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Leonard Leo Is Pushing for Public Funding of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
11

Leonard Leo is one of the most powerful people in the nation. Get to know him. He led the conservative lawyer’s group The Federalist Society. He personally prepared the list of judges for Trump’s selection to the Supreme Court. He can take credit for the appointment of dozens of federal judges in district courts and appellate courts. In tribute to his effectiveness, a Chicago businessman gifted him with $1.6 billion to use as he wished to advance conservatism.

Politico reports that Leonard Leo’s latest cause is promoting religious charter schools, which would be fully funded by the public. The target, which he hopes to demolish, is separation of church and state.

At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.

Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, acknowledges that public funding of St. Isidore is at odds with over 150 years of Supreme Court decisions. He said the justices have misunderstood Thomas Jefferson’s intent when he said there should be a wall separating church and state, but that the current conservative-dominated court seems prepared to change course.

“Jefferson didn’t mean that the government shouldn’t be giving public benefits to religious communities toward a common goal,” he said. “The court rightly over the last decade or so has been saying, ‘No, look, we’ve got this wrong and we’re gonna right the ship here.’ ”

Behind the effort to change the law are Christian conservative groups and legal teams who, over the past decade, have been beneficiaries of the billion-dollar network of nonprofits largely built by Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman.

Leo’s network organized multi-million-dollar campaigns to support the confirmation of most of the court’s six conservative justices. Leo himself served as adviser to President Donald Trump on judicial nominations, including those of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett…

“The Christian conservative legal movement, which has its fingerprints all over what’s going on in Oklahoma, is a pretty small, tight knit group of individuals,” said Paul Collins, a legal studies and politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment,” said Collins, author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, adding that“They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you’re going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly.”

In Oklahoma, the legal team representing the state’s virtual charter school board, the Alliance Defending Freedom, helped develop arguments that led to the end of Roe v. Wade. It is significantly funded by donor-advised funds that allow their patrons to keep their identities secret but which receive large amounts of money from Leo-aligned groups.

They include Donors Trust, often called the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. In recent years, Donors Trust has been the largest single beneficiary of Leo’s primary dark money group, the Judicial Education Project. Donors Trust, in turn, gave $4 million to Leo’s Federalist Society in 2022, according to the IRS filings.

Since 2020, when Leo received a $1.6 billion windfall from Chicago electronics magnate Barre Seid, among the largest contributions to a political advocacy group in history, other groups funded by Leo’s network have become substantial contributors to ADF. For instance, Schwab Charitable Fund, which has given at least $4 million to ADF, received $153 million in 2021 from a new Leo-aligned nonprofit that received the Seid funding.

ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler said in an emailed statement that his group is defending the board “in order to ensure people of faith are not treated like second-class citizens.” Sechler, who said he “cannot predict” whether the case will land at the Supreme Court, did not comment on the group’s funding.

St. Isidore is represented by the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative, a legal clinic created by the law school at the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett has worked with St. Isidore from the start of its application process.

In the same timeframe, Garnett joined the board of the Federalist Society, where Leo is co-chairman. She also joined the advisory council of a Catholic University law school initiative funded by a $4.25 million anonymous gift directed by Leo, according to a March 2021 press release. Justice Samuel Alito is its honorary chairman.

The Notre Dame clinic’s director is another alumni of Leo’s network, Stephanie Barclay, an attorney who spent multiple years at another legal nonprofit named after a Catholic martyr where Leo sits on the board: the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The clinic itself was announced a few monthsbefore the confirmation of Barrett, who was a Notre Dame law professor for 15 years. The June, 2020, announcement of the clinic’s creation stated that Barclay would take a leave of absence to clerk for Gorsuch during the same time period — 2021 and 2022 — that the group was working with the Oklahoma archdiocese on its St. Isidore application. In June of 2022, the court also overturned Roe; a month later, the clinic funded a trip for Justice Alito to be feted at a gala in Rome.

Clinic spokeswoman Kate Monaghan Connolly declined to say if Barclay has done any work on behalf of St. Isidore, including before, during or after her clerkship. The clinic declined comment on its funders.

The clinic “has defended the freedom of religion or belief for all people across a wide variety of projects,” including Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and an Apache tribe, said Monaghan.

As St. Isidore and its allies readied for legal battle, Farley said, Notre Dame brought in a corporate team at the law firm Dechert LLP, including Michael McGinley, who worked on selecting judicial nominees at the Trump White House at the time Leo was advising the president. McGinley clerked for Gorsuch when he was a 10th Circuit appeals judge and for Alito at the Supreme Court. He accompanied Gorsuch to his confirmation hearings. He is not employed by Notre Dame, said Connolly. He is working “pro bono” for St. Isidore, Farley said….

Those backing the St. Isidore application face a formidable array of critics and opponents. Charter schools are required by Oklahoma statute to be non-sectarian, and in its application, the archdiocese says the school would be part of the “evangelizing mission of the Church.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, says the proposed school violates both the U.S. and the state Constitution, and he is suing to stop it. Separately, a group of 10 plaintiffs including public school parents and faith leaders represented by groups including Americans for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit warning that the creation of the school will erode a pillar of American democracy: the wall of separation between church and state.

The plaintiffs in that case are calling on the Oklahoma judge presiding over it, C. Brent Dishman, to recuse himself. Dishman sits on the board of the College of the Ozarks, an evangelical college that was represented by ADF in a suit against the Biden administrationover transgender bathroom policy.

The school’s detractors say the national implications of the dispute are not getting enough attention. They include Melissa Abdo, a practicing Catholic and school board member in Jenks, Oklahoma, and Robert Franklin, a Republican-appointed member of a state virtual charter school board who last summer voted against the school’s application.

If the law were to allow public funding of religious schools, legislatures in conservative states would come under immediate pressure to help bail out troubled religious school systems: Catholic and Protestant churches are shuttering due to significant declines in church attendance and financial support as Americans become increasingly secular.

The 1.8 million-student Catholic education system received a lifeline through the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the case of Carson v. Makin, which required states with voucher systems to help students afford private schools to allow the money to be spent on religious academies. The influx of public money was already helping the Catholic Church to stave off parish closings, according to a 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research studythat called vouchers “a dominant source of funding for many churches.”

“It’s not about the 500 kids. The game is to get this to the Supreme Court,” said Franklin. “If the court approves this, it changes everything” about public education in America, he said.

“It’s been extremely unsettling,” said Franklin, noting that the state already has six virtual schools to serve children of all faiths and that some of the school’s biggest backers, including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, had previously bashed virtual learning as ineffective.

Please open the link to read the full article.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump, Vouchers

John Thompson: What Do School Report Cards Mean?

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
7

John Thompson, historian and retired history teacher, analyzes the use and misuse of Oklahoma’s school report cards.

He writes:

As usual, the 2023 Oklahoma school Report Card prompted headlines about “struggling” students. But counter-intuitively, State Superintendent Ryan Walters stressed the declines during his time in office!?!?

Two tales of the Report Card are being told. As the Tulsa World reports, Walters “claimed that the data was from ‘previous years,’ even though all of the academic achievement indicators are from state tests administered just seven months ago.” Yes, taking office as State Superintendent in January 2023, Walters hasn’t had time to achieve many gains in learning, even if he’d really tried to. But the chaos during 2023, combined with the disruption he’d spread since 2020 as head of the Education Department, provided plenty of time for disruption.

As the Oklahoman reports, Walters cited the greatest decline under his watch, 8th grade reading proficiency which saw “a 5.7 percent decrease,” although “No other grade had more than a 0.4 percent decrease in reading scores, and some others “saw a very small uptick in reading scores.” Walters then promised “we are taking a Back to Basics approach,” which is the opposite of what it takes to increase proficiency.

The wisest narrative, illustrated by the Education Watch’s Jennifer Palmer, places the 2023 Report Card within the context of the massive decline of scores due to Covid, and the 2022 report. The 2023 report saw “no big swings in proficiency rates in any of the three tested subjects content,” while noting the overlooked fact that “a score of basic means a student demonstrated foundational knowledge and skills.”

Then Palmer tweeted background information on the differences between what basic means, as opposed to the widely misunderstood grade of proficiency which, I must add, has been misrepresented since the Reagan administration in order to denigrate public education. Oklahoma’s 8th grade reading proficiency grade requires that “students demonstrate mastery over even the most challenging grade-level content and are ready for the next grade, course or level of education.” It requires mastery of grade level skills that include interpretation, evaluation, analysis across multiple texts, and critical thinking. Mastery in requires use of evidence, argumentative response and synthesis of to create “written works for multiple purposes.”

As Palmer tweeted, we need a more nuanced” understanding of “reading.” And “the 8th graders who didn’t score proficient, but are in the ‘basic’ category, can still do all this” and then she linked to the challenging goals that are required for that grade, which include: partial mastery of interpretation, evaluation, analysis across multiple texts, critical thinking, use of evidence, argumentative response and synthesis.

Granted, these definitions are not necessarily the same as the more reliable NAEP scores. But as Jan Resseger explains, the nation’s NAEP proficiency grade “represents A level work, at worst an A-” and, basically, the same applies to Oklahoma’s tests. She asks, “Would you be upset to learn that “only” 40% of 8th graders are at an A level in math and “only” 1/3rd scored an A in reading?”

Ressenger also cites the huge body of research explaining why School Report Cards aren’t a reliable tool for measuring school effectiveness. We need a better understanding why the proficiency has been weaponized against schools, but we also need to master the huge body of research which explains why Report Cards aren’t a fair, reliable, and valid measure of how well schools are performing.

I’ll just cite one of the scholars that Ressenger draws upon. Stanford’s Sean Reardon’s 2022 research explained why “test score gaps may result from unequal opportunities either in or out of school; [but] they are not necessarily the result of differences in school quality, resources, or experience.” Reardon documented:

The socioeconomic profile of a district is a powerful predictor of the average test score performance of students in that district. The most and least socioeconomically advantaged districts have average performance levels more than four grade levels apart. … Achievement gaps are larger in districts where black and Hispanic students attend higher poverty schools than their white peers… and where large racial/ethnic gaps exist in parents’ educational attainment. The size of the gaps has little or no association with average class size, a district’s per capita student spending or charter school enrollment.

And that brings us to chronic absenteeism. As the New York Times reports, across the nation, “nearly 70 percent of the highest poverty schools experienced widespread, chronic absenteeism in the 2021-22 school year,” and “in these schools, about a third or more of the student body was considered chronically absent.” Of course, the Times notes, “Students cannot learn if they are not in school, and they cannot benefit from interventions, such as tutoring, that are supposed to help them make up pandemic losses.”

And Palmer reports:

Across the state, 20% of students were chronically absent last year, a half a percent increase over 2022. Some student groups were even higher: 24% of Hispanic students, 25% of economically disadvantaged and 31% of Black students were chronically absent …” Moreover, excessive absences are more prevalent now than before the pandemic. In 2019, 14% of Oklahoma students were chronically absent.

Tulsa World had previously reported that “About half of the Tulsa high school students are chronically absent” and explained why this complex and serious problem is “showing no signs of improvement.” The World cited the work of Georgetown’s Phyllis Jordan who explained the need to reconnect “what’s going on in the school and what’s going on outside the school.”

On one hand, that is why Patrick Forsyth, a University of Oklahoma professor who had analyzed the state’s A-F report card system, said “using attendance to measure school effectiveness is like using rates of tobacco use to measure hospital effectiveness.” On the other hand, as the Oklahoman reported, the Attendance Works’ Hedy Chang said, chronic absenteeism is an “all-hands-on-deck moment.” She also called on schools to “learn the specific barriers to attendance that their students experience before crafting a response to those unique challenges.”

That gets us back to the tragedy of two tales about what the Report Card means. Sadly, Ryan Walters uses it as one more weapon for disrupting public education. The other side must use these flawed metrics not to punish but for diagnostic purposes.

Categories Education Reform, NAEP, Oklahoma, Standardized Testing

John Thompson: Will Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Schools Finally Tell the Truth?

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2023 //
2

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, wonders whether Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of schools, will at last tell the truth when he is in court? He’s been telling so many lies lately that it’s hard to know if he is aware of the difference between truth and lies.

Thompson writes:

In Oklahoma and across the nation, hate mongers like Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters have been willing to speak any falsehood they want, portraying them as political narratives, which are legal, even when they are lies. But if Walters repeats false claims when testifying in court, his lies could backfire.

Walters is facing lawsuits for wrongly firing Department of Education employees. One employee, the director of grant development, disproved Walters’ claim that, ‘We have applied for millions and millions of grants since I took office.’” She explained, “We have not applied for one single grant. That was a blatant lie.”

Moreover, State Auditor Cindy Byrd alleged that millions of COVID-19 relief money were misspent by Walters’ department, and the “Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he won’t rule out criminal charges against some state leaders after a report alleged misspending of COVID-19 relief money.” A.G. Drummond also has “described what was found as a pervasive culture of waste, mismanagement and apparent fraud. What concerned him the most was the mishandling of money that had been allocated for education expense accounts and tuition assistance programs.”

Walters also used state money to fund an inflammatory anti-union video which he called a “public awareness campaign” about teachers’ unions (which he labels as a “terrorist organization.”) As these investigations continue, Walters has doubled down on falsehoods such as testifying to Congress that the Tulsa Public Schools “maintains an active connection with the [Chinese government] through a program called the Confucius Classroom.”

But what is Walters doing now?

This week’s breaking news includes echoes of past lies. For instance, the Oklahoma Voice reports that the newly appointed Education Secretary Katherine Curry “said she resigned from her position after three months because the state superintendent’s administration limited her oversight of his agency.” Curry “said she repeatedly asked for financial documents showing how the agency budgeted and spent money, but the Oklahoma State Department of Education never provided them.” Curry said Walters’ refusal to respond was “‘100%’ the reason for her resignation.”

Second, two of the five state and federal suits by dismissed employees have gone to court. It is possible that he will be found accountable for both, his official role, and actions as an individual. 

Third, as the Oklahoman reports, after being fined for 14 cases of failure to report campaign donations, Walters now faces a possible fine for failure to report a donation from the 1776 Project PAC. The donor “says on its website it is ‘committed to abolishing critical race theory … from the public school curriculum.’” And his “amended pre-general election report still lists more than a dozen donors with an “x” before the last names, a mistake that prevents accurate searches of his contributions.”

The week’s fourth story may help explain Walters’ continuing lies and allegedly fraudulent behavior. He announced: 

“I fully stand behind President Trump, and I am excited to see him dismantle the Department of Education,”

“President Trump will be able to end radical indoctrination in our schools,” Walters said. “This woke ideology will be driven out of our schools. This cancer that is the teachers union will be driven out of our schools, and parents will be put in charge of their kids’ education.”

Finally, Jennifer Palmer reports that “the state Education Department is looking to hire someone to manage national media appearances, raising concerns the agency would be boosting Superintendent Ryan Walters’ national profile at taxpayer expense.” She adds:

A firm is being sought to provide print and digital op-eds to national outlets, coordinate national events and appearances for executive staff, write speeches and handle some communications. Records show the department wants a minimum of three op-eds, two speeches and 10 media bookings per month. 

Palmer explains that some Oklahomans have responded that “the public shouldn’t have to pay for Walters’ political ambitions.” But we shouldn’t overlook the costs to people across the U.S. They may have to deal with a new level of Walters’ propaganda.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Character, Lies, Oklahoma

Nora DeLa Cour: Religious Charter Schools Corrupt the Charter idea

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2023 //
11

Nora De La Cour was a teacher who now writes about education with sharp insight.

She warns about the danger of religious charter schools in Jacobin:

A church-run charter school is on track to open in Oklahoma — publicly funded but run by the archdiocese. The arrival of religious charter schools is one more piece of evidence that public charter schools are not so public after all.

In early October, Georgia state senator Elena Parent coauthored an op-ed for the 74 entreating her fellow Democrats to recall their former support for charter schools. Decrying the GOP-backed private-school voucher schemespassing in state after state, Parent warns that these programs’ unfairness “does not mean Democrats should abandon discussion around school choice.” Rather, she argues, they must reenergize their own liberal vision of school choice, focused on bringing opportunities to underserved populations.

A decade ago it was easier to make this sort of pro–civil rights, liberal defense of charter schools (albeit ignoring the gathering evidence about who is harmedby charterization and the attendant defunding and closure of neighborhood schools). Today though, it’s overwhelmingly clear that charters, like other forms of school privatization, are among the Right’s primary tools for advancing a decidedly illiberal vision of free-market fundamentalism and Christian nationalism. And recent decisions from our radicalized Supreme Court have suggested that, legally speaking, charter schools may not be all that different from voucher-supported private schools.

One of the most glaring examples of this is St Isidore of Seville, a virtual Oklahoma Catholic school that, if it opens in 2024 as planned, will be the nation’s first church-run charter. The archdiocese of Oklahoma City intends to use this publicly funded statewide school “as a genuine instrument of the Church, a place of real and specific pastoral ministry,” complete with religiously motivated discrimination against protected groups of kids. It’s just one more example of how privatization makes fertile ground for the desecularization of America’s schools — and the erosion of students’ rights.

St Isidore of Vanishing Civil Rights

Weeks before the Supreme Court elevated religious free exercise over the Establishment Clause by ruling that Maine’s town tuitioning program could not bar private schools from putting taxpayer money to religious uses, attorney and leading education policy scholar Kevin Welner made a prediction: such an outcome in Carson v. Makin, he argued, would act as an invitation for church-run charter schools.

Sure enough, Oklahoma’s virtual charter board (with two new right-wing appointees) voted in June to grant a charter for St Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School (SISCVS), which will be operated by the archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the diocese of Tulsa. This month the board approved the school’s contract, bringing it one step closer to furthering the “evangelizing mission of the Church” on Oklahoma taxpayers’ dime. But the board’s chairman is currently refusing to sign the contract — demonstrating the high level of contention surrounding SISCVS within the conservative Bible Belt state.

A religious charter school runs afoul of both the Oklahoma Constitution and the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act — to say nothing of the US Constitution’s promise of church/state separation. While Oklahoma’s Republican governor Kevin Stitt has been among the school’s most avid cheerleaders (along with the state’s previous attorney general), current attorney general Gentner Drummond — also a Republican — has vehemently opposed SISCVS, asserting that “Christian nationalism is the movement that is giving oxygen to this attempt to eviscerate the Establishment Clause.”

In the SISCVS charter application, the archdiocese of Oklahoma City states that the school “will operate in harmony with faith and morals, including sexual morality, as taught and understood by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.” Instruction will assist parents in “forming and cultivating” children who believe, among other things, “that God created persons male and female,” and that if we “reject God’s invitation,” we will “end up in hell.”

In response to Drummond’s charge that the school appears intent on violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the archdiocese insists it is “committed to providing a school environment that is free from unlawful discrimination, harassment, and retaliation” (emphasis added). But, emboldened by Supreme Court rulings subordinating antidiscrimination laws to religious free exercise, they suggest that these practices are lawful when they’re required by faith….

Public Schools Are the Only Public Schools

School-choice Democrats like Cory Booker, Barack Obama, and Arne Duncan mastered the contortionist art of pitching school privatization — which strips families of their right to democratically elected school boards — as “the civil rights issue of our time.” Publicly funded, privately managed charter schools, they argued, would increase opportunities for marginalized students, leveling an unfair playing field.

It was never true, and decades of research have shown us that charter schools don’t outperform their publicly managed counterparts — but they do drain funding from neighborhood schools attended by poor kids. Nevertheless, a sheen of “equity” and “opportunity” sparkled around bipartisan charter school initiatives in the Bush and Obama days of education reform.

But in the Trump era, Besty DeVos, a privatizer laser-focused on state-funded Christian education, made the school-choice brand feel icky to its D-column champions. While DeVos treated the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) as “a slush fund for large charter chains,” Carol Burris and her team launched a series of reports documenting the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse the program was enabling. By the 2020 presidential primary it was clear that Democrats were looking to distance themselves from the charter movement, taking their cues from organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which called for a moratoriumon new charters in 2016.

Biden’s education department attempted to make good on a campaign promise to eliminate federal funding for for-profit charter schools (thanks in no small part to the work of Burris and NPE, who marshaled a grassroots network of public education advocates willing to take on the charter sector’s powerful Washington guardians). And while the department’s new CSP rules don’t go quite that far, they do make it much harder for profit seekers to cash in on the program. They also increase transparency and accountability for grantees, and set up requirements aimed at combating resegregation and federally financed “white-flight charters.” In Congress, the 2023 House Appropriations Bill supported these tighter rules and reduced CSP funding by $40 million, seemingly in recognition that the federal government caused grave harm by promoting reckless charter expansion.

Open the link and read the article in full.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Religion

Oklahoma: State Attorney General Sues to Block Religious Charter School

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2023 //
13

Gentner Drummond, the Attorney General for Oklahoma, sued to block the authorization of a Catholic charter school. Drummond disagrees with Governor Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters. Even the lobbyists for the charter movement oppose the religious charter school, which is a back door voucher.

Sean Murphy of the AP reported:

Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond on Friday sued to stop a state board from establishing and funding what would be the nation’s first religious public charter school after the board ignored Drummond’s warning that it would violate both the state and U.S. constitutions.

Drummond filed the lawsuit with the Oklahoma Supreme Court against the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board after three of the board’s members this week signed a contract for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit states.

The school board voted 3-2 in June to approve the Catholic Archdiocese’s application to establish the online public charter school, which would be open to students across the state in kindergarten through grade 12. In its application, the Archdiocese said its vision is that the school “participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out.”

The approval of a publicly funded religious school is the latest in a series of actions taken by conservative-led states that include efforts to teach the Bible in public schools, and to ban booksand lessons about race, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Oklahoma’s Constitution specifically prohibits the use of public money or property from being used, directly or indirectly, for the use or benefit of any church or system of religion. Nearly 60% of Oklahoma voters rejected a proposal in 2016 to remove that language from the Constitution…

Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who earlier this year signed a bill that would give parents public funds to send their children to private schools, including religious schools, criticized Drummond’s lawsuit as a “political stunt.”

“AG Drummond seems to lack any firm grasp on the constitutional principle of religious freedom and masks his disdain for the Catholics’ pursuit by obsessing over non-existent schools that don’t neatly align with his religious preference,” Stitt said in a statement.

Drummond defeated Stitt’s hand-picked attorney general in last year’s GOP primary and the two Republicans have clashed over Stitt’s hostile position toward many Native American tribes in the state.

The AG’s lawsuit also suggests that the board’s vote could put at risk more than $1 billion in federal education dollars that Oklahoma receives that require the state to comply with federal laws that prohibit a publicly funded religious school.

“Not only is this an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty, but it is an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars,” Drummond said in a statement.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a nonprofit organization that supports the public charter school movement, released a statement Friday in support of Drummond’s challenge.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Resistance

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters Is a Shameless Liar

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2023 //
3

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, is appalled by the spread of a culture of lying. The state’s superintendent of schools is a textbook example of a man who lies openly, repeatedly, and without shame.

As the New York Times’ Peter Wehner wrote, “The first hours of the Trump presidency began with a demonstrable lie, when Mr. Trump, his press secretary and his closest advisers lied about the size of his inaugural crowd, photographic evidence to the contrary be damned.” Since then, state and federal officeholders, as well as Trump voters have become shockingly comfortable with “alt facts,” but as cases are heading to multiple courts, brazen falsehoods which have been portrayed as political narratives that are legal, even when they are lies, will become violations of law. Oklahoma’s State School Superintendent Ryan Walters is likely to become one case study in such transitions.

Walters is facing federal lawsuits for wrongly firing Department of Education employees. Another employee, the director of grant development, disproved Walters’ claim that, ‘We have applied for millions and millions of grants since I took office.’” She explained, “We have not applied for one single grant. That was a blatant lie.”

The Oklahoma Ethics Commission fined Walters $7,800 for filing late campaign reports 14 times. Most importantly, the state auditor alleged that $30 million of COVID-19 relief money was misspent by Walters’ department, and the “Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he won’t rule out criminal charges against some state leaders after a report alleged misspending of COVID-19 relief money.”

Moreover, Walters’ promotion of lies (that presumably were not illegal) by Libs of TikTokand other rightwingers likely contributed to bomb threats to Tulsa-area public schools. As the top Democrat in the Oklahoma Senate said, she supports her House colleagues’ request for an impeachment investigation because, “These threats are a direct result of reckless rhetoric and must be addressed.”

Then, as KGOU reported, “Walters put TPS (Tulsa Public Schools) in the national spotlight for participating in the Chinese language program Confucius Classrooms, which has indirect ties to the Chinese government.

It’s hard to understand how anyone could believe Walter’s narratives, especially Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, who “is one of 18 members of the U.S. Senate who have called for an investigation into educational ‘funds from hostile foreign governments flowing into America’s K-12 schools.’” Lankford asserted “The CCP is the greatest threat to America’s security today,” and “The CCP’s involvement in the K-12 education system further demonstrates how far the Chinese government is willing go to expand its influence and promote its authoritarian agenda.”

But Walters’ recent stunt, testifying before Congress, should prove that he is willing to tell virtually any lie, defend it, and at least temporarily, convince some or many (or most?) Republican legislators to believe it. As the Oklahoman reports:

“Walters has often equated the nonprofit with the Chinese Communist Party and accused Confucius Classrooms of being part of a propaganda campaign by the party.

“He and the state Board of Education voted in August to require all Oklahoma school districts to report any foreign funding. Walters urged Congress and the state Legislature to prohibit schools from receiving funds from hostile foreign governments.”

Then, he testified to Congress, “We must protect our kids and not allow a hostile foreign government to indoctrinate them.”

In fact, as the Tulsa Public Schools replied:

All costs that related to the Confucius Classroom Coordination Office amounted to $6,240 over the 2022-23 school year. That included the price of the teacher’s training and travel, classroom supplies, cultural supplies and food for students.

The superintendent and founder of the Texas charter school which trained the Tulsa teacher, “Eddie Conger, drove to Oklahoma City to reiterate that to Walters and the Oklahoma State Board of Education during the board’s meeting Thursday. ‘I just want you to know that I’ve not sent any money to Tulsa Public Schools, not one dime,’ Conger said while speaking in public comment at the meeting. ‘I would have, but they said no.’”

Then, as reported by the Oklahoman, Walters testified to Congress on Sept. 19 that the ‘district maintains an active connection with the [Chinese government] through a program called the Confucius Classroom.’ But TPS says it ended its contract nearly a month before, on Aug. 25.”

It was reported by State Impact that according to:

Email correspondence obtained by State Impact between TPS and the State Department of Education, the district made the department aware of the contract termination the week before Walters testified otherwise, on Sept. 15. The department had asked for the information on Sept. 7.

Once upon a time we believed “A lie is a lie.” It’s been four decades since Ronald Reagan proclaimed, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Since then, the Rightwing has been extremely successful in undermining public services by telling big lies, arguing that what we now call “alt facts” may not be true but that’s just politics.

But as rightwingers ranging from hate mongers like Ryan Walters to Trump have been willing to speak any falsehood they want, they seem to be forgetting the legal danger of spinning their tales under oath. As long as they keep repeating false claims, it seems inevitable to me that their habits of repeating concrete and documented lies will backfire in court.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Character, Fake News, Lies, Oklahoma

Peter Greene: Norte Dame Law School Joins Rightwing Extremists to Defend Religious Charter School in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2023 //
7

Peter Greene reports on the status of Oklahoma’s attempt to open the nation’s first openly religious charter school. the State’s Attorney General thinks it’s wrong, so Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walter (a MAGA-nut) is relying on outside help. As Peter explains, the rightwingers are flocking to Walters’ side.

He writes:

Earlier this year, Oklahoma State Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued an opinion about the prospect of the state approving a church-run charter school. He was reversing the opinion of his predecessor, saying that previous opinion “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion. If allowed to remain in force, I fear the opinion will be used as a basis for taxpayer-funded religious schools.”

In June, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board ignored him and approved the St. Isidore of Seville virtual charter, a cyber school that was proposed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in collaboration with the Diocese of Tulsa. It was in anticipation of this application that the virtual charter board asked the previous AG for an opinion in the first place.

As an AP report noted, “Archdiocese officials have been unequivocal that the school will promote the Catholic faith and operate according to church doctrine, including its views on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

And just in case you wonder if the state knew what it was doing, or was trying to preserve any plausible deniability, State Superintendent Ryan Walters supported the decision:

This decision reflects months of hard work, and more importantly, the will of the people of Oklahoma. I encouraged the board to approve this monumental decision, and now the U.S.’s first religious charter school will be welcomed by my administration.

And Governor Stitt hailed it as “a win for religious liberty and education freedom in our great state.”

Meanwhile, AG Drummond called the decision “contrary to Oklahoma law and not in the best interests of taxpayers.” Furthermore, “It’s extremely disappointing that board members violated their oath in order to fund religious schools with our tax dollars. In doing so, these members have exposed themselves and the state to potential legal action that could be costly.”

To the surprise of nobody, that lawsuit was filed before summer’s end with Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee and individual parents as plaintiffs in a case that has already been busy and twisty.

The case has drawn a number of national groups to the case, including for the plaintiffs the ACLU, Americans for Separation of Church and State, and the Education Law Center.

The defendant side is a more interesting array. Drummond, having made it clear that he believes the charter proponents are dead wrong, is not using the attorney general’s office to defend them. So the school board, the state department of education, and Ryan Walters are being defended by private attorneys in Oklahoma and some other hired guns.

Two are part of the usual array of legal shops that work to defund and dismantle public education. There’s the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian advocacy group that was incorporated in 1993 by six right-wing luminaries, including Larry Burkett, Bill Bright, and James Dobson. They are supported by a host of right-wing foundations, including the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. And they oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, most all LGBTQ+ rights. Their track record is sadly successful; these are the Hobby Lobby lawsuit folks. They have a summer legal training program to get Christian law students whipped up for legal careers; Justice Amy Coney Barrett taught at it. They successfully litigated against Vermont, establishing that the state must include Catholic students in its voucher program, a sort of throat-clearing for Carson v. Makin.

There’s First Liberty Institute a Christian conservative firm based in Texas, which co-took Carson v. Makin all the way to SCOTUS, as well as the case of the praying coach.

These are to be expected; getting money away from public education and into church coffers is their thing. But you get a fuller idea of who has a lot riding on this case from the third set of lawyers– the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic….

A Catholic charter in Oklahoma would pretty much erase the difference between charters and vouchers, and the Catholic charter in Oklahoma serves as a proof of legal concept, so this case is a good fit for the church. It is winding through various legal twists and turns (the defendants just moved to have it dismissed), but if it ends up before SCOTUS, it could represent one more reduction of the pile of rubble that now stands where the wall between church and state used to.

Please open the link and finish the article.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Extremism, Gender, Oklahoma, Religion

John Thompson: Protests Force Ryan Walters to Suspend Plans for Takeover of Tulsa Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2023 //
3

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Ohlahoma, keeps us up to date on the battle between Tulsa Public Schools and Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s far-right MAGA Secretary of Education.

He writes:

Who won the latest battle between Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS)?

Walters had promised to fire TPS Superintendent Deborah Gist, and drive “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) out of the classes, as well as mandating his ideology-driven curriculums. Then, Walters said at a Moms for Liberty event, “Tulsa Public Schools is getting money from the Chinese communist government,” He said, “They funneled it through a nonprofit — I mean, money-laundered it through a nonprofit in Texas.”

But Walters’ assault on the TPS accelerated further when Walters said he “had been in regular communication with Houston [HISD] about their school takeover.” And according to HTUL news, he has said “there’s currently a standards team and textbook committee to gather information on possible vendors like Hillsdale College and PragerU.” It thus became clear to Tulsans that the survival of their schools (and Oklahoma schools in general?) was at stake.

Walters’ promised to reveal his plan during the Oklahoma State Board of Education (OSDE) meeting on August 24. So, TPS board member, Jennettie Marshall, warned “during the board’s 90-minute discussion of the district’s accreditation status. ‘We are under attack. If you’re not keeping up with Houston, … if we continue the course we’re on, that’s where we’re headed. That shouldn’t be.’”

The day before the OSDE meeting, Deborah Gist resigned in the hope that Walters wouldn’t take over the state’s largest school system. And at the meeting, the World also explained that Walters “praised the local school board for ‘rooting out a cancer in the district that caused so many problems,’ referring to the Tulsa school board’s formal agreement approved Wednesday evening to part ways with Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist.” But “he also vowed to give the local Tulsa school board ‘a very short rope,’ saying he would return and ask for additional authority from the state Board of Education if he does not see adequate progress made within a few months.”

In response, the TPS Board Chairperson, Stacey Woolley, criticized Walters’ misstatements about the system’s student outcomes. She also said, “Antics and rhetoric must stop. We had two bomb threats at schools in the city of Tulsa because of rhetoric.” she said. “I do look forward to going forward and continuing the work and accelerating that work.”

Similarly, “Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, told the state board Walters has been ‘fostering an atmosphere of intimidation’” and protested, “When you talk about Black and brown children in Tulsa, Oklahoma, there are issues that go on in larger cities that have to be addressed. You don’t just say ‘You better perform better in three or four months!’ What kind of plan is that?”

Almost certainly, pushbacks by TPS supporters, and private communications, produced this outcome. It is too soon to know which side won the battle. Or, should I say lost less?

Unless Walters is correct and the TPS is secretly plotting with China to bring our democracy down, or violence erupts, I believe that the most important aspect of the battle could be the way that educators and journalists (especially at the Tulsa World) issued fact-based rebuttals to the extremists. Then, the Schusterman and the Kaiser foundations publicly opposed Walters’ takeover threats. Mayor G.T. Bynum finally came out against the takeover. And on the day of the OSDE meeting, Booker T. Washington H.S. students walked out.

The resistance even reached the point where the World editorialized, “conservative lawmakers must speak up.” And also, Gov. Kevin Stitt distanced himself from Walters who he appointed and then repeatedly supported. The World reported that Stitt said he “believes the State Board of Education will not overreact when considering accreditation for Tulsa Public Schools.” Stitt now says, “I don’t know what takeover is, what they are talking about. I believe in local control. I think the local board needs to address that.”

Secondly, the battle wasn’t over Deborah Gist. It was about the future of public education, and defending our democracy.

Thirdly, the former-teacher Rep. John Waldron (D) explained what we now know, “A far-right media source spread a doctored video suggesting a librarian was spreading a ‘woke agenda,’“ causing a Tulsa Union elementary school and the librarian to receive a bomb threat. (By the way, Waldron noted that the librarian’s actual agenda was promoting “reading and kindness.”)

Then, Walters reposted it, leading to two more bomb threats. NPR’s Beth Wallis reported that the first threat included, “I’m not going to stand as you bastards continue to indoctrinate and prey on our children.” And it also warned the librarian, “We know where you live.” Walters’ response was, “Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it.” Another threat said:

“We placed a bomb at [the librarian’s elementary school address] and inside the Residence of [the librarian]. You will stop pushing this woke ideology or we will bomb every school in the union district.”

At the time that Wallis published the story, Walters had not removed his “repost of the altered video.”

Perhaps we will someday learn the behind the scenes discussions that prompted Walters to pull back from his most extreme threats. Who knows, perhaps this mayhem will prompt Republicans who are appalled by Walters to come out in support of public education and against the dangerous politics of hate. However, Rep. Mark McBride, R-Moore, the chair of the Oklahoma House subcommittee on education funding who has frequently challenged Walters, complained to the Oklahoman that “he was unable to sit in the conference room during the board meeting, despite requesting a seat along with multiple other lawmakers for several weeks.”

Finally, the other issues pushed by Walters at the OSDE meeting are a recipe for dysfunction and chaos. As Nondoc’s Bennett Brinkman reported, the board unanimously approved Walters’ demand for a “a report of ‘foreign government contributions to Oklahoma schools,’” and “a report regarding district policies and informal guidance for ‘student pronouns in Oklahoma schools.’” 

Moreover, Walters’ mandates, such as teacher training in the science of reading, can’t be rushed into place. As Linda-Darling Hammond explains, school improvement can only “move at the speed of trust.” Moreover, will teachers be expected to focus on phonics, or will the TPS be allowed to bring back the science and history instruction that is required to build the background knowledge that is needed for reading for comprehension? 

Sadly, we’re likely to learn more fake news over the next few months about what Walters sees as student outcomes, and a passing grade for high-challenge schools. Across the nation, we have seen the disastrous effects of rushed, test-driven instruction that was forced on high-poverty schools. Also, I sure hope we don’t see violence. But, even though Walters warned the TPS, “Do not test me,” I expect that the defenders of schools in Tulsa and elsewhere will continue to push back diplomatically but firmly. For better or for worse, we’re likely to see in the next few months what the TPS will face.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Extremism, Oklahoma, Resistance, State Takeover, Stupid

Oklahoma: Will the State’s Extremist Secretary of Education Seize Control of Tulsa Schools?

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
9

Oklahoman John Thompson writes about the conflict enveloping the Tulsa public schools: Ryan Walters, the extremist Secretary of Education, wants to take over Tulsa’s public schools. Opposition to Walters’ plans by Tulsa’s parents and political leaders is growing. State takeovers if school districts have historically failed but Walters doesn’t appear to know it.

Thompson writes:

Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters has a history of threatening the accreditation of the Tulsa Public schools, promising to fire its superintendent, Deborah Gist, and driving “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) out of the classes, as well as mandating his ideology-driven curriculums. Walters’ attacks grew dramatically as he responded to the news in June that he might be in danger because his department’s “administration of federal GEER funds is being investigated by FBI agents and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, according to people with direct knowledge of the inquiry.”

For instance, Walters said at a Moms for Liberty event, “Tulsa Public Schools is getting money from the Chinese communist government,” He said, “They funneled it through a nonprofit — I mean, money-laundered it through a nonprofit in Texas.”

But then Walters said he “had been in regular communication with Houston [HISD] about their school takeover.” According to HTUL news, he has said “there’s currently a standards team and textbook committee to gather information on possible vendors like Hillsdale College and PragerU.”

Immediately afterwards, journalists, educators, and public school supporters studied the history of Broad Foundation takeovers in Dallas and the HISD. Even better, they spoke out in ways I had never seen in Oklahoma’s edu-politics. For example, TPS board member, Jennettie Marshall, “said during the board’s 90-minute discussion of the district’s accreditation status. ‘We are under attack. If you’re not keeping up with Houston, … if we continue the course we’re on, that’s where we’re headed. That shouldn’t be.’”

Just as important, the Tulsa World balanced its excellent reporting with editorials and publishing letters to the editors. The following 13 headlines were cited in just one day, August 18, 2023, of the paper’s E-Edition:

Letter: Many good things, successes happening in Tulsa Public Schools

Letter: State School Board needs to show support for Tulsa community, stop antics of top official

Letter: Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum must be more forceful defending Tulsa schools

Letter: Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist deserves credit for leading through times of crisis

Letter: State Education Department ought to help improve schools, not tear down

Letter: State superintendent has no specific plans for Tulsa schools, only insults


Letter: State superintendent’s attack on Tulsa schools harms students across the state

Letter: Tulsa clergy leaders urge state to build bridges with TPS, not hurl rocks

Letter: Oklahoma education crisis comes from state superintendent pushing a personal agenda

Editorial: Silence is no way to improve schools or defend representative democracy

Editorial: Losing control of Tulsa schools to state bureaucrats bad for city and students

Ginnie Graham: Manufactured crisis in schools takes time away for big-picture discussions

Opinion: Set aside political rhetoric, provide Tulsa schools help to keep good teachers

The first thing that stands out stands out about the World’s coverage is its excellent journalism, and its fact-checking of Walters. The first thing that stands out from the World’s opinion pieces and letters to the editor is the strong wording when opposing Walters’ threat to the Tulsa Public Schools. The letters opposed Walters’ “antics;” his “personal agenda;” his “political rhetoric;” how he “has no specific plans for Tulsa schools, only insults;” and how he “harms students across the state; as well as how he should “help improve schools, not tear down;” and how the mayor “must be more forceful defending Tulsa schools.”

The editorials criticize the “silence” of political leaders, who belatedly pushed back against Walters, saying the “TPS needs partners, champions and advocates to improve — not political firebombs and quiet bystanders.” Another argued that Walters’ “political rhetoric” hurts the retention of good teachers; and that it hurts the city. Ginnie Graham described the chaos that she witnessed when enrolling her child in school, and explained:

The TPS administrators are completely overwhelmed by the firehose of misinformation, distortions and lies coming at them. Their time is monopolized by people seemingly hell-bent on tearing down the district, rather than offering a helping hand or even sitting down for an informative discussion.

And TPS School Board Chair Stacey Woolley closes her editorial with:

Your TPS Board of Education has a plan. Walters does, too, but not one that works on behalf of Tulsans.

I didn’t sign up for this takeover and neither did you. As a community, we must stop it: www.protecttps.com

Moreover, the World reported on powerful philanthropists, like the Schusterman and the Kaiser foundations, who have publicly opposed Walters takeover threats. Then, Mayor G.T. Bynum came out against the takeover. The resistance has even reached the point where the World editorialized, “conservative lawmakers must speak up.” And now, Gov. Kevin Stitt has distanced himself from the extremist (Walters) who he appointed and then repeatedly supported. The World reported, Stitt said he “believes the State Board of Education will not overreact when considering accreditation for Tulsa Public Schools.” Stitt now says, “I don’t know what takeover is, what they are talking about. I believe in local control. I think the local board needs to address that.”

When I first learned about Walters’ new threats, I worried, “If we don’t recognize the extent of the threats of a HISD-style takeover, he might unite the worst of the corporate reform privatizers, with his Moms for Liberty extremism, and impose irreparable damage on the TPS and other school systems.” But, “If we unite, the damage that Walters is promising to inflict on the TPS, and the Tulsa metropolitan area as a whole, could undermine his extremist campaigns.”

It looks to me, that Tulsans and other Oklahomans are pushing back, making it more likely that Walters will lose this fight

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Houston, Injustice, Oklahoma, Privatization, Resistance, Stupid, Tulsa

Tulsa: Mayor Tells State Board: Hands Off Our Public Schools! Meanwhile, Mike Miles Stages a Musical in Houston

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2023 //
32

The State Secretary of Education in Oklahoma Ryan Walters has been threatening to take control of the Tulsa public schools, replace the elected school board and fire the district superintendent. State takeovers have a long history of failure. Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum wrote a strongly worded letter to the Oklahoma State Board of Education and told its members in no uncertain terms, “hands off our public schools and our elected board!”

It’s a terrific letter. Open the link and read it. If only every city had leadership who stood up for their public schools like Mayor Bynum did!

Of course, Houston’s Mayor opposed the state takeover of HISD but Governor Abbott and his state Commissioner Mike Morath were determined to destroy democracy in Houston because the people there vote Democratic.

Speaking of Houston, the state-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles celebrated his arrival with a splashy musical performance, while teachers sat obediently in their seats at the NRG Arena.

The Texas Observer reported:

Hundreds of Houston’s teachers gathered at the NRG Center early morning Wednesday, where they were directed to wear school colors, wave school banners, and shake sparkly pom poms. Facilitators started the Harlem Shuffle dance in the aisles. And then, as the teachers were motioned back into their seats, the room turned dark and silence fell.

A single spotlight shined on a student performer in an aisle belting the lyrics to West Side Story’s “Something’s Coming”:

Something’s comin’, something good
If I can wait!
Something’s comin’, I don’t know what it is
But it is
Gonna be great!

The stage lit up to reveal a 1950s diner with red and white checkered tablecloth tables and red rubber stools. In walked new district superintendent Mike Miles, playing “Mr. Duke,” owner of the joint who doubles as a counselor who listens to the teachers’ and students’ grievances.

Since March, when the Texas Education Agency seized control of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), citing the failure to meet state standards at one high school, Houston’s teachers and parents have seen the battle with the state-appointed school board and superintendent play out in community meetings and in the press. Now, during a week of district-mandated conferences at the NRG Center, teachers were watching the takeover play out on stage. Miles directed the script—an hour-long musical that took six weeks to prepare, depicting how the new superintendent will rekindle the extinguished spirits of burnt-out teachers, give hope to hopeless students, and bestow a visionary plan to save public education.

“We are lost as a profession,” a teacher said on stage.

“My dreams are getting smaller and smaller,” a student later echoed.

“Well, maybe that new guy—you know, super … super …”

“You mean Superintendent Miles?”

“Maybe Superintendent Miles will make things better for us.”

Maybe.

But teachers who spoke to the Texas Observer said Miles’ performance wasted the district’s time and money and mocked their professional experience and concerns.

“For him to turn our concerns into satire is really insulting,” HISD teacher Melissa Yarborough said. “It reeks of propaganda.”

“He wasted our time when we could be in our classrooms preparing our lesson plans before school starts,” said Chris, an elementary school teacher who asked only to be identified by his first name.

Jessica, who has been teaching for 24 years, told the Observer Miles’ musical “was very condescending. The message was that we don’t know what we’re doing. And he’s coming in to show us how to do it right.”

The Houston Chronicle also reviewed Miles’ musical event.

A few fine arts teachers who spoke to the Chronicle said Miles is hypocritical for spreading his message through a musical theater production even after disrespecting fine arts teachers, who at NES schools will be paid far less than their peers teaching reading, math or science.

“He claims reading and math are the forefront and he wants to get rid of fine arts. Yet he used fine arts to promote his ideologies,” said one fine arts teacher, who called the production a “slap in the face.”

Another fine arts teacher said it was “the very definition of irony.”

“The fact he used HISD fine arts teachers and students in his presentation, the day after saying in his evaluation sessions that we are not as essential … creates a sense of rage and despair I cannot even describe,” said the teacher, who was told they could be fired for making negative public statements about the district.

Only staff from NES campuses attended the live event at NRG, while educators from other schools watched convocation remotely from their own campuses following a last-minute scheduling change.

Funnily enough, Miles also staged a splashy musical with him as the star when he began his tenure in Dallas in 2012. All of the district’s 18,000 teachers were summoned to watch. The video has been removed from the internet. But The Texas Observer ran a great story about the event, with a photo of him dancing with students. At that performance, he laid out his vision for making DISD the best urban district in the nation by 2020 using ideas he learned at the Broad Superintendents Academy. He was, he said, a believer in disruptive change, like Arne Duncan. “Miles epitomizes today’s school reform movement, convinced that anything worth doing in a classroom can be measured.” But three years later, he was gone.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Houston, Oklahoma, State Takeover, Teachers, Texas, Tulsa
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