Stephen Dyer, former state legislator in Ohio, wrote in his blog “Tenth Period” that the 85% of Ohio’s children who attend public schools are being shortchanged by the state. First the state went overboard for charter schools, including for-profit charters and virtual charters and experienced a long list of money-wasting scandals. Then the state Republicans began expanding vouchers, despite a major evaluation showing that low-income students lost ground academically by using vouchers. As the state lowered the restrictions on access to vouchers, they turned into a subsidy for private school tuition.
He writes:
Since 1975, the percentage of the state budget going to Ohio’s public school students has dropped from 40% to barely 20% this year — a record low.
This is stunning, stunning data. But the Ohio General Assembly and Gov. Mike DeWine today are committing the smallest share of the state’s budget to educate Ohio’s public school kids in the last 50 years. And it’s not really close.
What’s going on here?
Simple: Ohio’s leaders have spent the last 3+ decades investing more and more money into privately run charter schools and, especially recently, have exploded their commitment to subsidize wealthy Ohioans’ private school tuitions. This has come at the expense of the 85% of Ohio students who attend the state’s public school districts.
Look at this school year, for example. In the budget, the state commits a little more than $11 billion to primary and secondary education. That represents 26.6% of the state’s $41.5 billion annual expenditure. However, this year, charter schools are expected to be paid $1.3 billion and private school tuition subsidies will soar to $1.02 billion (to give you an idea of what kind of explosion this has been, when I left the Ohio House in 2010, Ohio spent about $75 million on these tuition subsidies). So if you subtract that combined $2.32 billion that’s no longer going to kids in public school districts, now Ohio’s committing $8.7 billion to educate the 1.6 million kids in Ohio’s public school districts. That’s a 21.1% commitment of the state’s budget.
Some perspective:
That $8.7 billion is about what the state was sending to kids in public school districts in 1997, adjusted for inflation.
The 21.1% commitment currently being sent to kids in public school districts is by far the lowest commitment the state has ever made to its public school students — about 7% lower than the previous record (last year’s 22.2%) and 20% lower than the previous record for low spending in the pre-privatization era.
The voucher expenditure alone now drops state commitment to public school kids by nearly 10%.
The commitment to all students, including vouchers and charters, represents the fifth-lowest commitment since 1975. Only four years surrounding the initial filing of the state’s school funding lawsuit in 1991 were lower. The lowest commitment ever on record was 1992 at 25.2% of the state budget. Don’t worry, though. Next year, the projected commitment to all Ohio students will be 25.3% of the state budget.
What is clear now is that every single new dollar (plus a few more) that’s been spent on K-12 education since 1997 has gone to fund privately run charter schools and subsidize private school tuitions mostly for parents whose kids already attend private school.
What’s even more amazing is that even if charters and vouchers never existed and all that revenue was going to fund the educations of only Ohio’s public school students, the state is still spending a smaller percentage of its budget on K-12 education than at any but 4 out of the last 50 years. And next year it’s less than all but 1 of those last 50 years.
Ohio’s current leaders have essentially divested from Ohio’s greatest resource — its children and future — for the last 30 years.
Please open the link and finish reading the post. Ohio has also slashed funding for public higher education.
Does this disinvestment in children and higher education make any sense? Who benefits?
In Ohio, as in every other state, most children go to public schools. You would think that their elected officials would work hard to ensure that their district’s public schools are well-funded. In red states like Ohio, you would be wrong. Safe in their gerrymandered districts, Republicans are shoveling money to charters and vouchers, not public schools. Their generosity to nonpublic schools ignores the long list of scandals associated with charters, as well as their poor performance. Nor are Republicans concerned by the lack of accountability of voucher schools, not to mention their discriminatory practices.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Capital Journal’s Susan Tebben reported: “Ohio House Democrats have laid out a plethora of bills targeting the education system in the state, impacting everything from teacher pay to oversight of private school vouchers and the overall funding of the public school system…’Our principles are pretty clear on that front,’ said House Minority Whip Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati. ‘There is no better investment we can make in the future of our state than investing in the education of our students, and that every kid, no matter which corner of the state they grow up in, deserves a world class education.’
There is a problem, however, blocking most pro-public school legislation. Only 32 of 99 Ohio House members are Democrats, and in the Ohio Senate, only 7 Democrats serve in a body of 33 members. Due to gerrymandering, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the district maps that are being used today, but the Court did not enforce its ruling. This means that, except in the state budget where compromises sometimes are demanded, most of the Democratic priorities languish. In the recent budget, the legislature enacted a second stage of the three-budget, phase-in of a new public school funding formula, but it was accompanied by a universal private school tuition voucher expansion.
Here, according to Tebben, is what has happened to a bill to prioritize and protect the new public school funding formula:
“At the top of the (Democrats’) list is House Bill 10, which seeks to hold legislators to the six year phase-in plan that was assigned to the Fair School Funding Plan, legislation that funds public schools based less on property values and more on the needs of individual school districts. HB 10 is a bipartisan bill which simply ‘expresses the intent of the General Assembly to continue phasing in the school financing system,’ which was inserted in the 2021 budget bill, ‘until that system is fully implemented and funded,’ according to the language of the bill. The bill was introduced in February 2023 and quickly referred to the House Finance Committee, but has not seen activity since.”
Ohio’s gerrymandered Republican supermajority won’t commit to the eventual full funding of the state’s public school system because, they say, revenue projections are unsure in the context of growing privatization and years of cutting taxes in budget after budget.
Ohio’s gerrymandered Republican legislators instead operate ideologically and far to the right. After Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill to deny medical care for transgender youths last winter, legislators immediately overrode the veto. Far-right bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council and other bill mills, and bills endorsed by the extremist but powerful Columbus lobby, the Center for Christian Virtue, now housed in the building it purchased across the street from the Statehouse, dominate legislative deliberation and get lots of press.
Thomas Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics, reports on a new book by literacy scholars, The book, he concludes, demolishes the hype associated with “the science of reading.” Ultican believes that states should not mandate how to teach reading. I agree. Legislators are not teaching professionals or literacy experts. They should not require teachers to follow their orders.
Ultican writes:
Two eminent professors of instruction and literacy teamed up to write “Fact-Checking the Science of Reading.” P. David Pearson of UC Berkeley and Robert J. Tierney of University of British Columbia are Emeritus Professors with high reputation in their respective countries.
In the introduction, they inform us that Emily Hanford’s 2022 “Sold a Story” podcasts motivated them to write. In particular, they noted:
“A consistent misinterpretation of the relevant research findings; and
“A mean-spirited tone in her rhetoric, which bordered on personal attacks directed against the folks Hanford considered to be key players in what she called the Balanced Literacy approach to teaching early reading.” (Page XIV)…
After reviewing their findings, Ultican concludes:
SoR advocates say when teaching reading, the “settled science” of phonics “first and fast”, should be applied. They are working to make it against the law to disagree, claiming other forms of instruction cause child harm. SoR reading theory may have some holes but their political power is unquestioned and global. Laws mandating SoR have been enacted in 40 US states, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries. These rules limit teacher autonomy and attempt to make reading a scripted subject. (Page XII)
The Orwellian labeled science of reading (SoR) is not based on sound science. It more accurately should be called “How to Use Anecdotes to Sell Reading Products.” In 1997, congress passed legislation, calling for a reading study. From Jump Street, establishment of the National Reading Panel (NRP) was a doomed effort. The panel was given limited time for the study (18 months) which was a massive undertaking, conducted by twenty-one unpaid volunteers. NRP fundamentally did a meta-analysis in five reading domains, ignoring 10 other important reading domains. In other words, they did not review everything and there was no new research. They simply searched for reading studies and averaged the results to give us “the science of reading.”
SoR’s real motivation is to sell products, not helping children struggling to read. Scholars like Pearson and Tierney are ignored and swept away by a podcaster with no credentials.
For the sake of the future, we must stop legally mandating SoR as a solution to a fraudulent“reading crisis” and put our trust in education professionals.
Two years after the horrendous massacre of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the families are suing the corporations that fed the warped mind of the young man who perpetrated the murder. They hired the lawyer who successfully represented the Sandy Hook families and won a $73 million settlement for them.
SAN ANTONIO — The lawyer who won a record-setting settlement for Sandy Hook families announced two lawsuits Friday on behalf of Uvalde school shooting victims against the manufacturer of the AR-15-style weapon used in the attack, as well as the publisher of “Call of Duty” and the social media giant Meta.
The lawsuits against Daniel Defense, known for its high-end rifles; Activision, the manufacturer of first-person shooter game “Call of Duty”;” and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, may be the first of their kind to connect aggressive firearms marketing tactics on social media and gaming platforms to the actions of a mass shooter.
The complaints contend the three companies are responsible for “grooming” a generation of “socially vulnerable” young men radicalized to live out violent video game fantasies in the real world with easily accessible weapons of war.
The wrongful death suits were filed in Texas and California against Meta, Instagram’s parent company; Activision, the video game publisher; and Daniel Defense, a weapons company that manufactured the assault rifle used by the mass shooter in Uvalde. The filings came on the second anniversary of the shooting.
A press release sent on Friday by the law offices of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder PC and Guerra LLP said the lawsuits show that, over the past 15 years, the three companies have partnered in a “scheme that preys upon insecure, adolescent boys…”
The first lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses Meta’s Instagram of giving gun manufacturers “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night,” with only token oversight.
The complaint also alleges that Activision’s popular warfare game Call of Duty “creates a vividly realistic and addicting theater of violence in which teenage boys learn to kill with frightening skill and ease,” using real-life weapons as models for the game’s firearms.
[Salvador] Ramos played Call of Duty – which features, among other weapons, an assault-style rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense, according to the lawsuit – and visited Instagram obsessively, where Daniel Defense often advertised.
Trump sells Bibles; Trump sells whatever he can brand. He recently realized he could monetize the suit he was wearing when he was booked in Atlanta. To Trump lovers, a piece of the suit he wired when he was booked in Atlant—no matter how small—is akin to buying a thread of the Shroud of Turin.
“It was a great suit, believe me, a really good suit. It’s all cut up, and you’re gonna get a piece of it,” Trump said in a video announcing the sale.
Of course, he made a point of glowering for his mug shot, making a face that is now sold on mugs, T-shirts, and other items. other people might feel ashamed to be booked. Trump immediately recognized it as a chance to make money.
Trump wore a blue suit when he was arrested and had his mugshot taken at an Atlanta jail in August. The former Apprentice host has already monetized the mugshot: on his campaign website, people can buy coffee mugs, T-shirts and Christmas stockings bearing the image.
The move into fabric sales is a new one, however.
To buy a piece of the suit, people first have to buy 47 “digital trading cards”, each featuring an illustration of Trump, through the Collect Trump Cards website. Buyers will then receive a bit of the suit, or tie, that Trump wore when he was arrested – on charges related to his attempts to overturn the election – at Fulton county jail in August 2023.‘
The suit, according to the website description, is “the most historically significant artifact in United States history”.
The suit is described as “priceless”. People can buy a piece of it for $4,699.53.
A few days ago, I joined a discussion with Dr. Tim Slekar and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci about the current state of public education. It was aired on their show “Busted Pencils,” which is dedicated to teachers, students, and public schools.
We talked about charters, vouchers, testing, and how to get involved. Everyone can stand up for what they believe.
Carol Burris reports on an important decision in Vermont:
By a 19-9 vote, the Vermont Senate refused to approve Zoie Saunders, a former strategist for the for-profit Charter Schools USA, as the new Superintendent of Instruction in Vermont.
Saunders, a Florida resident, had worked briefly for a Florida public school district (3 months) even as she was applying for the Vermont position. She was Republican Governor Scott’s choice.According to a source in the state, “Senators in opposition spoke eloquently about her complete lack of vision (her best vision communication to a Senator in individual conversation was – schools in Middlebury should partner with Middlebury College) and her lack of relevant public education experience.”
The Governor is given great deference regarding his appointees. However, there was a groundswell of opposition to her appointment among Vermont citizens who feared she would bring charters to the state and expand the private school town tuition program. There was also great concern for her lack of experience in public schools. NPE Action stood in opposition to her appointment.
Dan Patrick hates public schools. He wants to abolish them and replace them with vouchers.
Tomlinson explains Dan Patrick’s malevolent plan:
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s fantasy of abolishing property taxes would set the state up for financial failure and end public education as we know it by placing a greater burden on low- and medium-income Texans.
As lieutenant governor, Patrick appoints the leaders of Senate committees, sets their agendas and decides whether a piece of legislation gets a vote. Patrick also rewards senators who appease him and punishes those who don’t with his fat campaign war chest.
Last week, the lite guv ordered the Senate Finance Committee to “determine the effect on other state programs if general revenue were used to fully replace school property taxes, particularly during economic downturns.”
Rising property taxes are directly correlated to the growing cost of housing in Texas. When home or apartment values go up, so do taxes, and the two combined create a crisis across the country.
Median property taxes in Texas rose 26% between 2019 and 2023, according to data from real estate research firm CoreLogic, and first reported by Axios, an online news agency. In four years, the median payment rose to $4,916 from $3,900 as property values nationwide grew 40%.
To understand how and why, Texans must remember that we pay for schools through property taxes levied by school districts. The state is forbidden from collecting a property tax, so the Legislature depends primarily on sales taxes and severance taxes levied on oil and gas production.
The Texas Constitution also forbids an income tax, perpetuating the myth Texas is a low-tax state. The wealthy, who spend less of their income on retail purchases and real estate, get off easier than in other states. But the half of Texans who struggle to make ends meet pay a higher proportion of their income in sales and property taxes.
Most states rely on the proverbial three-legged stool of income, property and sales taxes to fairly charge families and businesses based on their ability to pay. Texas relies on only two legs, and Patrick is talking about kicking away one of them.
Patrick’s command comes less than a year after the Legislature took $18 billion from sales taxes and oil and gas severance taxes to pay down school taxes. Most of that money came from high crude oil and natural gas prices and a roaring economy that generated huge sales tax returns. The move marked the first tax reduction paid by most property owners in decades.
Ending property taxes is part of the Republican Party of Texas platform, but it would require collecting $73.5 billion from the remaining leg of the stool, the sales tax.
Right-wing fantasists will point at Texas’ colossal budget surplus last year as proof that lawmakers will only need to raise sales taxes a tiny bit. However, anyone who’s lived in Texas for a decade or more knows the fossil fuel business goes through boom-and-bust cycles.
During a bust in 2011, Texas lawmakers slashed school funding by $4 billion. When the money runs out, the Republicans who control every lever of power in Texas do not hesitate to sacrifice public education to avoid raising taxes. Even with last year’s windfall, they refused to give teachers a raise.
This is where school vouchers and property taxes collide. The billionaires backing Abbott and Patrick believe public schools are Marxist, woke indoctrination factories. They want to give parents vouchers to choose Christian nationalist indoctrination factories exempted from state or federal oversight.
The vouchers, though, are insufficient to cover private school tuition, so families must pay the difference. The GOP hopes to create a system in which the state pays a defined amount and normalizes parents’ paying the rest.
Don’t be fooled by promises of lower taxes; this is about killing public schools by underfunding them and shifting more of the burden onto young families and off the wealthy.
This malicious proposal could be politically palatable. There are some five million public school students in Texas. There are more than six million privately owned homes. The population of Texas is majority-minority, like the public school students. The Republican-dominated legislature is overwhelmingly white. Do the math. The people with the power, the people who pay the most property taxes, are white. Do they want to pay property taxes for other people’s children?
Tim Slekar is a fearless warrior for public schools, teachers, and students. I will be talking to him about Slaying Goliath and the struggle to protect public schools from the depredations of billionaires and zealots.
This Thursday on Civic Media: Dive Back into “Slaying Goliath” with Diane Ravitch
Grab your pencils—BustEDpencils is gearing up for a no-holds-barred revival of Diane Ravitch’s game-changing book, *Slaying Goliath*, live this Thursday on Civic Media.
Launched into a world on the brink of a pandemic, *Slaying Goliath* hit the shelves with a mission: to arm the defenders of public education against the Goliaths of privatization. But then, COVID-19 overshadowed everything. Despite that, the battles Diane described haven’t paused—they’ve intensified. And this Thursday, we’re bringing these crucial discussions back to the forefront with Diane herself.
This Thursday at 7pm EST on BustEDpencils, we’re not just revisiting a book; we’re reigniting a movement. Diane will dissect the current threats to public education and highlight how *Slaying Goliath* still maps the path to victory for our schools. This isn’t just about reflection—it’s about action.
**It’s time to get real. It’s time to get loud. It’s time to tune in this Thursday at 7 PM EST on Civic Media.**
If you believe that without a robust public education system our democracy is in jeopardy, then join us. Listen in, call in (855-752-4842), and let’s get fired up. We’ve got a fight to win, and Diane Ravitch is leading the charge.
Mark your calendars and fire up Civic Media this Thursday at 7pm Central.
Tom Ultican, retired teacher in California, smells a scam in the making. The science behind “the Science of Reading” movement is not very scientific, he writes. Publishers and vendors are preparing to cash in on legislative mandates that force reading teachers to use only one method to teach reading despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy. Ultican zeroes in on the role of billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs as one of the key players in promoting SofR.
He writes:
Laurene Powell Jobs controls Amplify, a kids-at-screens education enterprise. In 2011, she became one of the wealthiest women in the world when her husband, Steve, died. This former Silicon Valley housewife displays the arrogance of wealth, infecting all billionaires. She is now a “philanthropist”, in pursuit of both her concerns and biases. Her care for the environment and climate change are admiral but her anti-public school thinking is a threat to America. Her company, Amplify, sells the antithesis of good education.
I am on Amplify’s mailing list. April third’s new message said,
“What if I told you there’s a way for 95% of your students to read at or near grade level? Maybe you’ve heard the term Science of Reading before, and have wondered what it is and why it matters.”
Spokesperson, Susan Lambert, goes on to disingenuously explain how the Science of Reading (SoR) “refers to the abundance of research illustrating the best way students learn to read.”
This whopper is followed by a bigger one, stating:
“A shift to a Science of Reading-based curriculum can help give every teacher and student what they need and guarantee literacy success in your school. Tennessee school districts did just that and they are seeing an abundant amount of success from their efforts.”
A shift to SoR-based curriculum is as likely to cause harm as it is to bring literacy success. This was just a used-car salesman style claim. On the other hand, the “abundance of success” in Tennessee is an unadulterated lie. National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tracks testing over time and is respected for education testing integrity. Tennessee’s NAEP data shows no success “from their efforts.” Their reading scores since 2013 have been down, not a lot but do not demonstrate an “abundance of success”.
NAEP Data Plot 2005 to 2022
Amplify’s Genesis
Larry Berger and Greg Dunn founded Wireless Generation in 2000 to create the software for lessons presented on screens. Ten years later, they sold it to Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation for $360 million. Berger pocketed $40 million and agreed to stay on as head of curriculum. Wireless Generation was rebranded Amplify and Joel Klein was hired to run it.
Murdoch proposed buying a million I-pads to deliver classroom instruction. However, the Apple operating system was not flexible enough to run the software. The android system developed at Google met their needs. They purchased the Taiwanese-made Asus Tablets, well regarded in the market place but not designed for the rigors of school use. Another issue was that Wireless Generation had not developed curriculum but Murdoch wanted to beat Pearson and Houghton Mifflin to the digital education market place … so they forged ahead.
In 2012, the corporate plan was rolling along until the wheels came off. In Guilford County, North Carolina, the school district won a Race to the Top grant of $30 million dollars which it used to experiment with digital learning. The district’s plancalled for nearly 17,000 students in 20 middle schools to receive Amplify tablets. When a charger for one of the tablets overheated, the plan was halted. Only two months into the experiment, they found not only had a charger malfunctioned but another 175 chargers had issues and 1500 screens were kid-damaged.
This was the beginning of the end.
By August of 2015, News Corporation announced it was exiting the education business. The corporation took a $371 million dollar write-off. The next month, they announced selling Amplify to members of its staff. In the deal orchestrated by Joel Klein, who remained a board member, Larry Berger assumed leadership of the company.
Three months later, Reuters reported that the real buyer was Laurene Powell Jobs. She purchased Amplify through her LLC, the Emerson Collective. In typical Powell Jobs style, no information was available for how much of the company she would personally control.
Because Emerson Collective is an LLC, it can purchase private companies and is not required to make money details public. However, the Waverley Street Foundation, also known as the Emerson Collective Foundation, is a 501 C3 (EIN: 81-3242506) that must make money transactions public. Waverly Street received their tax exempt status November 9, 2016.
Navigating tells readers that it helps teachers move away from ineffective legacy practices and start making shifts to evidence-based practices. The claim that “legacy practices” are “ineffective” is not evidence-based. The other assertion that SoR is evidence-based has no peer-reviewed research backing it.
Sally Riordan is a Senior Research Fellow at the University College London. In Britain, they have many of the same issues with reading instruction. In her recent research, she noted:
“In 2023, however, researchers at the University of Warwick pointed out something that should have been obvious for some time but has been very much overlooked – that following the evidence is not resulting in the progress we might expect.
“A series of randomised controlled trials, including one looking at how to improve literacy through evidence, have suggested that schools that use methods based on research are not performing better than schools that do not.”
In Symposium, we see quotes from Kareem Weaver who co-founded Fulcrum in Oakland, California and is its executive director. Weaver also was managing director of the New School Venture Fund, where Powell Jobs served on the board. He works for mostly white billionaires to the detriment of his community. (Page 15)
Both Symposium and Navigating have the same quote, “Our friends at the Reading League say that instruction based on the Science of Reading ‘will elevate and transform every community, every nation, through the power of literacy.”’
Who is the Reading League and where did they come from?
Dr. Maria Murray is the founder and CEO of The Reading League. It seems to have been hatched at the University of Syracuse and State University of New York at Oswego by Murray and Professor Jorene Finn in 2017. That year, they took in $11,044 in contributions (EIN: 81-0820021) and in 2018, another $109,652. Then in 2019, their revenues jumped 20 times to $2,240,707!
Jorene Finn worked for Cambria Learning Group and was a LETRS facilitator at Lexia. That means the group had serious connections to the corporate SoR initiative before they began.
With Amplify’s multiple citations of The Reading League, I speculated that the source of that big money in 2019 might have been Powell Jobs. Her Waverly Street Foundation (AKA Emerson Collective Foundation) only shows one large donation of $95,000,000 in 2019. It went to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (EIN: 20-5205488), a donor-directed dark money fund.
There is no way of following that $95 million.
The Reading League Brain Scan Proving What?
Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University noted the League’s over-reliance on brain scans and shared:
“Many researchers in neurobiology (e.g., Elliott et al., 2020; Hickok, 2014; Lyon, 2017) have voiced alarming concerns about the validity and preciseness of brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect reliable biomarkers in processes such as reading and in the diagnosis of other mental activity….
“And Mark Seidenberg, a key neuroscientist cited by the “science of reading” movement, offers a serious wcaution about the value of brain research: “Our concern is that although reading science is highly relevant to learning in the classroom setting, it does not yet speak to what to teach, when, how, and for whom at a level that is useful for teachers.”
“Beware The Reading League because it is an advocacy movement that is too often little more than cherry-picking, oversimplification, and a thin veneer for commercial interests in the teaching of reading.”
The push to implement SoR is a new way to sell what Amplify originally called “personalized learning.”This corporate movement conned legislators, many are co-conspirators, into passing laws forcing schools and teachers to use the SoR-related programs, equipment and testing.
SoR is about economic gain for its purveyors and not science based.
Diane Ravitch's blog 