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Texas Public Schools Are Under Attack: Consider the Case of Austin

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2026 //
1

A journalist in Texas wrote the following. He/she lives in Austin and requested anonymity to avoid reprisals. I have double-checked the information shared. It is accurate.

The journalist describes Governor Greg Abbott’s tactic to destroy public education: state takeovers. This allows the state to dismiss the locally elected school board and replace it with people loyal to Governor Abbott and State Superintendent Mike Morath, a non-educator picked by Abbott. After the state takeover, teachers leave, enrollment declines..public schools being to the state, not to the district.

The journalist wrote the following to me:

Texas public schools are under attack. And no Texas district is being attacked on as many fronts as Austin ISD.

 State policies and targeted investigations are taking a toll, pulling time, energy, and funds from the real work of supporting Austin’s students, teachers, and campus communities. The district is facing a long list of challenges, all created or exacerbated by many years of anti-public school policies from state leaders. Students and teachers feel the impact on campuses every day. Families are leaving the district. Budgets are becoming tighter each year. Charters and vouchers are siphoning students from public schools and concentrating need at many campuses. And despite this community’s deep belief in engaging education, teaching is increasingly focused on testing – the near-inevitable result of a punitive high-stakes testing environment.

 Austin is sometimes described as the blueberry in the tomato soup – the brightest blue community in what has long been a deeply red state. That makes the district a favorite target for state leaders, who routinely attack it to score political points.Students, teachers, families, and the city are suffering as those attacks weaken a district in that should be among the strongest urban districts in the country.

 The community shows up for Austin ISD schools, and people across the economic spectrum continue to choose Austin ISD schools, which educate a mix of students who are diverse in every way. About half come from families classified as having economic disadvantage and half do not. About half are Hispanic, almost a third are emergent bilingual, and nearly one in ten are immigrants from all over the world.

 Austin ISD’s school board looks a lot like the city itself – racially and economically diverse, highly educated, and politically progressive. All were elected with strong support from their local union and their local communities. All serve as volunteers in a role that demands many hours and invites public critique along with the joy. All have seen the impact of state policies on Texas public schools. Many are longtime public education advocates. And all have become far too familiar withthe power the Texas Education Agency holds over Texas districts.

 In Texas, state takeovers are becoming a go-to remedy. Houston ISD was the first big district to fall, in 2023. Then, last year, the pace escalated. A single school with five F ratings in a row can trigger a takeover. Four more districts are now under state control, including Fort Worth ISD – another of the state’s largest urban districts. When the 2026-27 school year began, some 250,000 Texas students walked into classrooms that are now under state control.

 It’s an unprecedented experiment, and an aggressive exercise of state power over local communities. Now Austin ISD – rated a B under the state’s narrow accountability system – is the latest Texas district at risk of state takeover. And that is just the biggest threat among many, many others.

 Here’s a short list of challenges Austin ISD is facing right now:

 

• Investigation of student walkouts

State leaders have targeted Austin ISD for a special investigation after students at many campuses walked out to protest ICE. In a community as diverse as Austin, issues involving immigration are felt deeply and personally. Their protests were part of a student movement across the state and the country in late January. Yet Governor Greg Abbot and Attorney General Ken Paxton have focused special attention on Austin ISD, with an investigation that still has not been completed. The Texas Education Agency has warned that walkouts could lead to a state takeover.

 

• Investigation of which bathroom a single student has used

Attorney General Paxton has also targeted Austin ISD for alleged violations of the state’s “bathroom bill,” which requires people at sites including public schools to use the bathroom that matches their sex at birth. The bill depends on people reporting districts for alleged violations – something that happened two times when someone complained about the bathroom a single transgender student was using at an Austin ISD high school, which was followed by a complaint at the district’s performing arts center. The law holds the district accountable, allowing fines of up to $5000 a day for documented violations. But the law also allows the full weight of the state to be weaponized against individual students – children in public schools.

 

• Funding crisis

For years, public education funding has failed to keep up with inflation or a long and growing list of mandates from the state. Texas consistently ranks in the bottom ten states in per-student funding. Yet schools must also pay for expensive security mandates, serve students who are emergent bilingual or who receive special education services despite funding that leaves immense gaps, and follow many other state demands that are neither optional nor funded. Across the state, dozens of schools have closed, class sizes are growing, programs and student supports are being cut, and teachers are quitting or taking second jobs. Texas offers no funding for many things it simply does not require, including school nurses and school librarians. Transportation is funded at a fraction of the actual cost to districts. In Austin ISD, the 2026-27 budget included about $205 million in deeply painful cuts. The district closed eleven campuses. They are selling property to help plug the holes. And still funding is not keeping up with costs. That crisis has been deepened by the passage of a $1 billion statewide voucher after many years of successful resistance by the Texas Legislature. Passage was only possible after the sitting governor primaried legislators who voted against vouchers, then had President Trump call lawmakers the morning of the vote. The cost is expected to double this year.

 

• State comptroller audit

At a campaign stop in El Paso in August, Governor Greg Abbott asked the Texas Comptroller to investigate the use of taxpayer money at up to four Texas school districts. The goal, according to the Governor, was to prevent funds from “being absorbed by central office growth, administrative bloat, consultants, and the web of noninstructional bureaucracy.” News reports say districts are being asked for data far beyond what an audit focused on the use of funds would require. The list includes lists of library books, demands for documents related to DEI, scrutiny of foreign workers, and information about Social Security numbers that advocates fear is an attempt to understand how many students may be undocumented.

 

• Investigation of Pride Week celebration

Austin ISD has a long history of celebrating Pride Week. Since 2014, that meant supporting activities that included flying Pride flags at district facilities, participating as a district in the community’s Pride Parade, offering age-appropriate activities focused on respect for other people, and supporting campuses that chose to host their own after-school events for families. Staff and families have often said that they have chosen the district because of AISD’s welcoming climate. And the district continued to celebrate Pride Week – along with Juneteenth, Cesar Chavez Day, and other important community celebrations – even after trustees received a death threat targeting the parade. Since 2024, AISD’s Pride Week celebrations have grown smaller and smaller, and less and less visible. In 2026, the district chose not to participate in the community’s parade, inviting PTA leaders to step into the district’s place. As a result, the parade shrank from dozens of people with district support to just a handful. And still, in April, the Texas Education Agency began an investigation into Austin ISD for Pride Week. That investigation was launched in response to a complaint not from within the community, but from a conservative member of the State Board of Education who represents a district in Fort Worth, about 200 miles away. On social media, he called for defunding the district and for a criminal investigation of the superintendent. He also shared concerns that if the practice is not stopped in Austin ISD, it will expand to other communities in the state.

 This is not normal, even in Texas, except for Austin ISD. Each investigation or audit takes precious resources that no Texas district has to spare. Time and funds are diverted from the work that matters most – of educating students, supporting teachers, and inspiring a lifelong love of learning that prepares Austin’s students for the futures they deserve. 

 It does not have to be this way. And it’s both painful and promising to imagine what might be if the State of Texas would offer support rather than sanctions, and if they would also simply get out of the district’s way.

 Austin ISD has a strong board with a broad mix of highly relevant experience. All nine members were endorsed by the district’s union, Education Austin, and all serve by working long hours without pay. Six members are former K-12 educators in Texas public schools – including five who taught in the district, one who worked as the district’s head of multilingual education, and several who are current or former professors in programs that teach future teachers. Another is an educational anthropologist who teaches at UT and ran programs for students in the district. Another is a journalist with a law degree and a long background in advocacy and family engagement. And another is a former foster child who was in the first graduating class of Austin ISD’s Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, ranked as one of the top public high schools in the country. Another worked as an accountant after a career as a teacher. Together, the board holds five masters’ degrees, one law degree, and two Ph.Ds. Another trustee is earning a doctorate now. They have hired a superintendent who is a graduate of the district and the son of a longtime teacher. He’s an unconventional choice – with an MBA, an engineering degree, and a career in construction and district operations – but he has also brought stability after a series of rapid superintendent turnovers. And he has worked with the board and community to navigate immensely challenging times.

 As they have tackled issue after issue, district leaders have also managed to do important and thoughtful work in many areas. The community approved a $2.4 billion bond and a crucial increase in the tax rate for operations with powerful support from district voters. The district has created systems to focus resources where they are needed most – essential but also not easy in a district with such a broad range of economic opportunity and economic need. They cleared a large backlog of special education evaluations that grew during the pandemic. They have sharply reduced the number of F-rated campuses and steadily grown the number of highly rated campuses – a measure that must be a focus no matter how flawed and opaque the state’s metrics are. And they are seeing impressive results from a grant-funded investment in early literacy.

 And still, Austin ISD risks being taken over by the state.

 The community’s worry about a takeover goes far beyond the loss of elected control. Their fears are also based in facts about what has happened since the state took control of Houston ISD. State leaders routinely call the takeover an unparalleled success, citing a higher rating for the district and near zero F rated schools. But the costs have been immense – of lost opportunity, financial cost, and damage to community and careers.

 Reports document practices that serve scores but sacrifice student learning – limiting access to 8th grade Algebra by systematically holding some students back, gaming college readiness measures in ways that are legal but offer little benefit, removing both libraries and librarians, and reducing teaching to timed and scripted lessons. Campuses have closed, enrollment has plummeted by more than 20,000 students, and teachers are fleeing. Hundreds of their replacements are uncertified. And the state-appointed leaders have eaten into the district’s fund balance by pulling hundreds of millions from reserves in ways that will be impossible to sustain.

 Good reporting and strategic advocacy are helping the whole story from Houston ISD reach more people. Our state owes deep thanks to Community Voices for Public Education for its advocacy from the beginning, the Commission on the Takeover of HISD for its new in-depth report, state and local education union leaders for advocating and organizing, elected trustees for becoming the resistance, and doctoral student Dan Dawer for work to examine the takeover through an academic lens.

 In Austin, a group called Keep Austin Schools Independent has formed to inform and organize our community. We are also lucky to have strong trustee candidates who are stepping up, not knowing what their role will be but knowing their voices will matter.

 Takeovers are looming for more Texas districts. 

 Education is on the ballot in Texas in a way it has never been before. And the results of the election could make things far better or far worse, not just here in Austin, but also for public schools across our state. Voters in the Democratic primaries chose proven public education supporters up and down the ballot. And for people who know that change is needed for Texas public schools, Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas Governor, is carrying a whole state’s hopes. She’s the mom of children who chose Austin ISD schools, a former AISD school board president, and a Texas House member who served her community and fought for Texas students on the public education committee. Her office became a place of pilgrimage for public education advocates, who would visit their own representatives, then stop by her office, too.

 A huge amount is at stake – not only for Austin, but for public education statewide. Dozens of Texas districts are just one or two years away from potential takeover. Schools are struggling after years of underfunding. And increasingly, the state’s vision of education is focused on the narrow measure of standardized tests – despite clear evidence that families and educators want and need something more for the 5 million students of Texas

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Injustice, Lies, Parents, Privatization, State Takeover, Texas

Benjamin R. Cremer: An Outpouring of Hatred While Shouting “USA! USA!”

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2026 //
9

Every day, as I read the political news, I think to myself “This is not America.” A country where masked men assault people on the streets, drag them out of their cars and homes, run them over with their cars, even kill them. A country where authorities deport people to lands they never lived in. A land where casual cruelty is tolerated. A land where the President insults the free press daily. A land of obscene wealth at the top and a shrinking middle class. This is not the country to which I pledged my heart every day in school and for many years afterwards.

Rev. Benjamin R. Cremer of Idaho was raised and home-schooled by his strict fundamentalist parents, but he came to think differently as he reconciled the world with Jesus’s words.

He wrote:

On October 12th, during a Trump rally at Youngstown, Ohio, several men physically assaulted a woman as the crowd chanted “USA! USA! USA!”

The woman was wearing a t-shirt that said “Release the Epstein files!” and was loudly calling Trump a fascist. She was exercising her first amendment rights. Peacefully protesting at a public event. 

Several men then began to push, punch, slap, and pull her to the ground. They even bragged about it later online.

The police came and instead of taking the men who were attacking her away, they removed her from the rally.

And the president of the United States was watching it all unfold. Instead of demanding them to stop. Instead of acting honorable and presidential. Instead of acting like a man. He called her “terrible” and a “big fat guy” as the police drug her away. “These are the people who want to destroy our country!” he said.

All while the crowd continued to chant “USA! USA! USA!”

This is just days after the president weaponized ICE to go after a sitting representative, Ilhan Omar and raided her home. A person he’s continued to target with overtly racist and bigoted rhetoric.

This is just days after the secretary of defense announced the live streamed execution of a prisoner confined to a wheelchair by firing squad.

This is in the wake of continued dehumanization and mistreatment of migrants and their children.

This is in the wake of barring journalists from the White House, book bans, eroding women’s rights, rounding up people in our streets, and making student read the Bible in schools, and so much more cruelty, all in the name of “patriotism” and “Christianity.”

All while people chant “USA! USA! USA!”

This is where we are as a country right now. It shouldn’t matter where we align ourselves politically or theologically. This dynamic should deeply disturb us all and drive us to oppose it.

History warns us time and time again that moral collapse in a society and the rise of authoritarian regimes rarely begins with a population openly declaring itself evil. It begins when people persuade themselves that their cruelty is necessary, their prejudice is justified, their enemies deserve what happens to them, and it is someone else’s responsibility to speak out.

That is why we must pay attention when dehumanizing language becomes ordinary, when humiliation becomes entertainment, when injustice is excused because the victims belong to the wrong group, and when religious leaders bless the very attitudes that the teachings of Jesus should compel them to confront.

The question is not simply whether we call ourselves Christians, patriots, conservatives, liberals, or defenders of freedom. The question is what those identities are producing in us. Are they making us more truthful, more merciful, more courageous, and more protective of human dignity? Or are they teaching us whom we are permitted to despise?

When the name of Jesus is invoked to excuse contempt, when political loyalty overrides mercy, when the vulnerable are treated as disposable, and when cruelty toward an out-group is celebrated as righteousness enmeshed with patriotism, Christ followers must ask whether they are bearing witness to Christ or merely baptizing the prejudices of their surrounding culture.

Cruelty, bigotry, corruption, and greed our masquerading themselves around as the definition of patriotism and Christian virtue.

While sitting in a concentration camp, awaiting his sham trial and execution, German theologian, pastor, and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted or destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that people are deprived of their independent judgment, and-more or less unconsciously give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves. The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent. One feels in fact, when talking to him, that one is dealing, not with the man himself, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which have taken hold of him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation that can do irreparable damage to human beings.”

As a Christian in America today, I refuse to be silent as this same mentality and evil continues rise among us.

May we raise our voices in solidarity together, not in mindlessly chanting “USA!” as blatant harm takes place before our eyes, but in speaking out against injustice and for liberty, freedom, and love to lead us.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Environment, Equity, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Injustice, Scandals, Trump, Tyranny

Come to Hear a Brilliant Analysis of Trump’s War on DEI!

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2026 //
5

Come to Wellesley College to hear Dr. Yohuru Williams dissect and eviscerate the Trump administration’s attack on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Such policies are meant to broaden opportunity. They take us closer to our professed goals of liberty and justice for all. Yet the Trump administration wants to abolish them. Civil rights protections have already been reversed, so that any effort to help students of color is treated as a violation of this administration’s hostility to DEI.

Yohuru Williams is a leading scholar and public intellectual who has often appeared on public television to expound on African American history. He is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a wonderful speaker.

Join me on October 6 at Wellesley College.

Open to all. Free.

Yohuru Williams is speaking as part of the annual lecture series that I established several years ago.

The event will be live-streamed and available later online.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Racism, Trump

Is It 1950 Again? Provost at University of Texas-Austin Removes Majors in All Ethnic, Racial, and Gender Studies.

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2026 //
5

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a professor of educational leadership at Western Michigan University. As a writer and scholar in Texas, California, Kentucky, and now Michigan, he has concentrated on issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity.

He writes here about the current drive to turn back the clock on civil rights in Texas. To put it mildly, he eviscerates the decision by the Provost at the University of Texas in Austin to close down

He writes:

Is the provost at UT-Austin a right wing political operative?

The University of Texas at Austin is eliminating majors in African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Race, Indigeneity, and Migration. These are not abstract academic labels. They represent the histories, intellectual traditions, and lived experiences of communities that built Texas and continue to shape the nation.

The manner in which this happened is almost as disturbing as the decision itself. Faculty members reportedly were asked to design proposals to preserve the existing majors inside the provost-initiatives consolidated Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, but the Daily Texan reported that Office of the Provost rejected that proposal. According to Professor Danielle Pilar Clealand, interim chair, faculty then discovered that the majors had already been removed from the admissions application while they were still working to redesign and save them.

That is not shared governance. It is administrative maneuvering designed to make consultation meaningless.

Vasquez Heilig explains that Provost William Inboden was imported in 2025, along with several professors from the University of Florida’s Alexander Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, which was part of a rightwing effort to increase the conservative movement in higher education. Inboden was director of the Institute.

Vasquez Heilig points out:

I have not seen evidence of a formal numerical quota for conservative professors. But when public resources build institutions expressly promoted as ideological counterweights, while programs studying marginalized communities are dismantled, the result resembles an ideological preference whether administrators call it an official quota or not. Political favoritism that overwhelms qualifications does not become academic freedom simply because its supporters describe themselves as restoring balance

He has faced the pressure from the right at his own university and paid the price personally:

I have discussed before that when I served as provost at Western Michigan University, I faced pressure to close Gender and Women’s Studies. The Faculty Senate recommended against closure, and I agreed with the faculty despite intense internal pressure to do otherwise. I paid a political price, and I would make the same decision again.

I also advocated for Black student success and community-centered initiatives while several deans complained about and opposed those efforts. Those complaints had consequences for me, but leadership without risk is merely management. If leaders support marginalized communities only when nobody powerful objects, they do not truly support those communities.

As provost, I said no to closing Gender and Women’s Studies because the university did not belong to me or to the loudest administrators around the cabinet table. It belonged to the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and communities whose labor, knowledge, and trust gave the institution meaning.

We must be of the people because the people are the institution. Buildings, endowments, rankings, and administrative titles are empty without them.

Please open the link and learn how pressure from wealthy alumni is reshaping higher education in states like Texas.

Categories Texas, Curriculum, Equity, Ethics, Bigotry, Evil, Censorship, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Freedom to Learn

Why You Should Attend the NPE Conference This Weekend!

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2026 //
4

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, explains why this NPE conference will be stellar.

She writes:

A community governs its public schools. Neighbors elect a board, set a budget, and decide what their children learn. That is exactly what privatization threatens, and it is what NPE’s national conference is built to defend. Over two days, September 26–27, at the Hyatt Regency Conroe near Houston, more than 40 sessions take on the fight from every angle. Here’s a taste of what’s on the schedule.

Vouchers and charters. In “Beating Vouchers in Court,” Derek Black, Jessica Levin, Fred Jones Jr., and Sharon Krengel will walk through recent wins in Montana, Utah, and Ohio, where voucher programs were declared unconstitutional. They will also review the live challenges in Tennessee, Wyoming, Florida, and Missouri. In “A View from the Trenches,” two Florida school board members and an Arizona teacher offer a candid account of what universal ESA vouchers have already done to how public education is funded and governed. And a session on the federal tax-credit voucher scheme, set to launch in January 2027, lays out what advocates in opt-in and opt-out states can do right now. 

In “Taxation Without Representation — Using a Conservative Argument to Combat Charter Schools,” Gregory Walace, Alison Chaplar, Betsy Flanagan, Daniel Marcano Jr., and Jennifer Simões will show how that framing sparked a grassroots movement, moved public opinion, and helped drive proposed legislation. “What’s Next for Charter Schools? A Review of Charter Strategies Across State Lines,” Patti Everitt, Gregory Walace, Carol Burris, and Dave DeMatthews lead an interactive look at how charters keep expanding in key states with few guardrails and little public engagement, which national initiatives fund that growth, and the research and messaging advocates can share across state lines to push back.

Takeovers are where democracy gets stolen outright. Houston high schoolers will describe how they organized against the HISD takeover. Parents from Houston (CVPE) and Fort Worth (FORT) share how they are fighting to win their voice back. An Indianapolis panel will dissect the sharpest trick of all — an elected board left in place, but stripped of control over buildings, transportation, and property taxes. “The Struggle to Govern Ourselves” will confront the research showing takeovers overwhelmingly target majority-Black districts, while organizers from New Orleans share hard-won lessons from years on the front lines. And in “The People’s Board,” presenters will take on Student Outcomes Focused Governance, the corporate model quietly sidelining elected members in board after board.

Follow the money. Maurice Cunningham, Mercedes Schneider, Mike DeGuire and David Armiak teach their best techniques for tracing dark-money networks back to the billionaires and foundations bankrolling privatization in two sessions. Other sessions map the private firms profiteering off vouchers and spotlight Wisconsin’s campaign to get voucher and charter costs printed right on taxpayers’ bills. 

The money grabs keep getting more creative. Texas advocates expose SB 1882 “partnership” charters as a fast-track privatization grift. Another panel takes on corporate tax breaks — energy-hungry data centers now the worst offenders — draining billions from schools. And with 17 states cutting or capping property taxes in 2024–25, national and state experts lay out how to defend the local revenue public schools depend on.

Faith, nationalism, and the classroom. Sessions on building school–congregation partnerships and mobilizing faith leaders in hostile states sit alongside a hard look at Christian Nationalism and its playbook for defunding and reshaping public education.

The newest battlegrounds. Randi Weingarten joins experts to debate AI’s role in classrooms — cognition, privacy, mental health, and the environment. A separate panel takes on ed-tech overreach and the lawsuits challenging how it commercializes student data. And student organizers from SEAT share how they’ve carried the fight to school boards, the legislature, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

The skill builder sessions are the reason you will leave with more than notes. Charles Siler, a former Goldwater Institute lobbyist who helped build the privatization playbook before turning on it, joins Manny Garcia to teach what messaging actually moves people. Rachel Coyle and Susan Spicka show how to win over hostile legislators. Others cover new-media strategy, gathering community input at scale, and getting real press traction beyond the press release. 

The keynotes anchor it all: Diane Ravitch and Texas AFT’s Zeph Capo open Saturday; Southern Education Foundation CEO Raymond Pierce speaks at lunch; investigative journalist Katherine Stewart headlines Sunday brunch; and Howard University’s Dean Emerita Leslie Fenwick closes us out.

You’ll meet the students, parents, teachers, clergy, researchers, and organizers who are actually winning in courtrooms, at statehouses, and on ballots. Privatizers have the money. We have the people, the passion and the plan. Register now here, book your room here in the hotel block, and join us in Conroe, Texas, right outside Houston.

I can’t promise that hotel rooms are still open but Carol will help you if you made a terrible mistake and forgot to sign up.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Childhood, Closing schools, Corruption, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Failure, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Parent Groups, Privatization, Religion, School Choice

Don’t Miss This Brilliant Blast at Trump’s War on DEI!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2026 //
2

Come to hear Yohuru Williams dissect and eviscerate the Trump administration’s absurd attack on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Such policies are meant to broaden opportunity. They take us closer to our professed goals of liberty and justice for all.

Yohuru Williams is a leading scholar and public intellectual who has often appeared on public television to expound on African American history. He is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Join me on October 6 at Wellesley College.

The event will not be livestresmed but will be available later online.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History, Trump

Nick Covington: The Battle for Public Schools and the Freedom to Learn and Teach in Iowa

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2026 //
1

Nick Covington writes: “The War on WOKE was always a war on American values.”

Nick taught social studies in Iowa. He interviewed me on his podcast about my memoir, An Education.

Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C (Wikimedia Commons)
Books on brown wooden shelf. (Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash)


Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years.

The culture war battles we fight over our public schools are fundamentally disagreements about American values: what does it mean to be an American, and in whose image do we build our public schools?

“When Americans start fighting over their schools, you can be fairly sure of one thing: it probably isn’t really about school.”

— Jennifer Berkshire & Jack Schneider,

The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual

From working as Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration to laying the foundation of the modern conservative education reform movement, Diane Ravitch—a one-time champion of No Child Left Behind—spent most of her life as a Republican with conservative values. The story of her life, as told in her 2025 memoir, is the story of the American Century. As today’s culture war on “wokeness” and “leftist indoctrination” targets diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools, Ravitch’s memoir makes a powerful case study for teaching these core American values.

Born in Houston in 1938, Diane recounts celebrating VJ Day with her family as a young child, surrounded by returning sailors and the pop of firecrackers. She learned to write with a quill pen and attended a segregated high school when the Supreme Court declared that unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. The descendant of Polish Jews who came to America in the 1850s, Diane experienced a level of antisemitism and misogyny in her personal and professional life that by today’s standards would be galling (and illegal). She learned as an adult that the entire Jewish community where her grandfather was born was murdered in the Holocaust.

Ravitch’s interest in education didn’t begin until she began attending community meetings as the only white person in the room with parents in Harlem, New York who had felt shut out of the school district’s planning process. As a member of the Silent Generation, she made explicit demands of American wealth and greatness:

“Why shouldn’t all people in our rich society—regardless of their wealth or class or race or personal attributes—have a decent life, meaning health care, decent housing, good schools, food security, and physical safety?…I think these are preconditions for a good society.”

If Diane’s values were informed by a life lived in the greatness of the American Century, what made America great was the steady—and always imperfect—realization of those values in action. The New Deal aligned our immense national resources toward popular economic recovery from the depths of the Great Depression, even as jobs and housing programs discriminated against Black Americans. The GI Bill helped create a thriving post-war middle class by providing housing to millions of veterans and their families and sending millions more to college, even as Black veterans were segregated out of the nation’s suburbs and universities. 

As we underwent a decades-long civil rights revolution at home, the postwar world we rebuilt in our image was of an idealized United States that overcame a violent and prejudicial past to renew itself as a more diverse, pluralistic, multicultural, democratic, and egalitarian nation. 

E Pluribus Unum. Out of Many, One.

Uneven and flawed as it was, American prosperity did grow in proportion to our inclusivity: by expanding citizenship and voting rights, integrating and publicly supporting schools and universities, asserting our obligations to the elderly and those in poverty, and protecting the rights of marginalized groups. The American Dream became a shorthand for people who came here to start their lives over, even from countries victimized by U.S. foreign policy, knowing their best days were ahead of them. And as Americans watched the Times Square ball drop on the eve of Y2K, they were standing in the most powerful, prosperous, innovative, and culturally dominant nation in the history of the world.

Now, at age 87, Ravitch reflects on how conservative politics abandoned these core values and caused her to leave the Republican Party in the early 2000s, as they became increasingly dominated by self-serving corporations, wealthy donors, and religious interests. “To use current parlance, I went from being a staunch conservative to being ‘woke,’” she writes, adding, “I wear the label with pride. To me, it means that I awakened to the inequity and injustice that deprives millions of people of a good life, the life that everyone wants and deserves.”

In other words, by taking seriously the charge of our founding documents to become “a more perfect union”, taking up “the unfinished work” of the American experiment, and bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice over the course of the 20th century, Diane Ravitch—like America itself—became woke.

Our fights about schools are really battles over American values and what it means to be an American, and the War on Woke has always been a war on American values.

At the start of this midterm election year, Moms For Liberty hosted Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidates in a debate that focused largely on education. Candidates spent their time hammering“leftist indoctrination” in teacher education and classroom teaching, with one complaining about “downright evil” ideology pushed on students in reference to a book about a boy wearing a dress to school. Another called for the installation of the Ten Commandments as a way to put the “concept of God” back in schools. Zach Lahn, founder of the unaccredited private Wonder School and current Republican nominee for governor, offered the closest thing to a positive vision with a partisan twist arguing, “Public school is to promote civic virtue, to understand the principles of faith in our country and our culture.”

The trouble comes in whose answer we enshrine in law, turn into policy, and live in the public sphere through our public education system:

  • What kind of nation are we?
  • What is the role of public education—that is, the system of tuition-free common schools mandated in our state constitution, accessible to all students, and maintained by taxpayer dollars—in a nation like ours?
  • What subjects and practices will inform such a system?
  • Whose values will we train in the adults who teach our children?

Today’s Republican Party demands that we forget the hard-fought lessons of history and remove challenging perspectives, making easier for children to believe in nationalist mythology than the imperfect lived reality of people like Diane Ravitch. A closer look at their changing values and legislative agenda tells us exactly what today’s Republican Party means when they appeal to “civic virtue” and “principles of faith in our country and our culture” in education: in the guise of a war on “woke” diversity, equity, and inclusion, Republican policies are at war with the very materials that made America great.

In Iowa, this has manifested as de-facto book bans and banning so-called “specific defined concepts” from public school curriculum. In response to Iowa’s vague and punitive “age appropriate” school materials law in 2023, schools immediately removed more than 3,000 books. The most removed literary classics included Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners written by Nobel Prize laureates: The Handmaid’s Tale, The Bluest Eye, Beloved, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Brave New World, and Slaughterhouse-Five among them.

These are perspectives that speak honestly about racial, sexual, and gendered abuse and violence, sometimes all at once, and inform a shared past that tolerated and protected it. They’re also some of the most acclaimed and influential works in American and English literature. It’s no accident that most of them are either written by Black authors, by women, or center the experiences of Black people in America.

Iowa Republicans have also banned so-called “specific defined concepts” from mandatory staff or student training. House File 802, in effect since July 2021, makes it a violation to conduct training that the United States and Iowa “are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist,” that anyone “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex,” or that “meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist.” One banned concept forbids including in mandatory training that any student “should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of that individual’s race or sex.”

Although the law states that it does not “Prohibit the use of curriculum that teaches the topics of sexism, slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination,” and does not “Prohibit discussing specific defined concepts as part of a larger course of academic instruction,” it was widely misunderstood to prohibit classroom teaching about those topics.

The impact of House File 802 has been a documented chilling effect and over-compliance owing to the vagueness of the law as written and interpreted. In one interview-based study, Iowa educators described themselves as surveilled, isolated, and self-censoring. The researchers reported that “the perceived lack of clarity and guidance on this law fueled concerns about their ability to be effective justice-oriented administrators and classroom teachers,” and that teacher candidates are afraid of unintentional violations of the law. 

These explicit bans on books and the implicit self-censoring of difficult curriculum leave our kids less prepared for the world outside of school, and outside of Iowa, and create a gap in our children’s public education that is ready to be filled by social media influencers, misinformation, and propaganda.

Public schools are the institution where American values are practiced and lived, not just taught, and where we build shared American identity. All of our fights about books, curriculum, and school choice programs are really arguments over whose answers to these questions we write into law and into the lives of children where the stakes become very real. Through intention or its absence, built by us or built for us, the very real and shared world we inhabit is built bit by bit each day.

The question isn’t whether we teach values in public schools—we always have and we always will. The question is whether we teach the values that actually made this country great: pluralism, inclusion, democratic participation, honest history, and the belief that every child deserves a free and appropriate public education.

“I was a patriot who never questioned my country and its leaders. My complacency was a reflection of my comfort and affluence; radicalism had no appeal to me. If I were to meet that version of myself today, we would have a vigorous argument over everything related to education, race, and politics, although I still abhor violence. Today I want change, demonstrable change that narrows the gap between rich and poor; that provides equal opportunity to all; and that ensures health care and good education as a matter of right, not income. I am still not a radical. I don’t want to overthrow the government. I want it to work on behalf of its ideals to benefit everyone.”

— Diane Ravitch,

An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else

Tags: 2026 elections, Commentary, diversity, Education, IA-Gov, IA-Gov 2026, Iowa GOP, Iowa Politics, Zach Lahn

About the Author(s)

Nick Covington

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Iowa

Farewell to an Icon: Dolly Parton Reminds Us That There is Goodness in the World

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2026 //
11

The death of Dolly Parton was a blow to millions of people who never met her but loved her for her spirit, her kindness, her humor, and of course, her music.

In a time of meanness, she was steadfastly kind.

She was born into dire poverty, one of 12 children in a one-room house. She was never bitter or angry about her meager beginnings. She marveled at where her talent took her.

Over the course of her long career, she amassed a huge fortune but she did not aspire to be a billionaire. She was a philanthropist. She gave her money away, unlike Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and the Trump family. Is there a hospital or library or public space named for them because of their generosity? None that I know of. People will remember Dolly for her generosity; the others and their ilk will be remembered for their avarice.

She was not political but she spoke up for Black Lives Matter and for LGBT people. When she was interviewed by Johnny Carson in 1977, she spoke up for LGBT people in her straightforward way. She loved drag queens; she knew that they liked to mimic her style, her hair, her dress. She said it was God’s role to judge, not ours. Hers was the voice of love and compassion.

Peter Greene wrote about Dolly here:

I wrote this four years ago when the twins aged out of her Imagination Library, one of the best things any wealthy person ever did. How cramped and meager some of our leaders look in comparison.

After five great years, the Board of Directors has aged out of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
I have been plugging this program for years (my first post was in 2014, back before the Board of Directors was even a sparkle in our eyes). Parton has engineered putting a book a month into the hands of families all across the country–we’re talking (currently) 184 million books in millions of households meeting no requirement other than they have a child between the ages of born and five. It costs the family nothing.

The quality of the books is great. Over the years we have received classics, newer books, books featuring every sort of family, every sort of kid. They are filled with wonder, kindness, beauty, excitement. This is one of the best examples of thoughtful, useful, not-trying-to-take-over-a-government function philanthropy you’ll find.

The program launched in 1995 in Sevier County, and it grew quickly. By 2006, when the Washington Post wrote about it, the program had spread to 471 communities in 41 states. In 2011 it launched in Scotland, and it can now be found in the UK, Australia, and Canada. The site says that 706,468 US kids are currently signed up. It’s still fairly simple. Some combination of sponsors (some private, some government, depending on the locale) help with the financing (the cost is roughly $27 per child per year) and the Foundation delivers the books, each in its own poly bag with the child’s name on it (consider the power of a child, even a small one, receiving a book that is theirs, addressed to them, by name).

I am not, I’ll confess, a huge fan of Parton’s music, but she is the very best example of what good a person can do with their giant pile of money you can find. Not trying to shape the world to her own requirements, not trying to buy a good name, not trying to make herself the unelected boss of whatever. And the little PR that Imagination Library does is to get itself out into the hands of students, not to raise Parton’s profile. She doesn’t pay people to promote it, and it has spread largely through word of mouth or through the local organizations that co-sponsor it and help make the connections to local families.

Once a month, the boys received a book, addressed to them personally. We love books in this house, and the arrival of the monthly “book from Dolly” was an event. We will miss it.

The last book to arrive is Kindergarten, Here I Come, and the first page inside the front cover is a letter from Parton, that I’ll quote in part:

My, how time flies. It seems only yesterday when your family and friends read you your first story. You were just a baby. Now you’re five years old and about to go to school. How exciting!

This may be your last book from my Imagination Library but you have to promise me you will keep on reading…Every book is a treasure and every time you open one you will meet new friends and take wonderful journeys to magical places.

I hope you have a great time in school. I bet your school will even have a library where you can check out books. You and all your friends are very special. There is no limit to what you can do or how far you can go.

The board of directors examines a position paper

Her signature, a simple Dolly, is at the end. The first time we read the message together I was apparently having a bad allergy day.

None of the rich amateurs who want to change the face of education are doing anything of this value on this scale–both intensely personal and yet broadly across the globe. I mean, imagine if Bill Gates had said, “I want to give every child a book” instead of “I want to give every child a test.”

And if there is a tiny human in your life, and they aren’t signed up, go to the program website and see if it’s operating in your neighborhood, and if so, then sign up that child.

What a fabulous, generous, powerful program. God bless Dolly Parton. We are going to miss here at this house.

Categories Character, Creativity, Ethics, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Goodness, Joy, Love

Jan Resseger: The Trump Administration’s War on Children

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2026 //
1

Jan Resseger keeps a steady focus o what matters most in a decent society: the well-being of children. Trump and his minions don’t care. Not about children. Not about the rule of law. Not about democracy. Trump cares about greed and self-enrichment. He seems to care about his children. He cuts them in on the grift. His youngest son Barron is said to be worth $150 million. But he doesn’t care about yours.

The fact that he just issued guidance on childhood vaccinations, which reduces mandated vaccines and puts America’s most vulnerable at risk of serious illness and death, tells you all you need to know about this scientifically ignorant man.

Jan writes:

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s important new book, Regime Change, explores how the second Trump administration functions—the cast of characters, their relationships, and their operational style. A reader is also exposed, however, to the President’s and the administration’s big policy concerns—imposing tariffs, ridding the country of immigrants, ending nuclear weapons in Iran, proclaiming that everything is more affordable, and ending the public’s fixation on Jeffrey Epstein. These issues have also been widely covered broadly in the news.

Here are topics that do not appear at all in Regime Change‘s index: children, public education, CHIP, SNAP, Head Start, or Child Care.  There is not even a mention of Trump’s tuition tax credit private school vouchers launched in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The issue of birthright citizenship is mentioned in the index only as a subhead under immigration, and in the book itself birthright citizenship is covered only in one sentence describing its proposed elimination by an early Trump executive order. In the index, there is only one page citation to the U.S. Department of Education itself, but the reference is to brief coverage of the administration’s attempt to eradicate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at Harvard University.

The lack of regular news coverage—particularly in the local newspapers—about Trump’s damaging public education policy and the administration’s failure to protect children’s well-being and children’s rights does not, however, mean that these issues have been untouched by Trump administration policy. For those of us who do not need CHIP or SNAP, who can afford quality child care and preschool, whose children attend well-funded public schools, whose families have been citizens for generations, however, there is minimal exposure to the Trump administration’s threats to the institutions on which vulnerable families and children depend.

Just this past week the Trump administration took two steps that, if they do come to pass, will seriously impact some of our society’s most vulnerable children—poor children benefiting today from Head Start, and the children of immigrants from whom the President is once again trying to steal the protection of birthright citizenship. First Focus on Children’s President Bruce Lesley has identified what he calls the Trump administration’s “organized abandonment” of the needs and rights of our society’s most vulnerable children.

The Trump administration attempted to destroy Head Start.     At the end of last week, the Trump administration formally proposed new federal administrative guidance to deregulate the quality of Head Start programs that currently serve 700,000 children across the United States.  The destruction of Head Start had been predicted early last week but on Thursday in a notice in the Federal Register, the administration formally proposed radically diminishing 133 pages of rules that have shaped Head Start since it was established in 1965 as a centerpiece of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.  The Center on Law and Social Policy explains that the proposed new rules are being disguised by the administration with language describing “an effort to ‘streamline,’ ‘enhance,’ and ‘modernize’” the program.  Politico‘s Mackenzie Wilkes reports: “The Heritage Foundation has long called for the elimination of Head Start, but the conservative group published a report last month saying the program should be deregulated in many of the ways the proposed rule suggests while ‘officials work to end the program.’ ”

The Associated Press‘s Moria Balingit outlines the changes the new rules would prescribe: “Head Start… is currently governed by more than 100 pages of regulations… (which) require centers to have low staff-to-student ratios and a research-backed curriculum, among other things, and they ensure centers are providing wraparound services that are critical to children in poverty, including medical and dental screenings and parent coaching. The proposal would toss out nearly all of that rule book. Education Week”s Elizabeth Heubeck adds: “The new proposal would require (that) all classroom instruction be conducted in English, except for immersion programs operated on Native American tribal lands. An estimated 30-35% of children enrolled in the Head Start program are dual language learners.”  The program would also exclude many non-citizen children and children in some immigrant families.

While Congress establishes federal departments and the specific offices within the departments, the legislative branch has no power over the executive branch’s right to establish formal administrative rules and guidance.  It is possible that the rules announced in last week’s Federal Register can be challenged in court, and it is also possible, of course, that public outrage might cause the Trump administration to modify the new rules during the 60 day period when the public is invited to submit public comments before the rule becomes final. A future President, of course, could replace the Trump administration’s new rules.

President Trump signed two new executive orders to undermine birthright citizenship.     Last Thursday, The Washington Post‘s Isaac Arnsdorf, Justin Jouvenal, and David Nakamura reported: “President Donald Trump took another stab at restricting automatic citizenship for people born in the United States after the Supreme Court rejected his earlier attempt. In two executive orders signed Thursday, Trump reached for different legal maneuvers to test the limits of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. The first order said children would be ineligible if born to ‘alien enemies,’ members of foreign terrorist organizations, or foreign lobbyists. The second order said children of people who fraudulently request tourist visas for the purpose of giving birth in the U.S. would not become citizens… The new orders marked a fresh effort to… deliver on a campaign promise by expanding the categories of people who the administration argues fall outside the constitutional guarantee.”

The reporters quote legal experts who doubt that the first executive order could survive a legal challenge: “An estimated 15 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., while only a few thousand people are foreign lobbyists registered with the Justice Department. No significant populations of U.S. residents are designated as alien enemies or foreign terrorists, making that provision largely symbolic.”

The reporters attribute the second executive order to White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, who has made stopping “birth tourism” a priority. They provide data to demonstrate that what is called “birth tourism” is relatively infrequent. “In 2024, fewer than 10,000 babies were born in the U.S. to people with foreign addresses, out of 3.6 million total live births.”

None of the legal experts the reporters quote believes that either of these executive orders would be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court or would challenge in any way what Chief Justice John Roberts declared in his June 30, 2026 decision in Trump v. Barbara: “Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.”

First Focus on Children’s Bruce Lesley believes that both of  last week’s executive orders are seriously misguided: “The legal question isn’t simply what the government thinks about immigration. It’s whether an innocent child can lose fundamental rights grounded in the Constitution because of something government officials allege about a parent’s conduct and intent… The latest effort to gut a fundamental constitutional operating principle since our nation’s founding has been written clearly in the Constitution since 1868, is being sold to the public with pathetic history and legal arguments the Supreme Court itself rejected 128 years ago and early this year. Every administration has the authority to enforce immigration laws. However, none has the authority to rewrite the Constitution… by redefining which babies they deem are precious and which are pushed into the shadows of our society.”

Although there has obviously been some news coverage of the week’s public policy initiatives impacting our society’s children, the well-being of our children is neither the top policy concern for officials in the Trump administration nor the top story for the reporters who track the administration’s agenda. Because the needs of children are definitely not the primary lens through which the Trump administration views and conceptualizes our society’s important needs, it is especially important to watch for news about children’s welfare, their rights, and the enormous institution of public schools that serves the mass of our children

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Industry, Environment, Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Science, Trump

Unprecedented: Retired Judges Act to Protect the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
1

We live in strange and dangerous times. For the first time in memory, maybe ever, the rule of law itself is under attack. Our Dear Leader has threatened judges who rule against his wishes. He and his lawless administration ignore decisions they don’t like. He installed a Supreme Court majority who were vetted by the far-right Federalist Society. That majority proceeded to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite their repeated pledges not to do so, and to gut the Voting Rights Act, terminating guarantees of equal rights for Black Americans.

At this time when the rule of law itself is disregarded by the President, who is himself ruled only by whim and self-aggrandizement, two retired judges expressed their concern in The Guardian.

Judge Michael P. Connelly and Judge Robert F. Orr wrote:

Last October, US lawyers, judges and rule-of-law advocates traveled to Warsaw as guests of the Carter Center. Neither of us was among them. But when our colleagues returned, their stories inspired us.

They told us about judges and lawyers across central Europe who had been surveilled, smeared, prosecuted and sometimes jailed for standing between political power and courts meant to remain independent.

And they kept going.

Poland’s example was especially compelling. When its government sought greater control over the judiciary, Polish judges put on their robes and marched through Warsaw. Judges from across Europe joined them in what became the March of 1,000 Robes.

Then they left their courthouses and traveled through towns and villages, explaining what an independent judiciary means to a farmer, shopkeeper, parent or business owner. They talked about law not as an abstraction, but as protection against arbitrary power.

They understood a truth Americans can no longer overlook: judicial independence cannot survive merely because judges believe in it. The public must understand why it matters.

That lesson brought us on to a bus.

Last month, shortly after the United States celebrated its 250th birthday, the Justice in Motion tour traveled from western Pennsylvania through Ohio and into Michigan. Thirty sitting and retired judges, lawyers and advocates handed out pocket constitutions, met students and asked a question Americans do not consider often enough: what does the rule of law mean in everyday life, and what happens when we take it for granted?

In Columbus, we did something neither of us imagined during our years on the bench. We put on our robes and marched from the federal courthouse toward the supreme court of Ohio, carrying purple flowers, an international symbol of judicial independence.

American judges do not ordinarily march in the streets. Nor should they. The judiciary derives much of its legitimacy from restraint. Judges do not campaign for particular outcomes or answer criticism with press conferences. They speak through their decisions. But these are no ordinary times.

And our Polish colleagues taught us that silence can carry its own risk.

Our march was not about Democrats or Republicans, nor about defending particular judges or decisions. It was about defending the system that allows legal disagreements to be resolved according to law rather than political power.

One of us was elected to the supreme court of Ohio as a Democrat. The other was elected to the supreme court of North Carolina as a Republican and is now an independent. Through two long careers, we have disagreed about plenty.

That is precisely the point.

The rule of law is not a partisan possession.

Both sides enter a courtroom with the right to be heard. Judges must apply the law to the facts without regard to which party is more powerful, popular or politically useful.

Sometimes judges get it wrong. That is why we have appellate courts. Sometimes courts issue decisions that elected officials or citizens strongly dislike. That is unavoidable in a constitutional democracy.

The answer is appeal, legislation where constitutionally permissible, or constitutional amendment. It cannot be intimidation, retaliation for unpopular rulings or the suggestion that compliance with lawful court orders is optional.

Once adherence to judicial decisions depends upon whether the politically powerful agree with them, we have left the rule of law behind.

In Wooster, Ohio, about 150 people gathered across from the historic courthouse. The discussion was not about red America or blue America. It was about ordinary life.

The rule of law is why you can deposit money in a bank and expect it to be there tomorrow. It is why contracts mean something, property can be protected and an individual citizen can enter a courthouse and challenge the government.

These protections seem ordinary only because generations before us built institutions strong enough to make them ordinary. When the rule of law works, it is almost invisible.

Judges are trained – rightly – to exercise restraint. During our years on the bench, we spoke through our rulings. That tradition is essential to maintaining confidence in an impartial judiciary.

But restraint should not be confused with silence about the survival of the institution itself.

When judges are threatened because of their rulings; when an adverse decision is answered not with an appeal but with demands for retaliation; when courts are judged legitimate only when they produce politically desired outcomes, those who understand the system have an obligation to explain what is being lost.

Our Polish friends understood this before we did. Their circumstances differ from ours, and comparisons should be made carefully. But the lesson travels well.

The rule of law does not defend itself. Neither does an independent judiciary. Constitutions are pieces of paper unless citizens and public officials possess the courage and habits necessary to honor them.

Four days on a bus will not persuade a nation. The purpose was more modest: to begin conversations, one community and one citizen at a time, about institutions Americans have been fortunate enough to take for granted.

That work belongs not only to judges and lawyers, but to all of us.

The rule of law is not something judges possess. It is something citizens inherit.

And every generation must decide whether to preserve it.

What’s giving us hope now

Justice Robert F Orr (retired): What gives me hope is the scope of individuals and groups now focusing and talking about the rule of law and the independence of our judiciary. Our bus trip had a great mix of backgrounds and experience both in the judges participating and meeting us at stops as well as the young people who amplified the message across various media platforms. It’s genuinely a national movement.

Justice Michael P Donnelly (retired): What gives me hope is the genuine appreciation we encountered during the bus tour for the role of an independent judiciary in protecting individual rights and civil liberties. The people we met understood that these freedoms, defended at great sacrifice throughout our history, cannot be taken for granted – and that each generation must be willing to stand up for them.

  • Michael P Donnelly is a retired justice of the supreme court of Ohio
  • Robert F Orr is a retired justice of the supreme court of North Carolina. Both participated in the Justice in Motion tour organized by the Democracy Rising Collaborative and Keep Our Republic

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Justice, Trump
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