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Greg B.: The Confederacy Lives On!

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2023 //
53

Greg B. is a regular commenter on the blog. He lives in Ohio. He is deeply knowledgeable about German history and literature. I enjoy his comments.

He wrote:

As much as many Americans crow about being the land of the free, etc., they don’t like to do the work of being citizens, much less engaged. With citizenship comes responsibility. When one is engaged with the history of this nation, one understands that the enslavement of Africans who were transported here and their descendants literally built this country. While we learn about elites, it was enslaving Americans that created capitalism and wealth for whites around the world. The descendants of those whites have benefitted immeasurably from the status quo and keeping status regardless of quo. Even those who weren’t direct descendants, yes even people who immigrated to the US in the 19th through 21st century have benefitted by virtue of not having immediately identifiable physical traits.

Those who continue to complain that they didn’t benefit from racism, who claim merit got them to where they are, conveniently forget that a large portion of the population never ever gets the chance to prove merit. And if they can, they are not promoted, they are paid less, and they are segregated to live in certain areas. Those who claim merit are scared of real competition; they like the game rigged, one that gives them advantages before they even start playing and excludes everyone else. They may claim equal opportunity, but they see in “woke” a threat to their status. Even poor whites in West Virginia and Utah don’t realize they’re being played as pawns.

For Black History Month, I reread a classic on enslavement and found these two nuggets that help explain it all: “The willingness of many white southerners to unite around the idea of hanging on to racial power made the South a swing region, and white southerners a defined interest group, willing to join whichever national party was willing to cater to its demands.” And, “…the unbending anger of former Confederates against Reconstruction morphed into their grandchildren’s suspicion of the New Deal, and the insistence of the part of white southern Democrats that measures against the Depression could do nothing to alleviate black poverty or lessen white supremacy.” That’s what they want to keep up.

Nostalgia for “The Lost Cause” and deep-seated racism keep white southerners tethered to a political party that keeps them poor.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Equity, Evil, Extremism, Failure, History, Lies, Propaganda, Racism

Chicago: Can Mayor Brandon Johnson Change National Democratic Education Policy?

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
22

Retired teacher Fred Klonsky points out the stark difference between national Democratic education policy and the views of Chicago’s new Mayor Brandon Johnson. He would love to see the party follow the lead of Mayor Johnson, who was a teacher in the public schools and an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union.

The national Democratic Party was once a strong champion of public schools, it once understood the importance of resources and funding for needy students and schools, it was once skeptical about the value of standardized testing.

All of that changed, however, after the Reagan report “A Nation at Risk.” (In a recent article, James Harvey explained how that very consequential report was distorted with cherry-picked data to smear the nation’s public schools.)

Democratic governors jumped aboard the standards-and-testing bandwagon, led by Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. When Clinton became president in 1993, his major education legislation was Goals 2000, which put the Democratic Party firmly into the standards-and-testing camp with Republicans. Clinton was a “third way” Democrat, and he also enthusiastically endorsed charter schools run by private entities. His Goals 2000 program included a small program to support charter start-ups. That little subsidy—$4-6 milllion—has grown to $440 million, which is a slush fund mainly for big charter chains that don’t need the money.

George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation was supported by Democrats; it encompassed their own party’s stance, but had teeth. Obama’s Race to the Top rolled two decades of accountability/choice policy into one package. By 2008-2020, there was no difference between the two national parties on education. From Clinton in 1992 (with his call for national standards and testing) to NCLB to Race to the Top, the policies of the two parties were the same: testing, accountability, closing schools, choice. And let us not forget the Common Core, which was supposed to lift test scores everywhere while closing achievement gaps. It didn’t.

Democrats nationally are adrift, unmoored, while Republicans have seized on vouchers for religious and private schools that are completely unregulated and unaccountable. Despite evidence (Google “Josh Cowen vouchers”) that most vouchers are used by students who never attended public schools and that their academic results are harmful for public school kids who transfer into low-cost, low-quality private schools, red states are endorsing them.

Mayor Johnson of Chicago represents the abandoned Democratic tradition of investing in students, teachers, communities, and schools.

Fred Klonsky writes:

In his speech yesterday, Mayor Johnson addressed the issue of schools and education, an issue that as a retired career school teacher, is near and dear to my heart.

“Let’s create a public education system that resources children based on need and not just on numbers,” Johnson said.

I hope so.

Some have predicted that the election of Brandon to be mayor of a city with the fourth largest school district in the country might represent a shift in Democratic Party education policy.

Chicago under Mayors Daley and Emanuel gave the country Arne Duncan and Paul Vallas who together were the personifications of the worst kinds of top-down, one-size-fits-all curriculum, reliance on standardized testing as accountability and union busting.

Corporate school reform groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children dominated the Democratic Party’s education agenda for two decades.

Joe Biden’s Department of Education has mostly been silent on these issues.

If Chicago’s election of Brandon Johnson does reflect a national shift, let alone a local one, it must do it in the face of a MAGA assault on free expression, historical truths and teacher rights.

None of this will be easy.

So, yes. I wish the Mayor the best and will do what I can to help.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Clinton, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Failure, Funding, Hope, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Republicans, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Supporting public schools, Turnaround Schools, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Commissioner Schwinn Resigns in Tennessee, Replaced by Reformer with No Classroom Experience

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
7

Mercedes Schneider employs her highly honed investigative skills to examine the background of Tennessee State Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn, who announced her resignation, as well as the “credentials” of her replacement Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds.

Schwinn started in Teach for America, then worked her way up to become chief deputy commissioner of academics for the Texas Education Agency. Such meteoric advances seem to happen only with TFA experience, especially in red states. Schwinn caused a bit of controversy after she handed out a $4.4 million no-bid contract to a newly-formed vendor who also had a TFA background. Strangely the whistle-blower was fired, while Schwinn rose yet again to be state commissioner of education in Tennessee.

In 2021, a Republican legislator introduced legislation calling for her resignation, due to the astronomical turnover rate in her department. But the proposal was withdrawn.

Then Schwinn audaciously awarded a multimillion dollar contract to TNTP (founded by Michelle Rhee) without disclosing that her husband worked for TNTP.

Schwinn’s successor, Reynolds, has no classroom experience. None. She rose through Ed deform organizations, largely connected to George W. Bush and Jeb Bush.

Schneider concludes:

Ed-reform makes for a tight and influential club.

For now, Schwinn is out, but with Reynolds replacing her, market-based ed reform will almost certainly not be taking a back seat in the Volunteer State.

Scandal might. But not corporate-styled ed reform.

If the people of Tennessee want a different approach to education, they will have to elect a new governor.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Teach for America, Tennessee

Michigan: Evangelical Extremists Take Control of County Government and Launch Chaos

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2023 //
12

This is one of the most disturbing articles I have read in recent memory. A prosperous county in Michigan elected a slate of evangelical rightwing fanatics to run their local government. The new majority replaced a conservative Republican board that was known for fiscal responsibility and moderate politics. The spark that lit the rebellion was a mask mandate for children during the pandemic.

The article was written by Greg Jaffe and Patrick Marley in the Washington Post:

WEST OLIVE, Mich. — The eight new members of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had run for office promising to “thwart tyranny” in their lakeside Michigan community of 300,000 people.


In this case the oppressive force they aimed to thwart was the county government they now ran. It was early January, their first day in charge. An American flag held down a spot at the front of the board’s windowless meeting room. Sea-foam green carpet covered the floor.


The new commissioners, all Republicans, swore their oaths of office on family Bibles. And then the firings began. Gone was the lawyer who had represented Ottawa County for 40 years. Gone was the county administrator who oversaw a staff of 1,800. To run the health department, they voted to install a service manager from a local HVAC company who had gained prominence as a critic of mask mandates.


As the session entered its fourth hour, Sylvia Rhodea, the board’s new vice chair, put forward a motion to change the motto that sat atop the county’s website and graced its official stationery. “Whereas the vision statement of ‘Where You Belong’ has been used to promote the divisive Marxist ideology of the race, equity movement,” Rhodea said.


And so began a new era for Ottawa County. Across America, county governments provided services so essential that they were often an afterthought. Their employees paved roads, built parks, collected taxes and maintained property records. In an era when Americans had never seemed more divided and distrustful, county governments, at their best, helped define what remains of the common good.

Ottawa County stood out for a different reason. It was becoming a case study in what happens when one of the building blocks of American democracy is consumed by ideological battles over race, religion and American history.


Rhodea’s resolution continued on for 20 “whereases,” connecting the current motto to a broader effort that she said aimed to “divide people by race,” reduce their “personal agency,” and teach them to “hate America and doubt the goodness of her people.”


Her proposed alternative, she said, sought to unite county residents around America’s “true history” as a “land of systemic opportunity built on the Constitution, Christianity and capitalism.’”


She flipped to her resolution’s final page and leaned closer to the mic. “Now, therefore, let it be resolved that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners establishes a new county vision statement and motto of ‘Where Freedom Rings.’”


The commission’s lone Democrat gazed out in disbelief. A few seats away, the commission’s new chair savored the moment. “There’s just some really beautiful language in this,” he said, before calling for a vote on the resolution. It passed easily.
A cheer went up in the room, which on this morning was about three-fourths full, but in the coming weeks it would be packed with so many angry people calling each other “fascists,” “communists,” “Christian nationalists” and “racists” that the county would have to open an overflow room down the hall.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Equity, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Freedom, Health, Michigan, Religion, Science, Trump

NYC: Mayor Adams Is Unfit to Control the Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2023 //
33

During the mayoral campaign in New York City, Eric Adams won the support of many leaders of the city’s orthodox Jewish community, which often votes as a bloc for the candidate who promises to protect their insular world and the flow of government funds. In a recent speech to a Modern Orthodox Jewish audience, Mayor Adams said that the city’s public schools should try to duplicate the “achievements” of the city’s yeshivas (most of which are run by Hasidim, not Modern Orthodox). The Hasidic yeshivas have been heavily criticized for their failure to teach a secular education.

This is astonishing.

Mayor Adams was probably just pandering to his audience, but he revealed profound ignorance about the failure of yeshivas, as well as profound ignorance about his own city’s public schools, which have produced Nobel Prize winners and generations of scientists, scholars, business leaders, performers, professionals, and other successful people.

The private yeshivas for the children of Hasidic Orthodox Jews have been criticized by an organization of some of their graduates called Young Advocates for a Fair Education for failing to teach English and other subjects, leaving graduates unprepared for life.

The New York Times reported that the city’s yeshivas had received over $1 billion in public funding but were academic failures. Typically, they don’t take state tests, but when one of the larger Hasidic schools administered the state tests in reading and math, every student failed.

This was “failure “by design,” said the Times.

The leaders of New York’s Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition — and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish.

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.

Segregated by gender, the Hasidic system fails most starkly in its more than 100 schools for boys. Spread across Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, the schools turn out thousands of students each year who are unprepared to navigate the outside world, helping to push poverty rates in Hasidic neighborhoods to some of the highest in New York.

The story about Mayor Adams’ obsequious speech to Modern Orthodox leaders was reported by a newspaper called Shtetl:

In a speech given Wednesday night, mayor Eric Adams suggested that yeshiva students are better off than public school students, and that religion should be in schools “anywhere possible.”

The speech was given at an event for Teach NYS, which is part of the Orthodox Union, which represents Modern Orthodox Jews. In it, Adams condemned yeshiva critics, but made no distinction between Hasidic and Modern Orthodox schools. A September report from the New York Times found that many Hasidic yeshivas fail to provide an adequate secular education, to the point where some boys graduate high school without speaking fluent English. The Times also found that teachers at some Hasidic yeshivas regularly use corporal punishment.

In 2015, New York City’s education department announced it would investigate complaints about the quality of secular education in Hasidic schools. (The complaint did not include Modern Orthodox schools, which generally provide a thorough secular education.) In January, the state education department ordered that the city complete its investigation no later than June 30, including specific reviews of individual schools.

The mayor began his speech by painting a grim picture of the secular world. He described problems that children across the city and country face, such as cannabis and fentanyl use, harmful use of social media, and mental illness, suggesting that yeshiva students don’t have these problems.

“The children are in a state of despair at an epic proportion, but instead of us focusing on how do we duplicate the success of improving our children, we attack the yeshivas that are providing a quality education that is embracing our children,” he said.

“I saw numbers just the other day, asking questions about what is happening at our yeshivas across the city and state. At the same time, 65% of Black and brown children never reach proficiency in the public school system,” Adams said, citing a statistic that he uses often in speeches. “We’re asking what are you doing in your schools. We need to ask, what are we doing wrong in our schools, and learn what you are doing in yeshivas to improve education.”

“We need to be duplicating what you are achieving,” he said.

Adams also discussed the role of religion in government.

“Let’s embrace those that believe in the quality of this country and the quality of this state, and uplift families, and children, and education, and that appreciate the religious philosophies that are a part of the educational opportunities,” he said. “I don’t apologize for believing in God.”

“Faith is who we are,” Adams added. “We are a country of faith and belief, and we should have it anywhere possible to educate and to help uplift our children in the process.”

“You were there for me when I ran for mayor,” Adams concluded, to loud applause. “I’m going to be there for you as your mayor.”

In City Council District 44, which includes most of Hasidic Boro Park, 56% of voters picked Republican Curtis Sliwa in the 2021 mayoral election.

On election night in 2021, Mayor-elect Adams was surrounded by prominent supporters on the podium, including leaders of the Hasidic community.

A man who knows so little about yeshivas or public schools or the reasons for separation of church and state should not be in control of the New York City public school system.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, New York City, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame

What Can Be Done about the Supreme Court’s Lack of Ethical Standards?

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2023 //
37

The stories about payments and gifts from rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas continue to escalate. The revelations began with ProPublica’s report that Crow had given luxurious vacations to Thomas and his wife. Then ProPublica reported that Crow bought the house where Justice Thomas’ elderly mother lives, rent free. Crow paid the private school tuition of Thomas’s grandnephew. The stories of the billionaires’ beneficence to this one Justice continue to roll out. Justice Thomas’ wife, a rightwing political activist, also received large fees from other sources who have cases before the Court.

What have we learned? The Supreme Court is not subject to any explicit code of ethics. Chief Justice John Roberts (whose wife has been paid millions as a headhunter for law firms that appear before the High Court) has refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Boston Globe noted that the Clarence Thomas affair is unprecedented in its scope, so much so that it has had a profound effect on public respect for the Court.

As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faces a growing number of revelations that have raised intense scrutiny over his ethical practices, legal experts say the high court has found itself in unprecedented territory, its credibility in the eyes of the public rapidly eroding.

The slew of disclosures about Thomas, the most recent of which came Thursday, demonstrate a need for institutional reform and the revision of ethics rules, experts said.

“The revelations showcase how both wealthy and narrow interests cultivate their own relationships with justices with life tenure with the capacity to entrench or undermine policies for generations,” Robert Tsai, a professor at Boston University School of Law, said in an e-mail….

As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faces a growing number of revelations that have raised intense scrutiny over his ethical practices, legal experts say the high court has found itself in unprecedented territory, its credibility in the eyes of the public rapidly eroding.

The slew of disclosures about Thomas, the most recent of which came Thursday, demonstrate a need for institutional reform and the revision of ethics rules, experts said.

“The revelations showcase how both wealthy and narrow interests cultivate their own relationships with justices with life tenure with the capacity to entrench or undermine policies for generations,” Robert Tsai, a professor at Boston University School of Law, said in an e-mail.

Democrats are outraged and want accountability and reform. Republican sensors have closed ranks and insist that it’s up to the Court to reform itself. Fat chance.

Mark Paoletta defended Thomas, a friend of his, in a statement Thursday, arguing that, while Thomas was helping a “child in need,” Thomas was not required to report the tuition because his grandnephew was not technically his “dependent.”

But Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law, said that defense was invalid and that the payments “certainly had to be recorded on his disclosure statements.”

“The gift was to Thomas himself because Thomas had legal responsibility for his nephew’s education,” Gillers said. “He didn’t adopt the great-nephew, but he did become a legal guardian of the nephew and took on the responsibility to support the nephew, including education. The money relieves Thomas of having to pay.”

The report about Leo also poses “serious concern,” Gillers said. “The idea that a person can turn on the spigot, generate substantial income to the spouse of a justice, should be troublesome to the court and to the country.”

As outrageous as the Thomas revelations are, there is no chance that the Supreme Court will reform itself—or that a closely divided Congress will act. That is, unless Chief Justice John Roberts decides that he doesn’t want “the Roberts Court” to go down in history as the Court without ethical standards, unwilling to reform itself, indifferent to the collapse of public respect for the Court. If he has any sense of honor or shame, he might act.

Even if the Justices agree to stop taking gifts and money from interested parties, the Court still has the problem that it can’t solve: it is packed with five rightwing ideologues, three chosen by the Federalist Society, who used Trump as their willing dummy. Their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, after swearing under oath that they would not, will be a permanent scar on the Suprene Court.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Failure

Dan Rather: CNN Was Wrong to Let Trump Spew Lies on Air

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2023 //
25

Dan Rather has had an illustrious career as a journalist. He is now blogging at Steady. He was annoyed that CNN gave Donald Trump a platform to repeat his lies, to bulldoze the interviewer, and to play his usual demagogic role. After Trump was elected in 2016, CNN was widely criticized for giving Trump so much air time, more than any other network or cable station did. CNN sometimes covered his rallies live and at length, a courtesy not extended to other candidates. By some estimates, CNN gave Trump $2 billion of free on-air time.

He writes:

Donald Trump is a liar. He is a bigot, a misogynist, and a deadbeat. He has just been found by a jury to be a sexual abuser. He faces multiple other serious criminal investigations. He spurred a violent insurrection. He has repeatedly demonstrated complete disdain for the foundations of American democracy. The list of traits that makes this man unfit for the presidency fills pages.

And yet despite these debased qualities, or maybe (depressingly) because of them, he is immensely popular with many Americans. They cheer on his worst impulses. They bask in his hatred. They are fueled by the danger he poses to this nation. They have propelled him once again to be the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination.

And although many Americans don’t want to believe it, at this moment, he is a real threat to return to the presidency.

Among other things, Trump is and always has been a performer, and performers, no matter how vile their message, crave and thrive in the spotlight.

Last night, CNN gave Trump not only a spotlight, but a platform and a rabid crowd of cheering supporters. He made the most of it, as chiling and distressing as that might be.

Those who have made up their minds on Trump — those who love him and hate him — undoubtedly found plenty of justification for their opinions watching, ignoring, or doom scrolling his performance.

But what about the casual observer, the disaffected, the persuadable? Trump knows how to command a stage. He knows how to go on the attack. And the format CNN gift-wrapped for him allowed him to score a mark.

There is a school of thought that Trump is so toxic that the more America sees of him, the less they like him. And there were moments last night that could easily be plugged into effective attack ads against him. But what we should have learned from 2016 and the years that followed is that people as shameless as Trump do not measure their success by metrics of civility. It’s about demonstrating primal dominance, and that instinct delivered him the presidency once before. And even though he lost reelection, he remade American politics in ways with which we are still contending.

Trump played the part CNN surely knew he would play. What did they hope to get from normalizing this demeaning and dangerous demagogue? Ratings? Relevance? A tack to the mythic “middle” in line with new ownership and direction? Trying to become some new version of Fox News? Is any of this worth endangering the health and security of our country?

When CNN announced that they would give Donald Trump more than an hour of free prime time for a “town hall” (more like a town maul), it was clear what was going to happen.

Trump would lie, and bully, and insult, and lie, and lie, and lie some more. That is who he is. It is who he has always been.

There is no moderating a discussion with Trump. It is nearly impossible to engage in dialogue by asking probing follow-up questions. Because he will just ignore them. And lie and lie and lie. And this is especially true when he has an audience that seemed hand-picked to double as a campaign rally — hooting and hollering with approval the more he launched into his mendacious invective.

The press will have to figure out how to cover Trump as he stomps his way toward renomination. Liars should not be given open mics in formats where they can filibuster falsehoods unchallenged. Edit what he says with context. Do not sugarcoat how untrue many of his rantings are.

America rejected Trump in 2020. He is further weakened by the court cases he faces. But he remains a potent force. He will get his message out. Let us hope the press will analyze it, not amplify it.

The future of not only American journalism, but of America itself, will be shaped by how Trump is covered going forward.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Trump

Colorado: What Happened When MAGA Extremists Gained Control of a School District

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2023 //
27

NBC News reported on the takeover of Woodland Park, Colorado, by rightwing extremists. Woodland Park is a mostly white district with 8,000 residents. Colorado is a bluish state. The governor is a Democrat, as are the two Senators. But the state, like other states, has deep red districts. The new board wasted no time in pushing their ideological agenda, which apparently concerns even some Republicans.

WOODLAND PARK, Colo. — When a conservative slate of candidates won control of the school board here 18 months ago, they began making big changes to reshape the district.

Woodland Park, a small mountain town that overlooks Pikes Peak, became the first — and, so far, only — district in the country to adopt the American Birthright social studies standard, created by a right-wing advocacy group that warns of the “steady whittling away of American liberty.” The new board hired a superintendent who was previously recalled from a nearby school board after pushing for a curriculum that would “promote positive aspects of the United States.” The board approved the community’s first charter school without public notice and gave the charter a third of the middle school building.

As teachers, students and parents began protesting these decisions, the administration barred employees from discussing the district on social media. At least two staff members who objected to the board’s decisions were later forced out of their jobs, while another was fired for allegedly encouraging protests.

These rapid and sweeping shifts weren’t coincidental — instead it was a plan ripped from the MAGA playbook designed to catch opponents off guard, according to a board member’s email released through an open records request.

“This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack at any one front,” David Illingworth, one of the new conservative school board members, wrote to another on Dec. 9, 2021, weeks after they were elected. “Divide, scatter, conquer. Trump was great at this in his first 100 days.”

The leaders of the Woodland Park School District are enacting an experiment in conservative governance in the middle of a state controlled by Democrats, with little in the way so far to slow them down. The school board’s decisions have won some praise in heavily Republican Teller County, but opposition is growing, including from conservative Christians and lifelong GOP voters who say the board has made too many ill-advised decisions and lacks transparency.

“I think they look at us as this petri dish where they can really push all their agenda and theories,” said Joe Dohrn, a Woodland Park father who described himself as a staunch Republican and “very capitalistic.” “They clearly are willing to sacrifice the public school and to put students presently in the public school through years of disarray to drive home their ideological beliefs. It’s a travesty.”

Teachers grew particularly alarmed early this year when word spread that Ken Witt, the new superintendent, did not plan to reapply for grants that covered the salaries of counselors and social workers.

At Gateway Elementary School in March, Witt told staff members he prioritized academic achievement, not students’ emotions. “We are not the department of health and human services,” he said, as teachers angrily objected, according to two recordings of the meeting made by staff members and shared with NBC News.

Someone in the meeting asked if taxpayers would get a say in these changes, and Witt said that they already did — when they elected the school board.

Over the past two years, school districts nationwide have become the center of culture war battles over race and LGBTQ rights. Conservative groups have made a concerted effort to fill school boards with ideologically aligned members and notched dozens of wins last fall.

In Colorado, conservatives started making gains earlier because school board elections are held in off years. Woodland Park offers a preview of how quickly a new majority can move to reshape a district — and how those battles can ripple outward into the community. Some longtime residents say that the situation has grown so tense, they now look over their shoulder when discussing the school board in public to avoid confrontation or professional consequences.

David Rusterholtz, the board’s president, believes that chasm predates his election in November 2021.

“This division is much more than political — this is a clash of worldviews,” Rusterholtz said at a board meeting in January. He concluded his remarks with a prayer for the district: “May the Lord bless us and keep us, may His face shine upon us and be gracious to us…”

When asked to respond to criticism from school personnel and parents, Illingworth, the board’s vice president, replied in an email: “I wasn’t elected to please the teacher’s union and their psycho agenda against academic rigor, family values, and even capitalism itself. I was elected to bring a parent’s voice and a little common sense to the school district, and voters in Woodland Park can see I’ve kept my promises.”

As the school year winds down, many of the Woodland Park School District’s employees are heading for the exit, despite recently receiving an 8% raise. At least four of the district’s top administrators have quit because of the board’s policy changes, according to interviews and emails obtained through records requests. Nearly 40% of the high school’s professional staff have said they will not return next school year, according to an administrator in the district.

The board’s critics have pinned their hopes on the next election in November — when three of the five school board members are up for a vote — to claw back control of the community’s schools.

“This is an active case study on what will happen if we allow extremist policies to start to take over our public education system,” said David Graf, an English teacher who recently resigned after 17 years in the district. “And the scariest part about it, they knew that this community would bite on it.”

The new board approved the district’s first charter school without any public notice. The approval of Merit Academy was listed on the board agenda as “board housekeeping.”

The district’s teachers union complained in an email to middle school staff that the board’s action was “underhanded, and at worst illegal.” A parent sued, aiming to force the board to follow open meetings law. A trial court judge did not rule on the legality of the board’s actions but ordered the board to list agenda items “clearly, honestly and forthrightly.”

In response to the teachers’ complaints, Illingworth accused the union of attempting to organize a “coup,” and instructed then-Superintendent Mathew Neal to make “a list of positions in which a change in personnel would be beneficial to our kids” and “help the union see the wisdom in cooperation rather than conflict.”

Illingworth’s emails spread after parents obtained them through open records requests. Subsequent board meetings attracted boisterous crowds, as teachers accused board members of creating a hostile environment, while other community members spoke in favor of the board for supporting “school choice” and quoted Scripture. A handful of parents, including some lifelong Republicans, tried to organize a recall, but failed to get enough signatures to force a vote.

The district’s superintendent resigned and was replaced by Ken Witt, who had been active in conservative politics in Jefferson County, CO., schools.

A week before Witt was hired, on Dec. 13, students in a class called Sources of Strength, which is part of a national suicide prevention program, asked their teacher what should they know about him as the sole finalist for the superintendent job.

Sara Lee, a longtime teacher at Woodland Park High School, responded, “You should Google him.”

The students did, and they didn’t like what they learned.

They discovered that Witt, as president of the school board in neighboring Jefferson County, supported a plan in 2014 to ensure the district’s curricula would promote patriotism and not encourage “social strife.” Witt said students who protested the board policies at the time were “pawns” of the teachers union. After he and two other conservative members of the board were recalled, Witt became executive director of an organization that oversees charter, online and other schools and helped launch Merit Academy.

The teacher, Sara Lee, had taught high school for 25 years, 18 of them in the district. The board reassigned her to an elementary school to punish her for sharing information about Witt. She resigned and was promptly hired by another district.

Please open the link and keep reading. The story gets worse. Parents and teachers tried to persuade Witt to reapply for mental health funds to support counselors and social workers. He refused, insisting that such problems should be handled by parents, not schools. The district’s mental health supervisor, unable to persuade him to ask for the funds, submitted her resignation.

Categories Censorship, Charter Schools, Colorado, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Ignorance, Teachers, Trump

Josh Cowen: Texas Doesn’t Need Vouchers. Neither Does Any Other State.

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2023 //
11

Josh Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. He has been involved in research on vouchers for two decades. He wrote the following article for The Houston Chronicle.

Every state has versions of Texas’ Snapshot Day: the time early in the school year when districts submit pupil counts to their state education agency. How many students go to school in each district determines how much money districts receive each year, as well as a variety of other services and programs.

Not every state is considering a school voucher program, however, and as the Texas Legislature debates that possibility (officially called an education savings account), details like pupil count are going to matter a lot more than either voucher supporters or opponents are considering right now.

Here’s how we know.

I’ve been studying school choice policy for two decades. That work includes official evaluations on behalf of state agencies, and more recent experience on the research advisory board for Washington D.C.’s federally required evaluation. I’ve also worked as a research partner to states and districts across the country. I know how little, seemingly inconsequential, technical details can have great impacts on how education programs function.

And I know those impacts can be costly — with taxpayers footing the bill.

Consider evaluations of voucher programs like the one before the Legislature right now. I’ve described elsewhere how these studies show catastrophic
academic harm to students who switch to private school with a voucher. That’s because vouchers tend to pay tuition, not at elite providers that don’t need the tax dollars, but at subprime schools needing the bailout — including those popping up to cash in on the new government subsidy.

Here’s something else those programs tell us: Although supporters often describe school choice as a long-term opportunity, the reality is that, for many kids, school choice is just a revolving door in and out of a new academic setting. And that’s especially true with vouchers.

Studies show that more than 1 out of 5 students give up their voucher every year. In some places like Florida that number is as high as two-thirds of voucher students leaving the program within two academic years. Similarly, the numbers publicly available from Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin range between 20 and 30 percent annual student attrition.

These exit rates matter not only because they underscore the false promise vouchers give to at-risk students — switching from school to school is a well-understood marker of academic or economic duress — but because they imply a huge potential fiscal waste.

Voucher supporters say it’s easy: The “dollars follow the kid” (this already happens with public schools, which is why count days exist). But it’s not that simple. Public programs with price tags in the hundreds of millions of dollars never are.

Imagine a parent who spends all of the proposed $8000 of their voucher at a private school nearby. Let’s say that before the last Friday in October — Snapshot Day — she sees the school simply isn’t working for her child and withdraws him. Will that private school keep the money? Or will the “dollars follow the kid” immediately back to the public school?

Imagine that parent waits until the holiday season to make the change. And in January, she enrolls her child back in a local public classroom. Will that local school be forced to enroll her child — a refugee from the voucher program — on its own local dime for the rest of the year?

Do these answers change if instead of the parent deciding to remove her child, the private school has made that choice instead?

If the voucher school has asked or forced her child to leave — something the current legislation permits for any reason along with denying admission in the first place — will it keep her tuition dollars as long as it waits until after Snapshot Day to do so?

These 30 percent of voucher decliners aren’t just numbers. The studies from other states tell us they’re likely vulnerable: kids who are scoring lower on school exams, kids from lower income families, children of color, and children from single-mom households.

Senate Bill 8 only stipulates that parents must notify the state of their exit within 30 business days; it does not establish a process to recover those dollars. And even when state guidance on these questions is issued, who will enact them? The fiscal note on SB8 makes assumptions about staff and legal support to run the program, but the legislation itself is ambiguous on issues like tuition reimbursement, or even the authority that compliance officers have to recover state funds.

Details matter. The ballooning voucher budget in Arizona and controversial new roll-out in Arkansas warn us that making public policy by slogan — however clever “fund students, not systems” might sound — is no substitute for careful planning.

The revolving door of school voucher tuition is one such detail — one that not only affects taxpayers’ bottom-line, but more basic issues of equity and opportunity as well. The bottom line for SB8 then, based on the evidence in other states, is that school voucher-type programs are on average bad for kids and bad for taxpayers. Texas would do well to reject them now.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Texas, Vouchers

Research: Children Need Stability to Do Well in School

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2023 //
15

A reader shared a link to an important study of the damaging effects of student mobility. The more students changed schools, the more negative effects on them.

Too bad Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan didn’t know about this research when they decided that the best way to help low-scoring students was to close their schools. Too bad Rahm Emanuel didn’t know about it when he closed 50 public schools in a single day.

School mobility has been shown to increase the risk of poor achievement, behavior problems, grade retention, and high school drop-out. Using data over 25 years from the Chicago Longitudinal Study, we investigated the unique risk of school moves on a variety of young adult outcomes including educational attainment, occupational prestige, depression symptoms, and criminal arrests. We also investigated how the timing of school mobility, whether earlier or later in the academic career, may differentially predict these outcomes over and above associated risks. Results indicate that students who experience more school changes between kindergarten and twelfth grade are less likely to complete high school on time, complete fewer years of school, attain lower levels of occupational prestige, are more likely to experience symptoms of depression, and are more likely to be arrested as adults. Furthermore, the number of school moves predicted above and beyond associated risks such as residential mobility and family poverty. When timing of school mobility was examined, results indicated more negative outcomes associated with moves later in the grade school career, particularly between fourth and eighth grade.

Doesn’t this seem like common sense? Your child is in a school where he or she makes friends and has a good relationship with teachers. You take the child out, and he or she has some trouble readjusting. Maybe the family moved, and it was necessary. But why would the government inflict it on children, call it “reform,” and celebrate the harm to the children?

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Closing schools, Cruelty, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Failure, Ignorance, Inequity, Innovation, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Students, Stupid
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