Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released her budget proposal for next year, and it’s as bad as expected.
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, reviewed the budget and concluded that it shows a reckless disregard for the neediest students and schools and outright hostility towards students who want to go to college.
We know that Trump “loves the uneducated.” Secretary McMahon wants more of them.
Burris sent out the following alert:
Linda McMahon, handpicked by Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Department of Education, has just released the most brutal, calculated, and destructive education budget in the Department’s history.
She proposes eliminating $8.5 billion in Congressionally funded programs—28 in total—abolishing 10 outright and shoving the other 18 into a $2 billion block grant. That’s $4.5 billion less than those 18 programs received last year.
And it gets worse: States are banned from using the block grant to support the following programs funded by Congress:
Aid for migrant children whose families move frequently for agricultural work
English Language Acquisition grants for emerging English learners
Community schools offering wraparound services
Grants to improve teacher effectiveness and leadership
Innovation and research for school improvement
Comprehensive Centers, including those serving students with disabilities
Technical assistance for desegregation
The Ready to Learn program for young children
These aren’t just budget cuts—they’re targeted strikes.
McMahon justifies cutting support for migrant children by falsely claiming the program “encourages ineligible non-citizens to access taxpayer dollars.” That is a lie. Most migrant farmworkers are U.S. citizens or have H-2A visas. They feed this nation with their backbreaking labor.
The attack continues for opportunity for higher education:
Pell Grants are slashed by $1,400 on average; the maximum grant drops from $7,395 to $5,710
Federal Work-Study loses $1 billion—an 80% cut
TRIO programs, which support college-readiness and support for low-income students, veterans, and students with disabilities, are eliminated
Campus child care programs for student-parents are defunded
In all, $1.67 billion in student college assistance is gone—wiped out on top of individual Pell grant cuts.
And yet, McMahon increased funding for the federal Charter Schools Program to half a billion dollars for a sector that saw an increase of only eleven schools last year. Meanwhile, her allies in Congress are pushing a $5 billion private school and homeschool voucher scheme through the so-called Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).
And despite reducing Department staff by 50%, she only cuts the personnel budget by 10%.
This is not budgeting. It is a war on public education.
This is a blueprint for privatization, cruelty, and the systematic dismantling of opportunity for America’s children.
Denis Smith retired from his position at the Ohio Department of Education, where he oversaw charter schools (which are called “community schools” in Ohio). In this post, he describes what he saw at the Network for Public Education Conference in Columbus, Ohio, in early April.
He wrote:
When It’s About Hands Off! That Also Applies to Public Schools
The Hands Off! demonstrations at the Ohio Statehouse that drew thousands of protestors wasn’t the only gathering of activists last weekend in downtown Columbus. Just a short distance away at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, a smaller but equally passionate gathering of concerned citizens from across the nation came to Ohio’s capital city to attend the Network for Public Education’s National Conference and affirm their support for the common school, the very symbol of democracy in this increasingly divided nation.
That disunion is driven in part by the rapid growth of universal educational vouchers and charter schools, where public funds flow to private and religious schools as well as privately operated charter schools and where public accountability and oversight of taxpayer funds is limited or even absent. In many states, including Ohio, those public funds in the form of vouchers are drawn from the very state budget line item that is earmarked for public schools.
Of particular concern to the conference attendees is the division in communities fueled by vouchers, which have been shown in some states to subsidize private and religious school tuition exceeding 80% of those enrolled. In Ohio, according to research conducted by former Ohio legislator Stephen Dyer, the figure is 91%.Several speakers referred to this situation as “welfare for the rich” and “an entitlement for the wealthy.”
The research shared at the conference also confirmed the findings of the National Coalition for Public Education that “most recipients of private school vouchers in universal programs are wealthy families whose children never attended public schools in the first place.” So much for the tired Republican rhetoric of vouchers being a lifeline of escape from “failing schools” for poor inner-city children.
Another strong area of concern shared at the NPE event was the growing intrusion of religious organizations like Life Wise Academy which recruit students for release time Bible study during the school day. While attendees were told that school guidelines direct that such activities are to be scheduled during electives and lunch, the programs still conflict with the normal school routine and put a burden on school resources, where time is needed for separating release time students and adjusting the instructional routine because of the arrival and departure of a group within the classroom.
One presenter, concerned about students receiving conflicting information, said that his experience as a science teacher found situations where there was a disconnect between what he termed “Biblical stories and objective facts.” In addition, he shared that a group of LifeWise students missed a solar eclipse because of their time in religious instruction.
Some Ohio school districts, including Westerville and Worthington in Franklin County, had to amend their policies in the wake of HB 8, which mandated that districts have religious instruction release time policies in place. The district policies had been written as an attempt to lessen the possibility of other religious programs wanting access to students and the further disruption that would cause to the school routine.
The recent legislative activity about accommodating religious groups like Life Wise is at variance with history, as conference chair and Network for Public Education founder Dr. Diane Ravitch pointed out in her remarks about the founding of Ohio. As part of the Northwest Territory, she noted that Ohio was originally divided into 32 plots, with plot 16, being reserved for a public school. No plot was set aside for a religious school.
Ohio became the first state to be formed from the Northwest Territory, and its provision for public education would become a prototype for the young republic. The common school, an idea central to the founders of the state, would be located such “that local schools would have an income and that the community schoolhouses would be centrally located for all children.”
Unfortunately, the idea of the common school being centrally located in every community is an idea not centrally located within the minds of right-wing Republican legislators. From the information exchanged at the conference, that is the case in the great majority of statehouses, and a matter of great concern for continuing national cohesiveness.
The theme of the NPE National Conference, Public Schools – Where All Students Are Welcome, stands in marked contrast with the exclusionary practices of private and religious schools where, unlike public schools, there are no requirements to accept and enroll every student interested in attending. While these schools are reluctant to accept students who may need additional instructional support, they show no reluctance in accepting state voucher payments.
Texas Rep. Gina Hinojosa. Photo: Texas House of Representatives
Texas State Representative Gina Hinojosa, one of the keynote speakers, told the audience about her experience in fighting Gov. Greg Abbott’s voucher scheme and the double meaning of the term school choice. “School choice is also the school’s choice,” she told the audience, as she estimated that 80% or more of state funds will go to kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools.
Her battle with the Texas governor, who has defined the passage of voucher legislation in the Lone Star State as his “urgent priority,” is a tale of his alliance with Jeff Yass, a pro-voucher Pennsylvania billionaire who has donated $12 million so far to Abbott’s voucher crusade.
Hinojosa was scathing in her criticism of Abbott and his fellow Republicans and of a party that once “worshipped at the altar of accountability.” Now, she told the attendees, “they want free cash money, with no strings attached.”
“Grift, graft, and greed” is the narrative of appropriating public funds for private purposes, Hinojosa believes, a tale of supporting “free taxpayer money with no accountability.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Photo: Denis Smith
The NPE conference ended with an address by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee. With his background as a former teacher and coach, Walz had a strong connect with an audience comprised mostly of educators and public school advocates. His folksy language and sense of humor further endeared him to the conference attendees.
Based on the continuing bad behavior of Jeff Yass and other affluent actors in the voucher and charter wars, greedy bastards is a better descriptor than oligarchs, he observed. From the reaction of the audience and what they heard previously from Gina Hinojosa and other presenters, the language offered by Walz was a more accurate definition of welfare for the wealthy.
At the end of his remarks, Walz encouraged educators not to despair but to accept their key place in society. “There is a sense that servant leadership comes out of serving in public education.”
Attendees at the NPE conference included educators, school board members, attorneys, legislators, clergy, and policy makers – a cross-section of America. Their presence affirmed a core belief that the public school, open to all, represents the very essence of a democratic society. And there is no debate about whether or notthose schools are under attack by right-wing legislatures intent on rewarding higher-income constituents with tuition support to schools that choose their students as they exercise the “school’s choice.”(As a devotee of the Apostrophe Protection Society, I applaud this distinction.)
So what are we going to do about this? Attendees left the conference with some strong themes.
The choir needs to sing louder.
Hope over fear. Aspiration over despair.
The road to totalitarianism is littered with people who say you’re overreacting.
Who are the leaders of the Democratic Party? They’re out there. On the streets.
It’s not just don’t give up. Be an activist.
As the loudness about the subject of what is more aptly described as “the school’s choice” gets louder,” you can bet that servant leaders like Diane Ravitch, Gina Hinojosa, Tim Walz and others are making a difference in responding to the challenge of servant leadership to ensure that the common school, so central to 19th century communities in the Northwest Territory and beyond, continues to be the choice of every community for defining America and the democracy it represents.
Nancy Flanagan is a retired veteran teacher. Her blogs are always insightful because she sees the issues from the perspective of her long career in the classroom. In this post, she explains why some conferences work and some don’t. She wrote it after returning home from the Network for Public Education conference.
She writes:
I am just back from the Network for Public Education conference, held this year in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is an eight-hour drive from my house, and we arrived at the same time as ongoing flood warnings. But—as usual—it was well worth the time and effort expended.
For most of my career—35 years—I was a classroom teacher. Garden-variety teachers are lucky to get out of Dodge and attend a conference with their peers maybe once a year. Teachers don’t get airfare for conferences in other states and often end up sharing rides and rooms, splitting pizzas for dinner. They go with the intention of getting many new ideas for their practice toolboxes—lesson plans, subject discipline trends and tips, cool new materials—and to connect with people who do what they do. Be inspired, maybe, or just to commiserate with others who totally get it.
In the real world (meaning: not schools), this is called networking. Also in the real world—there’s comp time for days missed at a weekend conference, and an expense form for reimbursements. Conversely, in schools, lucky teachers get a flat grant to partially compensate for registration, mileage, hotel and meals. In many other schools, nobody goes to a conference, because there’s just not enough money, period.
When you hear teachers complaining about meaningless professional development, it’s often because of that very reason—there’s not enough money to custom-tailor professional learning, so everyone ends up in the auditorium watching a PowerPoint and wishing they were back in their classrooms.
Back in 1993, when Richard Riley was Secretary of Education, his special assistant, Terry Dozier, a former National Teacher of the Year, established the first National Teacher Forum. (In case you’re wondering, the Forums lasted just as long as the Clinton administration, and Riley, were in the WH.) Teachers of the Year from all 50 states attended. The purpose of the conference was to engage these recognized teachers in the decision-making that impacted their practice. In other words, policy.
It was probably the most memorable conference I ever attended. I took nothing home to use in my band classroom, but left with an imaginary soapbox and new ideas about how I could speak out on education issues, engage policymakers, and assign value to my experience as a successful teacher. The National Teacher Forum literally changed my life, over the following decades.
But—the idea that teachers would start speaking out, having their ideas get as much traction as novice legislators’ or Gates-funded researchers, was a hard sell. Education thinkers aren’t in the habit of recognizing teacher wisdom, except on a semi-insulting surface level. In the hierarchy of public education workers, teachers are at the lowest level of the pyramid, subject to legislative whims, accrued data and faulty analyses, and malign forces of privatization.
Which is why it was heartening to see so many teachers (most from Ohio) at the NPE conference. The vibe was big-picture: Saving public education. Debunking current myths about things like AI and silver-bullet reading programs. Discussing how churches are now part of the push to destabilize public schools. New organizations and elected leaders popping up to defend democracy, school by school and state by state. An accurate history of how public education has been re-shaped by politics. The resurgence of unions as defenders of public education.
Saving public education. A phrase that has taken on new and urgent meaning, in the last three months. Every single one of the keynote speakers was somewhere between on-point and flat-out inspirational.
Here’s the phrase that kept ringing in my head: We’re in this together.
The last two speakers were AFT President Randi Weingarten and MN Governor Tim Walz. I’ve heard Weingarten speak a dozen times or more, and she’s always articulate and fired-up. But it was Walz, speaking to his people, who made us laugh and cry, and believe that there’s hope in these dark times.
He remarked that his HS government teacher—class of 24 students, very rural school—would never have believed that Tim Walz would one day be a congressman, a successful governor and candidate for Vice-President. It was funny—but also another reason to believe that public schools are pumping out leaders every day, even in dark times.
In an age where we can hear a speaker or transmit handouts digitally—we still need real-time conferences. We need motivation and personal connections. Places where true-blue believers in the power of public education can gather, have a conversation over coffee, hear some provocative ideas and exchange business cards. Network.
Last weekend, the Network for Public Education hosted its conference in Columbus, Ohio. Since our first conference in 2013 in Austin, everyone has said “this is the best ever,” and they said it again on April 7.
The attendees included the newly re-elected State Superintendent of Schools in Minnesota, Jill Underly. The Democratic leader of the Texas House Education Committee, Gina Hinojosa. Numerous teachers of the year from many states. Parent leaders from across the nation.
The Phyllis Bush Award for grassroots organizing was won by the Wisconsin Public Education Network, a parent-led group, who have stood firm for their public schools.
The David Award for the individual or group who courageously stands up to powerful forces on behalf of public schools and their students was won by Pastor Charles Johnson of Pastors for Texas Children, whose organization has fought against Governor Greg Abbott and the billionaires who want to impose vouchers, despite their failure everywhere else and the harm they will wreak on rural schools.
The last speaker was Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota and former Democratic candidate for Vice President in 2024. He was warm, funny, and inspiring.
Nearly 400 educators attended the conference from all across the nation, and everyone stayed to hear Governor Walz, who was wonderful. In time, I will post videos of the main presentations, including his. April 7 was his birthday, and it was too late to get a birthday cake. But two veteran educators left the hotel to find a bakery and returned with a cake.
I introduced Randi Weingarten and reminded the audience that Mike Pompeo had called her “the most dangerous person in the world,” which she should wear as a badge of honor.
Randi gave a rip-roaring speech that brought the audience to its feet. She presented Governor Walz with his birthday cake and everything sang “Happy birthday.”
He was fabulous. He was supposed to slip away at the end of his speech, through a private back door but someone caught up with him and asked for a selfie. Of course, he obliged. Within minutes, it appeared that at least 250 or more people were standing in line for a selfie. He did not leave. He signed autographs and posed for selfies with everyone who wanted one.
He is humble, self-effacing, has a crackling dry wit, and is most definitely a people person.
In the opening session on Friday night, I engaged in a Q & A with Josh Cowen about his recent book: The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers. Again, the room was overflowing. Josh was excellent at explaining the terrible results of vouchers and how they turned into a subsidy for wealthy families. Why do politicians continue to promote them. The billionaire money is irresistible.
The panels were fabulous. I participated in one about the close link between public schools and democracy. The room was packed, and we had people lining the walls. A panel led by Derek Black, law professor at the university of South Carolina, and Yohuru Williams, dean of the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul, talked about the history of Black education, inspired by Derek’s new book Dangerous Learning: The South’s Long War on Black Literacy.
Public schools are in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration. The fact that they have failed matters not at all to religious zealots and libertarians. The fact that they bust state budgets doesn’t matter. The fact that they are a subsidy for rich families doesn’t matter. Those rich families will vote for the politicians who gave them a gift.
The urgency of standing up for public schools, defending their teachers, protecting their students, and fighting censorship of books and curriculum has never been more important than now.
The Network for Public Education is committed to stand up for kids, teachers, public schools, and communities. .
Tom Ultican is a retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics. He is now a tireless blogger who unearths the machinations of the elites and billionaires intent on privatizing public education. Tom has been a strong supporter of the Network for Public Education. He explains here why he will attend the next NPE conference in Columbus, April 5 and 6.
He writes:
I am going to Columbus, Ohio for the 2025 NPE conference the weekend of April 5 and 6. Since 2015, these conferences have been a forward looking delight for me. (I missed the 2014 conference in Austin, Texas.) It is a place to hear from heroes of human rights and amazing defenders of public education. It is here where we unite and organize to take on ruthless billionaires; out to end taxpayer funded free education for all. Meeting and hotel reservations are still available.
Chicago 2015
My first NPE conference, in 2015, was held in the historic Drake Hotel on the shore of Lake Michigan. I had been reading blogs by Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider and Anthony Cody. They were all there. In fact, when I arrived the quite tall Cody was walking down a staircase to greet new arrivals. This got my conference off to a thrilling start. Yong Zhao, the keynote speaker, was amazing plus I personally met Deborah Meier and NEA president, Lily Eskelsen García. Always close to my heart will be the wonderful and all too short relationship I developed with our host, Karen Lewis.
Raleigh 2016
In Raleigh, I met Andrea Gabor, who was working on a book that was released in 2018, “After the Education Wars; How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.” She had been an agnostic on charter schools until she went to New Orleans and discovered a mess. The amazing speaker, Rev. William Barber, gave the keynote address. This leader of the “poor people’s campaign” is a truly gifted speaker.
Oakland 2017
Nicole Hanna-Jones who had just won the MacArthur Foundation genius award and recently published “The 1619 Project” was our keynote speaker. Susan Dufresne lined the walls of the Oakland Marriot’s main conference room with her art depicting institutional racism that was published in book form 6-months later (The History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools). At a KPFA discussion featuring Diane Ravitch and Dyett High School hunger strike hero, Jitu Brown, I ran into Cindy Martin, then the Superintendent of San Diego Unified School District. She has been the number two at the Department of Education for most of the past four years. Too bad she was not the number one.
Indianapolis 2018
Diane Ravitch opened the conference declaring, “We are the resistance and we are winning!” Finnish educator, Pasi Sahlberg, coined the apt acronym for the worldwide school privatization phenomena by calling it the “Global Education Reform Movement (GERM).” In Indianapolis, we met many new leaders in the resistance like Jesse Hagopian from Seattle. In his introduction, Journey for Justice leader, Jitu Brown, declared, “Jesse is a freedom fighter who happens to be a teacher.” Jesse’s new book “Teach Truth; the Struggle for Antiracist Education” was just released.
America’s leading civil rights fighter and president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, was our keynote speaker. He said the NAACP was not opposed to charter schools, but is calling for a moratorium until there is transparency in their operations and uniformity in terms of requirements is repaired. Derrick noted the NAACP had conducted an in depth national study of charter schools and found a wide range of problems that needed to be fixed before the experiment is continued.
Derrick Johnson, President of NAACP, Speaking at #NPE18Indy – Photo by Anthony Cody
Philadelphia 2022
Like the entire world, NPE activities were seriously interrupted by COVID-19. We were finally able to meet on Broad Street in Philadelphia March 19-20, 2022. This gathering was originally scheduled in 2020. My good friend Darcie Cimarusti, who worked for NPE, called me about joining her for a breakout session on The City Fund, the billionaire founded organization pushing the portfolio model of school management. By 2022, she was so weakened by cancer that I ended up leading the session. Sadly, Darcie passed a few months after the conference.
At the 2022 meeting, we also paid tribute to Phyllis Bush, an NPE founding board member and wonderful person. She was dealing with cancer at the Indianapolis conference and passed some time afterward.
The lunchtime conversation between Diane Ravitch and social activist, musician and actor, Stevie Van Zandt, was special. “Little Stevie” co-founded South Side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, became a member of the E-Street band with Bruce Springsteen and starred on the Sopranos. It turned out that Diane and Stevie became friends when they were walking a picket line in support of LA teachers.
Ravitch posted afterwards, “I wish you had been in Philly to hear the wonderful “Little Stevie” (formerly the EST band and “The Sopranos”) talk about his love for music, kids, teachers, and arts in the schools at #npe2022philly. Everyone loved his enthusiasm and candor.”
Diane Ravitch and Steven Van Zandt at NPE Philadelphia
Washington DC 2023
October 28-29, 2023, brought the Washington DC NPE conference, a special event. Of particular interest to me was the preconference interview (October 27 evening) of James Harvey by Diane Ravitch. Harvey is known as the author of a “Nation at Risk.” There were so many more of us there than expected; the interview was moved to the old Hilton Hotel’s large conference room. After the change and everyone settled down, Harvey commented, “I remember being at a meeting in this room fifty years ago when we heard that Alexander Butterfield had just testified that there were tapes of the oval office.” There is nothing like being there with people who made and witnessed history.
James also shared that the two famous academics on the panel, Nobel Prize winner, Glen Seaborg, and physicist, Gerald Holton, were the driving forces for politicizing the report. Strangely these two scientists did not come to their anti-public school conclusions based on evidence and they were significant to the reports demeaning public schools using phony data.
Gloria Ladson-Billings from the University of Wisconsin Madison delivered the first Keynote address on Saturday morning. She claimed, “Choice is a synonym for privatization.” And also stated there is money in the public which wealthy elites do not think common people should have. She also noted, “We are in the business of citizen making.” Ladson-Billings indicated that we do not want to go back to normal because it was not that great.
Conclusion
From the beginning, NPE has not sought donations from wealthy elites. The organization is 100% grass roots supported mainly by educators. When it holds a conference, the information has one purpose and that is protecting public education. If you can break free on the first weekend in April and you regard saving public education important, I encourage joining us in Columbus, Ohio for the 2025 NPE conference.
It was a well-planned conference with great speakers and panels. Every year, we say, “This was the best ever.” We said it again this time. How will we top this next year? The presentations of the keynote speakers were recorded and I will post them.
Jan Resseger writes:
It was while I was traveling home from last weekend’s Network for Public Education Conference that I realized I had not once heard Miguel Cardona’s name mentioned—even though the meeting was in Washington, D.C. Miguel Cardona is, of course, the U.S. Secretary of Education.
This year’s conference felt different than earlier conferences, when worries about federal policy brought by previous Secretaries of Education became a unifying focus. Rod Paige brought us “the Texas Miracle,” the test-and-punish model policy that spawned No Child Left Behind. Arne Duncan bribed the states with huge federal grants if they agreed to adopt his favorite Race to the Top priorities. And Betsy DeVos talked on and on about her favorite subject, school privatization.
Federal policy can be helpful or harmful for public schools. But with Miguel Cardona’s quiet management style and in the context of a badly divided Congress, any chance of our framing a collective narrative response to a nationwide policy has faded. It is, of course, true that a lot of awful remnants of the No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top era, like the federal Charter Schools Program that continues to support privately operated charter schools, remain in federal law. The remains of Race to the Top also still clutter the laws from state to state. But except for the Network for Public Education’s dogged effort to end funding for the federal Charter Schools Program, the focus on federal advocacy at this year’s conference seemed to have become limited. Keynoters were clear, however, that the attack on absolutely essential Title I funding from House Republicans is being vigorously countered by the Biden administration and in the U.S. Senate.
At last weekend’s conference it was clear that today the most damaging education policy is emerging in the 50 state legislatures, a situation which creates a challenge for collective advocacy. While states like Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio are all facing school funding shortages and concurrent growth in the diversion of state dollars to school vouchers, state laws and state politics make it extremely challenging for advocates even in these three similar states to pull together a coherent and moving universal narrative that also accounts for each state’s wonky legislative differences. At last week’s conference, workshops on the implications of state policy informed participants about work to reform Pennsylvania’s charter schools; to defend public schools from Ron DeSantis’s attack on teaching inclusive history in Florida; to push back against state takeovers in Houston, Lorain, Ohio, and Nashville; to inform the public about school funding lost to tax abatements in Kansas, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Missouri; to press for the end of portfolio school reform in Denver; and to help parent and teachers union advocates work together to build support for investment in equitable public schools as they did during teachers’ strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland.
Opposing the Growth of School Privatization via Vouchers
In this year of explosive growth of private school tuition vouchers across the states, several workshops explored the evidence that vouchers don’t fulfill the promises of their proponents. Experts presented research findings demonstrating that parents sign away their children’s constitutional protections when they accept a voucher to send a child to a private school. One researcher described the result as “the outsourcing of discrimination.” Another presented peer-reviewed research showing that students’ test scores in both math and reading dropped significantly after they took a voucher to attend a private school, and that many return suddenly to the public school district when their voucher school forces them out for one reason or another or she school suddenly closes. Public schools are prohibited by law from routinely expelling students; private schools accepting vouchers often push out children with special needs or those who do not fit their school’s profile.
Several workshops examined the fiscal damage when states divert massive tax dollars to uncapped voucher and Education Savings Account programs, which are often unregulated and poorly managed. Public Funds Public Schools, a collaboration of the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, shared its website that tracks voucher schemes across the states and provides up to date resources for advocacy. Two workshops presented full-service Community Schools, which are likely to become any family’s best school choice as medical, family, and community services are located right inside the neighborhood public school.
Refusing to Be Distracted by the Far-Right Culture Wars
Another factor creating today’s difficult public education policy climate is the massive investment in racist and homophobic “culture war” disruption by billionaire philanthropists and dark money groups. In A Citizen’s Guide to School Privatization, a new resource just published on the Network for Public Education’s website, Massachusetts political science professor Maurice Cunningham traces the dangerous groups working together to rile up and divide parents and distract us all from more constructive efforts to strengthen public schooling and make our schools more inclusive. The result? “Chaos is the product. It’s a lot easier to break something than to build something or to improve upon it.”
In a workshop last weekend, Cunningham described some of the research he has published in his new, and well documented Citizen’s Guide, for example, the following about the national organization that basically funds and operates Moms for Liberty: “The Council for National Policy… brings together wealthy conservatives, many from the oil and gas realm; Christian evangelists with vast communications networks; and groups that can turn out groups like the National Rifle Association. The Council for National Policy is a central directorate passing down plans to ‘obedient franchises’ like Moms for Liberty. The key Council for National Policy members that oversee Moms for Liberty are the Leadership Institute and Heritage Foundation. They run the annual summits, provide the training and literature, and even sue the Biden administration on Moms for Liberty’s behalf.”
What About the Separation of Church and State?
One workshop last weekend brought researchers from Documented to explore the Christian Right organization, the Alliance for Defending Freedom, which has worked to develop a legal strategy to confront public schools around the idea that “public schools are indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion.”
While private schools accepting vouchers have been quietly teaching religion for years and at the same time failing to protect the rights of their students, in a workshop last weekend three legal experts set out to clarify the issues posed by an explicitly religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has proposed to open. The presenters explored the question legally: whether, as publicly funded private contractors, charter schools are “state actors.” The issue is so complex in terms of legal precedents that even among the presenters there was subtle disagreement.
Participants in this and another workshop I attended seemed concerned about the broader constitutional question of the separation of government and religion. Many seemed clearly to grasp the importance of the first Amendment’s Establishment Clause’s protection of church-state separation, and many were concerned and confused about the current U.S. Supreme Court’s reliance on the Free Exercise Clause instead. It seemed a good thing that staff from Americans United for Separation of Church and State were workshop presenters in this year’s Network for Public Education conference to help clarify the issues around the current U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of religious liberty.
Working for Racial Justice
Many of the leaders and powerful speakers at last week’s conference identified racism and its lingering role as the greatest factor undermining children’s experience in public school along with the unequal school funding from state to state that regularly disadvantages Black and Brown children. It is clear that today’s attacks on the honest teaching of American history, on critical race theory, and on “diversity, equity and inclusion” are a blatant attempt to marginalize Black, immigrant, and gay, lesbian, and transgender children and adolescents.
Last weekend we heard about and talked about what happens when Ron DeSantis and others attack “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts as “woke.” Their goal is to ensure that schools can remain segregated by race and economics so that parents can protect their children from exposure to diversity; that state school funding schemes remain inequitable by favoring wealthy suburbs; and that public schools can exclude the history and culture and identity of some children from the curriculum and ban books about these children. Promoting homophobia and “fear of the other” is central to this agenda. Speakers throughout the event traced the advent of school vouchers back to the segregation academies that were a response to Brown v. Board of Education.
Gloria Ladson-Billings, the retired Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, seemed the perfect person to launch the conference’s opening plenary in this year filled with attacks on efforts by schools to protect diversity, multicultural education and authentic welcome for all students. Ladson-Billings’ own website introduces her as “known for her work in the fields of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory, and the pernicious effects of systemic racism and economic inequality on educational opportunities.” Keynoter, Dr. Marvin Dunn, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University, described his project to lead students on tours of the site of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre of an African American community in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis has attempted to suppress teaching about such events. A workshop highlighted the work of the Schott Foundation’s Opportunity to Learn Network along with the role of full-service Community Schools to house social, medical and community services to serve families and make them feel welcome and supported. Finally Jitu Brown and staff from the Journey for Justice Alliance introduced the Journey for Justice Alliance’s national Equity or Else Campaign for racial justice.
Remembering the Urgent Importance of Public Schooling for These Tough Times
Many of the event’s speakers called the growing attack on public education combined with rapid expansion of private school tuition vouchers and states’ investment in privately operated charter schools an existential threat to the primary institutions that anchor every small town, city neighborhood and suburb: the public schools that continue to educate the vast majority of our children and adolescents. As we strategize about how to push back against the threats to our public schools, however, the National Education Association’s Susan Nogan ended her workshop presentation with a reminder: “We must lead with our shared values.” Ladson-Billings opened the conference with a keynote entitled, “Regaining a ‘Public’ for Public Education.” Keynoter Julian Vasquez Heilig, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Western Michigan University declared, “Equity, inclusivity and democracy are what our public schools represent.” The American Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten reminded a luncheon plenary: “Public school is the place where we do pluralism.”
I was reassured that despite a lot of worrying about threats to public education, speakers shared their confidence in the foundational principles underneath our American system of public schools. Public schools are publicly funded, universally available and accessible, and guaranteed by law to meet each child’s needs and protect all children’s rights. Public schooling represents not only individualist concern for one’s own children, but also a sense of obligation to all of the community’s children.
School privatization cannot move our society closer to these principles. Last week’s 10th Anniversary Network for Public Education Conference represented a commitment to work together to ensure greater equality of opportunity and to improve our public schools, but at the same time to affirm public education as the optimal educational institution for the investment of our efforts and tax dollars.
The Network for Public Education sent out an alert, warning that several members of the U.S. Senate were proposing a bill to enrich the sponsors of privately-managed charter schools.
Tell Sen. Cornyn: Do Not Support More Charter School Program Waste, Fraud
Eight U.S. senators (including Texas Sen. John Cornyn) introduced a bill last week that was clearly written with the help of the charter school lobby. The Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act would allow billionaire-funded nonprofits operating as “state entities” to keep more of a cut when dispersing Charter School Program (CSP) grants. The bill would also allow these “state entities” to award up to $100,000 to would-be charter entrepreneurs, including religious organizations, to pre-plan a charter school before they have even submitted an application to an authorizer.
As the NPE has documented, CSP planning grants have led to enormous waste and fraud. Millions of CSP dollars have gone to school entrepreneurs who never opened a school — a fact confirmed by the Department of Education and the Government Accountability Office. That is why the NPE and other public education advocates supported the addition of modest guardrails in 2022 that provided guidance on how and when planning grants could be spent.
Clearly, that did not sit well with the charter lobby, led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which persuaded these eight senators to make it even easier to get funding to pre-plan a school.
There’s more. This bill would also increase the funding “state entities” can keep for themselves when they disperse grants. That cut is already at 10%, and this bill would raise it to a whopping 15%. Contact Sen. Cornyn today. Stop the charter school lobby’s new attempts to fleece American taxpayers and undermine public schools.
Jan Resseger is a dedicated supporter of public schools. She has a deep understanding of the role that public schools play in building community and strengthening democracy. she is coming to the Network for Public Education conference in D.C. this weekend. There is still time for you to register!
Jan Resseger writes:
Many of us will be traveling to Washington, D.C. next weekend for the 10th Anniversary Conference of the Network for Public Education. We will have an opportunity to greet friends and colleagues, listen to experts examine today’s attack on public schooling, and strategize about confronting the opponents of our society’s historic system of free and universal public education.
As well-funded interests like Moms for Liberty try to invade local school boards, as the Heritage Foundation, EdChoice, the Bradley Foundation, Koch and Walton money, and Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children support a school voucher revolution across the state legislatures, and as state legislators in many places obsess over test scores without grasping the human work teachers and students must accomplish together, we will gather to strategize about strengthening support for the public schools that remain the central institution in most American towns and neighborhoods.
There will be keynotes from Gloria Ladson-Billings, former chair of urban education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Becky Pringle, President of the NEA; Randi Weingarten, President of the AFT; Diane Ravitch, and several other prominent speakers. Participants will also be able to choose from among more than 40 workshops:
sessions exploring strategies and messaging to fight school privatization—including reports from Indiana, Florida and Arizona on vouchers; sessions on problems with charter schools in Pennsylvania and Texas; and a workshop on constitutional issues around religions charter school;
workshops addressing the need to overcome far-right attempts to hijack school boards including the fake grassroots parents’ groups funded by far-right philanthropy; reports on advocates working in a number of communities to engage parents as local school board advocates; and several Florida school board members sharing their experiences as their school boards were taken over and politicized;
discussions exploring the long impact of test-and-punish school reform including workshops examining state takeovers in several districts including this year’s state seizure of the Houston, Texas Public Schools; and a session about efforts to rid the Denver Public Schools of Portfolio School Reform;
conversations helping advocates support the retention and recruitment of teachers in these difficult times when, after COVID, many have blamed teachers for test scores and discipline problems, and when teachers’ autonomy has been undermined and their salaries remain low;
sessions to develop skills for coalition building, one of them from California stressing the need to build joint parent-teachers union coalitions; another from Wisconsin on statewide parent organizing; and other workshops emphasizing coalition building with communities of faith to preserve the Constitutional protections for religious liberty;
conversations helping advocates better frame and articulate an agenda to undermine racism, protect a diverse curriculum, and focus on students’ needs;
workshops celebrating full-service, wraparound Community Schools and strategizing to expand the number of Community Schools; and
discussions of specific issues: support for early childhood education, the need to protect student privacy, and the danger of outsourcing the work of education support professionals to private contractors.
As a blogger and an Ohio resident who worries about the diversion of public school funding to our state’s new universal vouchers, however, I am also looking for some broader help than any one of these specific workshops can provide. While it is possible to identify the forces unraveling support for public education, I struggle to find adequate language to articulate why the public schools we have taken for granted for generations are so important. I will be grateful at this conference to listen as experts name the essential role of the public schools in our diverse, democratic society. I will be listening as presenters and advocates emphasize these core principles.
Here are three examples of people writing about or speaking about what public schooling can accomplish. First from the late political theorist Benjamin Barber is a rather complex but also important declaration about school privatization as an expression of radical individualism in contrast with public education as an institution in which the public can protect citizens’ rights: “Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics. It puts us back in the state of nature where we possess a natural right to get whatever we can on our own, but at the same time lose any real ability to secure that to which we have a right. Private choices rest on individual power… personal skills… and personal luck. Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities, and presume equal rights for all… With privatization, we are seduced back into the state of nature by the lure of private liberty and particular interest; but what we experience in the end is an environment in which the strong dominate the weak… the very dilemma which the original social contract was intended to address.” (Consumed, pp. 143-144)
Second, William Ayers updates John Dewey’s 1899 declaration in The School and Society: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.” Here is how, in an essay in the 2022, Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, Ayers defines the kind of public education that every American child today ought to have: “Every child has the right to a free, high-quality education. A decent, generously staffed school facility must be in easy reach for every family. This is easy to envision: What the most privileged parents have for their public school children right now—small class sizes, fully trained and well compensated teachers, physics and chemistry labs, sports teams, physical education and athletic fields and gymnasiums, after-school and summer programs, generous arts programs that include music, theater, and fine arts—is the baseline for what we want for all children.” (Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, p. 315)
Third, Jitu Brown, the Chicago community organizer who now leads the national Journey4Justice Alliance, will be a presenter again at this year’s Network for Public Education conference. My notes from one of the earlier conferences quote Brown rephrasing in another way Dewey’s formulation about what public schooling must accomplish: “We want the choice of a world class neighborhood school within safe walking distance of our homes. We want an end to school closings, turnarounds, phase-outs, and charter expansion.”
I am looking forward to next week’s conference. In addition to all the practical strategy sessions and great keynotes, I hope we will actively be sharing our continued confidence in the foundational values represented by our American system of public schools—publicly funded, universally available and accessible, and guaranteed by law to meet each child’s needs and protect all children’s rights. School privatization cannot move our society closer to these goals. Although we will need to work doggedly to ensure greater equality of opportunity and to continue to improve our public schools, they remain the optimal educational institution for the investment of our efforts and tax dollars.
The next annual conference of the Network for Education (NPE) will take place very soon: October 28-29 in Washington, D.C. There are a large number of wonderful speakers and panels about the issues in U.S. education today. There is still time to sign up and join us.
I traveled from San Diego to Chicago’s famous Drake Hotel for the Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in 2015. Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers’ Union and her union hosted the event and leaders of the National teachers unions, Lily Eskelsen García from the National Education Association and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers were present.
Scholar author, Yong Zhao, was the day-one keynote speaker.
At the hotel early Friday evening, Anthony Cody, co-founder of NPE, standing on the entry stairs, greeted new arrivals. This tall man had developed a reputation as a renowned champion for public education. Steve Singer from Pennsylvania and T.C. Weber from Tennessee arrived right after me and I knew it was going to be special.
Karen Lewis was fresh-off leading a stunning victory by the Chicago teachers’ union. She had been planning to run for Mayor of Chicago but unfortunately was diagnosed with brain cancer. With her amazingly big heart, for the next several years, we communicated by telephone. It was stunning how she always had time for me even when sick. I miss her.
Day One
Next morning at breakfast, I met Professor Larry Lawrence, a lifelong education professional and friend of public education who just happens to live 20-miles up old Highway 101 from me. We became quite close. I wrote about Larry in my post, Breakfast with Professor Lawrence, laying out some of his awesome contributions to public education.
The first session kicked off with addresses by Chicago’s Jitu Brown and Newark student union leader, Tanisha Brown.
Jitu heads Journey for Justice and would become nationally recognized when he led a 34-day hunger strike, saving Chicago’s Dyett High School from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s chopping block. He shared that once, a man from Chicago, claiming to be a community organizer, dipped his toe in the ocean and when it was cold, moved on. It was Barak Obama.
Tanisha Brown was part of a student movement to save Newark’s schools from being privatized and from, the authoritarian control of a former TFA member, Cami Anderson.
These two speakers got the conference off to a rousing start.
During graduate school at UCSD in 2001, I spent a lot of time looking at various reforms. Then, it meant improving education, not privatization. The work of Deborah Meyer particularly stood out. Her small class-size and student-centered efforts in both New York City and Boston were inspirational. Getting to meet her at this conference in Chicago was a special treat. She and her niece talked with me for almost an hour. NPE is one of the few places this could happen.
On the way to lunch, I encountered Annie Tan, a special education teacher, then working in Chicago. The tables were round and could seat more than 10 people. We found a table right next to the stage. It turned out that four people at our table were going to be holding the lunch-time discussion: Jennifer Berkshire, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Peter Greene and Jose Vilson.
Today, almost everyone in the fight to save public education knows Jennifer Berkshire but up until 2015, she was hiding her identity under the pseudonym, Edu-Shyster. Julian Vasquez Heilig is now the head of education at the University of Kentucky; then, he was a department chief at Sacramento State University in California. Peter Greene was a teacher blogger from rural Pennsylvania and known to some of us as the author of Crumuducation. Jose Vilson was a teacher blogger from New York City, with a large following.
Also at the table was Adell Cothorne, the Noyes Elementary school principal, famous for exposing Michelle Rhee’s DC cheating scandal.
I will always appreciate Annie Tan, leading me up to that table. It was interesting that Peter Greene, his wife, Jose Vilson and I all play the trombone. Everyone knows that trombone players are the coolest members of the band.
Zhao is a funny guy. In 2015, readiness was a big education issue for the billionaire boys club … readiness for college, high school and even kindergarten, were written about in all big money education publications.
He said kindergarten readiness should mean “kindergartens are ready for children.” What he wanted for his children was “out of my basement readiness” and shared a personal experience of being in a Los Angeles elevator with Kim Kardashian, observing she had “out of my basement readiness”!
Union Leaders
In 2015, Bill Gates spent lavishly to control the direction of public education, giving large handouts to education journalists, education schools and teachers unions, in support of his proposal for the national Common Core State Standards. Activists at the Chicago meeting wanted the teachers unions not to accept Gates money, the underlying issue facing Lily Eskelsen García and Randi Weingarten as they took the stage in the main room for a Q & A session moderated by Diane Ravitch.
Both García and Weingarten were excellent presenters, consummate professionals, who did not disappoint. Most of the hour, Ravitch asked questions about topics, like teacher tenure and the scurrilous attack on classroom teachers. Answers from both union leaders received big positive responses.
The last question of the day was about the unions taking donations from Bill Gates. García and Weingarten both swore that their unions would no longer accept his gifts. This was not entirely true but did lead to that outcome eventually.
I personally got a chance to speak with García about diversity, saying in southern Idaho where I grew up, it might have a larger percentage of Mormons than Utah. She joked that in the Salt Lake school district, diversity meant there were some Presbyterians in the class. Lily was genuine and warm.
Some Thoughts on NPE
Be careful about your travel itinerary… had to leave before the conference ended to catch the flight home, not realizing how much time was needed to get to the airport … will not make that mistake again.
The next NPE conference will be my sixth. That first one in Chicago awakened me to the crucial efforts Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris and the NPE board are making.
NPE is our most important organization in America fighting to preserve public education, the foundation of democracy. When we meet in Washington DC October 28 and 29, some of America’s most brilliant educators and leaders will be sharing information and firming up plans for our country. I hope you can be there.
Remember, the way public education fares directly affects how American democracy fares.
Diane Ravitch's blog 