Archives for category: Missouri
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Jess Piper: Rural Missouri Kids Don’t Need Vouchers

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2023 //
3

The following post by Jess Piper was reposted by the Network for Public Education. Jess Piper is a fearless rural mom in Missouri who supports public schools.

New post on Network for Public Education.

Jess Piper: Poisoned Water in Missouri Public Schools? Let The Kids Eat Cake.

Jess Piper is a powerful defender of public education on TikTok and other social platforms. In this post, she talks about a recent run-in with Jean Evans, head of Betsy DeVos’s advocacy group in Missouri.

As a former public school teacher, with 16 years in the classroom, and an outspoken advocate for rural public schools, I have had more than my fair share of dealings with Jean. A few stand out in particular: one in which she said that “educational freedom” in rural Missouri is not a brick and mortar building staffed with certified teachers, but one in which rural kids could attend online schools and hire private tutors. That sure would free up some time for these kiddos to go to work, am I right?

Yes, she knows there is no school choice in rural Missouri, but our kids don’t deserve it anyway. I mean, we are just hayseeds out here and what do we expect?

That response is very indicative of the thought pattern for the grifters who want to privatize public schools…whose intentions are to siphon taxpayer money to private hands. But, what I loathe, yet enjoy, so much about Jean Evans is her ability — no, her insistence— on saying the quiet part out loud.

Yes, she works for a billionaire to defund Missouri schools. Yes, she is willing to say that defunding rural schools will displace children and close their schools.

But, what else is she willing to say publicly?

She was willing to tell me that the rural kids at my local public school would be deserving of clean drinking water if only Missouri would pass a voucher program. One may wonder if Jean herself snacked on too many lead paint chips as a child?

It all started with a letter from my local school reporting on the findings of lead in the water at the school. Most water sources were within EPA levels of lead in the water—not particularly great news, but I suspect most old schoolhouses reported much of the same. One faucet, in the nurse’s office, reported an elevated level more than four times the recommended limit. The school is addressing the water faucet and is attempting remediation. No children will drink this water.

I tweeted the findings and reminded my Twitter audience that over 80% of Missouri children test positive for lead in their blood. Jean responded by tweeting this:

Yes, if only we would expand Missouri’s current ESA scheme to defund schools and agree to a full-on voucher scheme, maybe the kids in my town wouldn’t be drinking poisoned water? If only rural folks would acquiesce to closing our schools and going along with the plan to keep our rural kids at home for online learning, and the occasional visit from a tutor, our kids wouldn’t be drinking lead.

Read the full post here.You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/jess-piper-poisoned-water-in-missouri-public-schools-let-the-kids-eat-cake/

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Extremism, Missouri, Rural Schools, School Choice, Vouchers

Feds Give St. Louis $35 Million to Expand Charter Schools Despite Past Failures

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2023 //
40

The U.S. Department of Education awarded $35 million to St. Louis from the federal Charter Schools Program despite the city’s checkered history with charters. The public schools sure could have used that money to reduce class sizes and improve their offerings. Republicans and DFER-funded Democrats protect the federal charter money from cuts, even though charter expansion harms public schools. (DFER=Democrats for Education Reform, a group of hedge fund managers who support charters, high-stakes testing and other corporate “reforms,” but never support public schools).

ST. LOUIS — The Opportunity Trust education reform group has been awarded a $35.6 million federal grant to expand and open new charter schools across Missouri over the next five years.

The money will be used for 16 charter schools to serve 5,000 additional students, according to the group’s application to the U.S. Department of Education. The federal agency granted a total of $147 million to education departments and reform groups in 10 states for more charter school seats…

The Opportunity Trust launched in 2018 and has helped fund the Leadership School and several other new charters, including Atlas, Kairos Academies and Voices Academy, which opened this fall in downtown St. Louis.

Charters have had a mixed record since they first opened in the city in 2000 with a promise to improve student performance through innovation and independence. More than half of the 37 charter school operators that came to the city have folded due to financial or academic failures, including La Salle and Hawthorn schools this year.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, DFER, Education Industry, Failure, Missouri, St. Louis

Missouri Allows 19 Districts to Opt Out of State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
22

The Missouri State Board of Education has granted permission to 19 school districts and one charter school to use alternative assessments and opt out of the annual state tests. The districts recognize that the results of the annual tests arrive too late and provide too little individual student information to be useful. This suggests “test fatigue.”

The Missouri State Board of Education unanimously approved an exemption for 19 districts and one charter school to measure student achievement using alternative assessments instead of the state’s prescribed methods.

Students in these districts will begin to see changes this fall as districts in the Success Ready Students Network implement their plan.

“Progress monitoring during the school year is already taking place within these school districts, though it may not be monitored by the state at this time,” Jeremy Tucker, superintendent of the Liberty 53 School District and Success Ready Students Network facilitator, told the board Tuesday. “We can really add more touch points from the start of the year all the way to the end of the year.”

The state board’s approval, called an innovation waiver, will allow the districts to break from components of the state’s evaluation system for three years.

“(Missouri Assessment Program results) don’t inform what we do on a regular basis,” Branson Public Schools Superintendent Brad Swofford told the board, mentioning the delay in receiving the test’s results.

Teachers prefer to look at assessments that show students progress over the school year, allowing them to adapt to the data and instill confidence in learning students, he said. Branson currently gives students NWEA assessments, tests that adapt questions to students’ achievement level and outputs a number to describe their level of knowledge.

Lee’s Summit R-VII School District, another of the districts in the network, will use this assessment to track students’ progress over the school year, Associate Superintendent of Academic Services Christy Barger told The Independent.

State Board of Education member Mary Schrag said she has heard that in states that already have similar programs, students feel “much more vested” in their educational progress.

Students in participating districts will likely complete the MAP test to comply with federal requirements, unless districts receive a federal waiver, but their schools will not be scored at the state level based on those results.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Missouri, Standardized Testing

Missouri: State Senate Restores Funding for Public Libraries!

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2023 //
16

Good news! After Republican legislators in the state House defunded the state’s libraries for daring to sue the state to overturn a censorship law, the State Senate restored the libraries’ funding of $4.5 million. Yes, there are some sane Republicans in Missouri.

JEFFERSON CITY — The chief Senate budget writer said he plans to restore state funding for Missouri’s public libraries that was stripped out of the House version of the state’s spending plan.

Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that the panel will place $4.5 million back in the budget, which covers spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

“There is no way that money is not going back into the budget,” Hough told the Post-Dispatch.

The restoration could mark the second reversal of a House budget prioritythat has stirred controversy under the Capitol dome. Hough and Senate President Caleb Rowden earlier said they oppose Republican language in the House blueprint that would prohibit the state from spending tax dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives….

The library money was removed from the House blueprint by House Budget Chairman Cody Smith and backed by the Republicans who control the chamber last week. He cited a lawsuit by two library groups to overturn a new state law banning sexually explicit material in school libraries.

The ACLU, the Missouri Association of School Librarians, and the Missouri Library Association in February asked a judge in Kansas City to find the law unconstitutional or clarify how and when it applies.

Smith, R-Carthage, believes the state shouldn’t subsidize the lawsuit by giving public libraries money.

Hough’s hometown library district, which covers Springfield and Greene County, would receive an estimated $368,000 if the money is restored.

Hough said libraries serve multiple purposes in communities, allowing people to not only get books, but internet service, job assistance and programs for adults and children.

“Libraries are an important resource for so many people,” Hough said.

Categories Censorship, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Missouri

Missouri: GOP Votes to Defund Public Libraries

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2023 //
28

Republicans in Missouri, ascendant in the Legislature, voted to defund public libraries in the state because librarians objected to censorship and filed a lawsuit. There are 399 public libraries in the state. The bill has not yet been approved by the State Senate yet, so there’s a chance that the cuts might be reversed. PEN reported that nearly 300 books have already been withdrawn from circulation in response to censors.

Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.

That will teach them a lesson! Reading is dangerous! Stay home and watch unfiltered porn on your computer, and you don’t need to learn any new words. Why read a book when you can get the real deal at home and be completely illiterate?

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Extremism, Funding, Librarians, Libraries, Missouri, Stupid

Missouri: GOP Rejects Ban on Children Openly Carrying Weapons Without Adult Supervision

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2023 //
43

This is one of the most bizarre stories I have ever read. The Republican-dominated Missouri legislature voted down a ban on children openly carrying weapons on public grounds without adult supervision. To this insane political party, no one is too young to carry a weapon.

The Washington Post reported:

The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have banned children from being able to openly carry firearms on public land without adult supervision.

The proposal, which was part of a long debate in the chamber on how to fight crime in St. Louis, was defeated by a vote of 104-39, with just one Republican voting in support of the ban. After the amendment on the open-carry restrictions for minors was initially supported by the Republican legislator sponsoring a broader crime bill, GOP lawmakers on a committee that he leads removed the firearms provision last week.

“Every time we talked about the provision related to guns, we knew that was going to be difficult on our side of the aisle,” state Rep. Lane Roberts (R) said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
State Rep. Donna Baringer (D), who represents St. Louis and sponsored the amendment to H.B. 301, said she brought the proposal to the chamber after police in her district requested tighter regulations to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”

“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”

While critics and Democrats denounced Republican lawmakers for defeating the proposal, some GOP lawmakers, such as state Rep. Tony Lovasco, defended the decision.

“Government should prohibit acts that directly cause measurable harm to others, not activities we simply suspect might escalate,” Lovasco, who represents the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon, told The Washington Post in a statement. “Few would support banning unaccompanied kids in public places, yet one could argue such a bad policy might be effective. While it’s reasonable to be wary of minors’ carrying guns, any solution to juvenile crime needs to be crafted properly and respectful of individual rights…”

Since 2017, Missouri residents have not been required to have a permit for concealed carry, after lawmakers in the Missouri House voted to override a veto by then-Gov. Jay Nixon (D) of a broad gun-rights bill. The law does not require gun owners to take safety training or have a criminal-background check to carry concealed firearms in most public places. The move was celebrated by Republicans, but law enforcement officials warned that the law was “going to make officers a lot more apprehensive,” St. Louis Public Radio reported at the time….

The Republicans must figure that a child is a citizen, and every citizen has the right to bear arms. Even if that citizen is only six years old.

One Republican, Rep. Lane Roberts supported the bill.

“This is about people who don’t have the life experience to make a decision about the consequences of having that gun in their possession,” Roberts said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why is an 8-year-old carrying a sidearm in the street?”

But Roberts’s sentiment was not supported by his GOP colleagues on the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee, who removed the provision.

“I just have a different approach for addressing public safety that doesn’t deprive people, who have done nothing to any other person, who will commit no violence, from their freedom,” Republican state Rep. Bill Hardwick, who represents Pulaski County and Fort Leonard Wood, told the Post-Dispatch.
Critics noted how quickly the momentum shifted on the proposal.“I am old enough to remember when Missouri Republicans were pretending to care about gun violence in St. Louis. Like, 2 days ago,” Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger tweeted on Friday. “That was short-lived.”

On Wednesday, Baringer offered an amendment to try to add the provision back into the broader crime bill that was being voted on by the chamber, but it was overwhelmingly voted down.

The vote was met with blowback from Democrats and gun control advocates. Among those was Shannon Watts, founder of the gun violence prevention nonprofit Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “Republicans can’t claim to be tough on crime when they’re soft on guns,” she wrote on Twitter.

State Rep. Peter Merideth (D) argued that the state cares more about drag shows than children openly carrying guns. One bill currently proposed in Missouri notes that it wants to change “the definition of a sexually oriented business to include any nightclub or bar that provides drag performances.” Another proposed bill would categorize drag performances on public property or viewed by minors as Class A misdemeanors.

You do have to wonder what legislation the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee passes. What do they do?

Categories Guns, Insane, Missouri, Republicans

Alexandra Petri: Missouri Legislature Bans Bare Shoulders!

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2023 //
61

Alexandra Petri is a humorist who writes for the Washington Post. Here she puts tongue in cheek to praise the Missouri Legislature’s bold stance on its female dress code.

She writes:

On Wednesday, the Republican-dominated Missouri House of Representatives decided to spend its one wild and precious legislative life focusing, laser-like, on the issues that matter most to the people of the state: the dress code for female legislators. All I can say is: Thank goodness!

The good people of the state of Missouri had been cowering for months in a state of panic, knowing that unless prompt, legislative action was taken on the very first day of the new session, some Missourian lawgiver might, without any warning, see a woman’s shoulder. I almost do not want to type it! I am sorry that you had to read the word, which may have forced you to picture one in your mind and derailed your legislative business for the month. Sh***der. That is better. I have already done too much harm.

Imagine the shock and horror of seeing a shoulder that belonged to a woman who was using it at the time! The mind reels. The jaw drops to the floor. I can think of nothing less respectful. A shoulder, covered not with a blazer, but with some sort of unstructured wrap — unthinkable! An abomination in the eyes of the law, and of all right-thinking citizens!

The new rule states that “proper attire for women shall be business attire, including jackets worn with dresses, skirts, or slacks, and dress shoes or boots.” Sweaters, formerly permitted, are right out! Cardigans were a subject of debate on the floor — could one possibly be adequate to do the duty of a blazer? After all, this is the Missouri legislature, not a Taylor Swift album! They had to think of the consequences.

I once saw a woman’s shoulder — in fact, two shoulders — not covered by a blazer. She was in a dress, supplemented by a drape of some kind, but that, as the legislators wisely noted in their statute, was not enough. It was a statue, on the top of the United States Capitol; I do not know what sick, disrespectful pervert put it there, but I am still recovering from the ordeal.

I thank the gods that I am not a male legislator (the ones most devastatingly affected by such sights). I read a story that one saw the Venus de Milo by mistake (he heard it was art) and is still in a hospital, groaning in agony.

We all know how many male legislators have suffered this fate, thanks to a previous dress code that did not pause for a moment to consider them as people. Those legions of men glimpsed a wrap, sliding precipitously down a human shoulder in the Missouri Capitol, and have had to give up public life entirely to spend their days screaming and staring at the wall.

Sometimes, at night, I still hear them, howling. Their lives, as they know them, have ended. So many lives, taken completely out of their owners’ hands and made to serve the whims of a legislature that didn’t think it was a big deal to allow shawls and sweaters, that didn’t take into account the impact on people’s lives of their careless words.

The people of Missouri sat there last year in the midst of major flash floods worrying: “Are my legislators going to protect their eyes from sh***ders? They had better focus on that,” they thought, “rather than the infrastructure. I know it is also important to try to make it more difficult to change the state constitution by ballot initiative, since the voice of the people might be heard, and that could be very awkward. But first! First, they must look to swaddling all those hideous, loathsome appendages and hiding them from view! Ugh, ugh!”

You would think that people so horrified by the sight of an innocent shoulder would not want to, voluntarily, delve any deeper into other people’s bodies and enact cruel, dehumanizing restrictions about their medical choices, but — you would be wrong.

Categories Humor, Missouri

Missouri: The War on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2023 //
24

Jess Piper lives in rural Missouri. She and her husband are farmers with five children. She taught American literature in the local public school. She describes herself as a “woke” progressive. When she added the history of slavery and African American literature to her classes, she said, none of her students (all white) felt embarrassed or uncomfortable. They identified with the abolitionists, not the slaveholders.

She ran for office when she realized that there were no Democrats, and she lost. But she wasn’t discouraged.

I am not a podcast person but I listened to Jess with close attention. On Twitter, she is @piper4Missouri.

You will enjoy listening to her podcast. She has a great voice and a great message.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Missouri, Rural Schools, Vouchers

Nephew of Homophobic Member of Congress Defends Gay Marriage

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2022 //
21

When Congress debated whether to pass a statute protecting gay marriage, Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler tearfully pleaded with her colleagues in the House of Representatives to vote against it. Every Democrat and 39 Republicans voted for it, and Rep. Hartzler was distraught.

Her nephew, Andrew Hartzler, disagreed with her vote. He is gay. He grew up in a strict conservative household. He told his parents he was gay when he was 14, and they sent him to conversion therapy. When he finished high school, his parents insisted that he attend Oral Roberts University, thinking that he would not encounter any gay students. They were wrong. More conversion therapy.

He was interviewed on MSNBC, CNN, and other news outlets. Watch him tell his story.

Categories Bias, Elections, Love, Missouri

Alan J. Singer: Missouri Is the “Don’t Show Me State”

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2022 //
16

Alan J. Singer writes about Missouri’s bid to be the state with the most censorship in schools and libraries.

He writes:

The State of Missouri may have to change its nickname from “Show-Me-State” to “It’s against the law to show me!” According to a report from PEN America, in response to a new state law, this fall Missouri schools removed almost 300 books from library…

The State of Missouri may have to change its nickname from “Show-Me-State” to “It’s against the law to show me!”

According to a report from PEN America, in response to a new state law, this fall Missouri schools removed almost 300 books from library shelves. They include Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus about the Holocaust,graphic novels based on George Orwell’s 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Bible, and the Gettysburg Address, art history books with naked subjects, and comic books about Batman and X-Men.Leviticus in the Old Testament has a lot of rules about sex and apparently the New Testament starts with too many “begats.” The new law establishes criminal penalties for exposing students to “explicit sexual material.” More than half of the books are about or written by LGBTQ+ people or people of color.

PEN America calls the Missouri book banning a “grave threat to the freedom to read.” It is the latest in a wave of “mass removals of books, new legislative proposals targeting publishers, and the passage of restrictive school district policies.” Nearly 100 books were recently pulled from Beaufort, South Carolina school libraries, a proposed Texas law would require publishers to create a rating system for school library books, and a number of states and school districts are afraid of any reference to gender fluidity.

Senate Bill 775, which went into effect in August 2022 was supposed to address the rights of survivors of sexual assault. However, an amendment pasted into the bill classified “providing explicit sexual material to a student” as a class A misdemeanor and subjects “any person affiliated with a school in an official capacity” to arrest. In response, at least 11 school districts starting purging books from the school library.

A spokesperson for a district that banned fourteen books was quoted in the St. Louis Dispatch. “The unfortunate reality of Senate Bill 775 is that, now in effect, it includes criminal penalties for individual educators. We are not willing to risk those potential consequences and will err on the side of caution on behalf of the individuals who serve our students.”

PEN America has posted an online petition addressed toMissouri School Boards and Districts. You can add your name at this link. A number of prominent authors have signed the letter. They include Laurie Halse Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Roxane Gay, Lois Lowry, and Art Spiegelman.

Please open the link to read the PEN petition and add your name.

 

Categories Censorship, Libraries, Missouri
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