Archives for category: Funding

Will the federal voucher program benefit public schools? Peter Greene says no. It is not intended to send funds to public schools, but to subtract them. How else can states afford the tuition of almost every child currently enrolled in religious and private schools? The states don’t intend to increase the funding pie. As voucher schools grow–with your tax dollars–public schools will experience budget cuts. Some will close. This is what Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos and their allies want.

Peter Greene writes on his blog Curmudgucation:

Remember “backpacks full of cash”? It was a phrase coined by reformster Jeanne Allen that captured the way that taxpayer-funded vouchers turned private school students into couriers, bagmen who simultaneously delivered and laundered taxpayer dollars so that public money could be directed to private religious schools. We may someday be nostalgic for the era in which such manipulations were necessary– “Once upon a time, not only was the government not required to fund religious organizations, but they were actually rquired NOT to.”

Vouchers were always an elegant solution to the question of “How do we get public money to private schools?” Private schools were already funded by a stream of students carrying backpacks stuffed with their parents’ cash. To get government-to-school funding going would require a whole other stream to be created, but vouchers could just hop onto the stream that already existed. Parents could stuff the backpacks with taxpayer dollars as well as their own.

It’s important to keep this model in mind when discussing one of the hot issues around the federal voucher system.

Voucher fans argue that federal vouchers will benefit public schools, which is a careful choice of wording because the federal vouchers will not go to schools– they will go to families, to shove into their child’s cash backpack.

For private schools, that’s a distinction without much difference, because vouchers pack new cash into the same old funding stream. But for public schools, it’s a completely different issue.

The public school funding stream is taxpayer to government to school district. There is no public school version of a funding stream fed by individual students carrying backpacks full of cash. That is, in many ways, antithetical to the public school mission.

In the private school backpack model, the size of the student’s backpack determines where they can go with that load of money. A large backpack full of loads of cash? You get to go to Philips Exeter. A fanny pack loaded with a small, lonely stack? You get to go to Bob’s Strip Mall Academy.

How the market treats you depends on how big and how stuffed your backpack full of cash is.

The public system is designed to work differently. All the cash comes into one big pool, and every student gets to swim in it regardless of what their family’s contribution might have been. (Does it work perfectly? No, particularly because of the ties to housing. The irony here is that the public mission is undermined by market forces in the housing market).

Point is– federal voucher dollars are not going to go to public schools unless the public schools can figure out a way to create the new funding stream for students carrying cash backpacks, and that create a whole new set of issues. If a special tutoring program is available to Susie because she has a backpack of federal voucher money, then why shouldn’t that tutoring be available to any or all students, regardless of backpack status?

Addendum: If a district already has a program that charges fees, then the federal voucher would help families pay that fee, but that would result in zero new revenue for the district.

If a public school sets up a program for backpack-bearing students to pay for a basic service, how do we square that with the mission of providing the same basic service for all? If a public school sets up a program for backpack-bearing students to “buy” an extra service, how do we justify only providing that special service to some students?

These dilemmas are unavoidable because, again, the federal voucher program will not give money to schools, but to students. For private schools, that will mean business as usual. For public schools, that will mean a new business model that will have to somehow co-exist with the traditional public service mission. There are undoubtedly some public districts out there well-positioned to wrestle with this issue, but it would be great if governors and districts put some real thought and discussion into the issue, because federal voucher dollars will only make it to public schools via a new and potentially troubling path.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Closing schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Heather Cox Richardson: Will the Rule of Law Survive Attorney General Todd Blanche?

By dianeravitch

August 17, 2026 //

Heather Cox Richardson is masterful at analyzing the important events of recent days and putting them into perspective. Trump now has firm control of the Justice Department, since his personal defense attorney has been confirmed as Attorney General of the United States. The department will brazenly reflect the President’s agenda and diligently persecute and prosecute his political enemies. Expect that the Justice Department will have a task force devoted to proving that Trump won the election of 2020 and another one seeking ways to exonerate and compensate the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

After his confirmation, Blanche said that there were people who were absolutely harmed by a “weaponized” Department of Justice, and both he and Trump want to “make them whole” to compensate for their sufferings.

I responded on Twitter:

“Is it now legal to break into the U.S. Capitol, beat up police, and disrupt Congressional proceedings?”

At last Trump has his own Roy Cohn.

Richardson writes:

On Monday, August 10, Todd Blanche took the oath of office as attorney general, administered by federal appeals court judge Emil Bove, another of Trump’s defense lawyers before moving to the Department of Justice, where he was Blanche’s top deputy. In that capacity, CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz recalled, he fired career prosecutors and pushed Trump’s takeover of the department.

Using Bove to swear in Blanche looked like a victory lap for the Trump team. Although the press was excluded, two other Trump loyalists, FBI director Kash Patel and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, attended Blanche’s swearing-in.

Retired conservative judge J. Michael Luttig told MS NOW: “Todd Blanche now becomes the symbol of Donald Trump’s corruption of the rule of law in America and the actual ruin of the Department of Justice of the United States. This is another shameful act of acquiescence, if not obeisance, by the Senate Republicans; they will bear this badge of shame the rest of their lives.

Never before in American history has an attorney general been confirmed who was as corrupt as Todd Blanche. The Department of Justice is already in shambles.”

“And,” Luttig added, “he will further ruin the Department of Justice.”

As soon as he took office, Blanche issued a memo dramatically expanding executive privilege, which he described as the authority of the president to “withhold certain sensitive information for the public good.” Executive privilege has enabled the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny with the logic that a president must be able to get a wide range of advice, given freely, by those in the executive branch.

Now, though, the Department of Justice under Blanche says the president can shield “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking.” The memo defines as a “private adviser” “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.” As John Light of Talking Points Memo notes, this definition would enable the White House to defy congressional subpoenas for anyone to whom the president talks.

As Avery Lotz of Axios reports, Democrats had been planning to begin investigations of Trump’s corruption if they retake control of the House and/or the Senate. Recognizing that the White House would stonewall them, they intended to subpoena companies, college officials, and private citizens to testify. The memo, which is not legally binding but which indicates the administration’s position, would hamper that effort.

Lotz notes that the administration is already fighting a subpoena in a lawsuit filed by the American Bar Association that orders Trump’s senior personal lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, to testify about the deals the Trump administration struck with major law firms early in his second term.

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote: “This latest opinion should be seen as a partisan measure to insulate the president and his corrupt activities from Congressional subpoenas when the majority flips.”

Thursday was the day that Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held a status conference in the case of Phang v. Blanche. This is a lawsuit brought by independent journalist Katie Phang to force the Department of Justice to produce unredacted versions of documents from the Epstein files that she says were redacted against the explicit instructions in the Epstein Files Transparency Act. With that law, Congress ordered the Department of Justice to release all the files gathered by the FBI investigation into sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, with redactions only to protect victims, no later than December 19, 2025.

Almost eight months later, the Department of Justice has refused to do so, probably producing about half the files, with many of the documents heavily redacted at the same time that it released some of the victim’s names, photographs, and identifying information.

As legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained in her Civil Discourse, Phang sued in April for access to an unredacted version of a handful of files, including emails about a “torture video” and sexual activity with girls, as well as notes from FBI interviews with a victim who claims Trump sexually assaulted her when she was 13 and materials in foreign languages, which the Department of Justice has not produced at all. She also asked the Department of Justice to explain why they made the redactions they did, something the law requires but the Justice Department has not done.

In late June, Sullivan granted Phang’s request.

But the Department of Justice under then–acting attorney general Todd Blanche, who interviewed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell shortly before she was transferred to a far less restrictive prison that should have been inaccessible to a sex offender, did not turn over those documents.

So, in July, Sullivan ordered the government to turn over the unredacted documents to him so he could review them himself to see if the decision by the Department of Justice not to release them was correct. Once again, the Department of Justice refused. As for an explanation for why the department hadn’t explained the decisions to redact, the Justice Department lawyer told the judge the process was “underway” but couldn’t say when it would be done or why translating documents in foreign languages wasn’t practical. He claimed the materials the department is withholding are simply duplicates of things that have been released, but offered no proof of that assertion.

Ultimately, as Vance explains, Sullivan asked: ““So you’re saying I’ve learned everything I’m going to learn from the government?” The lawyer for the Department of Justice, Andrew Block, answered: “That’s right.”

Sullivan wasn’t satisfied. “The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case. The victims have a right to know. The court has a right to know. The law is still in full force and effect. The court is just ensuring compliance.”

To make it clear he was being reasonable, in expectation of a review from a higher court, Sullivan repeatedly told Block he was willing to work with the department, but warned that he had held prosecutors in contempt of court in the past. Sullivan gave Phang’s lawyers 10 days to propose an order to deal with the failure of the Department of Justice to comply with his orders to produce the files Phang requested.

The administration is also undermining another popular law. This week, under Trump, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in the Treasury Department not only ended the registry Congress set up in 2021 over Trump’s veto to make shell companies identify their owners, but also destroyed all the data it has already collected.

FinCEN combats money laundering. Congress set up the Corporate Transparency Act after documents leaked to BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2020 found that between 1999 and 2017, banks had flagged more than $2 trillion in potentially laundered money, moved by criminals operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria through shell companies. These are legal entities that don’t have physical plants or operations, but can be used for holding and moving money.

Shell companies also meant that the political system in the U.S. was awash in secrecy. “[I]t’s illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns,” one Democrat reminded Congress in a speech for the bill, “but if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership there is very little we can do to stop you.” One of the documents flagged how much Russian money was flowing into the U.S. in 2016 through Deutsche Bank.

The U.S. was the easiest place in the world for criminals to form an anonymous shell company enabling them to launder money, evade taxes, and engage in illegal payoff schemes—Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen used a shell company to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from taking the story of her sexual encounter with Trump public before the 2016 election. So Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act to undercut the shell companies that enabled money laundering in America.

The act required the owners of any company that was not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file a report that identifies each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercises substantial control over it. That report, including name, birthdate, address, and an identifying number, would go to FinCEN. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

The plan was to pull the rug out from both domestic and international criminals that take advantage of shell companies to hide from investigators. The measure passed on a bipartisan basis; then-senator Marco Rubio of Florida, now secretary of state, co-sponsored it, calling it the “most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.”

Now the Treasury Department says it will not collect the information the law requires, raising the question of whether the Trump administration is openly refusing to implement a law.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democrats, Education Reform, Funding, Republicans, Resistance

Jan Resseger: The Trump Administration’s War on Children

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2026 //

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

Indiana: Republicans Have Systematically Undermined Public Schools, Where 87% of Students Are Enrolled

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2026 //

Indiana once took pride in its public schools. Not any more. Since the Republican Party took charge of state government, public schools have been neglected and underfunded.

Veteran educator Vernon Smith was elected to the state legislature after his retirement. He wrote this article, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

He wrote:

Sixteen years ago, Republicans assumed full control of Indiana’s state government, holding the governor’s office and winning majorities in the House and the Senate. Since achieving this trifecta, the Republican supermajority has systematically cut funding and programs that made this state work for the people who live here.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than the state’s complete neglect of public schools for nearly two decades. Since taking power, the Republican supermajority has done everything in its power to undermine public education, and Indiana’s children are worse off for it.

Let me explain where years of Republican education policy have gotten us. Last month, the Network for Public Education released a report revealing Indiana ranks 45th out of 50 states in support of public education. Last year, only 31.2% of students showed proficiency on both the math and ELA sections of the ILEARN test. More than half of fourth graders can’t read proficiently, and nearly seven-in-ten eighth graders aren’t proficient in math.

A record number of school districts across the state — nearly 40 — have turned to ballot referenda to secure the money they need this year because the state won’t properly fund them and has cut their local funding sources. These are the results of Republicans chipping away at Indiana’s public school funding for years.

Consider where their priorities lie. More than 87% of Hoosier children attend traditional public schools. Yet year after year, the supermajority pours its energy and political capital into expanding charter schools and private school vouchers for the children of families who were, in most cases, never going to need the state’s help in the first place. The legislature has made it clear: they have no issue abandoning working-class Hoosiers in favor of giving an extra leg up to the most fortunate among us.

When Indiana first opened the door to charter schools and voucher programs, lawmakers sold it as a lifeline for children of color and children in poverty whose assigned schools were failing them. But once the door was propped open, my Republican colleagues expanded it year after year, extending vouchers to families making well over six figures. If this were truly about rescuing kids who’d been failed by the system, it would have stayed targeted at the kids who needed rescuing. Instead, it grew into a subsidy for everyone but the working-class families the program was designed to serve.

None of this is by accident. The supermajority was warned by Democrats, education professionals and concerned Hoosiers of the consequences that their policies would inflict on our schools. It is the direct, foreseeable and self-inflicted result of almost two decades of choices made by men and women who have mistaken their own supermajority for a mandate to neglect the children they were elected to serve.

Districts across the state are being forced to ask voters to approve referenda to raise their own local property taxes just so schools can keep the lights on and pay their teachers. Let’s not pretend this educational belt-tightening is born of necessity. Indiana has nearly $4 billion in surplus and reserve funds, which is more than enough to return to our previous, robust support of public education. Our schools and the children attending them are being asked to make do with less while the state sits on more money than it knows what to do with.

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I do not say this lightly, and I do not say it out of partisan loyalty. I say it as a man who spent nearly 20 years as a school principal and six years as a teacher before I ever spent a day in the Statehouse. I have seen firsthand what happens when a school has what it needs, and I have seen what happens when it doesn’t.

I am telling you, plainly: Indiana’s Republican supermajority has had 16 years to prove it knows the difference too. It does not. If it did, we would not rank 45th in the nation for public school support. We would not be watching our children fall further behind their peers in other states while the people entrusted with fixing it offer nothing but superficial, special-interest-backed policies that don’t address the underlying issues.

This is where years of unchecked Republican domination have gotten us: two decades of failure and of backs turned on the generation that makes up the future of this state, this nation and the world beyond.

For 16 years, they have stood before us and promised that this would finally be the year public education in Indiana gets fixed. And for 16 years, they have failed to deliver on that promise. The only question left is how much longer Hoosiers are willing to take their word for it and allow more children to fail academically

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Indiana, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Carol Burris: The Hoax of “School Choice”

By dianeravitch

July 29, 2026 //

I posted the link to Carol Burris’s terrific article about school choice yesterday but was unable to copy the text. Carol sent the text to me.

Here it is:

Advocates of a rightwing, billionaire-funded campaign to replace public education with a privatized education marketplace have been candid about their goals and disciplined in pursuing them. A new reportfrom the organization I lead, the Network for Public Education, provides an accounting of how far state lawmakers across the nation, in both red and blue states, have advanced this campaign and have put at grave risk access to the current system of education that is free and available to all families.

For nearly a decade, the Network for Public Education has issued statehouse-by-statehouse report cards holding legislators accountable for how they treat public schools and the children who depend on them. And over the years, we have seen a ramp up in school privatization and continuous neglect of public school students and teachers.

This 2026 Report Card is our most expansive to date, evaluating all fifty states and the District of Columbia across four categories: privatization of public education, protections for homeschooled students, school funding, and conditions for teaching and learning based on thirty-nine factors. Some of those factors include charter school expansion, discrimination, and student-to-teacher ratio.

In 2022, when we issued our second report card, ten states achieved 80 percent or more of a possible 102 points. By 2024, the number of states achieving 80 percent of all possible points had dropped to four. Two years later, only two states, Nebraska and Vermont, hit the 80 percent mark.

Over the past four years, privatization efforts have seen heightened success across the country. Voucher programs (which began in the mid-1990s) have expanded from twenty-seven programs in 2022 to seventy-three programs in thirty-four states as of 2026, with multiple programs in several states. Vouchers pay for tuition at both secular and religious schools, and in some states, the purchase of goods and services by homeschoolers and microschoolers. Schools accepting vouchers also typically face little of the academic, financial, or civil rights accountability required of public schools, and many can reject or expel students based on disability, religion, sexual orientation, or academic record. And because voucher amounts frequently fall short of full private school tuition, the benefits flow disproportionately to families who could already afford private school without public dollars.

Charter schools, which began in 1992 as experimental schools controlled by school districts, have been privatized to include large chains of schools, some of which span across multiple states. Nearly one in five charter school students attends a charter run by a for-profit corporation. It is an unstable sector of schooling, with more than one in four closing by year five.

Only Nebraska and Kentucky are now the only remaining states free of both charter schools and state voucher programs. But the 2026 report card reveals a troubling and consistent pattern beyond the expansion of school privatization. The states most aggressively redirecting public funds toward private alternatives—charter schools, voucher programs, and home schools—are the same states that fund privatization at the direct expense of investment in public schools.

In fact, our analysis found a strong and statistically significant negative relationship between the expansion of privatization and other indicators of public school support. Privatization and public school disinvestment, it turns out, go hand in hand.

Seventeen states earned a grade of F, meaning they failed to meet even 40 percent of the thirty-nine standards we set for responsible stewardship of public schools. Standards that included equitable school funding, teacher satisfaction, protections for homeschooled students, and class size. Florida ranked dead last, scoring just fourteen out of 102 possible points, with Arizona following closely behind. These are not struggling states making hard choices with thin budgets. They are states that have made deliberate decisions to defund neighborhood schools while directing public money toward private alternatives with minimal oversight, weak accountability, and documented records of fraud and mismanagement.

The appeal of “school choice,” in which families are permitted to use state funds that would’ve been otherwise spent on public education on non-traditional programs like charter or private schools, is easy to understand. The promise of options and tailored education sounds reasonable in the abstract. But in practice, choice works best for families with the time, information, and flexibility to navigate it, and whose children the private school is willing to choose. For a family in rural Florida or a child with complex disabilities whose needs most private schools won’t accommodate, the marketplace of options is theoretical. The public school is the only institution legally required to educate every child who walks through the door. When it is weakened through funding cuts, the diversion of students and dollars, or a hollowed-out teaching workforce, the consequences fall hardest on the children least able to find alternatives.

Meanwhile, many of these states that have expanded privatization are the same states that fail to uphold school policies that support teaching and learning.

You cannot systematically eliminate teachers’ job protections, freeze wages, and inject heavy political pressure into classrooms, then be surprised when talented people leave the profession. States like Arizona and Florida, which we rank at the bottom for teacher working conditions, are the same states reporting severe shortages of teachers and the highest rates of underqualified instructors. That is a direct consequence of policy choices, not a demographic inevitability.

The top of the rankings offers a useful counterpoint. States like Nebraska and Vermont demonstrate that it is possible to adequately fund public schools, support teachers as professionals, and resist privatization pressure. The distance between them and the bottom-ranked states reflects not differences in wealth or circumstance, but differences in political priorities.

None of this means public school systems are beyond criticism. They have real failures and persistent inequities worth addressing. But the solution is not to defund the institution and redirect money to private alternatives that face no equivalent accountability. Charter schools limit enrollment. Voucher schools can turn away students. Education savings accounts, which give taxpayer funds to parents to buy private services in lieu of public schooling, can be misused with little consequence. Public schools cannot do any of these things—and that constraint is precisely what makes them worth protecting.

What happens next depends on whether parents, teachers, and the communities built around our public schools engage with the same urgency as forces on the right wing who work to dismantle them.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Hoax, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Randi Weingarten: Why We Are Fighting for a Better Society for All

By dianeravitch

July 27, 2026 //

This is one of Randi Weingarten’s best speeches. She delivered it at the 2026 Convention of the American federation of Teachers on July 26 in Washington, D.C.

Not only does she identify income inequality as a dire threat to our democracy, she speaks one of the greatest lines I have ever read:

Mr. President, you don’t own July Fourth. You own Jan. 6.

Randi points out that the dramatic income inequality of our times is destroying the middle class. Unions build a strong middle class. The large increase in the number of billionaires is it a sign of a healthy society; it is a sign of gross inequality.

As more people slip out of the middle class or hang on by their fingertips, our social problems get worse.

How do we restore a thriving middle class? Encourage the growth of strong unions.

She reminds us that today only 1 of every 10 workers belongs to a union. Union workers are paid more, significantly more, than non-union workers. In mid-century America, when 1 in 3 American workers were in a union, we had the largest middle class and the lowest income inequality. And she says, “That’s why, in the long term, growing the union movement is key to solving America’s affordability crisis.”

Rightwingers have done their best to eviscerate unions. And they have won significant victories in the courts.

But, despite the obstacles, the AFT is growing. It now has the largest number of members in its history: 1.875 million members. Al Shanker and Sandy Feldman would be proud of that accomplishment.

Unions are key to a better life.

Randi said in her address:

We plan our conventions years in advance. When we decided to hold this convention in our nation’s capital, to coincide with the celebration of America’s founding 250 years ago, who would have thought that the grievances that led to the American Revolution would be so relevant and relatable today? Or that America would have a new kind of aristocracy based on mind-blowing wealth?

In the United States, there are now 1,000 billionaires—and the world’s first trillionaire—at a time when nearly half of American households—46 percent—don’t earn enough to make ends meet.

This wealth imbalance—the top 1 percent having as much wealth as the entire bottom 90 percent of Americans combined—has led to a power imbalance that affects the lives of everyone in our country. These oligarchs influence policy. They have the power to undo social progress. To sway financial markets, monopolize the media, buy elections and undermine democracy.

In an earlier period of extreme wealth inequality, the country elected Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his New Deal programs lifted millions of Americans out of poverty.

This time, the country elected Donald Trump, and well …

Remember that warning—about the barbarians at the gate? Well, the barbarians aren’t at the gate, they are inside, including at the highest levels of government.

The president and his cronies are abusing government powers to punish political opponents. Every day they find new ways to attack voting, presumably to entrench themselves. Their war on working-class Americans includes stripping collective bargaining rights from 1 million federal workers, including members of our union, in the biggest act of union-busting in U.S. history. All while engaging in the most blatant corruption in modern American history to enrich themselves.

The attacks—on unions, on working people, on public education, on higher education, on the public good, on democracy—didn’t start with Trump. They’ve been decades in the making, going back to the 1971 memo by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell that successfully plotted corporate dominance in American politics. And the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that fueled the massive surge of “dark money” in elections—which has now been supercharged by the court’s ruling last month that blew up whatever campaign finance limits were left. And its 2018 Janus decision that anti-union forces hoped would drive a stake through the heart of public sector unions. Project 2025 became the playbook to enact this extremist agenda. This year’s Callais decision not only gutted what remained of the 1965 Voting Rights Act but did so in time to affect the 2026 elections. Then there’s the bare-knuckled crusade to destroy public education and higher education. Just look at Christopher Rufo’s tweets, or his unabashed declaration years ago that “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

And I haven’t even gotten to Big Tech and artificial intelligence.

Yes, the other side has enormous power. But this is what they don’t have: the power of the people.

That’s not a mere slogan; it’s the potential to work together, to bargain together, to protest together, to vote together, to act together to bring about change—real, lasting, life-improving change. That is the power and potential of our movement and of the AFT.

Our union stands at the intersection of the ways that regular people gain and exercise power in our democracy—through public education, unions and voting.

The skills and knowledge people secure through public and higher education expand opportunity—that’s power. Union contracts improve economic well-being—that’s power. Elections—voting for people who answer to their constituents, not wealthy donors—that’s power.

It’s power not just for ourselves, but for our students, our patients and our communities. Power to build what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “beloved community”—an America where hate has no home. Where the trans nurse, the Palestinian teacher, the Jewish student, and every person regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or place of origin, feels welcome, safe and valued.

We use our power for good—against chaos, cruelty and corruption. We care, we fight and we show up—for a better life for all. Oh, and one more thing: We get shit done!

We are a fighting union. To quote the president of Texas AFT, Zeph Capo, “Our members will forgive us if we fight and lose, but they’ll never forgive us if we don’t even fight.”

Look at what we have fought for, and won, in these last two years—despite constant challenges.

Through the AFT’s student debt clinics and our other activism, we have helped more than 1 million borrowers, many of them our members, get $78 billion in student debt forgiven! That is life-changing; people can start a family, buy a home, save for retirement.

The AFT has filed more than 25 lawsuits against the illegal actions of the Trump administration. If I talked about all of them, I would blow everyone’s bets on the length of the speech. So here are just a few: The Trump administration tried to stop any school—pre-K through college—from doing anything that could be construed as advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, essentially erasing 60 years of civil rights law. And it sought to condition all federal funding for schools on compliance with its dictates. We sued, and we won. We challenged the administration’s policies to detain and deport noncitizen students and faculty for participating in protected political speech. Again, we won. We sued to stop the administration from stripping federal funding from universities and to stop its efforts to control curriculum, hiring and speech. You guessed it—we won.

And then there’s the collective bargaining victories. Like for better wages—from Boston to Kansas City, from Chicago to Los Angeles and so many more. That’s the union difference: Union workers’ wages are 11 percent higher than nonunion workers. Unionized teachers earn 24 percent more in states with collective bargaining, and education support professionals earn 13 percent more.

And as we speak, the city council in New York City is voting to provide every United Federation of Teachers-represented paraprofessional a $10,000 “Respect Check” that the union has relentlessly fought for.

Life is better with a union.

It goes beyond wages. Take the United Educators of San Francisco, whose successful strike this year led to winning premium-free healthcare not only for members but for their families.

And paid parental leave. Kudos to our affiliates in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Fairfax County (Va.), New York City and Oregon for making great strides to help families thrive.

And safe staffing. The UFT has had some incredible wins through arbitration. And in New Jersey, our healthcare union, Health Professionals and Allied Employees, has negotiated 14 contracts in a row with enforceable safe-staffing provisions. And now one of our newest affiliates, Hawaii Nurses and Healthcare Professionals, has created a broad coalition to do the same.

And we have a sacrosanct commitment to retirement security. After a generation-long battle, we won passage of the Social Security Fairness Act that gave millions of public workers the full benefits they had earned but been denied. Our New York unions made great progress this year to fix Tier 6; now younger workers who had inferior pensions can retire in their late 50s. And AFT Massachusetts, AFT Pennsylvania and our Alaska affiliates are making progress on retirement security as well.

There’s also what we have fended off. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers reached an agreement to stop the cuts of 340 school-based positions for the coming school year. In Utah, a labor coalition including AFT Utah gathered more than 250,000 signatures and got the Legislature to repeal a ban on public sector bargaining. AFT New Hampshire has a mean game of whack-a-mole—defeating right-to-work, school vouchers and campus carry legislation, and successfully challenging a law that restricted teachers’ rights to teach and students’ access to honest history. In New York, our unions—United University Professions and the Public Employees Federation—and a broad community coalition successfully fought to keep SUNY Downstate hospital open after years of threatened closure, and they secured $1.1 billion to upgrade and expand facilities and services.

These are fights we’ll have to keep waging. The Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill cuts $1 trillion in Medicaid, makes the largest cuts to nutrition assistance in history, triples the cost of student debt for tens of millions of Americans, and threatens hundreds of rural hospitals with closure—all to give $1 trillion in new tax cuts to the richest 1 percent. State and local budgets are seeing the strain. We’ll keep fighting, school district by school district and hospital by hospital.

Then there is artificial intelligence—the most seismic industrial revolution of our time. From UUP in New York to the University Professionals of Illinois, we’ve won strong contract language so AI won’t be used to take our jobs, replace our professional judgment, or evaluate or discipline us.

And density matters: Like New York State United Teachers in education, Oregon’s density in healthcare is making a difference. The Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals secured the largest raises in its history—nearly 35 percent over four years for registered nurses. And OFNHP and HNHP in Hawaii have aligned all their contract expiration dates for the next Kaiser battle.

And then there is the protection of our students, our patients and our neighbors from brutal immigration tactics, like the recent fatal shootings by ICE agents in Texas and Maine of two men who should be alive today. Healthcare locals in Oregon won legislation to protect healthcare facilities from immigration enforcement. Educators across the country have fought for their students’ release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. Our Twin Cities union family peacefully and courageously stood up to the occupation and harsh immigration enforcement that led to the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and terrified thousands of immigrant families. We were there with mutual aid—food, diapers, rent money, books, toys and safe passage for children to and from school.

The AFT is always at the ready to help—like with our program for states and locals in crisis. Right now, we are helping our members in Florida, who are in the bull’s-eye of anti-union attacks intended to wipe them out. Let me be clear: We are with you every step of the way. And we’re investing in our affiliates through our MOVE grants, which affiliates are using as fuel to engage members, connect with community and strengthen their power.

This is what the power of the people looks like: caring, fighting, showing up and getting shit done.

This administration is waging a war on knowledge, from school voucher schemes, to erasing rather than facing history, to selling the Department of Education off for parts, to its all-out assault on higher education. Here, too, we’re not just fighting back; we’re putting forward big ideas.

The AFT and the American Association of University Professors have launched a national higher education campaign. We’re fighting to keep vital research funded and against attacks on academic freedom. We won collective bargaining rights for higher education employees in Maryland and made strides toward free college in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. In April, the AFT and AAUP released “A Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education”—and we launched it in Texas, because that is ground zero in the attacks on critical thinking.

Through AFT Healthcare’s Code Red campaign, we’re working to secure safe staffing limits, enforceable workplace-violence standards, and contracts that help recruit and retain frontline caregivers. That’s good for patients and for healthcare workers.

And on AI, we have a multifaceted plan: from limiting screens and child-facing AI for young students, to a tech tax to hold tech companies accountable for the massive disruptions their products are creating, to contract language, to our National Academy for AI Instruction to help educators master AI so AI doesn’t master us. AI is not going away, so we’re going to fight for the protections that matter to our members, our families and our communities.

And of course, we give out books, 11 million and counting, to children and families through our Reading Opens the World program.

All this is why the AFT is bigger, badder and more big-hearted than ever.

The AFT is the fastest-growing union in the AFL-CIO. Since our last convention, we have organized 173 more units, with close to 60,000 new members in these new locals. New affiliations have deepened our work in states like Hawaii, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. And many existing locals have grown as well.

I am thrilled to announce that, despite everything that’s been thrown at us, we have hit a historic milestone: We proudly represent more members than ever before. Today the AFT is 1.875 million members strong!

People see the value of belonging. They see that we’re a fighting union—and that we get shit done! It’s amazing. You are amazing. And we are not going to let up. Too few people have the benefit of a union.

Half of all nonunion workers want to join a union, but only 1 in 10 workers in the U.S. belongs to a union. Americans are 14 times more likely to have an Amazon Prime membership than to be a member of a labor union.

In the mid-20th century, when 1 in 3 American workers were in a union, we had the largest middle class and the lowest income inequality. That’s why, in the long term, growing the union movement is key to solving America’s affordability crisis.

But what do we do now? We’ve got to win elections. And here’s why.

As I said, 46 percent of households—55 percent of households of color—did not earn enough to make ends meet in 2024. And inflation has soared since then. That means there’s not enough to put food on the table, gas in the tank and still cover rent. It means constant stress and struggle.

Our members see it every day in the people they teach, heal and protect.

And our members feel it.

This winter we surveyed AFT members about the financial issues that keep them up at night, and 7,500 responded. Nearly three-quarters report living paycheck to paycheck, and more than a third say they are unable to cover all of their monthly bills.

There are few things worse than the fear of not being able to provide for your family. Reading our members’ responses took me back to my teenage years when my father was laid off. I remember my parents whispering about which bills they had to pay now and which they could hold off on until he found work. They tried to protect my sister and me from knowing, but there’s no hiding anxiety that deep.

Millions of Americans believed Trump’s promises to end inflation and make America affordable again on “day one.” It’s “day 542” since he took office. Is anybody paying under $2 a gallon for gas like he promised? What happened to the “DOGE dividend checks”? Or your tariff rebate check? After they got rid of the Obamacare tax credits, have they fixed healthcare?

Trump isn’t worried about being able to afford healthcare, housing or anything else. Since returning to the White House, he has raked in more than $2.2 billion, through what government watchdogs call unprecedented corruption and self-dealing.

The president has called the affordability crisis “bullshit.” And he has said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” But he has made it worse.

Trump’s tariffs sent the strong economy he inherited into a slump, even with an AI bubble. His trade wars are costing American families $1,000 more every year. He started a costly war against Iran that has left us worse off than when it started. Trump said taxpayers wouldn’t pay “one dime” for his ballroom, but it turns out we’re on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.

We’re not holding our breath for the president to deliver on his promises to lower costs. We’re fighting for economic security and to put more money in our members’ pockets—like the 1 million borrowers we’ve helped get Public Service Loan Forgiveness relief. Our Fight for Affordability builds on that work, with resources to help navigate medical and credit card debt and on other support people are legally entitled to but may not know about.

And we are working with allies in Congress on bold solutions, like increasing the minimum wage to $25 and passing the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act, which would exempt 104 million lower-income adults from federal taxes—paid for by millionaires paying a fairer share. We’re pushing for increased funding for public schools and colleges. We’re fighting back against the draconian cuts to Medicaid and to rural hospitals. Millions of children risk going hungry because of the heartless changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the Big Ugly Bill; we are fighting for every single one of them.

But we need majorities in statehouses and in Congress this year, and ultimately the White House, to secure the foundational changes we seek.

Threats to Democracy

We face another grave danger: dire threats to democracy. I know, some of you are thinking, here she goes. But really, when is the erosion so much that we can’t get our freedoms back?

I remember the scoffing when terms like “authoritarian” were first used. And I have been asked repeatedly about why I used the term “fascist” in the book I wrote, Why Fascists Fear Teachers.

Unfortunately, the answer is clearer every day.

I don’t actually care what you call it, but I care very much about what Trump is doing. He is weaponizing the justice system to target political opponents, journalists and dissenters. He is sending armed forces trained for war to police American cities, especially to Democrat- and Black-led cities. He is using the presidency for his own benefit and to enrich himself and his family. He is trying to obstruct free and fair elections to maintain power.

Donald Trump keeps trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He urged on the Jan. 6 rioters and pardoned even those who brutally attacked officers bravely protecting the Capitol.

He is aggressively testing the legal and constitutional limits of presidential power.

Then there are the lies. It started with crowd size but now he lies about everything—about election results, the economy, his critics, the war in Iran. Even the botched paint job on the Reflecting Pool.

And sadly, instead of uniting the country to celebrate the great American experiment of democracy, what did Trump do for the 250th? He held what he described as “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.”

Mr. President, you don’t own July Fourth. You own Jan. 6.

I speak and write about democracy a lot because education is vital to understanding, and understanding is vital to acting. If we don’t heed the warnings from the generals who worked for Trump in his first term; if we don’t recognize the hallmarks of authoritarianism—fear, division, isolation and apathy; if we don’t learn the lessons of tyrants, how do we the people have the shared understanding and the urgency to organize and mobilize for democracy to work for working people.

As I wrote last year, fascists fear teachers because they fear a well-educated citizenry. They fear what educators do—the teaching of critical thinking, of honest history, of pluralism—because their brand of greed, power and privilege cannot survive in a democracy of diverse, educated citizens. We see it in the book bans. In the attacks on DEI. In the efforts to control what schools and universities can and cannot teach. And in the attempts to rewrite and whitewash history.

To be clear: Fascists don’t just fear teachers—they fear, loath and try to silence all of us who stand up for democracy, dignity, fairness and opportunity for all.

And stand up we must.

Americans are losing faith in democracy. Seven in 10 U.S. adults say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in the country. Young Americans in particular feel the country is on the wrong track.

I understand the disappointment. But we cannot give up on democracy. Winston Churchill was right when he said in 1947, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”

But we must improve it. As John Dewey said, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

Look at where democracy is being born anew: In Hungary, where this spring 80 percent of voters turned out to reject Viktor Orbán’s far-right agenda, ending his 16-year grip on power. In South Korea, where labor unions spearheaded mass protests and nationwide “strikes to defend democracy” after the president declared martial law. And here at home, at May Day and “No Kings” protests in small towns, suburbs and cities across America, where millions of people turned out to say we will not stand by while democracy is dismantled.

We are not helpless to change what is wrong. We can build a better future and a stronger democracy. But that requires winning in November.

Elections

As big and bad and big-hearted as we are, neither bargaining nor bullhorns alone will get us out of these treacherous times.

To get a working-class tax cut, to pass living-wage legislation, to get limitless money out of politics, to fix the healthcare system, to strengthen education, and to restore vital safety net and climate programs, we have to win majorities in 2026 and the White House in 2028. We have to elect people who support working people, leaders with real plans to make life better.

Strengthening public schools and stopping the reckless runaway train that private school vouchers are becoming should not be a partisan issue. Ensuring everyone who works can earn a living wage should not be a political issue. Fighting so everyone has access to high-quality, affordable healthcare should be a human priority, not one party’s priority. Shoring up Social Security to keep seniors out of destitution should have universal support. Addressing the climate crisis that threatens all humanity should unify all humanity.

Perhaps one day these issues will be bipartisan.

But sadly, the reality is that since Trump’s first term, Republican officeholders’ support for our priority issues averaged just 8 percent, while Democrats averaged 95 percent. Do I wish that was different? Of course. And do I wish Democrats were bolder? I do. But Republican leaders don’t even seem to want to try.

This election will decide whether we are a country governed by the people or ruled by the powerful. A country of opportunity or oligarchy. A country whose people live in freedom or in fear.

Do we want a future where billionaires and a trillionaire continue to grow their wealth at the expense of working people? Or one where working people earn a decent wage, support their families and take a vacation once in a while?

Do we want a future in which classrooms lack resources and life-changing research is abandoned? Or one in which we can nurture the potential of every student and continue to lead the world in bold discoveries?

Do we want a future where big healthcare corporations put profits over people? Or one in which every person—every person—has access to healthcare, and healthcare professionals have the resources, staffing and power to help their patients?

Do we want a future ruled by tech bros and robots? Or a future grounded in dignity and humanity?

Do we want a future in which elections are rigged to maintain one-party control and government is for sale to the highest bidder? Or one in which every person’s vote matters and government serves the people?

That’s what’s at stake in November 2026. And the future we want is within reach. We can win majorities in the House and in the Senate and in state capitals. Majorities who will act on our priorities.

But only if we vote, get others out to vote, and protect the vote. That’s why we are committing to our most ambitious election program ever.

Here’s the math: 1.3 million AFT members and their families live in a place where there is a competitive race in November. 600,000 of us are in battleground gubernatorial states. 464,000 live in the states with the seven top U.S. Senate battleground races. We need to flip four seats to win a Senate majority that works for working folks. And we have more than 1,000 members and voting family members in 86 critical, competitive congressional districts. We only need a net gain of three seats to win a working folks’ majority in the U.S. House. Can we do it?

With the AFL-CIO, we have a goal of reaching 2 million new voters. That means the AFT has to turn out about 200,000 more householders than in the last election. That means we need 28,000 volunteers to make calls, knock on doors and get out the vote—28,000 out of 1.875 million. Can we do it?

And it’s not just about getting out the vote in this election but also about protecting the vote. That’s why we are launching a new Democracy Defenders election protection program. We are recruiting 5,000 members to make sure that people can exercise their right to vote free from intimidation. Our Democracy Defenders will be part of the 50,000 people the AFL-CIO is recruiting for this critical work. Can we do it?

People power can win, but we need to be all in, and that means we need you to be all in. No one can do everything, but each of us can do something to win in November and achieve the better future we fight for.

So are we going to vote? Are we going to get out the vote? Are we going to protect the vote?

Conclusion

That’s the energy and commitment we need to achieve the America we dream of: An America where everyone has opportunity and economic security. An America where everyone’s dignity and freedoms are respected. An America whose democracy not only endures but finally lives up to its noble ideals.

I’ve spoken often this year about Martin Luther King Jr.’s final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Since January 2025, we have experienced a lot of chaos, fear and division.

Lately, I find myself drawn to another piece of King’s wisdom—that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I still believe that, and I hope you do too.

But the arc doesn’t bend on its own. It bends toward freedom and opportunity through the work you do every day making a difference in people’s lives—in classrooms, at the bedside, in our communities. You bend the arc. Unions bend the arc. Voting bends the arc. The power of the people bends the arc toward justice.

On this 250th anniversary of our nation, that is our responsibility. That is what I am asking you to do, what I am asking us to do—this bigger, badder, big-hearted union and our 1.875 million members.

And when we do, when we bend that arc, we will change the trajectory of our nation and secure a better future for all, from sea to shining sea. Thank you.

Watch the full speech

https://www.aft.org/media/oembed?url=https%3A//youtu.be/oIASmJ3ZO70&max_width=0&max_height=0&hash=Sadl1eN7tbOr37C7SenWNH-Hx34YmVOAuIc7CHYyQyQ

Categories Academic Freedom, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Justice, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

Julian V. Heilig: The Hunger Games of Education Has Begun. Who Will Survive?

By dianeravitch

July 22, 2026 //

This is a thoughtful essay on a crucial problem: shrinking enrollments in higher education and the budget cuts to meet them. Julian Vasquez Heilig lays out the problem and the typical response. He thinks there is a better way and he describes it.

Heilig is on the faculty of Michigan State University and is a national expert on topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion.

He writes:

The warning signs are no longer theoretical. Schools are closing. Colleges are preparing layoffs. Faculty buyouts are spreading. Academic programs are disappearing. Dorm beds are sitting empty. Classrooms are thinning out. Tax revenue is weakening. State appropriations are uncertain. Consultants are being hired and paid millions to identify “efficiencies.” Boards are quietly discussing mergers and closures. American education is entering a period of deep instability.

This is not only a crisis for presidents and superintendents. It is a crisis for communities. When a school closes, a neighborhood loses more than a building. When a college cuts faculty and staff, a region loses jobs and opportunity. When families question whether education is worth the price, the consequences ripple through local economies and democracy itself.

In this article, I first define the problem. Enrollment pressure, funding instability, demographic change, and political attacks are converging across K-12 and higher education. These pressures are already producing closures and painful restructuring. But this is not only a warning. At the end, I turn to what communities can do through politics, public pressure, local organizing, accountability, and leadership selection before the choices become narrower.

The Warning Signs Are Already Here

At my own institution, public projections suggest new student enrollment could decline somewhere between 3 and 5 percent this year. If those projections hold, that would mark a return to consecutive enrollment declines after the gains achieved during my years as provost. During that period, we reversed an almost decade-long enrollment slide.

That is alarming because this moment was supposed to be the “high water mark” before the demographic cliff. WICHE projects that the total number of high school graduates will peak around 2026 and then decline steadily through 2041. Universities were supposed to be maximizing enrollment now. Instead, some are struggling while the student pool remains historically large.

In many ways, education is being pushed into an arena where resources are shrinking and the odds are being rewritten before many institutions understand the rules.

The Old Survival Strategies Are Running Out

Much of higher education survived the past several years through strategies that are becoming unsustainable. Institutions poured millions into financial aid discounting. They leaned harder into full-pay families. They expanded retention offices and predictive analytics systems. They built student success centers and advising infrastructure. They spent heavily on marketing and enrollment staff.

Ironically, retention and enrollment strategy helped save some institutions from earlier financial pressure. During my time in executive leadership, we understood that higher education had entered a new era of competition. Universities were no longer competing only over prestige. They were competing over affordability and survival.

Financial aid, student success infrastructure, and community partnerships became essential tools. Institutions that moved aggressively like Arizona State and Georgia State often stabilized themselves. Institutions that remained complacent fell further behind.

But even enrollment growth stories now face new threats. Federal research funding is unstable. State appropriations remain uncertain. Inflation is pressuring budgets. Some states like Michigan have seen stronger FAFSA activity. Yet many families are questioning the value of higher education. Political attacks have also weakened public trust while threatening research capacity and institutional autonomy.

Please open the link to read Heilig’s creative proposals for meeting the crisis.

Categories Budget Cuts, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Higher Education

Pastors in North Carolina Oppose “Christian Nationalism”

By dianeravitch

July 17, 2026 //

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I have a strong friendship with and great respect for the Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children. Charlie comes to every conference of the Network for Public Education and is a strong advocate for public schools and the 5.4 million children who attend them. He believes deeply in separation of church and state, as do the 2,000 faith leaders in Texas who are part of Pastors for Texas Children. PTC was deeply involved in the voucher battle, on the side of public schools and church-state separation.

PTC has encouraged the creation of similar groups in other states. One of these groups is in North Carolina. I received this notice and thought some of you might want to participate in their zoom conversation about “Christian nationalism.”

People of Faith for Public Schools

Dear Advocates,

Though it’s still summer, our advocacy doesn’t stop! Have you been hearing about “Christian nationalism” but maybe don’t know quite what it is or why it matters to public education advocacy?

People of Faith For Public Schools, a project of Pastors for NC Children

Christian Nationalism:

What is it?

Why should we care?

How To End Christian Nationalism Zoom Book Discussion

Pastors for NC Children and Christians Against Christian Nationalism-North Carolina are co-sponsoring a 2 part zoom book discussion of Amanda Tyler’s “How To End Christian Nationalism”.

It will take place on Thursday, July 23 and Thursday, July 30 from 7-8:30pm. July 23 will look at the Introduction and Steps 1-4. July 30 will look at Steps 5-8 and the Conclusion. While we hope you read the book, you are invited to join in even if you haven’t. The discussion will include discussing the steps and how it intersects with our own experiences and life. The discussion will be led by Executive Director Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller.

ACTION ITEM: Register for the link at http://bit.ly/HTECNJuly2026

Support Our Work Today!

Thank you to everyone who has made a donation to PNCC’s ministry. WE ARE SO GRATEFUL! Would you consider becoming a monthly donor or make a one time contribution to our goal? Could your church include PNCC in their mission giving? THANK YOU!

ACTION ITEM: Donate to PNCC’s Ministry Today!

Know of congregational, denominational, or community grants or opportunities to support our work? Let us know at Fundraising@PastorsForNCchildren.org

919.346.6114

Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller, Director

Director@PastorsForNCchildren.org

PastorsForNCchildren.org

DONATE HERE!

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Musk Insisted that No Child Died Because of His Cuts to USAID. Kristof Proves He Is Wrong.

By dianeravitch

July 15, 2026 //

When Elon Musk started his Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), one of his first targets was USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agency that sent food, medicine and health workers to the world’s neediest nations.

Musk and his DOGE shut down USAID. On February 3, 2025, Musk boasted on Twitter:

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.

Clearly, Musk was very proud of what he did. American farmers complained that they lost $2 billion in sales that had previously been purchased by USAID to ship abroad to needy people.

Immediately, there were dire predictions that people would die without the food and medicine provided by the U.S.

Musk at first ignored the critics, but eventually insisted that no child had died as a result of closing down USAID.

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times responded:

Elon Musk is newly minted as humanity’s first trillionaire, but the world’s richest man seems grumpy. And he definitely is not a fan of mine.

“Kristof is lying through his teeth,” he announced on social media this week.

I got on his nerves for pushing back at his claims that his demolition of the United States Agency for International Development last year did not cost lives. The fracas began after Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said that Musk had “possibly sentenced to death” a large number of children, and Musk retorted that it was “time to sue this liar.”

“There is not even a single dead child!” Musk protested on social media. I noted that I had met many families of children who had died — and that’s when he concluded that I was lying.

Musk’s assertion that not a single child died is absurd, yet he doubled down: “They cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!”

On X, I began to give Musk some names. Let me elaborate:

Jibia was a 10-year-old girl, ranking third out of 58 students in her fourth-grade class in Rwamwanja, Uganda. Aid cuts meant that the local clinic ran out of $2 bed nets to protect from mosquitoes, as well as anti-malaria medicines. Jibia died of malaria last July, her mother told me outside the family home. Medical records confirmed that, and health workers told me that she would have been fine without the aid cuts: Replacing her tattered bed net with a new one could have prevented malaria, and in any case drugs would have helped her to recover promptly.

Yamah Freeman hemorrhaged while pregnant with her third child in her village in Liberia. The United States had provided ambulances to the local hospital, but the aid cuts under Musk and President Trump meant that the ambulances had no fuel. The strongest young men in the village placed her on their shoulders and raced down the path toward town, shouting encouragement to her as they ran, but she bled to death along the way. Her parents and sister told me about this, and I visited her grave.

Achol Deng, 8, had been infected with H.I.V. at birth in South Sudan but had been kept alive by American-provided medicines costing just 12 cents a day. The dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. and the resulting chaos meant that she lost her caseworker and access to medicines, and soon died of an opportunistic infection, health workers told me.

I could keep going. A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts have cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide. A study published in The Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates, the aid defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030.

These figures may not be accurate; we just don’t have solid mortality data, and the aid cuts have also reduced data collection. What I can say after visiting numerous impoverished villages is that aid cuts are unquestionably costing the lives of many children.

Some prominent conservatives leaped to the defense of Musk, saying in effect: Why is it our job to save the lives of children in South Sudan? Why don’t rich liberals write checks? Why don’t other countries do more?

Those are fair questions. But if any of us came across an ambulance that had run out of gas with a hemorrhaging woman inside, surely we would happily hand over a $10 bill to save her life.

Until Trump’s second term, American aid cost just 23 cents for every $100 of gross national income and saved a life approximately once every 10 seconds. Seems like a bargain to me. Certainly it appears wiser than spending billions of dollars on a war with Iran.

I say “wiser” because all this is not just about compassion but also about self-interest. Aid money serves national security and protects us from diseases. I’ve noted that the current Ebola outbreak in Africa may have gotten out of control precisely because we cut aid spending in the region.

Yes, other countries should do more, impoverished countries should be less corrupt, and our own aid can be allocated more wisely. But note that some countries in Europe are significantly more generous than America, spending up to 10 times as much on aid as a share of national income as we do.

Should liberals donate more to humanitarian causes? Sure. But compassion isn’t a liberal impulse — it’s a human one. It was evangelicals and Republicans who in 2003 started the single best aid program ever, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR; it has saved more than 26 million lives so far. Some of the most heroic aid workers I’ve met in dangerous locations have been Christian missionaries, from nuns to doctors; they would dispute the idea that empathy is woke.

It’s reasonable to ask how much we should spend or how we should reform the system. But why would anyone begrudge $2 bed nets or $4 malaria vaccines to save children’s lives?

So let me offer a challenge to Musk: Come with me on a reporting trip to South Sudan or Somalia or Mozambique. Meet starving children whose lives can be easily saved. Hold them. Look into their eyes. Talk to their terrified moms.

You’ll understand that these kids are just like ours, except that they didn’t do as well in the lottery of birth — and that just because we can’t save every child’s life doesn’t mean we should save none of them.

Back in the late 1960s, opponents of the war in Vietnam used to torment President Lyndon B. Johnson by shouting at him,

Hey, hey, LBJ,

How many kids did you kill today?

I can’t think of a word that rhymes with “Musk.” Can you?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Health, International, Poverty

Why Ohio Got a Terrible Grade on the NPE Report

By dianeravitch

July 7, 2026 //

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, was the author of the recent report Public Schooling in America: Our 2026 Report Card on the States. The subtitle: THE BEST AND THE WORST STATEHOUSES FOR SUPPORTING PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THEIR STUDENTS.

She wrote recently to explain why Ohio received a low grade:

Ohio lost more points on privatization in the NPE Report Card than any other state — more than Florida, more than Arizona. Its charter and voucher policies are among the most expansive and least accountable in the nation. The only reason Ohio does not rank at the very bottom is that it continues to fund its public schools at a relatively adequate level. That margin is shrinking.

The charter sector tells a particularly troubling story. Half of all charter schools in Ohio are operated by for-profit companies — an unusually high share even by national standards. Yet nearly half of all charter schools that have ever opened with enrollment in the state have since closed, a closure rate of 49 percent. These are not isolated failures. They reflect a system designed with too few guardrails and too little accountability.

A significant portion of these for-profit schools are credit recovery operations and online schools — low-cost, maximum-profit models held to lower academic standards than traditional public schools. Nearly one in three charter students in Ohio — 30 percent — attends a virtual school or an institution where instruction is delivered primarily online.

What explains so much low-quality supply? Ohio’s authorizing structure is a central culprit. The state permits multiple authorizers, including nonprofits that collect millions in authorizing fees and have a financial incentive to approve and retain schools regardless of performance.

Ohio also has more voucher programs than any other state in the country — eight in total — further diverting public dollars away from the students and communities that depend on public schools.

If Ohio continues on its current trajectory, the consequences are predictable: further erosion of public school funding, further decline in the rankings, and fewer educational options as the neighborhood public school choice disappears.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

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Why Ohio Got a Terrible Grade on the NPE Report

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