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Huffington Post Analyzed Every Voucher School in America and Concluded They Are Free to Teach Lies and Hate

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2017 //
18

Rebecca Klein, education editor of Huffington Post, reports here on a HuffPost analysis of the nation’s voucher-supported private and religious schools.

Many of these voucher schools teach creationism, sexism, racism, and homophobia. They are supported by your tax dollars.

These are the schools that Betsy DeVos wants to send more tax dollars to. Unlike public schools, which are expected to accept all children and to teach tolerance and democratic values, voucher schools teach whatever their religious sponsors want. And all too often, their teachings are hateful toward minorities.

President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have openly championed such programs and have encouraged states to embrace school choice, arguing that voucher programs give parents an alternative to low-performing public schools. Currently 14 states and the District of Columbia have voucher programs, and 17 have tax credit programs. DeVos has made it a top priority to push a federal school choice initiative.

Should federal and state tax dollars support the teaching of hate? DeVos and Trump say yes.

Our analysis found that about 75 percent of voucher schools across the country are religious ― usually Christian or Catholic, with about 2 percent identifying as Jewish and 1 percent identifying as Muslim. There were gray areas: At least six schools identified as non-religious but used a curriculum created by the founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.

42% of voucher-funded schools are non-Catholic Christian schools, many associated with an Evangelical group.

HuffPost spoke to nearly a dozen former students and teachers at schools that relied on Abeka, Bob Jones and Accelerated Christian Education curricula. Many of these students, who consider themselves no longer religious, reported feeling traumatized by their educational experiences. A number of them communicate with each other via online support groups for survivors of fundamentalist schools, including Bishop.

Some say these curriculum sources left them woefully ill-equipped to thrive in a diverse society while instilling in them racist, sexist and intolerant views of the world. Bishop [the focus of the article] said her fundamentalist education made her wary of people from other religious groups whom her teachers and textbooks had demonized.

“Anything that wasn’t Christianity was a strange religion,” said Bishop, who made it a priority to study other religious practices after high school and even spent time with the Hare Krishna. “But even other denominations were evil. Catholicism especially.”

Another former student who spoke to HuffPost under the pseudonym Natasha Balzak, was taught at home that all Muslims hate America, she said. Teachers at her Florida school reinforced this idea, telling students to pray for Muslims and other non-believers, like atheists and gay people.

“When it comes to hateful ideology and rhetoric, I was taught a lot of things to skew my mind into believing ― I guess you could call it brainwashing,” said Balzak, 27, who is using a pseudonym to protect the identity of family members who are still deeply involved in their church.

Balzak recalled that her school, Coral Springs Christian Academy, used a mix of ACE and Abeka materials, but the head of the school said they were not aware of the school ever using ACE and that they currently used only Abeka in lower grades for phonics.

The school participates in Florida’s three private-school choice programs and currently enrolls 172 students on these scholarships. It received $554,418 in taxpayer-funded scholarships this year, according to a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education.

A HuffPost analysis of Abeka, Bob Jones and ACE textbooks confirms the recollections of these students. These materials inaccurately portray events in Muslim and Catholic history while perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes. The materials speak disparagingly of Native Americans and Native culture…

“When I took my first real science class, a million light bulbs went off,” said Balzak, who had only been taught creationism in school. “Everything finally made sense.”

The experience made Balzak feel robbed of a fact-based education.

Indeed, Balzak’s former school, Coral Springs Christian Academy, includes a statement of faith in its parent-student handbook, which is posted on its website: “We believe God created the entire universe out of nothing.”

The handbook also describes the school’s attitude toward LGBTQ students. It says administrators will reject applicants or expel current students if they are caught “living in, or condoning, or supporting any form of sexual immorality; practicing or promoting a homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity.”

Voucher schools are free to teach lies about the environment and about people who are different from the dominant religious group in the school.

These are the schools that Betsy DeVos wants to fund with more taxpayers’ money.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Lies, Racism, Religion

Paul Thomas: The Political and Judicial Abandonment of Poor and Black Children in South Carolina

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2017 //
6

Paul Thomas summarizes the long conservative tradition of racism and classicism in South Carolina, once the property of the Democrats, now the domain of Republicans.

The politicians never wanted to spend money on black and poor children. Even the judiciary says it’s time to stop throwing money at schools, which has never happened.

“SC public schools (and public universities, in fact) exist in 2017 as a bold middle finger to everything promised by a democratic nation. But despite the political rhetoric, SC has failed its public schools; public schools have not failed our state, whose political leaders care none at all about poor, black, or brown children being currently (and historically) mis-served by K-12 education….

“Political and judicial negligence in SC—a microcosm of the same negligence nationally—remains entrenched in commitments to ideology over evidence, hard truths neither political leadership nor judicial pronouncements will admit.

“First, and foremost, one hard truth is that public schools in SC are mostly labeled failures or successes based on the coincidence of what communities and students those schools serve. Schools serving affluent (and mostly white) communities and students are framed as “good” schools while schools serving poor (and often black and brown while also over-serving English language learners and students with special needs) communities and students are framed as “bad” or “failing.”

“This political lie is grounded in the three-decades political charade called education reform—a bureaucratic nightmare committed to accountability, standards, and testing as well as a false promise that in-school only reform could somehow overcome the negative consequences of social inequity driven by systemic racism, classism, and sexism.

“The ironic and cruel lesson of education reform has been that education is not the great equalizer.

“Education reform is nothing more than a conservative political fetish, a gross good-ol’-boy system of lies and deception.

“Second, and in most ways secondary, another hard truth is that while education is not the great equalizer, public schooling tends to reflect and then perpetuate the inequities that burden the lives of vulnerable children.

“In-school only reform driven by accountability, standards, and testing fails by being both in-school only (no education reform will rise about an absence of social/policy reform that addresses racism and poverty) and mechanisms of inequity themselves.

“Affluent and white students are apt to experience a higher quality of formal schooling than black, brown, and poor students, who tend to be tracked early and often into reduced conditions that include test-prep, “basic” courses, and teachers who are early career and often un-/under-certified.

“Nested in this hard truth is that much of accountability-based education reform depends on high-stakes standardized testing, which is itself a deeply flawed and biased instrument. Tests allow political negligence since data appear to be objective and scientific; in fact, standardized testing remains race, class, and gender biased.

“Like school quality, test scores are mostly a reflection of non-academic factors.”

Bottom line: racism and classism.

Categories Inequity, Injustice, Poverty, Racism, South Carolina

White Billionaire Dan Loeb Accuses Black Deputy Mayor of NYC of Not Caring about Children of Color

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2017 //
48

White billionaire Dan Loeb likes to hector black people about their duty towards children who are black and brown. He is an exemplar of white privilege. He is chair of the board of Success Academy, which sifts and sorts the children it wants and tosses the others back to public schools. It has remarkably high scores because most of the children it accepts drop out or are pushed out.

Loeb likes to lecture black officials. He compared the black Democratic leader of the State Senate to the Ku Klux Klan and said she was worse.

Now it has been revealed that he has sent hectoring emails to a black deputy mayor in the DeBlasio administration, in a supercilious condescending effort to educate him about the superiority of charter schools. Loeb accused the deputy mayor of pulling strings to get his child into a popular neighborhood public middle school, a charge first leveled by Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post.

Loeb thinks the city should give Eva Moskowitz as many schools as she wants, rent-free. Loeb is contemptuous of the public schools that enroll 90% of the children. With his billions, Success Academy could pay its own way. It is a chain created for gifted children of color—willing to conform to SA rules without question—that dares to call itself a “model” for all public schools.

Dan Loeb has a problem with black adults. He likes to lecture them on their duties to their race. He is the personification of colonialism and paternalism. He is also a demonstration of why tax rates for the .01% are too low.

Sadly, the DeBlasio administration just gave Success Academy another 1,000 seats, expanding its little but well-funded empire.

The city public schools enroll 1.1 Million students. Success Academy will grow to 16,000 students.

And another billionaire, Julian Robertson, just gave the SA chain $20 Million to “share its lessons.”

Lessons: select the best, push out the rest.

I wish Success Academy would take responsibility for one very impoverished district in New York City—every student, no exceptions—and show everyone how to work its magic.

Categories Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization, Racism

Vicki Cobb: Literacy, Politics, and Racism

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2017 //
14

Vicki Cobb, writer of children’s books, writes here about the appearance of Professor David Omotoso Stovall of the University of Illinois at the New York State Reading Association conference in upstate New York.

He “gave an electrifying keynote address to an audience of mostly white, mostly female and mostly middle-aged reading teachers. The gist of his statement was that literacy, the ability to read, was a political act that was the first step in empowering children to be thoughtful citizens. It could also disrupt the famous Chicago inner-city Public Schools’ reputation of being a pipeline to prison. Adorable black and brown five-year-olds enter buildings with metal detectors, gray walls, and barred windows. Stovall questions what message that sends to these beginning learners. How many of these young human beings discover the joy of learning in this environment? Dr. Stovall is a literacy activist for all children. He was hoping to enlist some of these New York teachers in understanding that literacy is the underlying responsibility of a free government. That they are, indeed, on the front lines.

We live in a free society where public policies are supposed to evolve from public discourse that is predicated on an informed electorate. David Stovall’s work rethinks how schools are currently managed so that the love of reading is not present even if children can decode words on a page. I decided to interview him about his thoughts on how to change the system to bring inner-city children into university spaces.”

What follows is her interview. You will enjoy reading it.

Categories Inequity, Racism

John Rogers: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2017 //
18

John Rogers of the University of California in Los Angeles has written a powerful analysis of Trump’s effect on teaching and learning. You will not be surprised to learn that the vulgarity and crudity that Trump regularly expresses towards vulnerable groups has affected the climate in schools. His hate speech has spilled over into the atmosphere. He has given license to bigotry.

Here is Valerie Strauss on the Rogers’ report.

The full title is “Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump: Increasing Hostility and Stress in America’s High Schools.”

This is the press release:

Trump’s Heated Political Rhetoric Spills Over into Classroom,
Increasing Stress and Undermining Learning

New National Survey of Teachers by UCLA finds Heightened Stress and Anxiety, Polarization, Incivility and Hostility Among Students in First Months of Trump Administration

Amid the first months of a Trump administration characterized by highly charged and divisive political rhetoric, a new national survey of public high school teachers finds heightened levels of student stress and anxiety and concerns for their own well being or that of their family members, according to a new study published by the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access. Teachers in the survey also report a rise in polarization and incivility in classrooms, as well as an increased reliance by students on unreliable and unsubstantiated information. Teachers also report hostile environments for racial and religious minorities and other vulnerable groups.

“Hate speech and acts of intimidation are not new to U.S. Schools, but its disconcerting that numerous teachers are telling us that the level of animus they are seeing is ‘unprecedented’ in their careers, says John Rogers, a professor of education at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and the lead researcher for the study. “The harsh political environment of the first few months of the Trump administration is clearly spilling over into the classroom, increasing anxiety and undermining learning.”

The study, Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump: Increasing Stress and Hostility in America’s High Schools, reports the results of a nationally representative survey of more than 1,500 high school teachers conducted in May 2017 examining the impact of the national political environment on students and the implications for student learning. More than 800 teachers also responded to an open-ended question regarding how their “classroom and school climate has changed this past year as a result of changes in national politics.”

More than half of teachers responding to the survey report more students are experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety than in previous years, and more than three-quarters say students are concerned about their own well being or that of family members. Immigration is the issue causing the most concern, with more than half of teachers saying students are concerned about proposals for the deportation of undocumented immigrants. These concerns are significantly higher in schools serving predominately students of color.

Teachers also report heightened polarization on campus and incivility in their classrooms. One teacher said, “In my seventeen years I have never seen anger this blatant and raw over a political candidate or issue.” More than 40 percent of teachers also report that students were more likely than in previous years to introduce unfounded claims from unreliable sources, with many linking the use of unsubstantiated sources and growing incivility.

Teachers also say that a growing number of schools, particularly predominantly White schools, became hostile environments for racial and religious minorities and other vulnerable groups. More than one quarter of teachers reported an increase in students making derogatory remarks about other groups during class discussions. Teachers responding to the survey described how the political environment “unleashed” virulently racist, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, or homophobic rhetoric in their schools and classrooms.

“Many teachers are telling us that students seem to be ‘emboldened’ to use harsh racist and bigoted rhetoric,” says Rogers. “They cite examples of students being targeted for the color of their skin, their Muslim faith, or sexual orientation, while others tell stories of students openly embracing racism and white supremacy, and confronting classmates in threatening ways. These acts are taking a toll on young people and undermining student learning.”

Teachers also say that the stresses in the school environment are impacting student learning. 40 percent of teachers reported that students’ concerns over one or more hot-button policy issues including immigration, travel bans with Muslim countries, restrictions on LGBTQ rights, healthcare and the environment impacted students’ learning in terms of their ability to focus on lessons and their attendance.

It is important to note that teachers also have felt heightened stress in the first months of the Trump administration. More than two-thirds (67.7%) of U.S. public high school teachers reported that the level of stress associated with their work increased during the 2016-17 school year.

Teachers responding to the survey want more help to support civil exchange among students and greater understanding across differences. They also believe that leadership matters in cultivating positive school culture and student learning. But just 40 percent of teachers report that school leaders are issuing public statements confronting the problems and just over one quarter say leaders are providing guidance and support. Teachers in schools serving predominately students of color were substantially more likely than teachers in schools with predominately white students to say leaders were speaking out publically or acting to provide teachers with guidance or support.

“Unfortunately, the schools facing the greatest need for leadership to respond to the changing political climate were the least likely to experience it,” says Rogers.

Teachers also strongly support the need for political leaders to address the underlying causes of much campus incivility and stress – the contentious political rhetoric and policies that threaten student well being. More than 90% of teachers agreed that national, state, and local leaders should encourage and model civil exchange and greater understanding across lines of difference.

“In these tense political times, these findings from America’s teachers have important implication for our nation and its schools,” concludes Rogers. “The growing polarization and contentiousness in classrooms and schools undercuts the democratic purposes of public education. Public schooling emerged in the United States as a strategy for developing the civic commitments and skills of each new generation. Ideally, public schools provide opportunities for students to deliberate productively across lines of difference and practice working together to solve collective problems. The heightened level of incivility makes it more difficult for schools to achieve this valued goal.

A complete version of Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump: Increasing Stress and Hostility in America’s High Schools is available online at: https://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/publications/teaching-and-learning-in-age-of-trump

The study is a project of the UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. The study draws on the results of a nationally representative survey conducted in May 2017 of 1,535 social studies, English, and mathematics teachers working in 333 geographically and demographically representative public high schools in the United States. The study also draws on extended interviews with 35 teachers from across the United States who participated in the survey.

###

Summary of key findings

Stress and concerns with welfare have increased, particularly in schools enrolling few White students.

• More than half (51.4) of teachers reported more students experiencing “high levels of stress and anxiety” than in previous years.
• More than three-quarters (79%) of teachers reported students expressed concerns for their well-being or the well-being of their families in relation to one or more hot-button issues including immigration, travel limitations on predominantly Muslim countries, restrictions on LGBTQ rights, changes to health care, or threats to the environment.
• The policy issue prompting most concern among students was immigration. More than half (58%) of teachers reported some students had expressed concerns about proposals for deporting undocumented immigrants.

• Teachers in schools serving predominately students of color were almost six times more likely (53.8% to 9.1%) than teachers in predominately white schools to report that at least 10% of their students had expressed these concerns.

• 44.3% of teachers reported students’ concerns about well being in relation to one or more hot-button policy issues impacted students’ learning—their ability to focus on lessons and their attendance.

Polarization, incivility, and reliance on unsubstantiated sources have risen, particularly in predominantly White schools.

• More than 20% of teachers reported heightened polarization on campus and incivility in their classrooms.

• 41.0% of teachers reported that students were more likely than in previous years to introduce unfounded claims from unreliable sources. Many teachers noted a connection between students’ use of unsubstantiated sources and growing incivility.

A growing number of schools, particularly predominantly White schools, became hostile environments for racial and religious minorities and other vulnerable groups.

• 27.7% of teachers reported an increase in students making derogatory remarks about other groups during class discussions. Many teachers described how the political environment “unleashed” virulently racist, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, or homophobic rhetoric in their schools and classrooms.

School leadership matters.

More than 40 percent of teachers reported that their school leadership made public statements this year about the value of civil exchange and understanding across lines of difference. But beyond the “public statements” only 26.8% of school leaders actually provided guidance and support on these issues, as reported by teachers in the survey. Teachers in predominantly White schools were much less likely than their peers to report that their school leaders had taken these actions.

72.3% of teachers surveyed agreed that: “My school leadership should provide more guidance, support, and professional development opportunities on how to promote civil exchange and greater understanding across lines of difference.”

Teachers strongly supported the need for political leaders to address the underlying causes of much campus incivility and stress – contentious political rhetoric and policies that threaten student well being.

• More than 90% of teachers agreed “national, state, and local leaders should encourage and model civil exchange and greater understanding across lines of difference.”

• Almost as many (83.9%) agreed that national and state leaders should “work to alleviate the underlying factors that create stress and anxiety for young people and their families.”

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Education Reform, Racism

Mississippi: White Power Structure Grabs Control of Jackson Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2017 //
3

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or worse.

The parents and citizens of Jackson, Mississippi, organized to save their public schoools from state takeover. They think that black people should have the same democratic rights as white people.

But the past is never really past.

The state stepped in to seize control and ousted the superintendent.

Fortuitously, Betsy DeVos just have Mississippi millions of dollars to open charter schools.

Sure looks like a conspiracy by mean-spirited whites people to disempower black people.

Are there educational geniuses at the State DepEtment of Education? No, they will bring in th white charter operators to take over, as they did in Tennessee. And failed.

Donna Ladd, a columnist in Jackson, Mississippi, says there is no question. It is a conspiracy.

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2017/sep/27/yep-jps-takeover-conspiracy-prove-me-wrong/

“The disrespect said it all, really. After the Mississippi Board of Education came back into the hearing room in the old Central High School, it not only declared an “emergency” in Jackson Public Schools, setting a “takeover” into motion, but it went a nasty step further.

“The board insulted the hard-working interim JPS superintendent, Freddrick Murray, who was present, by announcing that Dr. Margie Pulley would become the new superintendent. Huh. It’s one thing to argue, rightfully or wrongfully, that the State of Mississippi can run our largest urban district better than locals can. It’s another to take a spiteful swing at the administrator in the room who is trying to fix the problems. 


“That’s jackassery.

“But the State displayed that tone throughout the kangaroo court designed to wink-wink give the district a proper hearing. It claimed JPS hadn’t done enough to fix problems (that occurred under prior leadership) due to an audit that just came out Aug. 31, a couple weeks before, so they had to hurry before the fixes were in.

“It was the second such circus Jackson has faced in the past two years. The first was Rankin County white Republicans’ push to take over our airport because, you know, they want it—and its revenue potential.

“The predictability of all this takeover hoohaa isn’t lost on anyone who comprehends Mississippi’s history of racial dynamics, white flight and victim-blaming. The state has a long history of white folk running when too many people of color move too close and start owning and running stuff and enrolling kids in “our” schools.

“Don’t forget that Central High School, as well as others like Murrah, were jewels in the crown of white Jackson back before forced integration—in a time when white conservatives abundantly funded public schools and extracurricular activities with tax money for their own. But when the black kids came, suddenly they were bad ole “government schools,” as some old-time Central and Murrah grads call them now.

“The worst part fully hit me on a recent Delta road trip as I stood before the old Delta Democrat-Times offices in the once-thriving downtown Greenville, now across the street from a casino entrance with a whole lot more black people than white evident in the area near it. The old office where Hodding Carter Jr. won his Pulitzer for changing his segregationist views and challenging racists is abandoned with cracked windows and a historic marker.

“They flee and burn it all down behind them,” I told Todd angrily in the car. What I meant was the tragedy not just of so many white people rejecting a fully integrated life for their families, but how they then try to legislatively and politically ruin what’s left. They not only take their tax money, but they pass laws trying to keep public dollars from flowing to where they’re needed, including now-poor schools, and try to redirect it to institutions they control.

“It’s like they leave and never look back except to say (a) we don’t care how bad our actions make it and (b) if you manage to build it into something anyway, we’re going to come back and take it again, teeheehee.

“Now, if you don’t agree with that recounting of local history, feel free to start proving me wrong by staying put and investing time and resources in diverse communities rather than running to a cow pasture or a flood plain and trying to build your own white-run paradise. Until it gets too diverse, of course, and you load up the U-Haul to move further into rural Mississippi and start all over again, leaving dead malls and crumbling schools in your wake.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Mississippi, Racism

Sixty Years After Little Rock, Racism Prevails–in Little Rock, in Jackson, and Elsewhere

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2017 //
6

This past week marked the 60th anniversary of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent the 101st Airborne to safeguard the nine black students who entered that school and defied the taunts of the white mob and the defiance of Governor Faubus.

Now, the Little Rock public schools are again segregated due to white flight and are under the control of the state board of education, thanks to the efforts of the Walton family, which pretends to care about children but cares only about union-busting and school choice.

The white power structure in Arkansas has reasserted control of the public schools.

The same story is playing out in Jackson, Mississippi, where white state leaders are taking control of the Jackson public schools. This effort was carried out behind closed doors. It attained a special urgency due to the election of a progressive black mayor in Jackson.

Jeff Bryant tells the story here. It is a story that shames our nation. Or should.

The truth of Little Rock repeats itself over and over in communities throughout the South and across the country.

Jeff Bryant writes:

More recently, I was in Jackson, Mississippi, researching a story about the current effort of the state to take over the local school district there, much in the same way Little Rock schools were taken over. Jackson is similar to Little Rock in that it is a school district populated predominantly by non-white students.

For two days, the Mississippi Department of Education staged a series of meetings that illustrated once again how white elites continue to define education opportunities for black and brown communities.

The racial symbolism of the events was inescapable.

MDE officials, who were predominantly white, presented their case in a room limited in seating and closed to the public over an hour prior to the meeting’s announced start time. Members of the State Accreditation Commission and the State Board of Education, who were predominantly white, decided the fate of Jackson schools in separate closed-door sessions completely sequestered from public view.

Some 100 local citizens, who were predominantly black, were relegated to an auditorium, where they watched events unfold on a live stream video that was often interrupted and garbled during transmission, and then they waited for hours to have decisions announced to them.

Local school officials, who had had a mere seven school days to muster a defense, presented detailed documentation of their recent and ongoing efforts to correct problems in the district, but the thick binders they presented were generally left unread on the meeting room tables as commission and board members convened in closed chambers to cast their votes.

Should the governor agree that Jackson schools are in a state of “extreme emergency,” as the state contends, the district’s school board is dissolved, the superintendent is dismissed, and an appointed conservator, reporting directly to the state Board of Education, is put in place to oversee the schools. In fact, the conservator has already been chosen.

The day the State Accreditation Committee decided to yank the district’s accreditation – a necessary step before proceeding to the Board of Education’s hearing the next day – Jackson’s recently elected progressive mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told those gathered on the sidewalk outside of MDE headquarters that they had just witnessed a “perfunctory exercise” in which “every commissioner who stepped into that room had already reached a decision.”

He declared “the burden of proof” in the state’s case “was not met.” And he called for ‘turn[ing] the page in Mississippi” and departing from the state’s history of denying black communities control of their schools. “We will not stand silently as they rob our children of an education.”

In D.C., we have a president who assails black football players who express their objection to racism; Trump portrays his attack on the athletes as a “defense” of the National Anthem. He would have us believe that he is patriotic and those who exercise free speech are not.

And we have a Secretary of Education who thinks that black colleges were created because black students wanted to exercise “choice.”

Has racism diminished since 1957, when the Little Rock Nine entered Central High School, protected by federal bayonets?

In many ways it has. We elected a black president. We see black actors on television and in the movies.

But in many ways, racism remains as virulent as it was in 1957. The selection by Alabama Republicans of Roy Moore as their Senate candidate reminds us that racism thrives; Trump reminds us daily that racism is alive. The efforts by the Waltons and other white elites to strip black communities of any role in their community public schools–and to offer them school choice instead–reminds us that racism comes in many forms.

Categories Little Rock, Mississippi, Racism, School Choice

Texas Pastors to Kentucky Pastors: Join Us in the Fight Against Racism and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2017 //
55

Those of us who believe in the importance and necessity of a much improved public education system are fortunate to have the support of pastors who understand the importance of separation of church and state. They also understand that the state will in time put its heavy hand on the affairs of the church if the church becomes dependent on the state. And they know too that a church that needs public subsidy lacks the support of its own congregants.

The leader in this grassroots fight against privatization of public schools is Pastors for Texas Children. It has helped Oklahomans organize Pastors for Oklahoma Kids. It is now working with faith-based groups in Arizona and Arkansas to ward off the attack against public schools. The leader of Pastors for Texas Children, Charles Foster Johnson, will speak at the convention of the Network for Public Education in Oakland from October 14-15. Please come to hear about the important work that is happening at the community level.

In this post, Reverend George Mason explained at a meeting in Simmons, Kentucky, why pastors must join together to protect the rights of African-American children. Rev. Mason is senior pastor of the Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.

Racism is not the root of all problems of public education in America, but the problem of racism is rooted in public education in America. It should be the mission of the church of Jesus Christ to call it out and root it out.

Public education is under assault in this country. And whom do you think suffers most when it does?

Racism has always prevented black Americans and other people of color from fully grasping the promise of prosperity our country says is dangling just within reach of every child who studies and works hard. Black American children have never had equal access to quality education, and yet they have been blamed for not achieving anyway.

The heroic efforts of people who founded schools like Simmons are to be lauded. The example of successful black Americans who had to work twice as hard as people like me to get where they are today is remarkable. But neither is any excuse for our complacency. Cherry-picking African Americans to praise so we have moral license to condemn many others who haven’t, because of unjust and unequal educational systems we continue to defend, is a sin against God.

You know the history. From slavery to Jim Crow segregation, white Americans have been afraid to be exposed as frauds in our assertion that we have God-given intellectual superiority. We have clung to a lie about ourselves; and it is idolatry, not theology. We have to repent of the contrived notion of whiteness as rightness that has become operational policy in our approach to public school education. It’s not enough for us to feel sorry for our history; it’s necessary for us to atone for it.

Pastors for Texas Children was formed in 2011 as a mission and advocacy organization to ensure that every child of God in Texas have access to a quality public education. We match churches with local schools, creating mentoring and tutoring relationships with students, and providing needed material support to compensate for our state’s failure to fulfill its constitutional duty to fully fund these schools. We advocate for just laws and adequate budgets.

Currently in Texas, and nationwide, we have a privatizing movement underway that wants to peel off taxpayer dollars to private schools through voucher programs. As always, these educational entrepreneurs see themselves as messianic figures, saving disadvantaged students from educrats and bureaucrats who only want to keep their jobs at the expense of the kids. But that argument is bogus.
Voucher programs take our tax dollars and give them to private schools without public accountability. Charter schools do a similar runaround. Vouchers are a ruse designed once again to privilege the privileged and underprivilege the underprivileged.
The people who cry for accountability all the time only want accountability when other people are in charge. And they employ all sorts of negative narratives to support their claims public schools can’t succeed. It’s either corruption of administrators or mismanagement of funds or the breakdown of the black family that makes education impossible. All these arguments are marshalled to undermine public education in favor of moving money and people toward charter schools and private schools.
The performance data, however, don’t back up the claims of failing public schools and thriving charter schools; nor do state experiments in voucher programs justify the upending of a public education system, which was created to strengthen democracy and reinforce our country’s high ideals of patriotism and citizenship. Something else is going on, and we all know what it is. It’s what it’s always been.
After Brown vs. Board of Education, whites fled the public schools for the homogeneity of private schools. When public schools were forcibly integrated, every form of creativity was called upon to maintain white advantage. Black kids and white kids now went to school together, but black teachers—who were invaluable role models in segregated schools—were let go all over the country. Schools were never ordered by the courts to integrate black teachers. Think of it.

Then consider the code language we use in educational reform. Local control, school-based decision making, and here’s the big one—choice. Sounds good in principle, but so did the lofty notion of states’ rights that was used to justify slavery and segregation. The outcome has hardly been different, because when the people in charge locally only answer to people like them, they choose in their own favor time and again, and nothing changes to equalize opportunity.

In Dallas, 95% of our school district is non-white. 90% of students are on partial or full food subsidy. White flight is rooted in white fright. Yet the one thing proven to improve performance in public schools is real racial and economic integration. Know why? Because children haven’t yet learned how not to love their neighbor. They work together and play together and want each other to succeed. It’s their parents and paid-for politicians who don’t know how to do this.

Cornel West was right when he said that “justice is what love looks like in public.” And public education is a fertile field for justice work. It’s one way white Christians can move from private sorrow over our racist history to public repentance. It’s a beautiful way for us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Faith and learning, churches and schools, preachers and teachers: all these are organically related. All of us are called to love God and love our neighbor. This is the perfect intersection to keep the Great Commandment.

Charlie Johnson leads Pastors for Texas Children. It was Suzii Paynter’s brainchild to start with, when she worked for another organization back in our state. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Fellowship Southwest are working hard to support this work.

Pastors and churches are busy cheering on kids, encouraging teachers and principals and superintendents. We also try to convince politicians of the error of their ways, and when they persist in their perdition, we work to elect new ones who will make good on the promise to all our kids.

You ought to have a chapter in your state too. We can help you. Talk to Suzii or me afterward, or email Charlie.

Here’s the thing: 400 years is long enough, dear Lord! The children of Angela must ever be before our eyes and in our hearts, because they are God’s children and our sisters and brothers. All children’s lives matter only if black children’s lives matter. And one way we can prove we believe that is to make sure the public in the public education system means all the public.

Pray for us, and join us.

Categories Kentucky, Racism, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Kenneth Campbell: The Board of Success Academies Charters Harbors Racists and Rightwingers

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2017 //
9

Kenneth Campbell is a political consultant who worked in the Obama administration.

In this article, he points out that the offhand racist remark of hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb–chair of the board of Success Academy Charter Schools network–was not an anomaly.

He writes:

Loeb isn’t the only Success leader who traffics in incendiary racial commentary. Board member Charles Strauch has had a blog for years that specializes in right-wing race baiting and recycled conspiracy theories from the dregs of the Internet, many with a racial tinge.

Strauch’s blog, Wealth Creates Good, was taken down on September 5th, not long after I began Tweeting excerpts of his posts to Success, asking for a response. (An archive of some of Strauch’s post can still be viewed here.)

In one post, Strauch writes about one of his projects, praising it as a “labor of love by those of us who really care about helping blacks to help themselves,” a regular theme on a blog that he says is dedicated to Blacks who dislike being portrayed as victims by other Blacks, especially the “well-financed government-and-media-backed minority leaders.”

In another post, he chastises Joshua DuBois, a former aide to the Obama administration, disparaging him as “Political Black activist-Degree in Black Nationalism. Anti gun ownership lobbyist. How does this guy stay busy – keepin’ the faith?” DuBois, by the way, was the White House aide responsible for strengthening national unity through work with faith-based leaders and organizations. He holds a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Strauch has also used his blog to recycle outrageous allegations from the dregs of the Internet. Here he is, for example, sharing excerpts from a controversial story written about former President Obama, which questioned Obama’s objectiveness and ability to lead because he had taken “multiple subsequent journeys to Africa” and was raised in Hawaii. He also shared a crude satirical letter originally posted on Breitbart News and addressed to black students at Oxford University, asking: “what were your ancestors doing …? Living in mud huts, mainly. … You’ll probably probably say that’s ‘racist’. But it’s what we here at Oxford prefer to call ‘true.’”

And in yet another post, Strauch shares a fear-mongering op-ed, entitled “America is in decay.” The post, originally from National Review, claims that “for the first time – in recorded history – gender is meaningless,” which Strauch highlighted. He also highlighted an excerpt which blames “the End of Religion” as the fault of America’s “decay.” The excerpt reads: “The End of Right and Wrong … There are no moral truths because there is no longer a religious basis for morality.”

Strauch is not the only rightwinger on the Success Academy board. There are others who have donated millions to rightwing causes.

Campbell adds:

When Americans were sold the idea of charter schools more than three decades ago, the argument that they would be hubs of innovation that could reinvigorate all of our public schools gave them bipartisan appeal. Charter school leaders and their funders no longer share that vision. Instead of integrating some of their ideas into public classrooms for all children and educators to benefit, they are interested in dismantling public education for their own gain with little transparency and minimal public oversight. And, those who disagree will face the wrath of charter schools’ political organs and influence – just as Dan Loeb attacked Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Charles Strauch attacked black Democrats and civil rights leaders, and Moskowitz herself attacked the NAACP, accusing the civil rights organization of turning its back on students of color.

Success Academy’s Board of Directors and leadership have collectively contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates and special interest groups, including many who challenge the rights of LGBTQ people – including LGBTQ youth – and who have worked to advance cuts to public education, youth meal programs, and young people’s access to health care.

Ultimately, it is our communities that must deal with the collateral damage. Youth and parents have been dragged into a political debate when all that truly matters to them is a high-quality education and leaders who invest in the welfare of our youth. Our communities are stronger when youth wake up in decent housing, attend a school in a clean and well-equipped school building that is staffed by certified teachers and coaches who oversee extracurricular activities; and, where students have access to a nurse or a doctor when they are ill; and, of course when youth have access to a solid meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The stench of colonialism is strong and getting stronger.

Categories Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Racism

St. Louis: a One-Great School District and the Vultures Who Destroyed It

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
43

Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network reports here on the sad story of what happened to public education in St. Louis, once a mecca of public education. The city has elegant public school buildings that were designed for eternity, but now stand shuttered and desolate.

What happened?

Racism. Segregation. White flight. Civic abandonment. Economic decline.

Remedies? The Broad Foundation and the Koch brothers to the rescue (not). Politicians committed to privatization. Business management. School closings, almost entirely in African-American neighborhoods. Incompetent business leadership. Some charter schools with high test scores, most with lower scores than the public schools. Charter scams and scandals. Profiteering. Loss of accreditation. State takeover. A new superintendent, determined to revive public education. Improved scores and graduation rates. Accreditation restored. New public schools with selective admissions, competing with charter schools.

Bryant visits some of the beautiful, abandoned schools and draws lessons from them.

“Many of these schools, like Cleveland High, are grand structures, built a hundred years ago or more, in a style that features intricate brick and stone exteriors with turrets and arches and spacious interiors with vaulted ceilings and sunlit classrooms.

“But the story of St. Louis’s schools is about so much more than the buildings themselves. It’s a story about an American ideal and what and who gutted that ideal.

“It’s also a story that merits important attention today as prominent education policy leaders, such as U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contend conversations about education should not even include the subjects of buildings and systems.

“Today’s current thinking that learning can “occur anyplace, anytime” prompts entrepreneurs to create networks of online schools and charter school operators to open schools in retail storefronts and abandoned warehouses.

“But the grand schools St. Louis built for its children caution that the permanency of schools as buildings and institutions is worth defending.

“More than a century ago, St. Louis embarked on a revolution in education that made the city’s schools the jewel of the Midwest and a model for urban school districts around the nation.

“I was recently standing in at one of the places where the revolution started: Elliot School at 4242 Grove St. It was padlocked with a graffiti-covered “For Sale” sign out front. The district closed the school in 2004.”

Footnote: Missouri legislation now debating expansion of charter schools to other districts.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Racism, Segregation, St. Louis
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