomberg loved churn and disruption. He closed scores of schools and replaced them with many more small schools. Some high schools that had programs for ELLs, special education, career paths for different fields, were closed and replaced by schools for 300/400 students, too small to offer specialized programs or advanced classes.

6. New initiatives were announced with great fanfare (like merit pay), thanks to a vastly enlarged public relations staff, then quietly collapsed and disappeared.

7. Bloomberg and Klein imposed a new choice system. But all high schools and middle schools became schools of choice. A dozen students of the age living in the same building might attend a dozen different schools, some distant from their homes. One retired executive told me that this dispersal was intended to obstruct the creation of grassroots uprisings against the new dictates.

8. Bloomberg and Klein favored charter schools. In short order, more than 100 opened. The charters were supported financially and politically by some of the wealthiest Wall Street titans. When there was any threat to charters, their wealthy patrons quickly assembled multi-millions dollar TV campaigns to defend them. Because of the deep pockets of the charter patrons, the charter lobby gave generous contributions to legislators in Albany. The legislature passed laws favoring the charters, including one that required the public schools to provide free space for them or, if no suitable space was available, to pay their rent in private facilities.

9. Bloomberg and Klein made testing, accountability and choice the central themes of their reforms. Their approach mirrored President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which began at the same time. Raising test scores became the goal of the school system. Schools were graded A-F, depending primarily on their ability to raise test scores. Eventually, teachers were graded by the rise or fall of their students’ scores. NYC faithfully mirrored the tenets of the national corporate reform movement.

10. NYC test scores improved on NAEP during the Bloomberg years, but not as much as in other cities that did not have mayoral control.

11. To get a great overview of “The Failure of Mayoral Control in New York City,” read this great summary by Leonie Haimson, which includes links to other sources. See, especially, the recent article in Education Week on the decline of mayoral control. Chicago had mayoral control similar to that in New York City, which allowed Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close 50 schools in black and brown communities in one day, completely ignoring the views of parents. It was an ignominious example of the danger of one-man control.

12. There is no perfect mechanism to govern schools, but any kind of oversight should allow parent voices to count. 95% of the nation’s school districts have elected school boards. Sometimes a small faction gains control and does damage. That’s the risk of democracy. Whatever the mechanism, there must be an opportunity for the public, especially parents, to make their voices heard and to have a role. The mayor controls the budget: that’s as much power as he should have.

History is an excellent overview of New York City school governance—history and myths. Again, by Leonie Haimson. (Note: her history leaves out the two years of mayoral control from 1871-1873.)

Categories Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Failure, New York, New York City

Heather Cox Richardson: History Is Watching!

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2024 //
20

Heather Cox Richardson writes about the supine behavior of Republicans in the House of Representatives, as they worship at the shrine of Trump. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill to fund Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel: 22 Republican Senators voted for it, openly defying the Orange Menace. But in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson says he won’t allow the bill to come to a vote because it is likely to pass. Johnson is collaborating with Trump who is collaborating with the enemies of freedom (aka Putin).

She writes:

History is watching,” President Joe Biden said this afternoon. He warned “Republicans in Congress who think they can oppose funding for Ukraine and not be held accountable” that “[f]ailure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”

At about 5:00 this morning, the Senate passed a $95 billion national security supplemental bill, providing funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Most of the money in the measure will stay in the United States, paying defense contractors to restock the matériel the U.S. sends to Ukraine. 

The vote was 70–29 and was strongly bipartisan. Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats in support of the bill, overcoming the opposition of far-right Republicans.

The measure went to the House of Representatives, where House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he will not take it up, even though his far-right supporters acknowledged that a majority of the representatives supported it and that if it did come to the floor, it would pass. 

Yesterday, House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH)—who had just returned from his third trip to Ukraine, where he told President Volodymyr Zelensky that reinforcements were coming—told Politico’sRachel Bade: “We have to get this done…. This is no longer an issue of, ‘When do we support Ukraine?’ If we do not move, this will be abandoning Ukraine.” 

“The speaker will need to bring it to the floor,” Turner said. “You’re either for or against the authoritarian governments invading democratic countries.… You’re either for or against the killing of innocent civilians. You’re either for or against Russia reconstituting the Soviet Union.”

Today, Biden spoke to the press to “call on the Speaker to let the full House speak its mind and not allow a minority of the most extreme voices in the House to block this bill even from being voted on—even from being voted on. This is a critical act for the House to move. It needs to move.”

Bipartisan support for Ukraine “sends a clear message to Ukrainians and to our partners and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom,” he said. “We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone, and certainly not to Vladimir Putin.”

“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin. Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”

“The stakes were already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate last night,” Biden said. “But in recent days, those stakes have risen. And that’s because the former President has sent a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world” Biden said, referring to Trump’s statement on Saturday night that he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—the 75-year-old collective security organization that spans North America and Europe—but are not devoting 2% of the gross domestic product to their militaries. 

Trump’s invitation to Putin to invade our NATO allies was “dumb,…shameful,…dangerous, [and] un-American,” Biden said. “When America gives its word, it means something. When we make a commitment, we keep it. And NATO is a sacred commitment.” NATO, Biden said, is “the alliance that protects America and the world.”

“[O]ur adversaries have long sought to create cracks in the Alliance. The greatest hope of all those who wish America harm is for NATO to fall apart. And you can be sure that they all cheered when they heard [what] Donald Trump…said.”

“Our nation stands at…an inflection point in history…where the decisions we make now are going to determine the course of our future for decades to come. This is one of those moments.

And I say to the House members, House Republicans: You’ve got to decide. Are you going to stand up for freedom, or are you going to side with terror and tyranny? Are you going to stand with Ukraine, or are you going to stand with Putin? Will we stand with America or…with Trump?”

“Republicans and Democrats in the Senate came together to send a message of unity to the world. It’s time for the House Republicans to do the same thing: to pass this bill immediately, to stand for decency, stand for democracy, to stand up to a so-called leader hellbent on weakening American security,” Biden said. 

“And I mean this sincerely: History is watching. History is watching.”

But instead of taking up the supplemental national security bill tonight, House speaker Johnson took advantage of the fact that Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) has returned to Washington after a stem cell transplant to battle his multiple myeloma and that Judy Chu (D-CA) is absent because she has Covid to make a second attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “high crimes and misdemeanors” for his oversight of the southern border of the United States. 

Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas by a vote of 214 to 213. The vote catered to far-right Republicans, but impeachment will go nowhere in the Senate.

“History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games,” Biden said in a statement. He called on the House to pass the border security measure Republicans killed last week on Trump’s orders, and to pass the national security supplemental bill.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has said he will use every possible tool to force a vote on the national security supplemental bill. In contrast, as Biden noted, House Republicans are taking their cue from former president Trump, who does not want aid to Ukraine to pass and who last night demonstrated that he is trying to consolidate his power over the party by installing hand-picked loyalists, including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who is married to his son Eric, at the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC). 

This move is likely due in part to outgoing RNC chair Ronna McDaniel’s having said the RNC could not pay Trump’s legal bills once he declared himself a presidential candidate. After his political action committees dropped $50 million on legal fees last year, he could likely use another pipeline, and even closer loyalists might give him one. 

In addition, Trump probably recognizes that he might well lose the protective legal bulwark of the Trump Organization when Judge Arthur Engoron hands down his verdict in Trump’s $370 million civil fraud trial. New York attorney general Letitia James is seeking not only monetary penalties but also a ban on Trump’s ability to conduct business in the New York real estate industry. In that event, the RNC could become a base of operations for Trump if he succeeds in taking it over entirely. 

But it is not clear that all Republican lawmakers will follow him into that takeover, as his demands from the party not only put it out of step with the majority of the American people but also now clearly threaten to blow up global security. “Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told his colleagues as he urged them to vote for the national security supplemental bill.

Politicians should recognize that Trump’s determination to win doesn’t help them much: it is all about him and does not extend to any down-ballot races. 

Indeed, the attempt of a Republican minority to impose its will on the majority of Americans appears to be sparking a backlash. In today’s election in New York’s Third Congressional District to replace indicted serial liar George Santos, a loyal Trump Republican, voters chose Democrat Tom Suozzi by about 8 points. CNN’s Dana Bash tonight said voters had told her they voted against the Republican candidate because Republicans, on Trump’s orders, killed the bipartisan border deal. The shift both cuts down the Republican majority in the House and suggests that going into 2024, suburban swing voters are breaking for Democrats. 

As Trump tries to complete his takeover of the formerly grand old Republican Party, its members have to decide whether to capitulate.

History is watching.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Freedom, Funding, Republicans, Trump

Houston: Principal Turnover Hits 20% After State Takeover

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2024 //
47

The Houston Chronicle reports an acceleration in principal turnover since the state took over control of the Houston Independent School District and placed non-educator Mike Miles in charge. The principals of nearly 60 schools have resigned or been removed. A military man, Miles was “trained” by the Broad Superintendents Academy. He is imposing standardized curriculum and instruction across the schools he directly controls (called the “New Education System”).

Even the principal of an A-rated school lost his job.

The memos came in one after the other, a laundry list of grievances listing all the ways Federico Hernandez was supposedly failing as principal of Houston ISD’s Middle College High School.

A teacher used Post-It notes rather than index cards during a lesson, according to one complaint from Hernandez’s supervisor. Others allowed students to sit in the back of a classroom or kept a light off during class. Some implemented multiple response strategies, “but not correctly,” read the memo shared with the Houston Chronicle.

Even though the campus run on Houston Community College’s Felix Fraga campus boasts an A-rated academic performance, those were among the infractions that got Hernandez removed from his job less than two months into the school year.

He is one of at least 58 principals who left their schools, involuntarily or otherwise, in 2023 since Superintendent Mike Miles was appointed to his post by the Texas Education Agency on June 1, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of HISD staffing records. After taking into account schools that share a principal, such as Jane Long Academy and Las Americas Newcomer School, or those that recorded multiple changes between June and December, such as Madison High School, the Chronicle confirmed there have been at least 61 leadership changes across 59 campuses…

Erica Harbatkin, an education policy expert at Florida State University who studies principal turnover, said it is not unusual for administrators to reassign principals in an attempt to shake up under-performing schools. They typically don’t do so during the school year, though, because principals need time to plan and coordinate their staff, and “coming in after the school year started… obviously undermines some of those strategies.”

Harbatkin said replacing a principal is one of the quickest ways to effect change at a school, for better or worse.

“The theory of action behind more contemporary school turnaround and improvement policy is that these schools are in this pattern of low performance, and they need something to get them out, some sort of big external shock … and one of the ways that happens is through replacing the principal,” Harbatkin said.

If not done carefully, however, principal turnover can lead to negative effects on student achievement, Harbatkin said. Her research found that principal turnover “is associated with lower test scores, school proficiency rates, and teacher retention.”

“When principals turn over teachers tend to turn over as well, and if that turnover is not well-planned, if there’s not good distributed leadership in the school or someone who can step into the role, that’s likely to make those negative effects even larger,” Harbatkin said.

No one explained the theory or rationale for removing a principal from a high-performing school. Maybe he failed to comply with an order…

Ebony Cumby, who served as principal at Askew Elementary in west Houston for 12 years, resigned within a week of Miles’ appointment after sitting through the first couple days of principal meetings.

“Throughout that period, there were things that I thought were exciting changes that needed to be made in the district, and there were other things that I could foresee being problematic, especially for a district as large as HISD,” Cumby said.

Cumby said she appreciated Miles’ attempts to “bring more consistency” to the district by standardizing the curriculum and other elements, but she was put off by what she described as “a cookie-cutter way of teaching” that she would be expected to enforce. After over two decades at HISD, she ended up leaving public education altogether for another industry.

“I noticed early on that there were things in place that, whether it was intentional or not, were going to take autonomy away from teachers and require them to conform to a certain way of doing things and really take away their creativity, which as a principal was a big deal to me,” Cumby said. “To kind of hear that its ‘our way or the highway’ did not sit well with me.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Disruption, Extremism, Failure, Houston, Principals, Texas
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