Archives for category: Politics
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Kathryn Joyce: How Sarasota County Became Florida’s Laboratory for Far-Right Extremism

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2023 //
7

If you read one article today, make it this one.

Kathryn Joyce is an outstanding journalist who has written several excellent articles about the far-right conspiracy to destroy public education. In this important article, published by both the Hechinger Report and Vanity Fair, she examines the rightwing takeover of public schools in Sarasota, Florida, by the extremist Moms for Liberty and their hero Governor DeSantis.

Joyce begins:

SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. — On a Sunday afternoon in late May 2022, Zander Moricz, then class president of Sarasota County’s Pine View School, spent the moments before his graduation speech sitting outside the auditorium, on the phone with his lawyers. Over the previous month, the question of what he’d say when he stepped to the podium had become national news. That March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, quickly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law for its ban on all mention of gender identity and sexuality in K–3 classrooms and restriction of those discussions in higher grades as well. Moricz, a student LGBTQ+ activist, had led several protests against the act that spring and joined a high-profile lawsuit against the state. In early May, he charged on Twitter that Pine View’s administration had warned that if he mentioned his activism or the lawsuit at graduation, his microphone would be cut. (In a statement released last year, the school district confirmed that students are told not to express political views in their speeches.)

In the tumultuous weeks leading up to the ceremony, Pine View — Sarasota’s “gifted” magnet institution, consistently ranked one of the top 25 public high schools in the country — was besieged with angry calls and news coverage. Moricz stayed home for three weeks, he said, thanks to the rvolume of death threats he received, and people showed up at his parents’ work. When a rumor started that Pine View’s principal would have to wear a bulletproof vest to graduation, he recalled, “the entire campus lost their minds,” thinking “everyone’s going to die” and warning relatives not to come. His parents worried he’d be killed.

But after all the controversy, graduation day was a success. Moricz, now 19, delivered a pointedly coded speech about the travails of being born with curly hair in Florida’s humid climate: how he worried about the “thousands of curly-haired kids who are going to be forced to speak like this” — like he was, in code — “for their entire lives as students.” Videos of the speech went viral. Donations poured into Moricz’s youth-led nonprofit. That summer, he left to study government at Harvard.

Half-a-year later though, when Moricz came home, Sarasota felt darker.

“I’m wearing this hat for a reason,” he said when we met for coffee in a strip mall near his alma mater in early March. “Two years ago, if I was bullied due to my queerness, the school would have rallied around me and shut it down. If it happened today, I believe everyone would act like it wasn’t happening.”

These days, he said, queer kids sit in the back of class and don’t tell teachers they’re being harassed. A student at Pine View was told, Moricz said, that he couldn’t finish his senior thesis researching other states’ copycat “Don’t Say Gay” laws. (The school did not respond to a request for comment through a district spokesperson.) When Moricz’s nonprofit found a building to house a new youth LGBTQ+ center — since schools were emphatically no longer safe spaces — they budgeted for bulletproof glass.

“The culture of fear that’s being created is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do,” he said. And much of it was thanks to the Sarasota County School Board.

Over the last two years, education culture wars have become the engine of Republican politics nationwide, with DeSantis’s Florida serving as the vanguard of the movement. But within the state, Sarasota is more central still.

Its school board chair, Bridget Ziegler, cofounded the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty and helped lay the groundwork for “Don’t Say Gay.” After a uniquely ugly school board race last summer, conservatives flipped the board and promptly forced out the district’s popular superintendent. In early January, when DeSantis appointed a series of right-wing activists to transform Florida’s progressive New College into a “Hillsdale of the South” — emulating the private Christian college in Michigan that has become a trendsetting force on the right — that was in Sarasota too. In February, DeSantis sat alongside Ziegler’s husband and Moms for Liberty’s other cofounders to announce a list of 14 school board members he intends to help oust in 2024—Sarasota’s sole remaining Democrat and LGBTQ+ board member, Tom Edwards, among them. The next month, Ziegler proposed that the board hire a newly created education consultancy group with ties to Hillsdale College for what she later called a “‘WOKE’ Audit.” (Ziegler did not respond to interview requests for this article.)

The dizzying number of attacks has led to staffing and hiring challenges, the cancelation of a class, a budding exodus of liberals from the county, and fears that destroying public education is the ultimate endgame. In January, Ziegler’s husband, Christian — who chairs the Florida Republican Party — tweeted a celebratory declaration: “SARASOTA IS GROUND ZERO FOR CONSERVATIVE EDUCATION.”

It wasn’t hyperbole, said Moricz. “We say that Sarasota is Florida’s underground lab, and we’re its non-consenting lab rats.”

For as long as Florida has been grading schools and school districts — a late 1990s innovation that helped spark the “school reform” movement — Sarasota, with its 62 schools and nearly 43,000 students, has enjoyed an “A” rating. Perched on the Gulf Coast just south of Tampa, the county’s mix of powder-soft beaches and high-culture amenities — including an opera house, ballet and museums — have made it a destination for vacationers and retirees. And that influx has made Sarasota one of the richest counties in the state.

Since many of those retirees, dating back to the 1950s, have been white Midwestern transplants, it’s also made Sarasota a Republican stronghold and top fundraising destination for would-be presidential candidates. Both the last and current chairs of the state GOP — first State Senator Joe Gruters and now Christian Ziegler — live in the county. Sarasota arguably launched Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, thanks to Gruters’s early support. These days, though, Sarasota isn’t just conservative, but at the leading edge of Florida’s turn to the hard right.

Partly that’s thanks to the Zieglers, who have become one of Florida’s premier power couples, with close ties to both Trump world and the DeSantis administration and a trio of daughters enrolled in local private schools. As founder of the digital marketing company Microtargeted Media, Christian did hundreds of thousands of dollars of work for pro-Trump PACs in 2021, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. After being elected state GOP chair this February, he announced his goal was “to crush these leftist in-state Democrats” so thoroughly that “no Democrat considers running for office.” Although Bridget stepped down from Moms for Liberty shortly after its founding, she subsequently helped draftFlorida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, which helped pave the way for DeSantis’s 2021 ban on mask mandates and ultimately last year’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. In 2022, the right-wing Leadership Institute hired her as director of school board programs, and built a 6,000-square-foot headquarters in Sarasota to serve as a national hub for conservative education activism. This winter, DeSantis also appointed her to a new board designed to punish the Disney Company for criticizing his anti-LGBTQ laws….

Last year, when Ziegler was up for reelection and two other board members were terming out, she ran as a unified slate with former school resource officer Tim Enos and retired district employee Robyn Marinelli. The candidates drew support from both DeSantis’s administration — which unprecedentedly endorseddozens of school board candidates across the state — and local members of the far-right. A PAC partially funded by The Hollow’s owner campaigned for the “ZEM” slate (a shorthand for the candidates’ surnames) by driving a mobile billboard around the county, calling one of their opponents a “LIAR” and “BABY KILLER” because she’d once worked for Planned Parenthood. Proud Boys hoisted ZEM signs on county streets and a mailer was sent out, castigating the liberal candidates as “BLM/PSL [Party of Socialism and Liberation]/ANTIFA RIOTERS, PLANNED PARENTHOOD BABY KILLERS, [who] WANT GROOMING AND PORNOGRAPHY IN OUR SCHOOLS.” (Enos and Marinelli did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

Open the link and read all of the article. It is a devastating article about the takeover of the school board by hateful extremists whose tools are fear and divisiveness.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Gender, Injustice, Lies, Parent Groups, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Safety, Shame, Students

NPE Releases New Report about Christian Nationalist Charter Schools, Funded with Taxes

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2023 //
16

The Network for Public Education released a new report today that should concern everyone who cares about public schools and the use of public resources. The report shows that a growing segment of the charter industry is controlled by Christian nationalists, who indoctrinate their students, using taxpayer dollars.

Contact: Carol Burris

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

(646) 678-4477

NEW REPORT DOCUMENTS HOW FAR-RIGHT CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE FUELING THE CULTURE WARS

Right-wing Republicans involved in the creation and governance of charter schools

American taxpayers across the country are funding the recent explosion of growth in far-right, Christian nationalist charter schools, including those affiliated with Hillsdale College, according to a new report, A Sharp Right Turn: A New Breed of Charter Schools Delivers the Conservative Agenda, released by the Network for Public Education (NPE) today.

NPE identified hundreds of charter schools, predominantly in red states, that use the classical brand or other conservative clues in marketing to attract white Christian families. From featured religious music videos to statements that claim they offer a faith-friendly environment, these charter schools are opening at an accelerated rate, with at least 66 schools in the pipeline to open by 2024. While some of these schools, such as the Roger Bacon Academies, are long-standing, nearly half of the schools we identified opened after the inauguration of Donald Trump–representing a 90% increase.

The report exposes how right-wing Republican politicians, including Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida and failed Colorado gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, have embroiled themselves in creating and governing these schools, with some benefiting financially. In fact, NPE found that right-wing charters are nearly twice as likely to be run by for-profit management companies than the entire charter sector.

According to NPE Executive Director Carol Burris, who co-authored the report with journalist Karen Francisco, “Sectarian extremists and the radical right are capitalizing on tragically loose controls and oversight in the charter school sector to create schools that seek to turn back the clock on civil rights and education progress. These schools teach their own brand of CRT–Christian Right Theory–capitalizing on and fueling the culture wars. As a taxpayer, I am appalled that my tax dollars are seeding such schools.”

Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter School Programs (CSP) has funneled more than one hundred million dollars to begin or expand right-wing charter schools.

NPE President and education historian Diane Ravitch commented, “Few doubt that the religious right has decided to stake its claim on the next generation of hearts and minds with its unrelenting push for vouchers and book and curricular bans. This report exposes the lesser-known third part of the strategy—the proliferation of right-wing charter schools. It should be a wake-up call to those with progressive ideals who have embraced charter schools. A movement you support is now taking a sharp turn right to destroy the values you cherish.”

To learn more about the rapid growth of right-wing charter schools and their connections with right-wing politicians and the religious right, you can read the full report here.

The Network for Public Education is a national advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen public schools for current and future generations of students.

###

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Lies, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Separation of church and state, U.S. Department of Education

Free Kevin McCarthy!

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2023 //
62

As everyone, I hope, remembers, Kevin McCarthy wanted to be Speaker of the House. He wanted it so badly that he had to wheel and deal to get the votes he needed from the Republican Caucus. Even though the Caucus had a slim majority, the most rightwing members withheld their votes, denying him victory. Ultimately, the so-called Freedom Caucus was able to deny him what he wanted until he made multiple concessions, like putting its members on important committees and agreeing that he could be ousted by a simple majority vote. To win the Speakership on the 15th round of balloting, he had to agree to their demands.

Now his hands are tied in the debt negotiations with President Biden because the Freedom Caucus wants deep budget cuts and no compromise. Basically, everything but defense, Social Security and Medicare would be slashed by some 22%, and Biden’s efforts to address climate change would be gutted.

The Freedom Caucus doesn’t care if the federal government defaults on its debts. The public doesn’t follow details closely, and it would likely blame Biden, because he is President.

Kevin McCarthy needs a way to escape the chokehold of the Freedom Caucus so he can negotiate a compromise.

Here’s a plan to free him. The number of Republicans who are aligned with the Freedom Caucus is between 20-50 (they don’t publicize their numbers). That’s how many votes McCarthy needs to hold on to his job.

Why don’t Democrats offer him enough votes so he doesn’t need the Freedom Caucus? Since the Democrats can never win the Speakership in this session, why shouldn’t they all vote for McCarthy in exchange for his agreement to negotiate to raise the debt ceiling? Why shouldn’t he win bipartisan support for doing the right thing?

The Democrats have it within their power to free McCarthy from the extremists in his party who have no qualms about crashing the world economy.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Budget Cuts, Courage, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Extremism, Politics, Republicans

Michael Hiltzik on the Ron and Elon Show

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2023 //
32

Michael Hiltzik, columnist for the Los Angeles reviewed the debut of Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign on Twitter, accompanied by Elon Musk. DeSantis boasted about the glory of debate and free speech, which he has done his best to stifle in Florida. And he adamantly denied that there was any book banning in his state, despite the fact that PEN America says that Florida is number two in the most books banned, behind Texas. The guy rules Florida with an iron hand, suppressing the teaching of history he doesn’t like, demonizing drag queens and anything LGBT, and encouraging vigilante censorship.

Column: Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk give us a preview of the chaos of a DeSantis presidency

The SpaceX Starship

Elon Musk hosted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Twitter for DeSantis’ announcement of his presidential candidacy. It went about as well as the April 20 launch of a rocket by Musk’s SpaceX, which ended in an explosion that destroyed the spacecraft.

(Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)

BY MICHAEL HILTZIK

I was taking my customary siesta Wednesday afternoon when I was jolted awake by the sound of a truck straining to go uphill. Come to discover that I had my computer tuned to Elon Musk’s Twitter, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was struggling to get out the official announcement of his candidacy for president.

The noise turned out to be Musk trying to get the thing to work in real time, amid feedback, weird musical interludes and long stretches of silence. Scheduled to start at 3 p.m. Pacific time, it finally got going on Twitter Spaces, an audio-only application on the platform, about 18 minutes late. I listened, so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

As he struggled to resolve repeated glitches in Twitter Spaces, Musk and the moderator, a Musk acolyte named David Sacks, kept trying to assert that the technical screw-up was, in fact, a triumph brought about by the large audience. (Sacks claimed that more than 300,000 users had logged in.) “We are melting the servers, which is a good sign,” Sacks said early on.

This reminded many listeners of the claim by SpaceX, another Musk venture, that its April 20 launch of a prototype rocket, which ended with the vehicle exploding in flight four minutes after lift-off, was a success. Never mind that the launch destroyed the launchpad, showered a neighboring community with debris and prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to mount a major investigation.

Once it got underway, the Twitter event unfolded as a love fest between DeSantis and Musk. The general theme was what my mother used to describe as “I like me, who do you like?”

Musk and DeSantis praised each other for their dedication to free speech, and Sacks brought on several right-wing sophists to add their voices. They included Jay Bhattacharya, one of the drafters of the Great Barrington Declaration, which, as I reported this week, advocated letting the COVID virus run rampant through the population in quest of the elusive goal of “herd immunity” — at the cost (thus far) of more than 1.13 million American lives.

Another was Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), whose claim to fame on a national scale was issuing a Christmas tweet in 2021 showing himself, his wife and their five kids brandishing assault weapons. “Santa, pls bring ammo,” the tweet read. (In December 2021, there were 39 mass shootings in the U.S., taking 36 lives and wounding 160.)

DeSantis said Florida was safer than blue-state cities, where “you got kids more likely to get shot than to receive a first-class education.” A reminder: One of the worst school shootings in American history took place in Parkland, Fla., in February 2018, when 17 people were killed and 17 injured. In April, DeSantis signed a law allowing Floridians to carry guns without a permit.

It would be wrong to say there weren’t some lighthearted moments during the Twitter event. Unfortunately for DeSantis, the best joke came from President Biden: While Musk was struggling to get the event launched, Biden posted a tweet that read, “This link works,” pointing to a fund-raising site for the Biden-Harris campaign.

If you were looking for policy prescriptions from the freshly minted candidate, you didn’t hear anything new. Put it this way: If you were at a party where you had to down a shot of whiskey every time DeSantis uttered the word “woke,” you were reduced to insensibility within ten or twenty minutes. If the drinking game included a shot when DeSantis took a shot at “the legacy media,” you may have needed to get your stomach pumped.

Other than that, it was a festival of cynical lies and rank hypocrisies uttered by DeSantis.

He spoke up for free speech and open debate, for instance. “People should be exposed to different viewpoints,” he said. “You can’t have a free society unless we have the freedom to debate the most important issues that are affecting our civilization.”

This is the guy who has waged a ferocious battle with Walt Disney Co. because Disney had spoken out against his “Don’t Say Gay” law, which stifles the teaching of gender issues in the schools.

When Sacks primed him with a question about the fight with Disney, DeSantis replied, “We believe jamming gender ideology in elementary school is wrong; Disney obviously supported injecting gender ideology in elementary school.” He added that Disney’s “corporate culture had really been outed as trying to inject matters of sex into the programming for the youth.” One doesn’t have to be a fan of Disney to see that as fatuous claptrap.

DeSantis also dismissed accusations that Florida is a hotbed of book-banning as “a hoax.” All his administration has done, he said, has been “to empower parents with the ability to review the curriculum, to know what books are being used in school.” That’s one way of looking at it.

The right way is to observe that he’s empowered a tiny cadre of reactionary activists to force books they don’t like off the shelves of Florida schools. As the Washington Post reported Wednesday, a majority of the complaints about schoolbooks nationwide have come from just 11 complainants. Florida ranks second among the states in the number of schoolbook challenges, after Texas.

By the way, one of the Republican toadies DeSantis appointed to the board created to oversee Disney’s development district (as part of his retaliation against the company) is Bridget Ziegler, co-founder of the right-wing censorship-happy organization Moms for Liberty.

When Bhattacharya came online, DeSantis took the opportunity to boast about his success against the COVID pandemic. The truth is that Florida’s record is one of abject, lethal failure. Florida’s COVID death rate of 411 per 100,000 population is the 10th worst in the nation. DeSantis has appointed Bhattacharya to a state panel investigating federal COVID policy.

DeSantis claimed to have based his COVID policies on his determination to “look at the data…. There was a concerted effort to try to stifle dissent.” This can only be interpreted as some kind of gag. DeSantis installed a COVID crackpot, Joseph Ladapo, as Florida’s surgeon general.

Ladapo has promoted useless anti-COVID nostrums such as ivermectin, and counseled against the COVID vaccines. “Looking at the data”? As the Tampa Bay Times has reported, based on official state documents, Ladapo deliberately removed data from an official state report on the vaccines that contradicted his claim that the vaccines were unsafe for young men; in fact, studies show that the vaccines are far safer for them than being infected by the virus.

The event ended with a paean by Musk and DeSantis to cryptocurrency, which is tantamount to enticing innocent small investors into immolating their nest eggs in a scam.

“We should do it again,” DeSantis said in closing the feed. “We’ll make sure that we come back and do it again. This is a great platform.”

We shall see. The next DeSantis appearance on Twitter could be just as buggy, or worse. All that we can be sure of is that whatever happens, Elon Musk will deem it a great success.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Ethics, Failure, Florida, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Politics, Republicans

Texas: Civics Education Gutted by Law Banning Student Interaction with Elected Officials

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2023 //
31

Civics education in Texas has been turned into textbook study by a 2021 law that bans student interaction with elected officials. Apparently, the Republicans who control state government want to keep students in the dark about getting involved in civic action. Participation is a feature of civic education, but it’s illegal in the Lone Star State.

The Guardian reports:

The defining experience of Jordan Zamora-Garcia’s high school career – a hands-on group project in civics class that spurred a new city ordinance in his Austin suburb – would now violate Texas law.

Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.Being the only one leaves a mark: a Black mother on the long shadow of school segregation

Tucked into page 8 is a stipulation outlawing all assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local officials – short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.

Zamora-Garcia’s 2017 project to add student advisers to the city council, and others like it involving research and meetings with elected representatives, would stand in direct violation.Since 2021, 18 states have passed laws restricting teachings on race and gender. But Texas is the only one nationwide to suppress students’ interactions with elected officials in class projects, according to researchers at the free expression advocacy group Pen America.

Categories Civics, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Ignorance, Injustice, Politics, Republicans, Texas

Mercedes Schneider: DeSantis Better Build More Prisons in Florida

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2023 //
22

Mercedes Schneider points out that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis believes he can win over the Republican base by turning stuff he doesn’t like into felonies. With so many new laws on the books that carry criminal penalties, Florida will need more prison cells.

Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and the Republican supermajority in the Florida House and Senate are passing incredibly extreme, right-wing legislation, which will surely help DeSantis to curry favor with an extreme, right-wing Republican base in order for DeSantis to become Republican nominee for president in 2024….

Imposing felonies seems to be the legislative way in Florida of late; as a result of a new law in January 2023, the state’s teachers, librarians, and other school officials are packing up library books for fear of being charged with a third-degree felony for allowing the public access to non-government-approved books. But freedomand liberty.

The abortion ban cited above imposes possible third-degree felonies for any medical professional who assists, say, a woman who discovers at 10 weeks that her fetus has no skull. According to DeSantis’ law, since this woman’s life is not in danger, she should (must!) carry the pregnancy to term and give birth to a child without a skull (a child with a 5 percent chance of living one full week and no more).

Surely such cruelty is not good for any forthcoming DeSantis-as-Prez campaign.

A man who sneaks into town to sign such a bill into law under cover of darkness surely knows as much….

So, here’s the rub:

In order to get the Republican nomination, DeSantis needs all of this punitive, “felony” legislation. However, in order to win the presidential election, such fascist extremism is DOA.

Republican megadonors are noticing DeSantis’ extremism.

On April 15, 2023, the Financial Times published an article, entitled, “Top Republican Donor Sours on Florida Governor’s Stance on Social Issues.” From the article:

Top Republican donor Thomas Peterffy [worth $26B] is halting plans to help finance the US presidential bid of Florida governor Ron DeSantis due to his extreme positions on social issues. 

“I have put myself on hold,” the billionaire told the Financial Times. 

“Because of his stance on abortion and book banning . . . myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.” …

In January, Peterffy told the FT that he was a fan of DeSantis and was “looking forward” to backing a presidential bid by the governor.

But now, he says: “I am more reluctant to back him. We are waiting to see who among the primary candidates is most likely to be able to win the general, and then put all of our firepower behind them.”

Ahh, the DeSantis quandary: How to sell out to the base and also win the general election?

Might be a good idea to sign into law Florida legislation that does not include the words, “third-degree felony.”

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Politics

Who Is Putting Up the Big Money Behind Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
14

Inside Philanthropy reported on the major funding behind the push for vouchers.

Vouchers are not popular.

There have been nearly two dozen state referenda about vouchers. Vouchers have always lost, usually by large margins.

State legislatures have ignored the voice of the people and passed voucher legislation despite the public vote against them. Vouchers were rejected in Utah in 2007. Vouchers were rejected in Florida in 2012. Vouchers were rejected in Arizona in 2018. Yet the legislators in these states passed sweeping voucher laws, benefitting home schoolers and students already attending private schools.

Why?

There is a lot of money behind the voucher “movement.” The only thing moving in this “movement” is millions of dollars from rightwing billionaires into the pockets of Republican politicians.

All the usual rightwing suspects are pumping big money into the push for vouchers. Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Bradley Foundation.

Connie Matthiessen of Inside Philanthropy writes:

Who is funding the push for school vouchers?

Dark money and disclosure rules make it difficult to pinpoint the funders that support vouchers or how much they are spending on these efforts. But what we do know is that a lot of the typical channels of conservative-leaning philanthropy are funding the organizations that support vouchers.

One reason it’s so hard to track is that a lot of that money is going through donor-advised funds, which don’t have to identify which individual DAF holders are making specific grants. The conservative DAF DonorsTrust, for example, and its affiliated Donors Capital Fund have been moving money to groups that support vouchers. As my colleague Philip Rojc reported in 2021, “Since its founding, DonorsTrust has given out over $1.5 billion. In addition to the sheer volume of money, a large proportion of DonorsTrust’s grantees operate in the policy arena, magnifying the impact of this funding on the public sphere.” It also raked in over $1 billion that year, according to Politico.

DonorsTrust grantees include voucher advocates like the Heritage Foundation, the American Federation for Children, which was created by Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy Devos, as well as the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. The Cardinal Institute, which is supporting education savings accounts in West Virginia, is also a grantee.

We do know some of the non-DAF funders that are supporting the voucher movement, and a few names come up repeatedly. One of these philanthropies is the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a long-running conservative funder that has had a major influence in Wisconsin politics and also helped bankroll efforts to discredit the 2020 election results, as Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker….

The Bradley Foundation funds the Wisconsin Center for Law and Liberty, which supports education vouchers through its Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund. The Bradley Impact Fund includes among its grantees the Badger Institute, a conservative Wisconsin think tank that is advocating for the expansion of the privatization of the state’s public education system, as the Wisconsin Examiner reported. According to its 2021 grants list, the foundation has also supported Ohio-based Buckeye Institute and the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, which are both pushing voucher-type movements in their respective states.

DeVos herself is another major voucher backer, and has supported efforts in her home state of Michigan and beyond. She is involved with a number of organizations, including the American Federation for Children, which she chaired and helped found. That organization and its affiliates — the American Federation for Children Action Fund (a 527 group that supports candidates) and the 501(c)(3) American Federation for Children Growth Fund — have promoted education vouchers for years, including in Washington, D.C., as the Washington Post reported in 2017. More recently, it backed efforts to push ESA legislation in Idaho, according to a report in the Idaho Capital Sun (Republican state legislators just rejected a voucher bill there). The organization has also been active in privatization efforts in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly; and in Nebraska, the Nebraska Examiner reports that DeVos and her husband provided most of the dollars identified as funding from the American Federation for Children.

DeVos has worked hard to influence education policy in her home state of Michigan, with some success, but so far, has failed to establish a voucher program there. Most recently, in November, voters overwhelmingly opposed a school voucher plan she helped fund, as Chalkbeat reported. Devos and her family gave $6.3 million in support of the ballot proposal.

The State Policy Network also played a role in the pro-voucher campaign in Idaho, according to the Idaho Capitol Sun report. That organization, which oversees a coalition of state-based conservative think tanks, is backed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Charles Koch, according to a report by Documented, and has also received funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, according to Jane Mayer’s reporting. In an opinion piece for Washington Examiner, Chantal Lovell, the State Policy Network’s director of policy advancement, credited her group for expansion of education savings accounts across the country.

A number of organizations that Charles Koch has funded over the years have played a role in the voucher movement. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a membership organization of right-leaning state legislators, promotes education vouchers, for example. ALEC has received support from Charles Koch, Donors Trust and the Bradley Foundation. ALEC-affiliated state legislators have spearheaded the voucher movement in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly. The libertarian Cato Institute, which Charles Koch helped create, according to Mayer, supports a form of school voucher called Scholarship Tax Credits.

Open the link and read the article to learn who else is funding the voucher putsch. You may surprised, as I was, to learn that the Gates Foundation gave $1 million to the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization that supports vouchers and opposes public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Politics, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

New Hampshire: Dark Money Undermines Democracy

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2023 //
9

Garry Rayno writes in InsideNH about the dramatic change in the legislature’s agenda. Instead of dealing with the issues that affect people’s lives, legislators are now grappling with the same fake issues funded in many other states by Dark Money: vouchers, abortion, vaccines, guns, “parental rights.”

Rayno writes:

A quick look at the House and Senate calendars for this week will convince even those with casual political interests that the culture wars have come to New Hampshire.

Lawmakers will spend hours debating the war on public education, parental rights, abortion rights, voting rights, vaccines and medical care, firearms, drugs and governmental power to name about half the debates to grace Representatives Hall and the Senate Chamber.

Not that long ago, these more global issues were not front and center in every session of the General Court.

Instead it was the state’s support for institutions like nursing homes and higher education, reducing the uncompensated care for hospitals, tax credits to attract businesses and yes how the state funds education.

It was not about furries and cat litter boxes, drag shows and grooming, or face masks and lockdowns.

How did the state get from dealing with its own issues to making New Hampshire deal with the same issues as Texas or Florida or any of the other states undergoing the same forced “rehabilitations.” [Emphasis added]

It is easy to blame social media for the universalization of issues and concerns, but it is just the vehicle. What has caused the manipulation of this country’s consciousness is the information or misinformation that has been spread over the electronic infrastructure.

Very sophisticated networks are doing damage to this country that could not have happened in a war or limited military conflict.

During the Vietnam War the conflict was often described as a war for the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people.

And now the war for the hearts and minds has come home 50 years later.

The polarization between red and blue and the resulting cultural wars intended to energize “the base,” has created a country with little use for compromise and that is apparent in the New Hampshire legislature as well.

Much of what has been passed in the last three years is unpopular, some very unpopular with the general public if you read the polls, but lawmakers who push these agendas or proposals that serve a small portion of the state continue to be elected.

In New Hampshire it is easy to see how Republicans gerrymandered the Senate and Executive Council and to some extent the House, to have control of all three although Democratic candidates received more votes than Republican candidates in all three bodies.

The state has an all Democratic Congressional delegation, and until Gov. Chris Sununu won in 2016, controlled the governor’s office for 16 of the previous 18 years.

New Hampshire is truly a purple state but you would not know that looking at the legislation approved and proposed in the last three years by the House and Senate.

The public has not given the lawmakers a mandate to turn New Hampshire into a Libertarian Shangri-La but that is what is happening.

Money is being drained out of the public school system, taxes are cut and some eliminated like the interest and dividends tax which benefits the wealthy not the poor, regulations are eliminated, and personal freedoms are emphasized to the detriment of a safe society.

The one thing that has really not worked out “as planned” for the Libertarians is Gov. Chris Sununu’s power grab of federal money that he used to concentrate power in the executive branch.

And ironically it is the flow of money into politics that has driven what is happening in New Hampshire, and other states like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Florida and in the Midwest.

Extreme school voucher programs, attacks on reproductive rights and the gay and transgender communities, all similar if not identical in legislation that is intended to reduce the power of government, its reach and return to a time that never was in our lifetimes, but did exist before the Civil War or at least before Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in January 2010 struck down restrictions on corporate contributions saying they violated First Amendment rights.

It not only gave corporations the same rights as citizens it opened the floodgates for corporate money into campaigns and allowed them to influence elections like they never had before.

It also allowed that corporate money to operate in the dark money universe where super PACs do not disclose where the money comes from.

The decision essentially took government out of the hands of voters and put it into the hands of the mega donors.

And it trickled down to New Hampshire as well.

In each of the last two elections about $1 million was spent on House seats alone, while the Senate PACs received about an equal amount with spending on a senate seat often over $100,000 and some over $200,000.

That is a lot of money for a position that pays $100 a year and you know whoever gave big money will expect a return.

Please open the link and finish reading this important and perceptive article. It is an incisive analysis of the rightwing attack on local democracy.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Citizenship, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Lies, New Hampshire, Politics, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Carol Burris Speaks About the Whacko Texas Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2023 //
5

Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, was invited by the Texas AFT (American Federation of Teachers) to speak about pending voucher legislation.

This is what she said:

I lived in Texas for ten years–not far from here in a little town called Martindale when my husband was a Southwest Texas State University student. Then we moved to Houston, where two of our three daughters were born.

The Texas that I remember was a conservative state. Taxpayers didn’t like footing the bill for anything they did not need to.

So now I am back in Texas 40 years later, and I am wondering where all the conservatives have gone. Because all of the proposed voucher bills to give taxpayer money for private schools and homeschools are multi-billion dollar entitlementprograms that would make socialists blush.

Now, for my part, I like most entitlement programs like the GI Bill that members of our military earn or food stamps because no one in America should go hungry.

But these voucher bills are giveaways to people to pay for private schools even though there is a perfectly good public school just down the road.

But that good neighborhood public school, where most Texans send their children, will disappear. Because you can have a multi-billion dollar voucher program or well-funded public schools, but you can’t have both.

Let’s look at some of the voucher bills being pushed in Texas right now. These bills were not written by Texans for Texas. I read voucher bills. Your bills are all pretty much the same bills I see being proposed in other states. Earlier today, Corey DeAngelis, who works for Betsy De Vos, was rallying a small crowd at the capitol. Corey, bless his heart, is the Where’s Waldo of the voucher world. If there is a voucher bill, Corey will show up to sing its praises. But he will never tell you what it will cost. So I will.

Texas Senator Middleton proposed a voucher bill. Mr. Middleton’s voucher would give parents $10,000 a year and create a new taxpayer-funded bureaucracy to dole out the money.

Currently, in Texas, there are 309,000 private school students and 750,000 homeschooled students. There are 9.9 million Texas households. I did the math. If all private school and homeschool families take that $10,000, this voucher system will cost ten billion dollars–that is over $1,000 a household a year.

The Lt Governor is pushing a more modest voucher bill that would give $8,000 a year to families. Do you feel much better knowing that every Texas household could fund vouchers at over 800 dollars a year?

If one of these bills passes, Texas will fund a public school system, a charter school system, and a voucher school system. Something has to give. Because unless Governor Abbott says he will pay for billions of dollars of vouchers by raising taxes, that money is coming out of your public schools.

At the Network for Public Education, we have been studying voucher programs for years and know a few things about them.

First, they always grow. Every program that begins with restrictions grows each year.

Arizona began with special education students. Now it has a universal ESA voucher program.

Indiana insisted that students try public schools first. It was limited to low-income students. Now 77% of all Indiana families are eligible and the legislature is now trying to raise the income cap to make the wealthiest Indiana families eligible.

The second thing we know is that vouchers always cost a lot more than politicians say. When New Hampshire’s program was passed, it was estimated to cost about $3 million in year two. The actual cost came in at $22.7 million, a cost increase of 756%. In Arizona, they are still trying to figure out how to pay for this year’s vouchers that came in way over budget at a half billion dollars.

Third, most of the money goes to families that were perfectly willing and able to pay for a private school anyway. That percentage in most states is between 75% and 80%. The vast majority of voucher recipients are families whose children are already enrolled in private schools.

And if one of these bills passes, you will also see all of the waste and sketchy spending we have seen in other states—taxpayer funds used for horseback riding lessons, trampolines, big screen TVs, and items being bought only to be returned for a store gift card. And Texas politicians know it! Senate Bill 8 tells parents they cannot sell the items they buy with vouchers for a year.

When our daughters attended public schools, they had to return their books at the end of the year. With these voucher programs, you get taxpayer money to buy books and other items, sell them, and pocket the cash.

Finally, let’s talk about the more important cost that goes beyond financial concerns.

The Texas I remember was proud of its diversity. It embraced it. Whether you were a Baptist or a Catholic, Chicano, Black or white, a Texas identity glued everyone together. It formed the basis of a civil democracy.

Understanding others and tolerating different points of view cannot be learned by reading books; you learn empathy and tolerancethrough shared life experiences with those who are different fromyou. And that starts in public schools where every child—Christian, Jewish, gay, straight, kids with disabilities all have a place. Read Senate Bill 8. It is an invitation to state-funded discrimination. Do not publicly fund a private school system that gets to sort and select children and shut those it does not want out.

Go with what you know and want to conserve. Texas public schools made Texans great.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Community Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Hoax, Politics, Privatization, Texas

GOP Launches Anti-Trans Bill in House

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2023 //
40

Most of us probably didn’t realize that the controversy over transgender athletes was a matter deserving Congressional action.

Should trans women be allowed to compete in women’s sports? Should trans men be allowed to compete in men’s sports? I assumed that the governing bodies of the sports would settle the matter.

But Republicans believe it is necessary to pass a federal law. They know the Senate won’t pass whatever law they write, so this is a symbolic gesture to their base, some of whom are terrified of trans people.

SPORTS BILL ADVANCES FOR FIRST TIME —Congressional Republicans are the closest they’ve ever been to passing legislation that would prohibit transgender women and girls from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity.

— The bill — H.R. 734 (118), the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023 — was introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) several times, but was taken up by the House Education and Workforce Committee for the first time last week in a 16-hour markup. It would amend Title IX, the federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, to define sex as based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.

— The measure was recommended by the committee in a vote on party lines and is now primed for a vote on the House floor. While H.R. 5 (118), the Parents Bill of Rights Act, cleared the committee the same day and is slated for a vote in two weeks, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office said they haven’t made any announcements on when they will take up the sports bill for a vote. House Republicans are expected to pass the bill with their slim majority, but it’s not likely that the Democrat-controlled Senate will allow the bill to move.

— The legislation will be a way for the GOP to force Democrats to go on record with their support for transgender students to play sports, a key part of the GOP’s 2022 midterm policy agenda. It is also a direct rebuke of the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX rule, which seeks to codify protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Education Department is expected to unveil its final rule in May, though it said it would make a separate rule for sports.

Categories Gender, Politics, Republicans
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »