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Jonathan Chait: The GOP Plan to Take Over American Education

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2023 //
38

Jonathan Chait wrote an excellent article about the Republican plan to control, destroy, and censor American education. It is the cover story in this week’s New York magazine.

Chait and I have long disagreed about charter schools and will continue to do so. The article does not get into privatization, and the Republicans’ determination to divert public money to religious and private schools via vouchers. Nor does it touch on the growth and scandals of the charter industry. It’s hard to ignore privatization as a main line of attacking the public purpose of public schools, but Chait covers culture war issues only.

Chait says that, in the view of conservatives, left wing indoctrination occurs in religious schools, private schools, and charter schools, so choice will not solve the problem (the problem being the left wing capture of the culture). The answer, then, for the rightwing is to capture control of the institutions and replace left wing indoctrination with rightwing indoctrination.

The article digs into the Republican effort to destroy academic freedom, freedom to teach, freedom to learn, and to turn American schools and universities into purveyors of rightwing ideology. Two central figures in this conspiracy are Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and rightwing ideologue Chris Rufo.

Florida is indeed the model for the Republican attack on education. It is here that the Governor boasts about his Stop WOKE Act, which blocks teaching about topics that might cause discomfort (especially teaching factually accurate accounts of racist brutality in American politics); his Don’t Say Gay Act (which eliminates any instruction about homosexuality in K-3, recently amended to grades K-8); his successful capture of tiny progressive New College and to turn it into the Hillsdale of the South; his intention to take control of the state’s public colleges and universities, eliminate tenure, and purge progressive professors; and his encouragement of censorship of books about race, racism, and gender issues. Add to these DeSantis’ demonizing of the minuscule number of transgender students, as well as his bullying of drag queens, and you have a major state that has embraced fascism and scapegoating of powerless minorities. Florida is also notable for the billions it spends on lightly regulated charters and unregulated, unaccountable vouchers.

Readers of this blog are familiar with DeSantis’ war on public schools and higher education, and his control of curriculum and leadership. I can’t think of another state where the Governor has moved so aggressively to control every aspect of public education. Others have recognized the limits of their power. DeSantis does not.

We also know that Florida recently enacted universal vouchers, offering to subsidize the tuition of rich students. And that the wife of the Republican Speaker of the House, then state education commissioner, Richard Corcoran, now president of New College, started a charter. And that many legislators are financially tied to charters.

This article is about the culture wars, however, not privatization.

Chait writes:

Republicans have begun saying things about American schools that not long ago would have struck them as peculiar, even insane. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has called schools “a cesspool of Marxist indoctrination.” Former secretary of State Mike Pompeo predicts that “teachers’ unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids,” will “take this republic down.” Against the backdrop of his party, Donald Trump, complaining about “pink-haired communists teaching our kids” and “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” running our universities, sounds practically calm.

More ominously, at every level of government, Republicans have begun to act on these beliefs. Over the past three years, legislators in 28 states have passed at least 71 bills controlling what teachers and students can say and do at school. A wave of library purges, subject-matter restrictions, and potential legal threats against educators has followed.

Education has become an obsession on the political right, which now sees it as the central battlefield upon which this country’s future will be settled. Schoolhouses are being conscripted into a cataclysmic war in which no compromise is possible — in which a child in a red state will be discouraged from asking questions about sexual identity, or a professor will be barred from exploring the ways in which white supremacy has shaped America today, or a trans athlete will be prohibited from playing sports…

While there have been political battles over the schools for many years, but this controversy is different. Republicans are going for the jugular. They believe that “the left” has taken over the nation’s educational institutions and is determined to indoctrinate the next generation to despise their own country. Nothing could be more ridiculous, but facts don’t get in the way of their culture war.

He writes:

The Republican Party emerged from the Trump era deeply embittered. A large share of the party believed that Democrats had stolen their way back into power. But this sentiment took another form that was not as absurd or, at least, not as clearly disprovable. The theory was that Republicans were subverted by a vast institutional conspiracy. Left-wing beliefs had taken hold among elite institutions: the media, the bureaucracy, corporations, and, especially, schools.

This theory maintains that this invisible progressive network makes successful Republican government impossible. Because the enemy permanently controls the cultural high ground, Republicans lose even when they win. Their only recourse is to seize back these nonelected institutions….

“Left-wing radicals have spent the past 50 years on a ‘long march through the institutions,’” claims Manhattan Institute fellow and conservative activist Chris Rufo, who is perhaps the school movement’s chief ideologist. “We are going to reverse that process, starting now.”

Many institutions figure in Republicans’ plans. They are developing proposals to cleanse the federal workforce of politically subversive elements, to pressure corporations to resist demands by their “woke employees,” and to freeze out the mainstream media. But their attention has centered on the schools. “It is the schools — where our children spend much of their waking hours — that have disproportionate influence over American society, seeding every other institution that has succumbed to left-wing ideological capture,” writes conservative commentator Benjamin Weingarten.

Republicans are afraid that the liberal bias of schools and colleges is turning their children into liberals, intent on advancing social justice. They feel a sense of urgency about gaining control of these agencies of indontrination.

DeSantis’ approach is straightforward: Taxpayers pay for schools. Why shouldn’t they control them? Why shouldn’t they tell them what to teach and what not to teach?

Chait errs in describing Florida’s efforts to restrict the accurate teaching of African American history. He writes:

It is possible for legislatures to restrict some of the pedagogical fads of recent years without preventing children from learning unvarnished historical truths about slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and its aftermath. Reports have described bans on lessons that make students feel guilty, when they have merely restricted lessons that instruct them to feel guilty, a reasonable thing to ask. Commentators on the internet likewise depicted Florida as banning the teaching of African American history, when in fact the state merely objected to elements of the AP African American History curriculum, ultimately resulting in a revised version.

This is understating the active role that the DeSantis team played in squashing the brutal facts about African American history in Florida and the U.S. The Stop WOKE Act banned teaching “critical race theory,” which most people can’t define but assume that it refers to systemic racism. The DeSantis team has banned textbooks in math and social studies that showed any interest in “social justice.”

DeSantis and his education commissioner didn’t “merely object” to parts of the AP African American History course, they threatened to exclude the AP course and test from the state’s schools altogether, a move that would likely be followed by other deep red states. This hits the College Board where it hurts, in their revenues. DeSantis has objected not only to CRT, but to “social-emotional learning,” which he sees as indoctrination but which typically means exercises in perseverance, self-control, and other workaday approaches to collaboration and respect for others. Like what I learned in elementary school many decades ago.

Are there teachers who go too far in imposing their own beliefs (from both the left and the right)? Surely. But Chait observes:

A broader problem with the wave of conservative legislation is that it is responding to a wildly hyperbolic version of reality. In a very large country with a fragmented education system, there are going to be plenty of examples of outrageous or radical teaching in the schools on a daily basis without necessarily indicating anything about the system’s overall character. As conservatives grew alarmed about left-wing teachers, their favorite media sources started curating examples of it to stoke their outrage.

DeSantis projects Florida as a model for the nation, and he looks to Hungary as a model for Florida. Its leader Viktor Orban has tamed the universities by controlling them. Chris Rufo recently spent a month in Hungary, learning how Orban has silenced the left.

Orbán’s example has shown the government’s power over the academy can be absolute. DeSantis is simply the first Republican to appreciate the potential of this once-unimaginable use of state power to win the culture wars. Even before DeSantis’s plan has passed, Republicans in North Carolina, Texas, and North Dakota rushed out bills to eliminate tenure for professors.

I urge you to read the article in full. Aside from his leaving out privatization as the keystone of the Republican attack on public schools, the article fails to mention the big money behind the culture wars and privatization. DeVos, Walton, Koch, Yass. They are an important part of the story. And there are many more (I have a long list of billionaires, foundations, and corporations funding privatization in my book Slaying Goliath.)

Chait’s incisive analysis is a good primer for the elections of 2024. Implicit are the many reasons why Democrats must be prepared to defend teachers and professors, to protect both schools and universities from the takeovers planned by Republican legislators, to gear up for the fight against censorship, to resist incipient fascism, and to hold the line for our democratic principles.

Categories Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Republicans, Vouchers

“Democracy” on the Rise of the Republican Confederacy

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2023 //
43

A reader of the blog uses the sobriquet “Democracy” to protect his or her anonymity. His/her comments are always thoughtful.

The attack on public schools — in Virginia and across the country — is not some spontaneous “parent rights” outburst. It’s orchestrated. It’s being funded and set into motion by right-wing “Christians” at the Council for National Policy, a far-right group that had outsized-influence with the Trump administration.

Richard DeVos, husband of Betsy, has been president of CNP twice. Ed Meese, who helped Reagan cover up the Iran-Contra scandal, has been president of CNP. So has Pat Robertson. And Tim LaHaye.

Current and former CNP members include Cleta Mitchell, the Trump lawyer who was on that call to the Georgia Secretary of State demanding that he find Trump more than 11,780 votes, and Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA who bragged about bussing tens of thousands of people to the January 6th ‘Stop the Steal’ rally and insurrection. Two of the top peeps at the Federalist Society, Eugene Meyer and Leonard Leo, are also CNP members. (Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were high priorities for the Federalist Society and for CNP). Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is a member. So is Stephen Moore, the wack-boy “economist” that Trump wanted to appoint to the Federal Reserve but ultimately didn’t because he owed his ex-wife $300,000 in back alimony and child support, and who was an “advisor” Glenn Youngkin in his campaign for Virginia governor even though he’s been dead wrong about virtually all of his economic predictions and who helped Sam Brownback ruin the economy of Kansas.

The Council for National Policy is interconnected to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network and Tea Party Patriots and a host of other right-wing groups. This is – in fact – the vast “right-wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton complained about. Glenn Youngkin made himself all very much a part of this.

Did this “new” Republican Southern Strategy work? Well, Youngkin won the Virginia governorship, and exit polls showed that Youngkin won 62 percent of white voters, and 76 percent of non-college graduate whites. And, Youngkin got way more of the non-college white women votes (75 percent) than his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe.

Here’s how the NY Times explained it:

“Republicans have moved to galvanize crucial groups of voters around what the party calls ‘parental rights’ issues in public schools, a hodgepodge of conservative causes ranging from eradicating mask mandates to demanding changes to the way children are taught about racism…Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate in Virginia, stoked the resentment and fear of white voters, alarmed by efforts to teach a more critical history of racism in America…he released an ad that was a throwback to the days of banning books, highlighting objections by a white mother and her high-school-age son to ‘Beloved,’ the canonical novel about slavery by the Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison…the conservative news media and Republican candidates stirred the stew of anxieties and racial resentments that animate the party’s base — thundering about equity initiatives, books with sexual content and transgender students on sports teams.”

Republicans and racism. Who knew?

Lots of people.

Yale historian David Blight put it this way:

“Changing demographics and 15 million new voters drawn into the electorate by Obama in 2008 have scared Republicans—now largely the white people’s party—into fearing for their existence. With voter ID laws, reduced polling places and days, voter roll purges, restrictions on mail-in voting, an evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a constant rant about ‘voter fraud’ without evidence, Republicans have soiled our electoral system with undemocratic skullduggery…The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.”

And this Republican “Confederacy” hates public education.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Koch Brothers, Lies, Racism, Religion, Republicans

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

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2023 //
11

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

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

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

Here’s how we know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illinois Will Withhold State Funds from Institutions that Ban Books

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2023 //
10

Good news! The legislature in Illinois has passed a law to withhold state funds from institutions that ban books. Governor J.B. Pritzker is expected to sign it.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) is expected to sign a bill that would withhold state funds from institutions that ban books amid nationwide efforts to pull some titles from shelves.

“Illinois is one step closer to preventing book banning in Illinois libraries,” said Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.

“Under this bill, we can support our state’s libraries and librarians and protect them against attempts to ban, remove or restrict access to books and resources,” he said.

The state’s H.B. 2789 would require libraries to adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights — which “indicates materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval,” according to the proposed text — or develop their own such statement against book banning in order to be eligible for state grants.

The bill has cleared the state legislature and now heads to the governor’s desk. Pritzker has previously said he supports the bill, according to the secretary of State’s office.

“Banning books is a devastating attempt to erase our history and the authentic stories of many. Students across this state deserve to see themselves reflected in the pages of stories that teach and entertain. I’m proud to support House Bill 2789 and ensure that Illinois’ libraries remain sources of knowledge, creativity, and fact,” Pritzker said in a March release….

“Our nation’s libraries have been under attack for too long—they are bastions of knowledge and proliferate the spread of ideas. That is why I am so proud that my measure to prevent the banning of books passed in the senate today,” said Illinois state Sen. Laura Murphy, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Illinois, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Literature

LeBron James Is the Greatest Citizen-Educator of Our Time

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2023 //
24

The basketball superstar LeBron James grew up in Akron. He wanted to help children in Akron, so he funded a school. It is not a charter school. It is a community school that operates as part of the Akron public schools. Unlike most charter schools, it doesn’t choose the top-performing kids; it chooses the kids who need help the most, those with the lowest scores. It provides a range of services for them and their families. It offers a food pantry for families, for instance.

Now the LeBron James Family Foundation is reaching out to offer services to the entire community. This family foundation has some valuable lessons for the Walton Family Foundation, which uses its billions to destroy public schools and communities; it could teach lessons to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has imposed a series of failed programs on schools, dreamed up by consultants who never asked students, parents, or school staff what they wanted or needed.

Now, in a story told by Tawney Beans of the Akron Beacon Journal, the Lebron James program is expanding to offer job training and other services for community members.

It was quite the opening day for House Three Thirty.

The space, formerly home to Tangier restaurant, has almost concluded its two-year transformation into a retail, dining and event community center spearheaded by the LeBron James Family Foundation.

After the complex opened at 6 a.m. Thursday, a steady trickle people made their way through the space. Some simply wanted a hot cup of joe from the first-of-its kind Starbucks Community Store, others couldn’t wait to peek inside and scope out where to have their next church event, and still more came to see just how much impact a self-proclaimed “kid from Akron” could really have.

Some of the first visitors included LeBron James’ mother, Gloria, as well as former St. Vincent-St. Mary basketball teammate and LeBron James Family Foundation employee Willie McGee.

While touring the space, Gloria spoke about her pride in her son for creating House Three Thirty.

“I’m really proud of this venture, especially because it opens the doors to so many opportunities for our community — job training, employment, [Chase] bank being here and helping our community with their banking needs,” she said. “Then a huge ball area where lifelong memories can be made like weddings and receptions and birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and all that goes with that.”

McGee shares that pride and hopes that the new facility, coupled with the nearby I Promise School, I Promise Village and soon to be HealthQuarters, will have a substantial impact on the Akron community.

“We’re offering them the ability to come into a safe space where they feel comfortable, that they can receive resources,” he said. “We’re trying to build something to where whatever you need, you’re able to get in this area, and by being centrally located we want all of Akron to be able to come and join in.”

DeLondia Feaster of Akron had her 45th birthday party in Tangier and was pleased to see that the foundation kept much of the historic building’s integrity. One detail she admired were the picture frames in the main hallway, which were once adorned with photos and posters of entertainers who performed at the previous Akron restaurant and cabaret.

“I feel like I’m in Vegas, somewhere where you can go in somewhere and everything is in one shop,” she said. “It should bring some pride. A kid from the projects bringing something like this to a city is huge, you know, it’s really huge for the city, and I just hope people take advantage of that.”

Another spectator, Karon Boston of Akron, enjoyed the history within House Three Thirty — specifically, the portions depicting James’ progression from his time at St. Vincent-St. Mary to the NBA.

Highland Square resident Barbara Kemper and friend Cheryl Renick took in the new space from its sitting area near Starbucks.

“It’s nice to have something in this area besides bars,” Kemper said.

Sundae Davinport, a barista at House Three Thirty’s Starbucks, said that the family atmosphere of the place has given her a reason to wake up in the morning and be happy to go to work.

Davinport is the mother to a previous I Promise Program student and has spent the last eight weeks training in the facility’s kitchens. She’s learned everything from how to properly cut chicken and fish to ways to cook steaks and vegetables.

“We learned a lot,” she said. “I never knew there was 100 or more ways to cook an egg.”

That happiness to go into work was also influenced by the support she has received from the foundation, even something small like getting her hair braided for free at House Three Thirty’s in-house barber and beauty shop.

Contact Beacon Journal reporter Tawney Beans at tbeans@gannett.com and on Twitter @TawneyBeans.

Categories Community Schools, Creativity, Education Reform, Funding, Ohio, Parents

Jan Resseger: The Unfair Attack on Randi Weingarten and Unions in the New York Times

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2023 //
37

Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, the same publication that bravely published The 1619 Project, had a cover story about Randi Weingarten. It raised (and implied) the question of whether she is “the most dangerous person in the world.” The cover illustration had several placards, the most prominent saying “Stop Randi Weingarten.” My immediate thought, before reading the story, was that Randi’s life might be in danger, because the illustration and the title made her a target. This is no joke.

Randi has been a friend of mine for many years, and we don’t always agree. I have never persuaded her, and she has never persuaded me. We have had some strong arguments, but she’s still my friend. I believe passionately in the importance of unions, especially in a society with such deep economic inequality as ours. I wrote a letter to the editor about my objections to the article. I hope it gets published.

One important inaccuracy in the article: the author says that “only” 40% of American 8th graders are “proficient” in math, and only 32% are “proficient” in reading. This is a common error among journalists, critics, and pundits who misunderstand the achievement levels of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). “Proficient” on NAEP is not grade level. “Proficient” on NAEP represents A level work, at worst an A-. Would you be upset to learn that “only” 40% of 8th graders are at A level in math and “only” 1/3 scored an A in reading?

Jan Resseger, in one of her most brilliant articles, wrote today:

Why Randi Weingarten Is Not a Symbol of What’s Dangerous in American Politics

I felt myself getting angry as I began skimming Jonathan Mahler’s New York Times Magazine article featuring Randi Weingarten. But as I read more carefully, I realized I had to give Mahler credit for recognizing Weingarten’s strong leadership on behalf of public schools and the school teachers she leads as president of the American Federation of Teachers—even in an article framing public school policy according to the standard Republican attack against the teachers unions:

“By now, Pompeo, Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican Party were busy elevating education to a central plank in its 2024 platform…. But Weingarten was building her own case. Public education was now itself a hyperpartisan issue, and she addressed it in hyperpartisan terms in a fiery speech at the National Press Club. Calling out by name some of the people who had demonized her since the pandemic, including Betsy DeVos, she described the ongoing effort to defund public schools as nothing less than a threat to ‘cornerstones of community, of our democracy, our economy and our nation.’ She pointed to studies that have shown that vouchers don’t improve student achievement, characterizing them as a back door into private and parochial schools that are not subject to the same federal civil rights laws as public institutions and can therefore promote discrimination. ‘Our public schools shouldn’t be pawns for politicians’ ambitions… They shouldn’t be destroyed by ideologues.'”

I have myself been delighted to see Randi Weingarten out there fighting for the educational rights of our children during the pandemic, pushing against the widespread blaming of teachers, and opposing the wave of culture war attacks on teachers and on honest and accurate curricula. She has been a far better defender of public schooling than Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

But there is a bias in Mahler’s piece that kept me extremely uncomfortable. While Mahler gives Weingarten some credit for defending her side of the debate, he presents his analysis primarily from the point of view of of Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump.

We learn about “pandemic learning loss” as measured in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, but we don’t learn that the drop in scores is likely temporary—a one time drop due to Covid disruption. We learn about teachers unions fighting for better protection during Covid—fighting for mask and vaccination mandates. It is implied that teachers unions were partly to blame for school closures, but we read nothing about the struggles of teachers to provide for students’ needs during remote learning, including some pretty difficult periods when many teachers were teaching kids remotely in the same classrooms where they were simultaneously working in-person with groups of kids whose families sent them to school.

Mahler implies that teachers unions are a monolith. He does not tell readers that teachers join their union locals, which operate independently from the national American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—the two large teachers unions.

The culture wars comprise a substantial part of Mahler’s profile. He explains that Tina Descovich in Brevard County, Florida and Tiffany Justice, of Indian River County spontaneously decided to join up and create their own parents’ rights group, Moms for Liberty, but he neglects some important background: Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and No Left Turn in Education are, in fact, Astroturf fronts for a national culture war campaign being mounted by groups like the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation, with funding from DonorsTrust dark money and Charles Koch. Additionally Mahler reports that the American Federation of Teachers supported Terry McAuliffe against Glenn Youngkin, who ran a culture war campaign against honest teaching about race in American history in the campaign for Governor of Virginia. It should not be a bit surprising that, as a labor union, the American Federation of Teachers can legally endorse and support candidates, and that the AFT endorsed the candidate who stood with the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors, and PEN America on the issue of the school curriculum.

Mahler devotes a significant part of his report to what he describes as the “AFT’s left-wing local, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).” He adds that “like-minded left-wing slates have since taken control of AFT locals in several other cities, too, including Los Angeles and Baltimore.” Many supporters of public education would embrace the cause of these big-city teachers without identifying themselves as left-wing. Here is how Mahler describes CTU’s agenda: “They see public schools’ ongoing struggles to educate their students as inseparable from the larger societal and economic issues facing their working-class members and the poor communities whose children dominate their classrooms.” Mahler quotes the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s recent past president, Jesse Sharkey: “We are trying to promote a brand of unionism that goes all out in its fight for educational justice and is brave about taking on conflicts.”

The problem with Mahler’s analysis is that today’s debates about public education policy are far more complex and nuanced than a fight between Randi Weingarten as a symbol of teacher unionism and Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin. Those of us who have followed the history of education policy battles through the past two decades of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are now watching the far right and dark money campaigns driving culture war chaos across the state legislatures as a path to the expansion of school vouchers. Without any direct connection to teacher unions, many of us share the enlightened assessment that has been articulated by the Chicago Teachers Union.

Mahler mistakes the significance of the recent election of Brandon Johnson, who is a former teacher and more recently an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, as Chicago’s new mayor. Mahler sees Johnson’s victory as a symbol of the power of teachers unions: “When Johnson narrowly won, it was a stunning upset…. the teachers’ unions had effectively elected the mayor of America’s third-largest city, who was himself an avowedly progressive union organizer promising to raise taxes on the rich, reform the police and increase funding for the city’s schools…. It was those who had underestimated the political power of the unions who were mistaken.” In reality the meaning of Chicago’s mayoral election was more likely a rejection of nearly a quarter of a century of mayoral governance of Chicago’s public schools, of test-and-punish school accountability, of the explosive growth of charter schools in Chicago, and of Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 closure of 49 elementary schools in Chicago’s Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

In our alarmingly unequal society, where too frequently our children reside far apart in pockets of concentrated poverty or in pockets of wealth, we will not be able to close children’s opportunity gaps merely by improving the public schools alone. In a new book, The Education Myth, Jon Shelton, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, identifies the No Child Left Behind Act as the embodiment of a deeply flawed plan to equalize school achievement: “At root, the very premise of the bill—that punishing schools for the scores of their students would improve the schools’ performance—was simply flawed, particularly when school districts did not have the ability to raise students out of poverty or alleviate the trauma of racism…. NCLB ignored the broader economic structures that might lead a student to succeed or fail in school as well as the relationship between where a student got an education and what job would actually be available to them.” (The Education Myth, p. 173)

I am grateful that, in the cities where their members teach, some teachers union locals are working actively to support efforts to ameliorate child poverty. That is not a left-wing cause; it is instead a goal for us all to embrace. As we publicly debate the needs of our children and our public schools, it is wrong to define the conversation as a mere battle between right-wing Republicans and the teachers unions

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Propaganda, Race to the Top, Republicans, Teachers, Unions, Vouchers

Dana Milbank: What the GOP Vote on the Federal Debt Really Means

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2023 //
12

The federal government has to raise the ceiling on the debt or face a default on its bonds, which would set off a national and international crisis. Congress has raised the debt ceiling many times in the past, including three times during Trump’s term.

An extraordinary part of the national debt was generated during Trump’s four years in office, according to ProPublica, especially his 2017 tax cut for the 1% and corporations:

One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt….The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war.

Republicans do not want to raise the debt ceiling. President Biden challenged them to come up with their own plan. They did. It involves cuts of 22% to everything but Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending.

Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post:

Jen Kiggans had the haunted look of a woman about to walk the plank.

The first-term Republican from Virginia barely took her eyes off her text Wednesday as she read it aloud on the House floor. She tripped over words and used her fingers to keep her place on the page.
The anxiety was understandable. Like about 30 other House Republicans from vulnerable districts, she was about to vote in favor of the GOP’s plan to force spending cuts of about $4.8 trillion as the ransom to be paid for avoiding a default on the federal debt.

“I do have serious concerns with the provision of this legislation that repeals clean-energy investment tax credits, particularly for wind energy,” she read. “These credits have been very beneficial to my constituents, attracting significant investment and new manufacturing jobs for businesses in southeast Virginia.”

Directing a question to the Republicans’ chief deputy whip, Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.), she asked for “the gentleman’s assurance that I will be able to address these concerns as we move forward in these negotiations and advocate for the interests of my district.”

The gentleman offered no such assurance. “I support repealing these tax credits,” he replied, offering only the noncommittal promise to “continue to work with the gentlewoman from Virginia, just like we will with all members.”

Kiggans then cast her vote to abolish the clean-energy credits her constituents find so “beneficial.”
House GOP leaders are celebrating their ability to pass their debt plan, even though it has no chance of surviving the Senate nor President Biden’s veto pen. But the bill’s passage has achieved one thing that cannot be undone: It has put 217 House Republicans on record in favor of demolishing popular government services enjoyed by their constituents.

In Kiggans’s Virginia, the legislation she just backed would strip tax incentives that go to the likes of Dominion Energy, which is building a $9.8 billion offshore wind project in her district. She also voted to ax solar and electric-vehicle incentives for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, and tax breaks projected to bring $11.6 billion in clean-power investment to the commonwealth.

In addition, the bill she supported sets spending targets that require an immediate 22 percent cut to all “non-defense discretionary spending” — that’s border security, the FBI, airport security, air traffic control, highways, agriculture programs, veterans’ health programs, food stamps, Medicaid, medical research, national parks and much more. If they want to cut less than 22 percent in some of those areas, they’ll have to cut more than 22 percent in others.

According to an administration analysis of what the 22 percent cuts translate to, Kiggans is now on record supporting:


Shutting down at least two air traffic control towers in Virginia.


Jeopardizing outpatient medical care for 162,300 Virginia veterans.


Throwing up to 175,000 Virginians off food stamps and ending food assistance for another 25,000 through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program Women, Infants and Children.


Cutting or ending Pell Grants for 162,900 Virginia college students.


Eliminating Head Start for 3,600 Virginia children and child care for another 1,300 children.


Adding at least two months to wait times for Virginia seniors seeking assistance with Social Security and Medicare.


Denying opioid treatment for more than 600 Virginians.


Ending 180 days of rail inspections per year and 1,350 fewer miles of track inspected.


Kicking 13,400 Virginia families off rental assistance.


Similar calculations can be made for the other 30 House Republicans targeted by Democrats in the 2024 elections who joined Kiggans in walking the plank. Since enactment of the clean-energy credits Republicans have now voted to repeal, for example, clean-energy projects worth some $198 billion and 77,261 jobs have moved forward in districts represented by Republicans, according to the advocacy group Climate Power…

Trump’s huge deficits funded tax cuts for the rich. Biden’s deficits are investments in the future and lifelines for struggling people.

The Republicans’ draconian plan with its deep cuts passed by one vote.

But this week, they jammed their giant, secretly negotiated debt-limit bill through the Rules Committee on a party-line vote — at 2:19 a.m. And they did it with a “deem-and-pass” rule.


Even then, after all the reversals and surrenders, the bill came within one vote of failing. The lawmaker who cast the final, deciding vote? Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).


How apt that this legislation, built on one broken promise after another, should be carried over the finish line by the world’s most famous liar.

Categories Biden, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Environment, Fake, Funding

The Mississippi Free Press: A Powerful Voice for News, History and Truth!

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2023 //
3

Donna Ladd, a native Mississippian, founded the Mississippi Free Press three years ago to shine a bright light on the state’s politics, history, and culture. The MFP has grown into a journalistic force. I am excited to join its advisory board, because the force of sunlight can be so powerful. I want to share Donna Ladd’s last newsletter, introducing a new reporter—Torsheta Jackson—and describing some of their exciting plans for the future. This team wants to free Mississippi from the dead hand of the past. Read Donna’s letter and I think you will understand why I am so enthusiastic about the Mississippi Free Press.

Read our latest stories from mfp.ms. And please support our work: mfp.ms/donate. Thank you! Meet Torsheta Jackson!

Donna writes:

One of my favorite reporting trips ever was touring around Noxubee County with then-freelance writer Torsheta Jackson in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because she grew up in the East Mississippi county, over on the Alabama border, Torsheta was the tour guide, driving us around in her big truck I had to lift myself into. First, she pointed out where she grew up in Shuqualak (locally pronounced “Sugar-lock”), the child of educators. Along the way, she pointed out slabs where industry, grocery stores and schools used to stand before her hometown became a shell of its former self over the decades after forced integration in 1970.

We walked around the ruins that now dominate the little downtown and talked about poverty, neglect, white-flight cycles and disinvestment in the county settled by rich white planters—including Mississippi State University founder Stephen D. Lee’s family—and built by enslaved people. The county has always been majority-Black, but usually under white control, from newspapers, to industry, to local education decisions and resources. It was also the site of vicious white terrorism to keep it that way.

Click now to support MFP’s Mapping Mississippi systemic-reporting strategy covering the 82 counties of Mississippi.

In the county seat of Macon, Torsheta showed me the county’s only remaining grocery store—white-owned and too expensive in a region where hunger is far too rampant, she said. She then took me to see the library, which still has its gallows, where they used to hang people in front of crowds on the front lawn, now marketed as a tourist attraction. We looked straight out the front window of the library at the tall Confederate statue standing in front of the courthouse across the street in a town that is 82% Black. The Board of Supervisors voted in July 2020 to remove it; last I checked, it was still there as post-George Floyd anti-racism enthusiasm wanes.

Torsheta showed me the abandoned Central Academy, which the superintendent of the county public schools helped open in the 1960s, supported by state vouchers, becoming the seg academy’s headmaster. She drove me to all the now-boarded-up, or disappeared or repurposed, public schools that used to be in Noxubee (locally pronounced “Nock-shu-bee”) County before most white families fled either to C.A. or to the local Mennonite school, which also opened in 1970.

Torsheta and I spent hours in the “new” Noxubee County public school just north of Macon, talking to the principal and the school psychologist—both women she knew growing up there. We learned about the perpetual state of crisis that faces the district and its one remaining public-school system covering the entire county; district leadership was changing again that day, in fact. And, of course, we learned about the systemic challenges that face Black women and their families, in particular, in Noxubee County, from no broadband, to hunger, to mental health and more. Their honesty with us informed Torsheta’s award-winning installment of our “(In)equity and Resilience: Black Women, Systemic Barriers and COVID-19” cause-solutions journalism project. It is now the prototype of our statewide county-level Mapping Mississippi systemic-reporting strategy that we’re amping up by summer with Torsheta’s help and inspiration.

Not to mention, a new area of research opened up for me when I heard the school psychologist’s story about a mob of local white men killing a Black woman school principal to stop the education and advancement of Black children: white terrorism specifically deployed to keep Black children uneducated and, thus, inequity and white control in place for generations to come. They said what they were doing for white-supremacy perpetuity right in the local newspaper. It wasn’t a secret. They bragged about ugly mob race violence by county leaders.Make a recurring donation now monthly, quarterly or annually to support the systemic journalism of Torsheta Jackson and our other reporters. Become an MFP VIP Club member.

It was an eye-opening and powerful journey for us both. Torsheta would later say on MFP Live that, before that reporting experience, she had not understood fully how intentional barriers and discrimination caused the decline of her home county over the decades. After this journey into the past, she did.

It was also on that tour of Noxubee County that I decided that I wanted Torsheta as a full-time reporter to take her systemic journalism across the state and help me build our Education Equity Solutions Lab. This is a very different kind of education reporting than the partisan griping about schools and funding that we usually see in Mississippi. For me, what I called Project Torsheta started on that trip. With her years of teaching experience (19 as of now), her brilliance, her curiosity, her wit and her stunning work ethic, I knew Torsheta was the kind of reporter Mississippi needs and deserves covering education. She can show us like no one else how education’s use as a political tool hurts families, children and whole communities.

Fast forward a couple of years, and it’s happening. Report for America announced Wednesday that it is supporting Torsheta as our lead education-equity reporter to do this work, paying a chunk of her salary for the next two to three years. After two years of working together to figure out timing and resources, Torsheta and I—and our whole team—are ecstatic that our vision is happening. I cannot wait to develop this work with Torsheta, and it doesn’t hurt that we recently hired fantastic Business Manager Jared Norton to free me up for more journalism. Torsheta and I (and others) will soon be traveling the state together again, doing the systemic journalism we know can help improve this state for all of our people.

I’ll talk more soon about our second new reporter we announced this week. Heather Harrison of Copiah County is the vivacious and dogged outgoing editor of The Reflector at Mississippi State. I knew in our first conversation (and then confirmed in a team solution circle) that she is bringing the energy, passion and curiosity that it takes to succeed and thrive at the Mississippi Free Press. She’ll be our first regional full-time bureau reporter, remaining in Starkville to largely cover that region of the state and help us collaborate with the Starkville Daily News.

Needless to say, you readers are making all of this growth happen. We started with $50,000 and one full-time reporter just three years ago. You have helped create 17 good-paying jobs and pay for myriad freelancers, contractors and interns—most of them brilliant and engaged Mississippi natives staying in their home state to do the work. Our resources are mostly from readers. You get it, and you are intentionally helping us grow our team and our reach to more counties.

Please help keep us growing by giving what you can now at mfp.ms/donate. Remember, your recurring donations are paying for at least one reporter already, so every amount matters.

Donna Ladd, Editor and CEO

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Courage, Creativity, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Media, Mississippi

Will Bunch: Helen Gym Should Be the Next Mayor of Philadelphia! I Agree!

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2023 //
8

Helen Gym is a brilliant, eloquent progressive candidate for Mayor of Philadelphia. She is an activist and a member of the City Council. I enthusiastically endorse her candidacy. I have known her for a dozen years and am repeatedly impressed by her values, her energy, and her passion for justice. Philadelphia schools have suffered grievously due to budget cuts imposed by the state. A decade ago, two young children died because their schools had no nurse. Helen thinks that every school should have a nurse and counselors. In the suburbs, such services are taken for granted. But not in Philadelphia, where public schools and their students have been shortchanged for years.

Will Bunch is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has followed the mayoral race closely. He sums up the reasons why she is the right person at the right time. Her election would bring hope to Philadelphia. This election could be a turning point for this great but neglected city.

He writes:

Philly needs a bullhorn mayor to slice through decades of status quo baloney

In a crowded Philly mayoral race, Helen Gym is fighting for the city’s poor and neglected. No wonder status quo elites are so desperate to stop her.

Philadelphia City Councilmembers Helen Gym, Jamie Gauthier, and Kendra Brooks walk with protesters following the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Steven M. Falk / MCT

It was one of those raw late April afternoons in Philadelphia where the weather in the far corner of Love Park — unrelentingly grey, windy, occasional drizzle — seemed to match the grim civic mood looming over the City Hall tower in the background. At the supposed 12:45 p.m. start time for this Helen-Gym-for-mayor campaign rally, just a few folks milled around and chatted with the candidate in her bright red coat, carrying a reusable Target shopping bag, and you briefly wonder if you got the time or place wrong.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a blue-clad army of about 50 supporters — young and old, Black, brown and white, including members of the teachers’ union that has endorsed Gym, carrying signs that read “The Wealth To Fix Our City Exists!” — crossed JFK Boulevard all at once, and it was showtime. Over the next half-hour, speakers from the various Jenga blocks of Philly’s shaky civil society reimagined the city as it could be. A librarian from South Philly spoke about the dream of reopening on the weekends as a community refuge. An instructor and union leader from the Community College of Philadelphia imagined the benefits of free tuition.

“When I say, “Moral!,” chanted emcee Elisa King, a minister and counselor at CCP, “you say, “Budget!’” — driving home the rally’s theme that City Hall needs to focus on restoring vital services, not more incremental tax cuts.

When the 55-year-old former city council member finally got the microphone, the spring sun had seared through the layer of clouds. Gym declared her idea of a moral budget “is not defined by the corporate-backed interests, the developers and the status-quo electeds, bureaucrats and wealthy individuals who have long tried to buy this campaign with their tired ideas and their technocratic solutions.” The crowd whooped. “Those candidates have played it safe all their lives.”

The only remaining progressive in a May 16 primary field whittled down to five or six major candidates defined her rivals’ ideas as “just too small for this moment. They’re talking about safety that’s only defined by policing. They’re talking about development only in terms defined by the tax cuts and those people who get to benefit. They manage crisis — we’re here to end them!” Almost on cue, a passing dump truck on the boulevard tooted its horn loudly in support.

It’s fitting that the race to pick the 100th mayor of America’s founding city is also arguably its most consequential in decades, perhaps since the divisive Frank Rizzo era. That’s because the coronavirus also attacked the civic immune system that had allowed the city’s leaders to ignore the warning symptoms of the nation’s highest rate of deep poverty and unacceptable schools housed in unsafe buildings while touting the surface glitz of Philadelphia’s comeback … for tourists, and handful of gentrifying neighborhoods. Now, a spike in gun violence and related dysfunction has put the nation’s sixth-biggest city at a crossroads.

I might be The Inquirer’s national columnist but I’ve watched this local election closely — not just because I work and pay taxes and ride the troubled subways here (or because my two adult offspring live here) but also because what Philadelphia voters decide in little more than two weeks will say a lot about how America is going to solve its urban problems, especially persistent poverty. In this (sort of) post-pandemic era, comparable cities such as Boston, Chicago, and L.A. have rejected old-school police-union fearmongering for young, progressive mayors who see how issues like attacking climate change or youth unemployment can bring real change.

It’s not at all clear yet whether Philadelphia has the courage or boldness to follow its sister cities down that fresh pathway. I’ve watched both televised debates and have been somewhat taken aback with how most of the major candidates have crafted a message around not new ideas but “leadership.” What they are really offering, in essence, is a pledge to restore some presence and personality to City Hall that’s been missing during the shockingly absent Jim Kenney administration, but with little evidence they’d change the status quo policies of minor tax cuts or FOP-endorsed policing that coincided with decline.

In the debates and on the campaign trail, Gym has set herself apart as the only candidate who fully grasps the root problems in the most desperate neighborhoods — and who wants to go big to actually address them. How many times can we hire more cops or return to “stop-and-frisk” policing with the same tired results? That’s why Gym is the leader in pushing for trained responders to replace cops on mental-health calls — hugely successful where it’s been tried — and is the only candidate who agrees with the majority of Philadelphians who twice elected Larry Krasner as DA, that some criminal-justice reforms were long overdue.

Elite critics of some of Gym’s bigger and bolder ideas — going all-out in fixing unsafe school buildings, or guaranteed employment for adults under 30 — call them unrealistic pie in the sky. Most everyday voters know what matters most about a political leaders is less about the budgetary small print and more about who and what they are willing to fight for. And in her seven years as an at-large city council member, Gym has fought for what cynics had written off as lost causes, and won a strikingly high percentage of the time.

A ”fair workweek” ordinance that mandates essential workers have predictable schedules. Long-overdue eviction protections for the city’s beleaguered tenants. A return to local control of the Philadelphia School District while fighting to restore school nurses and counselors. A push to get lead out of school drinking water. No wonder that after her first term on council, The Inquirer Editorial Board hailed her as “a savvy, passionate and progressive leader.”

Things are a lot different now that Gym is running for mayor. While she’s been endorsed by the influential Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and a panoply of other unions and progressive groups, many of the city’s elites — even some who’ve been somewhat supportive of her council work — seem dead-set on preventing her from running Philly. Some of that is with a budgetary magnifying glass, but much of it centers on attacking her personality and blocking her ideas. Yes, she changed her mind on charter schools after founding one — but who wouldn’t after watching them become a negative drain on public education? Of course it was a mistake to protest the Union League and go there just days later, but is that a big-enough reason to punish Gym — and the city — by voting for someone who doesn’t share your values?

“I think it’s about making things about individuals and reducing it to isolated incidences rather than looking at a track record that holds steady over time,” Gym told me Wednesday after her rally. “The way to marginalize real movements for change is to hyper-individualize faults within imperfect people. I mean, I’m not perfect — I make mistakes and all of that — but I think the difference with me is I have a 20-year-plus track record of standing alongside communities.”

One truism about politics is that a lot of times you can gauge a candidate by the enemies they make. The Chamber of Commerce crowd and their handmaidens aren’t fighting Gym because of her mistakes but because of the things that she gets right. There’s a reason that many of Philadelphia’s most essential yet underheard folks — the teachers and librarians and social workers — don’t just think that Gym is the best among a large field of candidates, but truly believe that her election in 2023 is a matter of civic life-or-death.

“She is rising to the moment, which is a moment of crisis for our city,” Stan Shapiro, vice-chair of Philly Neighborhood Networksand a former City Council staffer, told me before the rally. “It’s not a time for the status quo, for business as usual, for just keeping the lights on. There aren’t enough lights. There aren’t enough rec centers. There aren’t enough health centers.”

One of the other straw-man arguments from Gym’s critics centers on how she’s carried a bullhorn to protest in the streets on behalf of Philly’s kids, or its underserved people, or the moment when — the horror! — she was willing to get detained in Harrisburg to dramatize how state Republicans won’t invest in education. We’ve had decades of “conveners” and glad-handers on the second floor of City Hall with too little to show for it. It’s time to try a bullhorn mayor, a real fighter. In a race with many candidates, there is only one that truly matters.

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Hope, Justice, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

New Hampshire: Legislators Debate School Funding, But Vouchers Set to Grow

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2023 //
1

Gary Rayno of InDepth NH is a reliable guide to education politics in New Hampshire. In this post, he describes the decisions that legislators must grapple with starting this week. New Hampshire public schools and public colleges have never been adequately funded, and the state has the misfortune of having a state commissioner who doesn’t care. He homeschooled his own children, and he doesn’t understand why the state pays for public schools.

He begins:

In New Hampshire, public education is a moving target.

It is a hodgepodge of activities and systems from pre-Kindergarten to its colleges and universities.

But the one unifying force along the spectrum is the state’s minuscule financial commitment.

The state’s contributions to public education puts it in line with states like Mississippi and Louisiana although its per capita wealth averages among the highest in the country.

One district has challenged the state in court, claiming that the state does not provide enough funding for an adequate education. State Commissioner Frank Edelblut doesn’t want any new money for public schools, but he’s quite willing to spend more on vouchers (so-called “education freedom accounts”.) The state contends that only the legislature—not the court—can determine funding for the schools.

To date the program is far more expensive than Edelblut advised lawmakers it would be, about $3.3 million this biennium, when the costs to date are well north of $20 million, much of that money paying tuition subsidies to parents whose children were in private and religious schools and homeschooling programs before the EFA program began.

The program was sold as allowing low-to-moderate income parents to find the best educational environment for their child if he or she did not adapt well to the public school setting.

Tuesday the Senate Education Committee will hear three bills that would allow more students to be eligible for the program, which Edelblut told lawmakers would cost $30 million in each year of the biennium.

House Bill 367 would increase the income threshold for a child to be eligible for the program by about $9,000 for a family of four by increasing the cut from 300 percent of the federal poverty level to 350 percent.

House Bill 464 would allow children to automatically qualify if they are in foster care, military families, homeless, and transients. The cost of the change has not been determined although the bill passed the House.

And House Bill 446 would require the organization administering the program to inform parents they will lose their federal special education rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act if they participate in the program.

This is part of the voucher hoax. Children with special needs lose federal right to services if they switch to a voucher school, but most of these parents don’t know it.

The Senate Finance Committee will also have to decide if the House gave the University System of New Hampshire and the Community College System of New Hampshire, too much money, too little money or enough money.

The university system had hoped to finally return to the level of funding it had more than a decade ago, before the 2011-12 legislature cut it in half.

The House approved almost the $200 million the system received before the slashing, and added a little more so tuition could remain frozen and the Whittemore Center could be upgraded.

The community college system successfully fought off a plan by the governor to merge with the university system a biennium ago but continues to face the challenge of providing education in more technical fields while enrollment decreases particularly in the more traditional areas of instruction.

But the system has continued to freeze tuition like the university system in a state where the students have the highest college debt in the country.

New Hampshire’s education system is jumbled and in flux. One thing that could make things a little easier is additional money, but the only program with open-ended funding is the EFA and that could cost the state nearly $70 million a year if all the students in private and religious schools and homeschools decide to participate.

That is almost as much money a year the university system receives and more than the community college system receives.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, New Hampshire
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