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Indianapolis: The Resistance Is Fighting the Well-Funded Disruptors

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2020 //
8

Professor Jim Scheurich read a recent article in the rightwing, anti-public school journal “Education Next” about Indianapolis, which he thought was fundamentally flawed.

He sent the following analysis of what’s really happening in Indianapolis:

 

A RECENT ARTICLE IN EDUCATION NEXT

COMPLETELY MISREPRESENTS

THE RECENT HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS K12 EDUCATION

Dr. Jim Scheurich

Urban Education Studies Doctoral Program

Indiana University – Indianapolis (IUPUI) Professor

President, IPS Community Coalition

 

Unfortunately, a recent article in the pro-charter, pro-neoliberal “magazine,” called Education Next, is a thorough misrepresentation of the recent history of Indianapolis K12 education (see https://www.educationnext.org/hoosier-way-good-choices-for-all-indianapolis/).  I know because, as a university professor and a community activist, I have spent the last seven years working against the pro-charter, pro-neoliberal efforts in Indianapolis, mainly through the IPS Community Coalition, a citywide grassroots organization, and through anactivist research group of doctoral students, community members, and university faculty.  Below, I am going to point out eight ways this Education Next “story” is distorted and deceptive.  

1. The real cause of the “schooling crisis” in Indianapolis was racism and desegregation as many whites who could afford to do so moved out of the city, as did much business and capital, along with the ongoing effects of local, long-term racist policies and practices.  

In the Education Next (EN) article, there is not a single reference to race, desegregation, and racism.  Indeed, these words are never used (except as labels in one chart) even though the history of Indianapolis schooling cannot be accurately and fairly storied without these. In addition, there is no mention of the ongoing racism in law enforcement and imprisonment, housing, education, medicine, employment, banking, and the media, which exists in all cities and is well documented in social science research. These exclusions are a loud absence that is unquestionably remarkable and certainly a mark of weak and/or distorted scholarship.  Why would anyone who wanted to tell an honest “Hoosier” education story leave these out?  At a minimum, it certainly makes one wonder about the real nature and agenda of this EN story.

2. No mention of the pro-charter neoliberal movement that has “Mind Trust” and “Stand for Children” like organizations in every major city and several smaller ones in the U.S.

The Mind Trust and Stand for Children in Indianapolis like to keep their “story” local so those who work for them and the Indianapolis public remain ignorant about their true nature. The Mind Trust and Stand for Children never discuss that they are part of a national neoliberal movement largely funded by conservative and right–wing individuals, organizations, and corporations.  They never discuss the wider agenda of this movement, which includes low taxes for the wealthy, decreased funding for social supports, the privatization of and profiteering off of public services (like public education), efforts to decrease the voting power of people of color, the end of unions (esp. teachers unions) and the benefits unions have developed, among other ways that decrease the quality of life for everyone but the 1% and those who serve them.  Also, Mind Trust and Stand for Children never discuss the strongly anti-democratic nature of the neoliberal movement.  To begin to educate yourself on this national movement, read these highly respected books, in this order, MacLean’s ”Democracy in Chains,” Mayer’s “Dark Money,“ and Lipman’s “The New Political Economy of Urban Education.”  

3. No mention of the key role of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) in the Mind Trust/Stand for Children story.

ALEC is a conservative-rightwing organization that creates model state-level neoliberal legislation to assist in institutionalizing the state-level neoliberal agenda discussed above in #2.  ALEC considers Indiana to be one of its favorite states, as Indiana Republicans and some Democrats have implemented so much ALEC developed legislation.  The result has been that Indiana consistently ranks high in business-friendly policies and effects and among the lowest in quality of life policies and effects.  Lengthy discussions and critiques of ALEC and its agenda are widely available, but there is no doubt ALEC is pushing a radical agenda that would not be supported if voted on by the general public.  

4. No mention of the “dark money” funding of Mind Trust/Stand for Children supported school board members.  

Since the 2012 board election in Indianapolis, the Mind Trust and Stand for Children have covertly used a Stand for Children 501c4 headquartered in Oregon to funnel national money into the Indianapolis school board race.  Before this, any everyday citizen who could put together funding of $3-5,000 had a chance to win election to the school board.  Starting in 2012, we know that the Mind Trust and Stand for Children started providing around $65,000 to each of their chosen candidates with all of them winning as no one was expecting or prepared for this infusion of such large amounts.  In the next election, 2014, they did the same and took majority control of the board, even though one of their chosen candidates, Gayle Cosby, turned against them once she realized what their real agenda was.  We call this “dark money” because a 501c4 does not have to report where the funds came from or how they were spent and not one of their candidates have publicly admitted this support.  In fact, it took the IPS Community Coalition shouting loudly about this for some time before the local news media paid any attention and still do not sufficiently attend to this, especially since in the last election, our best guess is that they spent over $500,000 on a district wide seat (more on this below).  Recently, the head of Stand for Children, who is widely praised in the EN article, said on social media that the Indianapolis Stand for Children has no relationship to the 501c4 in Oregon, leaving us puzzled as to how the Oregon folks know whom to support.  

5. Even though the “Innovation” schools (stealth charters inside the district) are widely praised, there is no discussion of constant reports to the IPS Community Coalition that the district leadership uses deception, misrepresentations (to put it politely), and threats to stop resistance and garner parent and teacher support for converting a traditional school to an “innovation” school.  

Either lots of teachers and parents are lying to the IPS Community Coalition, or the districts is using strong arm tactics to institute “innovation” schools.  Indeed, many teachers report to us that they feel afraid of the district leadership, given the district’s rough shod ways of getting what the district wants.  Also, there is no mention of the fact that for their first three years, the “innovation” schools are under easier state accountability rules.  Thus, the Mind Trust and Stand for Children often brag that the “innovation” schools are doing “better” even though traditional schools, which are under the full accountability rules, are actually doing better.  Might we call this dissembling?

6. No mention of the utter failure to successfully  educate Black children, who are the majority of IPS students, and no mention of the use of home schooling and high discipline rates to push out Black children.

Despite that we know that testing experts say we cannot use state accountability exams in the way we do, it is a harsh fact that less than 6% of Black 10th graders recently passed both the state’s language arts exam and the math exam.  If any business (the favorite neoliberal model) had this terrible outcome, that business would be shut down or all the leadership fired.  This is totally appalling—and never mentioned.  In addition, an intrepid local Chalkbeat reporter found compelling evidence that some schools have been counseling the parents of primarily Black students to choose to home school instead of facing a discipline incident result, a move that takes this student off the school’s roles and improves the school’s standing.  That this has the high potential to negatively impact the entire life of these Black students does not seem important to the decision makers, even though local Black activists, like Diane Daniels, have been pointing this out for years.  Furthermore, other schools, sometime called “no excuses” schools, use really high levels of discipline to push out primarily Black students that they see as potentially hurting their schools’ state grade, even though local education activists, like John Harris Loflin, have been making this point for years.  That all of this is totally disastrous for Black students, their families, their communities, and all of Indianapolis does not seem important enough to mention in the EN story.

7. Substantial problems with the CREDO and Indiana University (IU) research cited in the EN article are not addressed.

There is no mention of the deep critique of the CREDO report and its methodology, even though the University of Colorado’s National Education Policy Center (neps.colorado.edu) has published more than one critique of the CREDO methodology and their reports.  Also, no mention that the CREDO reports are done by a center that receives large pro-charter funding.  Furthermore, the IU research has been cited locally and nationally but never publicly released, as far as I have been able to determine.  I was able to get a copy of it, but since others have ownership, I cannot release it.  I did a thorough, indepth critique of it, showing it to be flawed in multiple ways but cannot publish since the research continues not to be public.  I mentioned that publicizing but not publishing results was against social science practice and ethics. I even asked that it be released, but they have stopped communicating with me even though I am part of the same university system.  

8. Nothing on the persistent incompetency of the Ferebee administration.  (Ferebee left last year to go to Washington, DC.  Fight hard, everyday DC folks!)

The examples of incompetency are many and large.  First, closing of high schools is almost always a fraught endeavor.  Nonetheless, there are good superintendents around the country who have figured out how to have authentic, transparent conversations with their communities and arrive at collaborative decisions.  I have met and talked to some of these folks.  It is never easy, and some community people are not happy in the end, but overall the community can feel it was done fairly and transparently.  That was not the case in Indianapolis.  Second, without consulting even with their friends and natural allies, like the Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Realtors, Ferebee went public with little time left before the vote with a nearly one billion–dollar bond proposal.  Even their friends and allies said, “NO!”  After an inappropriate Chamber study of cost cutting for the district, the district cut to around a quarter of the original amount to get Chamber and other elite support.  In addition, good superintendents know that it takes one to one and a half years of hard work to prepare for a successful bond election, and even that is no guarantee.  Ferebee seemed not to know this.  He did though get his quarter million because he committed most of it to raising teacher salaries, which even his critics supported.  Third, the district’s public budget document was opaque and confusing, even after having been critiqued by a non-political national organization that examines such documents nationwide.  After two years of pushing, we got some improvements.  Fourth, busing has consistently been a mess, which they now think they are solving by privatizing it. Fifth, teachers districtwide have become very afraid of raising any issues because they believe they will be fired.  Sixth, even though there is a large amount of research nationally as to what it takes to create successful urban schools for all children, regardless of race and ethnicity, family income, sexuality, disability status, and immigration status (some of which I have published), the Ferebee administration did not seem to know any of this.  Instead, initiating “innovation” schools and supporting charter schools that replaced district schools seemed to be his only choices.  

The neoliberal so-called education “reform” movement is weaker than they seem despite their millions of dollars and their PR machine.  

The IPS Community Coalition is a multi-race, multi-class citywide coalition of everyday Indianapolis folks and local organizations (see us on Facebook) who started a little over three years ago.  We began with less than eight people sitting in a room together, and now we have over 250 members.  We are very active on Facebook and sometimes have over 6,000 eyes on our posts.  We have no money, and many of our members have little. We do support teachers’ unions and work with the local teachers’ union.  In the 2018 school board election, we defeated two of the Mind Trust and Stand for Children incumbents.  The only race they won was due to the candidate being a non-incumbent.  In our best understanding, they spent over a half million dollars on their districtwide candidate, while the person we supported defeated their candidate on less than $10,000.  Because of their losses in the last election, now they are bringing back some of the most well-known local founders of their movement and trying to fake the community engagement that we authentically do.  They do have millions of dollars, many fulltime and part-time employees, and a large PR machine that falsely uses civil rights language, but they can be defeated.  

Study what neoliberalism is in education and other areas of your community.  

An activated people can defeat money and power.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Funding, Indianapolis, Privatization, Resistance

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
12

The charter industry is overrun with scandals because charter laws do not require accountability and transparency. Theft, conflicts of interest, nepotism, and fraud are a feature, not a bug.

A charter operator in Dallas was sentenced to seven years in jail for taking a kickback, but then convinced the board to give her a bonus of $20,000.

Donna Houston-Woods was convicted of defrauding her own Dallas charter school, but she wasn’t done taking its money for her own benefit, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.

She returned to Nova Academy after her October trial and pocketed a $20,000 bonus. Houston-Woods, the school’s longtime CEO, then asked for another $300,000 in severance, but the school board denied it.

Her actions, the prosecutor said, showed zero remorse and a lack of respect for the law.

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Houston-Woods to seven years and three months in prison for accepting $50,000 in kickbacks in exchange for steering a school technology contract to a friend, who then botched the job…

Senior Judge Sidney Fitzwater called it “outrageous” that the Nova board of directors, having been “injured” by Houston-Woods, would pay her a bonus before she resigned. He called it “stunning to me” and said the payment was indicative of the school’s management.

Because Houston-Woods defrauded the federal E-rate program out of about $337,900, Nova is ineligible for any future government money to pay for internet services, Fitzwater said.

The business leadership of Dallas wants more charter schools!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Dallas, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Scandals

Ohio GOP Grovels at Feet of Fordham and ALEC

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2020 //
20

Bill Phillis writes about the GOP’s pusillanimous capitulation to its masters and is prepared to sacrifice its public schools to satisfy DC-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute and ALEC, funded by CharlesKoch, the Waltons, and DeVos.

He writes:

School choice zealots seem to be driving the state education policy train
In spite of the harm being heaped on school districts due to corruption in the charter industry and the wild expansion of vouchers, the school choice zealots are in control. State officials seem powerless to establish rational Ohio education policy.
According to current media reports, the voucher “fix” being considered in the Ohio Senate, would lessen the harm to some school districts in the near term but would set the stage for a universal voucher system in the future. The local choice zealots and their big boy moneyed allies, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Fordham Foundation, are driving policy that undercuts the very foundation of the public common school. State officials seem to cower when confronted by the choice crowd.
 
Time to march on Columbus.
Before I saw Bill Phillis’ post, I tweeted an article about a temporary “fix” proposed by the GOP.
Jan Resseger wrote to me that the “fix” is a fraud and her own integrated, mixed-income district will be devastated.

She wrote:

I noticed you forwarded the Dispatch piece as though it will help anybody.  The Ohio Senate “solution” will simply leave in place all the damage from current year.  In CH-UH we have 478 percent growth in vouchers this year.  These kids will carry those vouchers out of our district’s budget each year until they graduate from high school. 

We’ll hope that this afternoon the House mitigates this in some way.  Leaves vouchers in place for now—but moratorium on their growth for a while.  Leaves flawed state report cards in place without a deadline to change them.  Expands income cap on the other kind of state funded vouchers.

The mess is embedded right in this so-called “solution.”

–Jan

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Carol Burris: The Five Biggest Charter Scandals of 2019

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2020 //
10

Carol Burris reviews here the five biggest charter scandals of 2019. 

There were many to choose from.

Numero uno, of course, was the giant charter scam in California:

1. A3 Education: Eleven are indicted over their involvement in a charter scheme that defrauded California taxpayers of more than $50 million.

In May, the California Superior Court for the County of San Diego indicted 11 people on charges that they helped defraud California taxpayers out of $50 million via an elaborate scheme to create phony attendance records to increase revenue to an online charter chain known as A3. You can find a summary of the story with its elaborate kickbacks and fraud schemes here.

The alleged theft took place over the course of several years. In 2016, Jason Schrock and Sean McManus reportedly purchased Mosaica Online learning, which got its start with a $100,000 grant from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). They eventually renamed the online schools Valiant. Schrock and McManus managed the schools through the nonprofit Academic, Arts and Action (A3) Charter Academy. Eli Johnson would reportedly approach small, cash-strapped school districts to enlist them as authorizers, for which they would receive an authorizer fee.

In addition to Valiant Academy charter schools, A3 expanded by starting CA STEAM Academies throughout the state. Using the 19 resulting charter schools that enrolled thousands of students, they put their scheme in place. Thousands of summer school students would enroll, some unwittingly, and never take any classes. Meanwhile, according to the indictment, the money flowed into Schrock and McManus’s real estate ventures, bank accounts and the kitty they created for payoffs.

In 2016, I exposed the mysterious growth of the CA STEAM Academies and other charters in which Johnson and McManus were involved here on The Answer Sheet. As part of my investigation, I spoke with Johnson on the phone. He claimed he did not know the name of the company he worked for or who signed his paycheck.

The CA STEAM empire extended into Ohio. Whether it has been investigated in that state is unknown. The A3 investigation and prosecutions continue as they hunt for McManus, who has disappeared.

Read on to learn about the other four members of the Dishonor Roll.

I had the odd experience of meeting McManus a year ago. I happened to be at breakfast in a hotel in Newport Beach, California. My companion and I were seated next to a table where a man was in harmonious discussion with two or three others. He spoke in a loud voice and I heard references to “schools,” “sports,” “$5 a head,” etc.

When their party broke up, I stopped and asked him I’m if he was “in the charter industry.” Yes, he answered, and told me proudly he owned many corporations.

That was Sean McManus, now on the lam.

In case the story is behind a paywall, number 2 was the decision by the board of Texas-based IDEA charter chain IDEA to lease a private jet for $2 million a year. The board reversed the decision in response to public reaction. Now the executives and their wives fly first class.

Number 3 is a small California Charter Chain whose owners somehow became multimillionaires, although their charters are “nonprofit.”

”4. A nonprofit operator of migrant shelters, Southwest Key, coordinated with its for-profit organizations to bleed its charter schools into rat-infested classrooms.

A Texas charter school named East Austin College Prep made national news in 2019 when the New York Times reported complaints of raccoons and rats invading classrooms, rain pouring in through a leaky roof, and furniture occasionally falling through rickety floors. Yet, according to the story, the charter high school pays almost $900,000 in annual rent to its landlord, Southwest Key Programs.

The school, which received a CSP grant of $450,900, is owned by Southwest Key Programs, the nation’s largest provider of shelters for migrant children who’ve been separated from their families at the border….

5.The North Jersey Record uncovered hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds going to buildings owned by private interests, with charter schools paying inflated rents that far exceed building debt.

A 2019 five-part series written by a team of reporters from the North Jersey Record exposed the shady dealings hidden from the public eye that allow developers to cash in on public money and tax breaks by providing real estate to charter schools. The reporters found that information was buried so deeply in documents, it was difficult in many cases to find out who was making the profit.

The report resulted in a federal grand jury subpoena issued to the Thomas P. Marion Charter School in Newark. Its nonprofit “Friends of” organization purchased two public school buildings and flipped them for a profit of nearly $10 million.

I left out the details. Burris’ article includes them. Read it in full if you can. The details are shocking.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization, Scandals

Craig Harris: Online Charters Have a Record of Poor Outcomes, Fraud, and Profit

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2020 //
10

Craig Harris, investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, wrote about the abysmal record of online charter schools. Despite their poor outcomes, they continue to be very profitable.

The biggest of the online charter companies is K12 Inc., whose schools regularly get bad results but whose revenue this year topped $1 billion for the first time.

State regulators mouth complaints about the low quality of online charters yet they are renewed again and again. As Harris points out, even school choice advocates (except for Betsy DeVos) believe that the online charters should be regulated, yet they continue to operate unimpeded.

Harris writes:

SAN DIEGO — By the time authorities brought charges against the owners of A3 Education earlier this year, the online charter school company had bilked California taxpayers out of $50 million, according to indictments handed up in May. 

The state would have lost another $200 million if authorities had not detected the scheme to inflate enrollment in the virtual charter school using names gleaned from youth sports league rosters, said San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan. League owners are alleged to have received kickbacks for providing names, according to the indictments.

A3 Education, a nonprofit management company that enrolled tens of thousands of California students at its peak, had sought out small school districts to authorize its online schools, knowing the districts would provide little oversight, authorities said.

The California case is the latest in a string of allegations of fraud and educational malpractice against virtual charter schools. These have included, among others, multimillion dollar scams in Ohio, Oklahoma and Indiana, and academic or financial problems that shuttered online charter schools in Georgia, Nevada and South Carolina.

California last year banned for-profit charter schools and this year adopted a two-year moratorium on new virtual charter schools. Neither law, however, would have affected A3 Education or its schools.

The Arizona Republic visited seven states to investigate the successes and challenges surrounding charter schools — the publicly funded but privately operated schools that many believed would revolutionize American public education through competition and innovation…

In Arizona, which has the most charter school students out of the states, no online charter school meets the state Charter Board’s academic standards. And Arizona’s largest virtual charter school, Primavera Online, earned the board’s lowest academic ranking and posted declining graduation rates for the last decade. That hasn’t stopped Primavera founder and CEO Damian Creamer from paying himself a combined $10.1 million in 2017 and 2018.

Primavera, which has a total enrollment of 22,000, reported a $10 million profit this year, while spending $6.9 million on teacher salaries. 

“These guys are definitely in it for the profit,” said Macke Raymond, director of the nonpartisan Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, at Stanford University.

Negative headlines have, however, prompted prominent charter school leaders to call on regulators to clamp down on virtual charters, and for the industry to cut ties with the schools.

Todd Ziebarth, a senior vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said poor academic performance at virtual charter schools gives ammunition to teachers unions and others who oppose school choice, hurting high-quality charter schools and the broader school-choice movement.

“They make up a small percentage of charter schools, but a huge percentage of negative publicity,” said Tom Torkelson, chief executive of Texas-based IDEA Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter school operators. “They add no value. I would never send my kids to one.”

Torkelson argues that it’s time for online charter schools to go out of business.

But few states have enacted reforms, experts note, because when such proposals arise, virtual charter operators — flush with cash — have flooded key lawmakers with campaign contributions.

This proves that when a big charter corporation buys legislators, they stay bought.

Despite poor academic performance, virtual charter schools likely are here to stay because parents want that choice, said Raymond, the CREDO director.

However, CREDO notes in a study, low-performing online charter schools are not keeping their end of the educational “grand bargain” struck about 25 years ago, during the early charter movement.

That deal gave charter operators the freedom to teach kids in innovative ways with minimal red tape. By being allowed to run a school like a business, operators promised they would allow regulators to shut down poor performing schools. 

To fix the problems, Stanford researchers concluded that charter school authorizers “must step up their responsibilities and demand online charter providers improve outcomes for students.” And, states should examine the progress of existing online programs before approving any expansions.

Raymond said she still believes in a “cost-efficient and effective education through online” schools but the system “doesn’t seem to deliver on that.”

University of Colorado researchers agreed that states should slow or halt the growth of virtual and blended schools until their performance has improved, and student-to-teacher ratios are lowered.

But Miron, the Western Michigan professor, said changes are unlikely.

Even when prosecutors, like the San Diego County district attorney, crack down on one virtual school another will quickly pop up because the business is so lucrative, he said. 

“Even if a charter board fires them, it doesn’t affect them. They are not losing a building,” Miron said. “They don’t get punished for risky behavior. It’s a very different model for brick-and-mortar schools.”

 

 

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Virtual Charter Schools

Tom Ultican Explains Corporate Education Reform and the Assault on Dallas Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2020 //
13

 

This is a very engaging video interview of Tom Ultican, an expert on corporate education reform, explaining the federal takeover of public schools via No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Ultican goes into detail about the corporate assault on public schools in the Dallas Independent School District. He names names, starting with the misguided superintendency of Mike Miles, a Broadie who managed to drive out large numbers of experienced teachers. He identifies the funders of corporate funders, both billionaires and the Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

He gives a concise analysis of the money behind the “portfolio model,” charters, and privatization in Texas and Dallas.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Dallas, Democracy, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Portfolio District, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teachers, Texas

Teresa Hanafin on the “Trial” with No Evidence Allowed

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
45

Teresa Hanafin writes the daily “Fast Forward” for the Boston Globe.

She writes:

It’s the last day for House Democrats to argue why senators should find Trump guilty and remove him from office. Yesterday they focused on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power; today they tackle the second, obstruction of Congress.

In making the case yesterday that Trump abused the power of his office, once again the House managers were clear, methodical, and thorough, using video, e-mails, and other material they were able to obtain from witnesses since Trump has tried to block everyone and everything (hence the obstruction charge).

They even showed a clip of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham arguing during the Clinton impeachment trial that a president need not have committed a crime to be removed from office. Why show that? Because now that a Republican is in the White House, Graham is arguing the exact opposite.

But the closing statement by lead manager Adam Schiff stole the show, and his passionate and emotional plea that “Here, right matters” went viral before he had even sat down.

Schiff was echoing the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman,an Iraq War veteran who had told the House Intelligence Committee that he wanted to reassure his father not to worry about his decision to defy Trump and show up to testify. Why shouldn’t his father worry?

“Because this is America,” he said. “This is the country I have served and defended, that all of my brothers have served. And here, right matters.”

It was the perfect phrase for Schiff to adopt last night. After he pointed out that when it came to the false Putin propaganda that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election, Trump chose to reject the truth as told to him by all of his intelligence experts and instead, believe what Rudy Giuliani was telling him. Why? Because people like FBI Director Christopher Wray were offering him information that was in the country’s interest, Schiff said, while Giuliani was offering him information that was in Trump’s personal and political interest. With Trump, the latter will win out every time, Schiff said, and that makes him dangerous. In closing, Schiff said:

If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves if right and truth don’t matter.

Here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No Constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore.

You know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters, and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.

Here’s a 9-minute clip of Schiff’s statement, or follow the trending Twitter hashtag #RightMatters.

Today, the House managers will make the case that Trump obstructed Congress,arguing that if Trump’s refusal to comply with every congressional request is allowed to stand, then Congress will have enabled him and all future presidents to hide their wrongdoing, effectively killing Congress’ constitutionally mandated duty to hold the executive branch accountable.

Their arguments come as the Republicans are touting a new reason not to find Trump guilty: That he’s just going to assert executive privilege anyway, and it will be dragged out in the courts, so why bother? They point to the fact that the House didn’t go to court (it actually did on several matters, and those matters are still tied up), but they are willfully ignoring history: During the Richard Nixon investigation, the House didn’t go to court to compel Nixon to turn over more information (he turned over many), but the Senate did. The difference? Those Senate Republicans wanted the truth; these Senate Republicans don’t.

Remember: In the entire history of the United States, no president has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry.

What is stunning is how assiduously the Republicans are avoiding the simple question: Do you believe the accusations against Trump? Instead they’re whining about having to sit so long, they’re complaining that the Democrats have been repetitive, and they’re pouting that the House didn’t go to court. Yoo-hoo … do you think he’s guilty or not? Crickets.

The GOP begins its arguments tomorrow, and Trump’s lawyers have indicated that they likely won’t use their full 24 hours. The Republicans could vote to acquit Trump by the end of next week.

Meanwhile, a reprehensible spectacle unfolded on Twitter when GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee attacked Vindman, the veteran who has shrapnel in the body and a Purple Heart on his chest. With no evidence, she decided to accuse him of leaking information about Trump’s fateful phone call with the president of Ukraine to the whistleblower. And she called him unpatriotic.

How sad. How vulgar. To see a US senator grovel like this for Trump’s approval shows just how far the Republican Party has fallen. As anchor Jake Tapper put it on CNN: There’s no reward for decency in Trump’s Republican Party. There’s only reward for indecency.

Categories Fraud

Domingo Morel: The State Takeover of Houston Schools Is about Race and Power, Not School Improvement

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2020 //
5

Domingo Morel is a professor of political science at Rutgers University who has studied school takeovers across the nation. He is the author of Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy. 

In this post, he describes the proposed state takeover of the Houston Independent School District as a hoax. 

It is a manufactured crisis. It is a theft of political power, and it is based on race.

If the state of Texas had its way, the state would be in the process of taking overthe Houston Independent School District.

But a judge temporarily blocked the takeover on Jan. 8, with the issue now set to be decided at a trial in June.

The ruling temporarily spares Houston’s public school system from joining a list of over 100 school districts in the nation that have experienced similar state takeovers during the past 30 years.

The list includes New York City, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, Oakland and Newark. Houston is the largest school district in Texas and the seventh largest in the U.S.

While the state of Texas claims the planned takeover is about school improvement, my research on state takeovers of school districts suggests that the Houston takeover, like others, is influenced by racism and political power.

States fail to deliver

State governments have used takeovers since the late 1980s to intervene in school districts they have identified as in need of improvement. While state administrations promise that takeovers will improve school systems, 30 years of evidence shows that state takeovers do not meet the states’ promised expectations. For instance, a recent report called Michigan’s 15-year management of the Detroit schools a “costly mistake” because the takeover was not able to address the school system’s major challenges, which included adequately funding the school district.

But while the takeovers don’t deliver promised results, as I show in my book, they do have significant negative political and economic consequences for communities, which overwhelmingly are communities of color. These negative consequences often include the removal of locally elected school boards. They also involve decreases in teachers and staff and the loss of local control of schools.

Despite the highly problematic history of state takeovers, states have justified the takeovers on the grounds that the entire school district is in need of improvement. However, this is not the case for the Houston takeover because by the state’s own standards, the Houston school system is not failing.

By the state’s own standards, the Houston Independent School District is not failing!

Although the state has given the Houston Independent School District a B rating, it plans to take over the Houston schools because one school, Wheatley High School, has not met state standards for seven years. According to state law, the state can take over a school district or close a school if it fails to meet standards for five years.

The Houston Independent School District has 280 schools. The district serves over 200,000 students. It employs roughly 12,000 teachers. Wheatley High School serves roughly 800 students and has roughly 50 teachers.

So why would a state take over a school district that has earned a B rating from the state? And why base the takeover on the performance of one school that represents fewer than 1% of the district’s student and teaching population?

The takeover is nothing more or less than a bald-faced attempt to strip political power from black and Hispanic communities.

No one believes that software developer Mike Morath (the current state commissioner) has a single idea about how to improve Wheatley or any other school. He has never been a teacher, a principal, or a superintendent. He is there to carry out the rightwing agenda of Governor Gregg Abbott.

Count on it. This is a bald-faced power grab.

Categories Fraud, Hoax, Houston, Racism, Texas

Betsy DeVos Defends Her Indifference towards Defrauded Students

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2020 //
14

Last month, Betsy DeVos testified to Congress about her role in the student loan program. 

Her Department hounded students to pay back loans instead of canceling them because their for-profit college defrauded them. A federal judge ordered the Department to stop harassing the students, then fined the Department $100,000 for violating the court order.

Rep. Josh Harder of California grilled her for her failure to side with the students. He accused her of acting like a lobbyist for the for-profit colleges.

It’s a powerful segment. Worth watching to see her utter and callous indifference to the suffering of students who accumulated tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a worthless degree.

Rep. Harder said he understood why she didn’t care: a student’s debt of $40,000 represented a minuscule fraction of the cost of one of her 10 yachts.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Houston: Community Members and Students Speak Out Against State Takeover of HISD

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2020 //
7

The following statement was released on New Year’s Day by Community Voices for Public Education, a coalition of parents and students in Houston. As their statement demonstrates, the state takeover is a fraud intended to strip the school district of its elected school board and to replace it with a hand-picked governing board selected by a non-educator who wants to privatize public education.

 

It is New Years’ Day and public education is on our minds.

Will you make a commitment to fight the immoral, unAmerican and racist takeover of HISD?  Call your elected officials and then bring five friends with you to the January 9 rally opposing this takeover. 

Recently, the Houston Chronicle editorial board used misleading facts and misrepresentation to misinform its readers. The Chronicle seems mission-driven to legitimize the state takeover of HISD no matter the cost to its journalistic integrity or actual facts.

When they do this over three editorials, it is no longer an accident; it is propaganda. 

Here are some examples from the most recent editorials.

HISD at a crossroads: Looming State Takeover: The editorial compared HISD’s 81% graduation rate to Dallas’ 88% and Fort Worth’s 87% leaving the reader with the impression that they were better school districts.  The reality is Fort Worth has a TEA 2019 Accountability Rating of “C”(79) and only 53% of their graduates are college, career or military ready versus HISD’s “B”(88) and 63% graduate readiness. Dallas ISD has a “B” (86) rating and only 57% of their graduates are college, career or military ready. By the TEA’s own standards HISD is the better district. How did the Houston Chronicle and Mr. Morath manage to come to a completely different conclusion? Didn’t any of them bother to check the Texas Schools website? https://txschools.gov 

HISD must learn from others and our own past:  This editorial starts with the statistic of 56% of HISD students not meeting grade level expectations as measured by the STAAR test but it never mentions that Dallas ISD has the exact same STAAR performance rating as HISD. Once again, the Chronicle incorrectly leaves readers with the impression that Dallas is a better school district. (Source https://txschools.gov) 

HISD needs improvement, but where to start? How could the Chron fail to mention the Superintendent? The person who actually runs the district. The person who hires and places the all important principals. The person who would have to actually implement the LBB recommendations. This piece misleads the reader into thinking the Board of Trustees run the district. They don’t! They are a governing body elected by us and accountable to us. If the state takeover proceeds, our democratically elected school board members, four just elected, will be replaced with a board of managers serving at the pleasure of the governor and the TEA.

A call to all Houstonians to participate: In its final editorial in the series, the Chronicle asks us to put blind faith in TEA Commissioner Mike Morath as our unelected torchbearer. His educational experience is one term as Dallas ISD Trustee in which he unsuccessfully tried to turn Dallas ISD into a “home rule” giant charter using the same tactics he is now employing in Houston ISD. Truly, his resume is thinner than most substitute teachers. 

Throughout the series, the Houston Chronicle disregards overwhelming evidence that state takeovers harm students and communities. They also turn a blind eye to the fact that takeovers have been used disproportionately against school districts of color. Furthermore, they have ignored a preponderance of evidence that high stakes testing is a flawed method for evaluating students, teachers and schools. 

And the series pays the barest lip service to poverty/inequity and the effect on children and families. When seven children share one mattress, they do not need a state takeover to do better in school; they need six more mattresses.

If the Editorial Board wanted to facilitate meaningful change in HISD, their editorials should have been grounded in complete facts and they should have used data to inform, not obfuscate. There is no such thing as problem solving through propaganda.

Community Voices for Public Education
http://www.houstoncvpe.org/

 

Categories Accountability, Fake News, Fraud, Hoax, Houston, Lies, Texas
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