Archives for category: Propaganda
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Please Watch Ken Burns’ “The U.S. and the Holocaust”

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2022 //
116

I watched the third episode of the latest Ken Burns’ documentary, and I understand why he said it is the most important documentary he ever made.

As history, it is powerful. And it is even more powerful because there are so many echoes of present events in our own country.

In three episodes, we see one of the most cultured countries in the world fall under the spell of a charismatic madman. We see the German people march to his tune, cheer him, fall in line, then become brutes as they carry out his mission to exterminate the Jews of Europe and to capture the Continent.

We see heroic Americans trying to rescue desperate refugees. And we meet the anti-Semites in the State Department who wanted to keep refugees out and leave them to their fate. and we are reminded again and again that the American public did not want the Jewish refugees.

We learn about the indifference and decided anti-Semitism in other countries, including our own. We learn about Hitler’s admiration for our brutal treatment of indigenous peoples, killing them and then isolating them on reservations. Hitler also admired our harsh treatment and segregation of Black people.

Inevitably, in the third episode, there are graphic videos of the death camps. There are piles of naked bodies. And there are emaciated men and women who survived, barely, their eyes empty.

In the closing minutes, the parallels to the present are presented. Scenes of racism, Young white men in Charlottesville chanting “The Jews will not replace us.” The mob storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, one of them wearing a T-shirt saying “Camp Auschwitz.” Having just witnessed scenes from the death camps, the T-shirt was not just tasteless but horrifying.

This series should be shown to high school students in every school in the U.S.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Fascism, History, International, Propaganda

Carol Burris: DeVos Blames Teachers’ Unions for “Learning Loss” With Malice But Without Evidence

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2022 //
15

Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education. She recently received a press release from Betsy DeVos’s organization, the ironically-named American Federation for Children, asserting that the drop in test scores during the pandemic was the fault of the unions. The purpose of the “American Federation for Children” is to promote vouchers, especially for religious schools, and it is always eager to criticize public schools and teachers’ unions. AFC much prefers religious schools where children are indoctrinated without apology and where discrimination against unwanted children is common. Maybe they should change their name to the American Federation for Some Children (who share our religious views).

Burris writes:


Walter Blanks, the Press Secretary of the American Federation for Children, got on the rickety old soapbox of Betsy De Vos to blame teacher unions for the recent drop in student performance on NAEP. Moms for Liberty then jumped on calling for parents to “fire teacher unions.”

Did children suffer a decline in learning progress during the pandemic? Of course.  Anyone who has ever taught in a school, unlike Mr. Blanks, could have predicted a drop.

As a former teacher and principal, I know that the relationship between a student and teacher and the relationship among students is critical for learning. And I also remember all those students who, without my cajoling and watchful eye, would have been content to put their heads down or look out the window instead of at their books. That’s kids. The warm smile directed at them, the subtle tap on the desk, you can’t do that over the internet.

But are unions the culprit for the NAEP score drop? There is no evidence of that. 

First, if union influence in keeping remote learning were to blame, we would expect to see a larger drop in city scores than suburban scores. Suburban schools, with or without unions, were far more likely to open. However, suburban scores dropped significantly more in Reading for both low and high achievers than for city students, whose scores barely budged. In Math, the point drop for high achievers was the same; suburban low achievers lost more ground than their counterparts in cities. 

Second, we would expect regional differences depending on the influence of unions.

But there is only one point difference in the scores’ drops between the union-heavy northeast and the right-to-work dominated south. And western states, where unions are prevalent in the most populous states, saw much smaller score drops than the south.  

Not content to blame unions in general, Walter Blanks singles out Randi Weingarten as a national villain. Ms. Weingarten, a woman and strong leader, married to Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, has become a prime target for the misogynist right. But the facts do not bear out his accusations. Even as Weingarten was listening to her members concerned with their own family and student health, she was quietly working behind the scenes to get schools safely opened.

As a New York City public school grandma, I know it. And I am thankful for those efforts. My granddaughter returned to in-person learning in the fall of 2020 as New York City public schools opened. There were bumps and starts, but they opened. Even so, the majority of NYC parents still kept their children remote. 

Will Mr. Blanks blame those parents and hundreds of thousands like them who were fearful of sending their children back to school? 

Covid 19 was a national tragedy. Over one million Americans died horrible deaths.  We will feel the pain and ramifications for years to come. And yes, our children deserve all our efforts to repair the academic and emotional damage of the pandemic. But using that tragedy to push an anti-union agenda does not help repair the damage. It continues to enflame the anger of parents still reeling from the pandemic themselves.

Blanks ends his essay by touting how school choice is the answer. I am scratching my head to reconcile that with the American Federation for Children’s stalwart support for low-quality online virtual schools and homeschools. You can’t blame learning loss on a lack of in-person learning and then support virtual learning solutions. Will AFC now advocate for the closure of online charters and homeschools? Don’t hold your breath. 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Education Industry, Health, Lies, Privatization, Propaganda, Unions

John Thompson: How the Republican Party Lost Its Soul

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2022 //
17

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, reviews Dana Milbank’s new book about the crackup of the Republican Party. As I have often said, Milbank is my favorite columnist in the Washington Post.

Thompson writes:

Dana Milbank’s The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party is based on his quarter of a century of political reporting. From 1992 to the present the Republicans won the popular vote only once. There were calls for diversity in their party in order to reach more voters, but it went in the opposite direction. In the 1990s, the false and polarizing propaganda of Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Sean Hannity, and Fox News took off, as Newt Gingrich became the key political driver of an ideology that would dismantle legislative norms and institutions.

This piece only has room for a brief overview of the 90s. I assume that readers will see and will be shocked by the cruelty and lies of that decade, and how they foreshadow today’s assaults on democracy.

Milbank starts with the suicide of the Clintons’ aide, Vince Foster. Rush Limbaugh, who called the 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton “the White House dog,” claimed, “Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton.”

The prime donor of Gingrich’s political training organization, the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC) was Mellon Scaife. Scaife then joined with Christopher Ruddy, who would become Donald Trump’s friend and informal advisor, to found Newsmax. They said Vince Foster’s death showed that Bill Clinton “can order people done away with … God there must be 60 people who have died mysteriously.” (By the way, such words didn’t keep Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating or Congressman J.C. Watts from helping to lead GOPAC.)

Brett Kavanaugh, who assisted in Ken Starr’s investigations of Bill Clinton and helped draft the Starr Report, knew as early as 1995 that “I am satisfied that Foster was sufficiently discouraged or depressed to commit suicide.” But he spent two years investigating, thus legitimizing, what Milbank called “all of the ludicrous claims.” In Kavanaugh’s files, that were released two decades later, were 195 pages of articles by Ruddy and Limbaugh’s transcript on the case.

Milbank writes that once Gingrich became Speaker of House in 1995, he “threw the weight of the speakership behind the Foster conspiracy theory.” That year, Ruddy, Scaife and Newsmax, would spread the lies further.

(By 2016, Rep. Pete Olson said that Bill Clinton admitted to A.G. Loretta Lynch that “we killed Vince Foster.” And Trump said the charges that Foster was murdered are “very serious.” And Milbank concluded that Justice Kavanaugh was not the most ideological of the Supreme Court’s majority, but he was the most political.)

Milbank explains how rightwingers encouraged violence. After the Waco tragedy of 1993, G. Gordon Liddy said of the ATF agents, “Kill the son-of-a-bitches.” Sen. Jesse Helms said “Mr. Clinton better watch his guard if he comes down here (North Carolina). He’d better have a bodyguard.”

Moreover, even though the Fish and Wildlife Department didn’t have helicopters, Rep. Helen Chenoweth said they were “sending armed agency officials and helicopters” to enforce regulations and “if they didn’t stop, I will be their “worst nightmare.”

In 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Building killed 168 people; Timothy McVeigh said his terrorist act was designed “to put a check on government abuse of power.” But some rightwingers claimed the bombing “was really a botched plot” by the FBI.

Also, Limbaugh asserted, “President Clinton’s ties to the domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City are tangible.” And Gingrich responded by defending the “genuine fears” of rural America regarding the federal government, and doubled down on repealing of the assault weapons ban.

Milbank goes into detail recounting how Gingrich “changed forever the language of politics.” Gingrich quoted Mao saying, “Politics is war without blood.” And he repeatedly made charges such as the Democrats “‘trash’ America, indict the president and give the benefit of every doubt to Marxist regimes.”

In 1977, a year before Gingrich was first elected, Milbank reports that a Gallup poll found that 40% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress. After 15 years of his “relentless” attacks, that number was down to 18%. Gingrich then undermined congressional norms that encouraged compromise and constructive actions. During his legislative career, committee and sub-committee meetings dropped by nearly half. By 2017, they had dropped by almost 75%. The ability of Presidents to get laws passed was also undermined. Presidents’ legislative victories dropped from 73% of the agenda under Nixon. At the beginning of the Clinton term, he had a victory rate of 87% but by 2016, President Obama’s rate was 13%.

Another pivotal change occurred after the 1996 defeat of Bob Dole. Republican aide Margaret Tutwiler said, “We’re going to have to take on [board] the religious nuts.” A couple of decades later, White evangelicals were only 15% of the US population but about 40% of Trump’s voters.

And with the arrival of Karl Rove’s anti-gay “whisper campaign” against George W. Bush’s opponent, Ann Richards, personal attacks escalated dramatically. Another example of campaign lies was the attack on Sen. John McCain’s mental stability, and the claim he had “fathered an illegitimate black child.” Actually McCain had adopted a daughter from a Bangladesh orphanage.

Although I had been horrified by the behaviors of the rightwing, Milbank’s details provided me a much better understanding of how the views I’ve held allowed me to remain excessively optimistic. I used to believe that it was deindustrialization and the loss of economic opportunity (accelerated by Reagan’s job-killing Supply Side economics) that mostly fed the racism which propelled Trump into the White House. Now I’m convinced by Milbank’s evidence that it was racism – not economics – that spurred Trumpism.

Also, I had misremembered Mitch McConnell’s record in the 1990s. In 1993, McConnell joined Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms in defending the Confederate flag on the Senate floor, saying, “My roots … run deep in the Southern part of the country.” And he stood before a huge Confederate flag at a meeting of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

In 1997, McConnell said in a fundraising letter, “Help to protect our country from a potentially devastating nuclear attack.” And he alleged, Clinton’s White House was “sold for ILLEGAL FOREIGN CASH”

I’m assuming that readers of this blog will quickly understand how the Alt Facts spread by politicians like Gingrich are linked to today’s crises. By 2018, only 16% of Republicans trusted the media over Trump. In 2020, people who said they were “very happy” dropped to 14% compared to the previous low of 29%.

Two years later, the attempted kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer showed how the worsening rhetoric was putting people in danger. In 2019, hate crimes increased by 30%, and over 18 months in 2020 and 2021, the FBI nearly tripled its domestic terrorism caseload. FBI director Christopher Wray said, “The violence in 2020 is unlike what we’ve seen in quite some time.” And who knows what the numbers are in the wake of Trump’s response to the subpoenaing of the Secret documents?

The 25-year rightwing siege and Trumpism has put our democracy at risk. Being from Oklahoma City, I’m increasingly worried about the chances of bloodshed. And I’m doubly concerned after reading The Destructionists.

In 1994, Vice President Al Gore explained, “The Republicans are determined to wreck Congress in order to control it – and then wreck a presidency in order to recapture it.” Now, Milbank concludes. “A quarter century after a truck bomb set by an antigovernment extremist … Republicans have lit a fuse on democracy itself.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Clinton, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, History, Lies, Oklahoma, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans

Peter Greene Explains the Hoax of the “School Choice” Fervor

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2022 //
17

Peter Greene, retired teacher and brilliant writer, explains the real goals of the school choice movement, and how its rhetoric has shifted over the years from “saving children” to destroying public schools.

He writes:

A quick summary of the history, so far, of pro-choice arguments. Because if it seems like they keep shifting, well, there’s a reason.

If you’re old enough, you may remember a time when the argument in favor of school choice was that students needed to be able to escape their failing public school.

There was a period way back when in which the argument was for vouchers, but vouchers tested poorly with the electorate, so choicers threw their weight behind charter schools, with a continued and frequent emphasis on the notion that charter schools were just another type of public school, because generally speaking, people liked and trusted public schools. Charters will just add to a robust public educational ecosystem, they said.

The “public schools are failing” trope (first given some heft in A Nation at Risk, a report commissioned to make exactly that point) needed some back-up, and at just that opportune moment, we got the rise of the Big Standardized Test, a high stakes system that would provide solid data proving that public schools were Failing Our Children.

Then school choice was adopted by folks on the Left and the Right (and by people from the Right pretending to be on the Left) so we had a tag team argument. Students should not have their educational quality determined by their zip codes. The pro-choice argument was two-pronged:

1) Public schools are failing academically (look at these test scores) but unleashing the power of the free market will competitionize them into excellence.

2) Public schools are failing poor and minority students, and in the pursuit of equity, those students should be given a school choicey path out.

This two prong period lasted roughly most of the Obama administration, because the movement benefited from the neo-liberal Democrat support of choice. But it was at times a tense partnership. Free marketeers chafed at the social justice wing’s ideas about regulating choice schools to suck less, and the social justice wing tried hard not to notice that free marketeers didn’t really care that much about how choice affected their children.

And then Obama was out and Hillary tanked and the free marketeers didn’t need the social justice wing any more, and detente was over.

The choice argument was also suffering from another problem. Charter schools weren’t any better than public schools, and voucher systems were maybe even a little worse. Some new arguments were tried out, like “choice gives strivers a chance to get away from those other kids.” Some free marketeers and libertarians started saying more loudly that it didn’t really matter if choice improved outcomes or not–it was a virtue in its own right.

Trump knew nothing about education policy except that backing choice got him support from the Catholic Church. And Betsy DeVos was patiently waiting for the rest of the movement to catch up to where she has been for years.

Her moment was almost coming, but first we had a few years of just replaying the hits– escape failing schools, improve outcomes, let’s push vouchers under some other name, etc.

Then the pandemic hit, leaving local schools to wrestle with the question “How do we navigate this unprecedented crisis” while on the national level, everyone was more focused on “How do we leverage this unprecedented crisis for maximum political benefit.”

To their credit, many choicers initially resisted the call to blame public schools for schools being closed, but that moment passed, someone decided it would be good strategy to blame school closures on the unions, and then people lost their damned minds over masking. When Christopher Rufo decided to elevate critical race theory to the level of a McCarthy-style Red Scare, a whole network of anti-maskers was already in place to spread the word (Moms For Liberty is a fine example of a group that started out anti-mask and quickly pivoted).

The many waves of complaints and controversies may seem large and complex, but they really aren’t. They all connect through one simple idea, the new choicer pitch, summed up in this quote from Rufo speaking at Hillsdale College:To get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a place of universal school distrust.

The current choice pitch is that parents need the power of choice because public schools can’t be trusted. Jay Greene, who I always thought of as intellectually honest, has moved to the heritage foundation and now publishes pieces like “Who will raise children? Their parents or the bureaucratic experts?” He signaled this new approach explicitly with February’s “Time for the school choice movement to embrace the culture war” aka “We can use this current noise to further our cause.” My state of Pennsylvania is facing a viable candidate for governor whose idea is to end property taxes, replace them with nothing, and give every parent a voucher good for half of the current per-pupil spending amount in the state.

Do not be distracted by the arguments about LGBTQ students and trans athletes and teacher gag laws; these all matter, and certainly many hard right folks will be happy if they win these fights, but for the pro choice crowd, the point is that public schools can’t be trusted and we need to scrap the whole system and replace it with vouchers (or, as DeVos called it, “educational freedom”). If the right drags victory out of any of these many erupting pockets of chaos, that’s gravy, but for many choicers, the chaos is the whole point, because it adds to the claims of a failing public system.

The end game, for those on the far right DeVos-style wing is as it has always been–get the government out of education. Take back the schools for religious education. Slash the tax-based funding because that’s just the government stealing our hard-earned dollars to pay for more services for Those Peoples’ Children. And while all that’s happening, if we could break the back of the teachers unions, which just prop up the democratic Party, and, hey–also let some entrepreneurs make a buck selling education flavored products.

At every stage of the choicer evolution, you will find people who sincerely believe their talking point du jour. But at this point, it’s hard not to notice that some choicers will adopt whatever argument will get them closer to the dismantling and privatization of public education.

Like many other movements, the school choice movement has room for both true believers and grifters, but in both cases, the school choice debates are marked by a refusal to talk about what we’re really talking about–changing education from a universally provided public good into a privately owned and operated commodity delivered however and to whomever the market deems worthy.

There’s another paragraph. Open the link and read it.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Extremism, Hoax, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers

Byron James Henry: Trying to Understand the Christian Nationalist Agenda

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2022 //
14

In the previous post, educator Byron James Henry described the election of three Christian nationalists to the board of the Ct-Fair District in Texas. He hoped for the best and hoped they would put the needs of students before their religious agenda. In this post, he describes what they did after their election.

“Something is rotten” in Cy-Fair ISD. Christian Nationalism first reared its ignorant and intolerant head in Cy-Fair ISD at school board meetings during the summer of 2021 when a loud minority of extremists began denouncing the fake threat of Critical Race Theory (CRT). For example, one resident stated that “true Christ followers are horrified to learn how the CRT ideology and BLM have infiltrated many of our schools” and insisted that “things won’t improve until we are more concerned about God’s approval than the approval of the cult of CRT.” Many of the attendees, duped into believing that young white children are being taught to see themselves as “oppressors” and feel ashamed of their race, gave her a standing ovation. It is almost impossible to reason with misinformed, self-righteous people who believe they are engaged in a battle of good vs. evil. In their quest to “save” Cy-Fair ISD students from the “threat” of CRT, these residents helped fuel an extremist movement that threatens the foundational values of the public school system: diversity, toleration, pluralism, equal treatment, and equal opportunity. Note: If you or someone you care about has succumbed to Christian Nationalism, then Christians Against Christian Nationalism can help.

Contrary to the extremist argument that public schools have a liberal bias or indoctrinate children with “woke” ideas, the public school system prepares all children for participation in our diverse, pluralistic society. Christian Nationalists oppose the civic mission of public schools if it means promoting toleration and equality for marginalized groups or affirming religious pluralism and cultural diversity. They want the public schools to promote a conservative Christian worldview that reinforces their own political and religious agenda and ignores the historical legacy of racism and discrimination. In Cy-Fair ISD, three extremist candidates harnessed this Christian Nationalist energy in the November 2021 school board election: Scott Henry, Natalie Blasingame, and Lucas Scanlon.

These board members oppose anything the schools do to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Natalie Blasingame stated on the campaign trail that teachers in Cy-Fair ISD “shouldn’t have to check their faith at the door” and pushing a conservative, Christian agenda in Texas public schools has been her motivation for seeking public office for years. We’ve known since 2015 that Blasingame doesn’t support the separation of church and state, believes that God called her to run for school board to promote Christianity in public schools, and by her own admission stated, “I have no politics but obedience.” Obedience? To what, exactly? The U.S. Constitution? To her interpretation of the Bible? Is Natalie Blasingame, like her donor Steven Hotze, a supporter of Dominion Theology that insists Christians must take over all elements of society, government, and culture to impose a Biblical worldview on everyone? Christian Nationalists are opposed to the idea of a pluralistic, multicultural republic if it means a conservative Christian worldview cannot be imposed on all of society. Should someone with such an extremist agenda be making policy for our public schools?

Alarmed by the rise of political and religious extremism in my community, I founded the Cy-Fair Civic Alliance in November 2021. We started out as a Facebook group and quickly grew to approximately 400 followers in a few weeks. Residents responded to the notion that Cy-Fair ISD needed a non-partisan group that would promote strong, inclusive public schools that serve everyone. The values of diversity, toleration, pluralism, equal treatment, and equal opportunity resonated with the community, and we started organizing on behalf of Cy-Fair ISD students, teachers, and families.

We spoke at school board meetings, wrote emails to the district about important education issues, raised money to award a scholarship to a Cy-Fair ISD graduate who planned to become a teacher, and delivered gifts to all librarians in the district when their professionalism and integrity was being attacked by everyone from Governor Abbott to members of the Texas legislature to the Texas Education Agency. The supporters of the new extremist board members called us, in public at school board meetings, “groomers” for rejecting their calls to pull books off library shelves. They said that we were supporting the “sexualization” of young children and wanted to have “pornography” available in the school libraries. They even created a hateful, anonymous sewer of a blog that somehow manages to combine the stupidity of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the misogyny of Matt Gaetz.

Our non-partisan, grassroots organization always took the high road and remained focused on our mission. Then, to our surprise, a bizarre turn of events took place. Bethany Scanlon, the wife of Cy-Fair ISD trustee Lucas Scanlon, helped create an LLC using our organization’s name and even filed federal trademark paperwork to prevent us from using it. We first learned of the creation of the faux Cy-Fair Civic Alliance when it was announced during the “Citizen Participation” portion of the June 2022 school board meeting. We were, to say the least, a little perplexed that the same crowd of people who had called us “groomers” and constantly denounced our group decided to take our organization’s name! What could possibly be their motivation? Was this supposed to prevent us from doing our activism? And, why of all people, was a school board trustee’s spouse involved in this? What was Christian Nationalist Lady Macbeth up to? A quick glance at the internet revealed that her new organization was a self-described “Conservative Christian group that believes the Bible is the Word of God, Jesus Christ is Lord, and free volunteer service to others is a constructive way to help the community.”

Read on. The takeover of school boards by those who want to destroy public schools is a frightening development.

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Democracy, Disruption, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Texas

Byron James Henry: Slate of Christian Nationalists Win Seats on District Board in Texas

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2022 //
20

Byron James Henry is an educator in Texas. He writes here about a bitter school board election in the Cy-Fair District in Texas, the third largest in the state, where three Christian Nationalists ran a campaign based on fear, lies, and exaggeration and won.

He writes:

What began as a relatively predictable conservative opposition to mask mandates and vaccines morphed into an often-incomprehensible obsession with the “threat” of Critical Race Theory. The parents who initially disrupted school board meetings to question the recommendations of public health experts became consumed by the prospect, always ridiculous and unfounded, that their children were being indoctrinated by progressive and “woke” ideas that all White people are “oppressors” and that they should feel shame and guilt for being White. This notion, that children were being made to feel bad about the color of their skin, became the genesis of a groundswell of opposition to “CRT,” which became the term for anything that discussed concepts of white privilege, systemic racism, or the legacy of white supremacy.

In truth, the analytical framework known as “Critical Race Theory” is not being taught in any K-12 schools, but discussions about privilege and systemic racism had begun to show up, appropriately, in some high school settings within the context of the nation’s collective reckoning with racial injustice after George Floyd’s murder. The propagandists of the GOP saw an opportunity to stoke White insecurity and inflame White resentment toward society’s attempt to wrestle with deep questions about race. They funneled money into a faux grassroots or “AstroTurf” movement against CRT in the hopes that it would inspire higher turnout of conservative voters at the polls. Their campaign of lies, as with previous warnings about the threat of “socialism” or “illegal immigrants” or “Ebola” or “health care death panels,” succeeded. What is somewhat different, and more troubling, about the anti-CRT movement’s success is that it is laced with Christian Nationalism and poses a direct threat to our local schools as the site where the principles and practices of pluralistic, democratic self-government are taught….

Christian Nationalists are opposed to the idea of a pluralistic, multicultural republic if it means a conservative Christian worldview is on par with other world-views in the public sphere. Christian Nationalists want their worldview to be dominant. Christian Nationalists want their religious beliefs to override secular laws. They believe their religious liberty should permit them to discriminate against people and receive exemptions from mandates others are expected to follow. They claim to believe deeply in “choice” when they don’t want to do something, but they believe just as firmly in forced compliance to promote their beliefs. For example, they believe that schools should be forced to teach a mythical version of American history that presents conservative Christians as the nation’s founders, sustainers, and heirs. They believe that a woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will.

Not satisfied, as in the past, to retreat from the public schools to private Christian schools, they are now engaged in a total war with the public-school system. The Texas legislature has passed legislation, HB 3979, preventing teachers from discussing the truth about the role of white supremacy, and how Christians used the Bible to justify it, in the nation’s founding and early history….

Their campaign literature, sent to me by the “Conservative Republicans of Harris County,” declares that, “We must take back the school boards that are controlled by the radical pro-Communist, anti-American leftists who are indoctrinating our children in Critical Race Theory and sexual perversion.” The piece then says, “We can change the direction of public education by electing conservative American Patriots to the school boards.”

The campaign literature then encourages the reader to “sign the Christian Patriot Declaration” at www.crtpac.com, which states, “Stouthearted Christian Patriots must rise up to boldly oppose and defeat the domestic enemy forces of evil, the atheistic pro-Communist Democrats, the despicable baby killers, pornographers, pedophiles, sodomites, transgenders, Antifa, and the BLM that have infiltrated our civil government and threaten to destroy all vestiges of Biblical morality and U.S. Constitutional principles. These domestic enemies are traitors to God and country.” The statement concludes: “Patriots, let’s press this battle to restore our nation to its Christian heritage to its successful conclusion!”

Can American public schools teach honest and truthful history when faced with this onslaught?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Texas

New Hampshire: Libertarians Launch Attack on Public School Funding

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2022 //
7

I was thinking of titling this post “Libertarian Crackpots Take Charge of School Funding in New Hampshire” but decided to bite my tongue.

Garry Rayno, a writer for InDepthNH.org, reports that the Koch-funded plan to defund public schools in New Hampshire is a “success.” Not because most parents want to put their children in private or religious schools, but because the overwhelming majority of students using the new education freedom accounts are already enrolled in nonpublic schools. Thus, public funds are now underwriting private education. At some point, the public schools will shrink to be just one among many choices even though the people of New Hampshire never voted to abandon their community public schools. This is a theft of public dollars for private use.

By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org 

The new education freedom account program is a success judging by the number of students participating in the first year.

More students are expected to participate in the second year and state education officials predict it will continue to grow into the future.

One of the most expansive school choice programs in the country, it was sold as a way for students and parents to find the best educational avenues to fit their student’s individual learning needs.

That would be wonderful and would fulfill the education department’s long-standing goal of individualized student pathways, but that is not what happened for a majority of students.

Instead the program has increased the state’s education spending while few students changed their learning environment.

The vast majority of students — around 85 percent — participating in the first year, did not attend public schools the year before. Instead they were in private or religious schools, or home schooled, or too young for school.

That does not change the learning environment for that 85 percent of students.

What did change under the program was the parents’ financial obligations, which were reduced thanks to the influx of state taxpayers’ money.

Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, a program advocate, told lawmakers the first year of freedom accounts would cost the state’s Education Trust Fund about $300,000 and the second year about $3.2 million. Instead the cost was close to $9 million this year.

Why the increase? Edelblut’s estimates were for students leaving traditional public schools to participate in alternative programs, not for those already in other programs applying for state help to cover the costs of private and religious schools, or home schooling.

Essentially most of the state money flowed through the parents to private and religious schools and for homeschooling costs all previously paid for by the parents or religious institutions.

When the program was first debated this term, the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Assistant’s office estimated the state’s exposure could be as high as $70 million if all the students in private or religious schools applied for grants.

The program provides grants to parents of students who earn no more than 300 percent of the federal poverty level or about $80,000 a year for a family of four.

You only have to qualify once, so if the next year your family makes $125,000, you still qualify and if you double that the next year, you still qualify.

Grants range from about $4,500 to $8,000 per student with the average the first year a little under $5,000 per student.

The money can be spent in any number of ways, for tuition, books and instructional programs, supplies, computers, individual instruction on a musical instrument, etc.

The money to pay for the freedom accounts comes from the Education Trust Fund established more than 20 years ago when the state overhauled its funding system after the Claremont II Supreme Court decision saying the then current system of relying on local property taxes with widely varying rates to pay for public education was unconstitutional because it violated the proportional and reasonable clause of the state constitution.

For most of its early years, the trust fund ran a deficit and state general fund money had to be added to meet the state’s education aid obligations.

In recent years the fund has had a surplus including this biennium. The state budget passed last year estimates a $54.4 million surplus at the end of last fiscal year June 30 and a $21 million surplus at the end of the 2023 fiscal year.

The surplus at the end of last fiscal year is much larger than that as the overall state revenue surplus is more than $400 million, but most of that has already been spent through legislation this year such as the $100 million settlement fund for the children abused at the Youth Detention Center.

The law establishing the freedom accounts has a provision if the education fund does not have enough money to cover the cost of the grants, the needed money will be withdrawn from general fund revenue without any action needed from the legislature or the governor.

Such a provision is extremely rare as lawmakers like to be able to determine how general funds are spent.

The number of students participating in the program the first year would probably not be so large if not for the American for Prosperity, an “education organization” funded by the Koch network and other like thinking libertarians who have longed advocated that public education tax money also pay for private and religious schools, homeschooling and charter schools.

The New Hampshire affiliate had a campaign ready to go when the freedom account legislation passed as part of the budget package last year. The group helped parents enroll their students in the program, many who were in private or religious schools or home schooled.

Last week the same organization held an “education fair” for parents to meet representatives of some of the organizations and groups approved to other alternative education programs under the freedom account program.

The fair was promoted by Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut who tweeted a photo from the fair, and the department had a booth there to promote its 603 Moment campaign on social media.

Others touting the fair included members of the House freedom caucus and others in the free state/libertarian wing of the GOP.

The fair is intended to help grow the program, meaning more state money will be drawn from the Education Trust Fund and ultimately the state’s general fund.

This is a well planned operation that only required the state to agree to a school choice program with few guardrails to begin taking the state down the road to greater educational “freedom” and less traditional public education.

The Koch network has recently developed a proposal to “reform” public education with one of its officials calling public education the “low hanging fruit.”

The reform would look a lot like what the freedom account program looks like and would shift resources as it does away from traditional public education to alternative pathways.

As the freedom account program grows, observers of the legislature know what will happen eventually.

As more and more education trust fund money is allocated, there will be pressure to reduce the amount of money going to traditional public education and, depending on which party is in control, to charter schools.

That is how public education becomes the low hanging fruit.

The education commissioner and others talk about the achievement gap between students from well off areas and minority students and those from low-income families.

Edelblut maintains that gap has not changed in 50 years despite numerous efforts on the federal and state level and says that is why education needs to change.

He downplays what the recent education funding commission made the centerpiece of its work, that the achievement gap is due to the resources available to students.

Students from property poor communities perform below students from property wealthy communities.

The economic disparity gap between students from property wealthy and property poor communities is larger now than it was when the Claremont lawsuit was filed 30 years ago.

Proponents of alternative education programs say it is not about spending more money, and the education funding commission said the same thing.

But the commission said the resources needed to be distributed differently, while the advocates for freedom accounts say it is about finding the right fit for a student.

Those advocates are saying the issue is not economic disparity.

Ultimately their goal is to make government smaller and they can accomplish that by disrupting traditional public education with lower cost, less regulated alternative programs.

Eventually traditional education will be small enough to be just one more alternative pathway for students among many.

That is why public education is the low-hanging fruit and freedom accounts are just the beginning.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Hoax, Koch Brothers, New Hampshire, Propaganda, Vouchers

“Moms for Liberty” Seek to Expand Their Influence on School Boards and State Races

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2022 //
22

At a meeting in Tampa recently, the organization of far-right agitators called “Moms for Liberty” took aim at public schools, teachers, and curriculum. They believe their children are indoctrinated in public schools, which is utter nonsense. What is clear is that they want to indoctrinate all children into their racist, bigoted worldview.

The so-called “Moms” are terrified by teaching about racism and gender. They want the power to censor books they don’t like. They want to stifle teachers who teach the truth about American history.

Their first national conference was addressed by Fovernor Ron DeSantis, Senator Rick Scott, and Betsy DeVos, all of whom are contemptuous of public schools.

Who are the Moms for Liberty? They are the female version of the John Birch Society. The latter spied Communists everywhere. The Moms are terrified that someone might teach children that racism was and is a blight on our country.

Known largely for speaking out against mask mandates in the pandemic, demanding access to school curricula, rooting out offensive or explicit content in literature and voicing their suspicions about the pervasiveness of “woke ideology” at school board meetings across the country, members of Moms For Liberty said they now hope to expand their political influence and the scope of parental rights laws, which exist in about one third of states.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Elections, Fascism, Florida, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism

Australian TV on FOX, Trump, and the Big Lie

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2022 //
62

Please watch this fascinating series (part one and part two) by Australian television on the rank cynicism of Rupert Murdoch and FOX News.

Under his leadership, FOX turned into a propaganda machine for Trump. Its leading correspondents (Sean Hannity and Judge Jeanine) joined his rallies, urged people to vote for him. They ceased to be journalists.

The two parts are gripping and well worth watching. There are pending lawsuits against FOX, Rudy Guiliani, and Sidney Powell for slandering Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, another voting machine used only in Los Angeles.

Powell and Guiliani both said numerous times that the voting systems were used to hack the vote and steal the election. Powell has since said that her claims were so ridiculous that no one took them seriously.

A must watch.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Ethics, Lies, Media, Propaganda, Trump

Putin Revives Kremlin Propaganda in the Schools

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2022 //
120

As the Russian war on Ukraine grinds on, the Kremlin propaganda machine has turned its attention to the nation’s schools, making sure that every Russian students has the “correct” view of the war and sees Putin has a heroic figure.

Starting in first grade, students across Russia will soon sit through weekly classes featuring war movies and virtual tours through Crimea. They will be given a steady dose of lectures on topics like “the geopolitical situation” and “traditional values.” In addition to a regular flag-raising ceremony, they will be introduced to lessons celebrating Russia’s “rebirth” under President Vladimir V. Putin.

And, according to legislation signed into law by Mr. Putin on Thursday, all Russian children will be encouraged to join a new patriotic youth movement in the likeness of the Soviet Union’s red-cravatted “Pioneers” — presided over by the president himself.

Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government’s attempts at imparting a state ideology to schoolchildren have proven unsuccessful, a senior Kremlin bureaucrat, Sergei Novikov, recently told thousands of Russian schoolteachers in an online workshop. But now, amid the war in Ukraine, Mr. Putin has made it clear that this needed to change, he said.

“We need to know how to infect them with our ideology,” Mr. Novikov said. “Our ideological work is aimed at changing consciousness.”

As the war in Ukraine approaches the five-month mark, the vast ambitions of his plans for the home front are coming into focus: a wholesale reprogramming of Russian society to end 30 years of openness to the West.

The Kremlin has already jailed or forced into exile just about all activists speaking out against the war; it has criminalized what remained of Russia’s independent journalism; it has cracked down on academics, bloggers and even a hockey player with suspect loyalties.

But nowhere are these ambitions clearer than in the Kremlin’s race to overhaul how children are taught at Russia’s 40,000 public schools.

The nationwide education initiatives, which start in September, are part of the Russian government’s scramble to indoctrinate children with Mr. Putin’s militarized and anti-Western version of patriotism, illustrating the reach of his campaign to use the war to further mobilize Russian society and eliminate any potential dissent.

While some experts are skeptical that the Kremlin’s grand plans will quickly bear fruit, even ahead of the new school year the potency of its propaganda in changing the minds of impressionable youngsters was already becoming apparent.

Putin sees his future as hero of the USSR in a new Cold War. How sad.

He started the war against Ukraine to stop NATO expansion, and the result so far has been a dramatic expansion of NATO, since Finland and Sweden asked to join NATO. They were spurred to do so by Putin’s aggression.

Putin claimed his profound love for Ukraine, which he wanted to restore to its rightful place in the Russian orbit, but he has spent five months obliterating Ukrainian cities, towns, villages, people, and cultural landmarks. He is creating a wasteland.

Negotiations are the only answer, say outside observers. But Putin has never shown any willingness to negotiate. None. He plans to spend Russian lives and treasure proving that he can destroy Ukraine.

Categories International, Propaganda
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