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Mercedes Schneider: Project 2025: Politicking for Jesus

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2024 //
9

Mercedes Schneider is a high school teacher in Louisiana who holds a doctorate in statistics and research methodology. It’s no secret that she is also a devout Christian who takes her faith seriously, so seriously that she doesn’t try to impose it on anyone else. As a veteran teacher, she writes with authority and keen intellect about education.

The following essay by Schneider was posted by the Network for Public Education. To read the full essay, please open the link.

Teacher and scholar Mercedes Schneider takes a look at Project 2025. Reposted with permission.

Schneider writes:

Project 2025 identifies itself as “The Presidential Transition Project,” further described as “an agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next Administration to save our country”:

The Heritage Foundation is once again facilitating this work, but as our dozens of partners and hundreds of authors will attest, this book is the work of the entire conservative movement.

The next conservative President will enter office on January 20, 2025, with a simple choice: greatness or failure.  It will be a daunting test, but no more so than every other generation of Americans has faced and passed. The Conservative Promise represents the best effort of the conservative movement in 2023—and the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.

Though the 900+-page document is clearly meant for “the next conservative President,” former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has publicly attempted to distance himself from the far-right, Heritage-Foundation-steeped governing plan.

In the opening pages of the document, numerous contributors include in their bio sketches connection to the Trump administration. So there’s that.

But one issue that has my attention is that the July 17, 2024, Intercept reports that “Conservative Groups Are Quietly Scurrying Away from Project 2025”:

THE MORE PEOPLE learn about it, the more unpopular and politically toxic Project 2025 has proven to be. This has led the Trump and Vance campaign to attempt to distance itself from the effort. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller now says he had “zero involvement with Project 2025,” despite appearing in a promotional video. And just today, The Intercept discovered two more conservative groups that have quietly bowed out from the controversial 900-page manifesto — including a national anti-abortion organization.

Miller’s group, America First Legal Foundation, was one of the first organizations to jump ship from the Project 2025 advisory board. Last week, America First Legal asked to be removed from the Project 2025 advisory board webpage. The organization was part of Project 2025 since at least June 2022, when the Heritage Foundation first announced the advisory board’s formation.

America First Legal staff were deeply involved in writing and editing the Project 2025 playbook. Its vice president and general counsel, Gene Hamilton, drafted an entire chapter about the Justice Department, which proposes launching a “campaign” to criminalize mailing abortion pills. In a footnote, Hamilton thanked “the staff at America First Legal Foundation,” who he wrote deserved “special mention for their assistance while juggling other responsibilities.” …

America First Legal did not respond to questions about why it asked to be removed from the Project 2025 advisory board despite its prior participation.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank, were among the more than 100 groups listed on the Project 2025 website as part of its advisory board. By Wednesday, Americans United for Life and the Mackinac Center had vanished.

Both organizations were relatively recent additions to the Project 2025 coalition. The Heritage Foundation announced they had joined in February 2024, several months after the massive playbook was released.

Neither organization would elaborate as to why it had joined the Project 2025 board in the first place or why it was exiting it now.

The distancing of conservative groups from a plan that has clearly been brought into the public eye reminds me of the 2011 exposure of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) by the nonprofit watchdog, Common Cause, and subsequent corporate member exodus.

Seems like far-right conservatives have a history of not really wanting the public aware of those conservative plans and schemes.

It should come as no surprise that ALEC is a Project 2025 advisory board member:

Project 2025 is the conservative, American white Evangelical Christian plan for operating government. Below is a “note” from Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 director, Paul Dans:

Let me offer some excerpts. Not many, for it does not take much reading to realize that the Project 2025 overarching goal is to force all of America into a white Evangelical Christian mold.

A smidge from Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts’, foreword:

PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN. The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics-the well-being of the American family. In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatu- ral ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are
the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives-and
the life of the nation— is the family. Today, the American family is in crisis. Forty percent of all children are born to unmarried mothers, including more than 70 percent of black children. There is no government program that can replace the hole in a child’s soul cut out by the absence of a father. Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of Ameri- can poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. So many of the problems government programs are designed to solve-but can’t-are ultimately problems created by the crisis of marriage and the family. The world has never seen a thriving, healthy, free, and
prosperous society where most children grow up without their married parents.
If current trends continue, we are heading toward social implosion. Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using gov- ernment alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of specific policies
to accomplish this existential task. Some are obvious and long-standing goals like eliminating marriage penalties in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for food stamps. But we must go further. It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government
power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family. Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent. The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi- tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice-a goal all conservatives and con- servative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women.


Schneider continues:

Free the churches, imprison the librarians.

Roberts was in the news for stating that an “ongoing American Revolution” will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” According to The Hill, that comment caused “blowback” for Roberts and the Heritage Foundation.

None of Jesus’ ministry involved any political agenda, much less the government-driven denigration of “other” or the imposing of His will on any human being.

Yet here we are.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Inequality, Injustice, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Republicans, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Ohio Is Funding the Construction and Renovation of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2024 //
4

In an unprecedented move that shatters the historic wall of separation between church and state, Ohio has passed legislation to fund the construction and renovation of religious schools. It also directly violates the explicit language of the Ohio state constitution.

ProPublica reports on the latest move to defund public schools and divert money to religious schools.

The state of Ohio is giving taxpayer money to private, religious schools to help them build new buildings and expand their campuses, which is nearly unprecedented in modern U.S. history.

While many states have recently enacted sweeping school voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to spend on private school tuition for their kids, Ohio has cut out the middleman. Under a bill passed by its Legislature this summer, the state is now providing millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, most of them Catholic, to renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.

The goal in providing the grants, according to the measure’s chief architect, Matt Huffman, is to increase the capacity of private schools in part so that they can sooner absorb more voucher students.

“The capacity issue is the next big issue on the horizon” for voucher efforts, Huffman, the Ohio Senate president and a Republican, told the Columbus Dispatch.

Huffman did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

Following Hurricane Katrina and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some federal taxpayer dollars went toward repairing and improving private K-12 schools in multiple states. Churches that operate schools often receive government funding for the social services that they offer; some orthodox Jewish schools in New York have relied on significant financial support from the city, The New York Times has found.

But national experts on education funding emphasized that what Ohio is doing is categorically different.

“This is new, dangerous ground, funding new voucher schools,” said Josh Cowen, a senior fellow at the Education Law Center and the author of a new book on the history of billionaire-led voucher efforts. For decades, churches have relied on conservative philanthropy to be able to build their schools, Cowen said, or they’ve held fundraising drives or asked their diocese for help.

They’ve never, until now, been able to build schools expressly on the public dime.

“This breaks through the myth,” said David Pepper, a political writer and the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. Pepper said that courts have long given voucher programs a pass, ruling that they don’t violate the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state because a publicly funded voucher technically passes through the conduit of a parent on the way to a religious school.

With this latest move, though, Ohio is funding the construction of a separate, religious system of education, Pepper said, adding that if no one takes notice, “This will happen in other states — they all learn from each other like laboratories.”

The Ohio Constitution says that the General Assembly “will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”

Yet Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network — several of whose schools received the new grants — recently told the Lima News that part of the reason for spending these public dollars on the expansion of private schools is that “we want to make sure that from our perspective, Christian school options are available to any kid who chooses that in the state.”

Ohio started funding vouchers in Cleveland only. They were supposed to “help poor kids escape failing public schools.” Initially, vouchers were only for kids already enrolled in public schools and only for kids from low-income families.

When they were implemented in the 1990s, vouchers in Ohio, like in many places, were limited in scope; they were available only to parents whose children were attending (often underfunded) public schools in Cleveland. The idea was to give those families money that they could then spend on tuition at a hopefully better private school, thus empowering them with what was called school choice.

Over the decades, the state incrementally expanded voucher programs to a wider and wider range of applicants. And last year, legislators and Gov. Mike DeWine extended the most prominent of those programs, called EdChoice, to all Ohio families.

Now, vouchers subsidize the children of families who never attended public schools, including affluent families. They have become a welfare program for families who previously paid their full tuition. As in every other voucher state, most students who take vouchers were already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Encouraged by Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers political advocacy group, the Ohio legislature added the religious school funding bill to the state budget.

Led by Huffman, Republicans slipped at least $4 million in grants to private schools into a larger budget bill. There was little debate, in part because budget bills across the country have become too large to deliberate over every detail and, also, Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers in Ohio.

According to an Ohio Legislative Service Commission report, the grants, some of them over a million dollars, then went out to various Catholic schools around the state. ProPublica contacted administrators at each of these schools to ask what they will be using their new taxpayer money on, but they either didn’t answer or said that they didn’t immediately know. (One of the many differences between public and private schools is that the latter do not have to answer questions from the public about their budgets, even if they’re now publicly funded.)

The total grant amount of roughly $4 million this year may seem small, said William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. But, he noted, Ohio’s voucher program itself started out very small three decades ago, and today it’s a billion-dollar system.

“They get their foot in the door with a few million dollars in infrastructure funding,” Phillis said. “It sets a precedent, and eventually hundreds of millions will be going to private school construction.”

The total grant amount of roughly $4 million this year may seem small, said William L. Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. But, he noted, Ohio’s voucher program itself started out very small three decades ago, and today it’s a billion-dollar system.

“They get their foot in the door with a few million dollars in infrastructure funding,” Phillis said. “It sets a precedent, and eventually hundreds of millions will be going to private school construction.”

The only statewide evaluation of Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program was published in 2016. The evaluation was funded by the choice advocacy group, The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. TBF has a special relationship to Ohio Republicans in the legislature because it originated in Ohio and maintains an office in Ohio. It also authorizes charter schools in Ohio.

The evaluation concluded that students who left to use vouchers in a private school performed worse than their peers who remained in public schools.

So, the Republican supermajority has known for at least eight years that vouchers don’t “save” poor kids; in fact, those kids are likely to fall farther behind. Now that the Republicans have adopted universal choice, they know that they are helping kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools. So now, it’s a logical step to throw in millions more for construction and renovation of voucher schools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

NCPE: Voucher Costs Are Rising Dramatically Above Budget Projections

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2024 //
5

The National Coalition for Public Education published valuable information contrasting the actual cost of vouchers to overly optimistic projections by their advocates. In every state that has adopted vouchers, most vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools. In states such as Florida and Arizona, vouchers are “universal,” meaning there are no income limitations or other restrictions on their accessibility. In essence, vouchers provide public dollars to subsidize the tuition of students in private and religious schools. They are a welfare program for the affluent.

The NCPE concluded:

When lawmakers consider expanding or creating private school voucher programs, their projections often drastically underestimate the actual costs. They sell a false promise that vouchers will save money, do not budget adequate funds, and then wind up with million dollar shortfalls, necessitating cuts from public education and even tax increases. 

Some voucher advocates incorrectly claim that if the amount of the voucher is less than the average expenditure spent to educate a student in public school, the state will save money. Existing voucher programs prove this false.  

First, it costs less than the average expenditure to educate some students, and much more to educate others who need additional support and services–like those with disabilities, English language learners, and low-income students. The students who are most expensive to educate, however, tend to remain in public schools  because they cannot find a private voucher school willing to accept them. Yet, because of the voucher program, the public schools are left with fewer resources. Furthermore, in a voucher program, the state now pays tuition for private school students who never attended public schools, which is an altogether new cost for taxpayers.

This all adds up to more, not less, spending.

Here are several examples of the skyrocketing costs of voucher programs:

ARIZONA’S VOUCHER IS COSTING 1,346% MORE THAN PROJECTED, CONTRIBUTING TO A $400 MILLION BUDGET DEFICIT.

  • The fiscal note attached to Arizona’s universal voucher program projected the program would cost the state about $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025. But once students’ applications started to come in, state leaders realized these estimates were woefully inadequate. The Arizona Governor’s Office now estimates that the price tag is more than 1,346% higher at a cost of $940 million per year. This is one of the main causes of a $400 million budget shortfall in the state’s general fund, which funds the state’s public schools, transportation, fire, police, and prisons.

THE FLORIDA VOUCHER IS ALREADY MORE THAN $2 BILLION OVER BUDGET IN YEAR ONE.

  • The Florida Senate projected that its voucher expansion would cost $646 million. But independent researchers estimated that the program would actually cost almost $4 billion, and actual costs are already approaching that amount—$3.35 billion in the first year. In just one county, Duval, school officials report a $17 million budget shortage due to funds lost to the vouchers.

WEST VIRGINIA’S VOUCHER DRAINS MORE THAN $20 MILLION FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS PER YEAR.

  • During the 2024 – 2025 school year, the West Virginia voucher program is expected to funnel $21.6 million away from the state’s public schools–enough to pay the salaries for 301 professional teachers and 63 school service workers. As a result of the voucher and other declines in enrollment, multiple school districts are already warning residents that they need to impose property tax increases in order to continue to pay current teachers’ salaries.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Webinar: Public Funding for Religious Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2024 //
14

The National Education Policy Center is hosting a webinar on the implications of federal funding of religious schools. Actually, two webinars, on September 26. Sign up here.

NEPC writes:

Should religious schools be publicly funded? And what are the implications when they are?

These questions have become increasingly relevant in the United States in the wake of Espinoza v. Montana (2020) and Carson v. Makin (2022), two U.S. Supreme Court cases that forced states, under certain circumstances, to provide public funding to private religious schools. But questions raised by such public funding are not unique to our nation. In fact, many of the issues currently confronting the United States have already been wrestled with in other countries around the world.

On September 26th, two back-to-back webinars will explore these trends and issues, with an eye to helping parents, teachers, administrators, scholars, advocates, journalists, and other education stakeholders better understand the history and impact of state-funded religious education in the U.S. and abroad.

The webinars, which are free to register for and attend, feature the authors of articles in a new special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education, a peer-refereed publication. This special issue on publicly funded religious schools considers research findings around equity, segregation, and discrimination as they relate to state-funded religious education. Studies presented in the special issue were conducted in Canada, Spain, and the U.S., and they examine how state-funded religious education has shifted over time as a result of factors such as legal rulings, politics, demographic changes, global migration, and education privatization.

The webinars are sponsored by NEPC, which invites the public to attend either or both.

Law and Public Discourse is the title of the first webinar in the series, which runs from noon to 1 pm Eastern Time.

Kathleen Sellers of Duke University will moderate. Panelists are Sue Winton of York University in Canada and NEPC Fellows Bruce Baker of the University of Miami, Suzanne Eckes of the University of Wisconsin, Preston Green of the University of Connecticut, and Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado.

The second webinar, Catholic Culture and Market Concerns, will be held right after the first one, from 1 to 2 pm Eastern on September 26th.

Joel Malin of Miami University will moderate. Panelists will be James Coviello, Stephen Kotok, and Catherine DiMartino, all of St. John’s University, Clara Fontdevila of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, Adrián Zancajo and Antoni Verger of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Ee-Seul Yoon of the University of Manitoba, Canada.

Click here now to register for one or both of these two webinars.

For those interested in reading the underlying articles in the Peabody journal, they’re available (although some are behind a paywall) as follows:

Fontdevila, C., Zancajo, A., & Verger, A. (2024). Catholic Schools in the Marketplace: Changing and Enduring Religious Identities

Green, P., Baker, B., & Eckes, S. (2024). The Potential for Race Discrimination in Voucher Programs in a Post-Carson World

Kotok, S., DiMartino, C.C., & Coviello, J. (2024). New York City Catholic Schools Operating in the Public Space in a Post-Makin World

Welner, K. (2024). Charting the Path to the Outsourcing of Discrimination Through School Choice

Winton, S. (2024). Same Arguments, Different Outcomes: Struggles Over Private School Funding in Alberta and Ontario, Canada

Yoon, E.S. (2024). Unequal City and Inequitable Choice: The Neoliberal State’s Development of School Choice and Marketization in the Publicly Funded Catholic School Board in Toronto, Canada

Yoon, E.S., Malin, J.R., Sellers, K.M., & Welner, K.G. (2024). Should Religious Schools Be Publicly Funded? Issues of Religion, Discrimination, and Equity

Categories Catholic Schools, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state

South Carolina: State Supreme Court Overturns Vouchers

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2024 //
8

Republican-controlled states have been on a crusade to enact vouchers, with the alone stimulus of billionaire lobbying dollars. We know from Michigan State University scholar Josh Cowen that most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. Thus, vouchers are a subsidy for people who can afford private schools, not for low-income students. Cowen also has demonstrated that the academic outcomes of vouchers are disastrous for kids who transfer from public schools (the evidence is contained in Cowen’s excellent new book: The Privateers).

The South Carolina State Supreme Court just overturned the state’s voucher program. Three judges recognized that the program violated the state constitution. Courts in other Republican-controlled states have decoded that the state constitution does not mean what it says.

Peter Greene writes in Forbes:

In many states, the challenge of creating a school voucher program is a constitutional requirement that public tax dollar are designated only for public schools. South Carolina’s legislature thought they had found a workaround; today the State Supreme Court said no.

The 3-2 decision came as a surprise. But the basis for the “relief granted in part” was straightforward.

The petitioners in the case make the claim that the voucher program violates Article XI, Section 4 of the South Carolina Constitution:

“No money shall be paid from public funds nor shall the credit of the State or any of its political subdivisions be used for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

The language is exceptionally direct and clear, but legislators thought they had created a workaround in the form of the Education Scholarship Trust Fund. The premise, seen in many taxpayer funded voucher programs in other states, is that once the money passes into the hands of a third party, it somehow sheds its public nature.

As the ruling puts it:

Respondents’ primary argument is that the funds start out as public funds but lose their public character once the Treasurer places the funds in the ESTF.

The court is unconvinced that the ESTF is a true trust. And the court points out that even if it is a trust, the nature of a trust is that the trustee holds legal title to the estate, and in this case, the trustee is the state. The court notes that “this is not the first time we have encountered an attempt to deploy a trust to avoid constitutional limits on the use of public funds” and cites O’Brien v. S. C. ORBIT.

The other argument by the state is that ESTF funds benefit the families, and do not provide “direct benefit” to the private schools. “[T]hey read our Constitution as allowing public funds to be directly paid to private schools as tuition as long as the funds are nudged along their path by the student.”

The state argues that this is not like the last time vouchers were struck down (Adams v. McMaster) because this time the vouchers can be used for private or public schools. Therefor the program does not provide direct benefits for private schools. However, responds the court, “just because the benefit is diffuse does not mean it is not direct.”

State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver responded to the ruling.

“Families cried tears of joy when the scholarship funds became available for their children, and today’s Supreme Court ruling brings those same families tears of devastation. The late timing of the initial filing and subsequent ruling on this case midway through the first quarter of the new school year wreaks havoc on the participating students and their families.”

The ruling is certainly inconveniently timed for those students who have already used the vouchers to start their new school year. It’s not clear what will happen to them.

Previously, Kentucky’s Supreme Court also struck down their state’s voucher program, arguing that the twists and turns built into the program did not conceal it’s fundamental nature—the use of public taxpayer dollars to fund private and religious schools in violation of the state constitution. In Kentucky, that has led to an attempt to rewrite the constitution. We’ll see what the South Carolina legislature tries next.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, South Carolina

North Carolina Alert! GOP Plans to Slip in $248 Million for Vouchers on Monday

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2024 //
6

Public Schools First, North Carolina’s premier parent-advocacy group, warns that the GOP-controlled legislature plans to expand the state’s voucher program on Monday. It asks parents and concerned citizens to sign a petition and get active to stop the ongoing campaign to defund public schools.

Public Schools First NC writes:

In a familiar move, voucher supporters in the legislature are adding a $248M voucher expansion to an existing bill instead of proposing a stand-alone bill that can be debated and voted on separately. 

House Bill 10 “Require Sheriffs to Cooperate with ICE” has been newly branded “Require ICE Cooperation & Budget Adjustments.” This is where they have included an additional $248 million for private school vouchers in 2024-25.

With the school year underway, parents have already had to make schooling decisions for their children. This means that the $248 million is primarily for private school tuition for students who are already enrolled in a private school this year. In other words, families that can already afford private school will simply receive a tax-funded tuition rebate. 

Left out of the ICE/Budget Adjustments bill are any additional funds for teacher pay, which leaves the average pay increase at 3% for teachers this year. Due to inflation increases, the 3% raise is effectively a pay cut unless local communities add salary supplements large enough to make up the difference. Even worse, teachers with more than 4 years of experience received increases of less than 2% this year.  

Why aren’t legislators spending the $248 million boosting teacher salaries so they’re not getting a pay cut?

Put into specific dollar amounts, the proposed voucher expansion would give $4,480 to families (of 4) making up to $259,740 per year and $3,360 to millionaires, while teachers with 10 years of experience make just $49,350 per year and are stuck with a skimpy $920 salary increase. Is this fair? Is this how we strengthen and support our public schools?

Also missing are dollars to support early childhood education or fund North Carolina Pre-K. Currently just 53% of eligible children are enrolled in NC Pre-K, leaving nearly 24,000 low-income children without an adequate pre-k option. 

Instead of clearing the private school voucher waitlist to fund wealthy families, perhaps the legislature should spend the $248 million to clear the NC Pre-K waitlist and support low-income families.

There are many, many more important issues the legislature should be addressing during their time in Raleigh than adding dollars to a program that harms public schools and sends dollars to private schools that are completely unaccountable to the public.

It is critical that you act now! The NC Senate will open their session at noon. Join us if you can.

Please sign our petition to let legislators know you want them to OPPOSE THIS THREAT TO OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS – TELL THEM VOTE NO TO ANY PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHER EXPANSION!Sign the Petition

Need help explaining this to your neighbors and friends? Public Schools First NC just released a short video explaining vouchers in NC. Please share it widely!

video

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

John Thompson: Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters Is in Hot Water!

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2024 //
15

John Thompson, historian and teacher, writes about the controversies swirling in Oklahoma, mostly around the MAGA State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters, who has mandated Bible lessons in every grade, among other things.

Thompson writes:

The Oklahoma press has been reporting on a seemingly endless number of battles between traditional Republican, conservative legislators, and rightwing extremists exemplified by State Superintendent Ryan Walters and Gov. Kevin Stitt. But this week this political civil war exploded. It culminated in Walters demanding that the Republican Speaker of the House, who almost certainly plans to run for governor against Walters, start impeachment hearings against him!

As KFOR News noted, that raises the question as to why Walters would call for an impeachment hearing against himself. It then quoted the former Attorney General Mike Turpen, who has a half-century of political experience, “Ryan Walters appears to be embracing what I call victim-hood,” Turpen said. “Ryan, what you’re doing right now, saying ‘come get me,’ is political suicide.” Turpen then concluded, “I have no idea who’s advising him, but it breaks my heart for his family,” he said. “This is a Republican Party like a firing squad of circle, and they’re all aimed at one person, Ryan Walters.” 

As Nondoc explains, this came at:

The end of a long week for Walters, which has included news about a legislative investigation into how his agency has and has not allocated appropriated funds, questions about his compliance with state transparency laws, and a new defamation lawsuit filed against him by Bixby’s superintendent (Rob Miller.)

This also was pivotal because Miller was the first superintendent to publicly call out Walters on his mismanagement of funds, even though the World spoke to “at least a dozen other superintendents [who] confirmed that Miller was accurate.” Walters then responded to Miller, a highly respected Gulf War veteran, by calling him a “clown” and a “liar,” and claiming that ‘the Department of Education was ‘dealing with all kinds of financial problems’ at Bixby schools.”

And Walters repeatedly continued to use his aggressive language, “I will not continue to stand here and listen to Speaker McCall and (Republican) Mark McBride lie about my office and lie about the work we are doing.”

As the Oklahoman reported:

On Monday, state Rep. Mark McBride sent a letter to McCall requesting a special investigation of Walters and the state Education Department. Initially, McCall told McBride “no” and said there would be no investigation until 51 Republican members of the House signed the letter.

By Thursday, however, “McBride had the support of 24 other Republican House members and the 20-member Democratic Caucus.” And as the Tulsa World reported, “McBride said he’s heard from other representatives who want to sign on or say they want Walters and the OSDE investigated but are afraid to go public.”

And, as the Oklahoman further explained, its stories this week looked “at Walters’ agency’s failure to turn over funds for life-saving asthma inhalers and why it took more than a year for “off the formula” school districts to be reimbursed for a state-mandated teacher pay raises.” 

Moreover, “other lawmakers criticized Walters for his recent online name-calling about Bixby Public Schools Superintendent Rob Miller.” Vocal critics included “House Speaker Pro Tempore Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) [who] did not sign McBride’s letter, but on Tuesday he did call for an end to Walters’ “rhetoric toward educators.” 

Hilbert also said, “The same is to be said about allowing legislators access to meetings in which they are clearly authorized by statute to observe.” (He thus came out in support of Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s legal challenge to Walters’ refusal to obey that law. By the way, Drummond will likely be another opponent to Walters in the governor’s race.)

Even Gov. Stitt backed off from Walters’ “name-calling,” saying that, “‘hey, let’s focus on the policies.’ It’s a hateful game sometimes in politics, as people are taking shots at you.” For what It’s worth, Stitt is now calling for “discussions across party lines.”

Then, Rep. Kevin Wallace (R-Wellston), the chair of “the House Appropriations and Budget Committee became the “spearhead” of the call for the investigation of Walters and the Education Department by the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT). And then, McCall “softened his stance and approved an investigation by LOFT.” It “will focus on issues raised by both legislators and private citizens regarding alleged state Education Department funding disbursement issues.”

And by Friday, Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat said, “Numerous Senators and I have been raising questions about spending and money not being allocated to specific programs the legislature has authorized at the Department of Education.” The Senate’s leader further explained that he originally said, “investigations like the state Education Department/Walters investigation weren’t part of LOFT’s original mission or purpose, but he supported the review because the concerns were serious.” He now says, “the Senate will stand ready to respond to any of the (LOFT) findings.”

And that brings us back to the second series of internal conflicts between MAGA’s and “adult Republicans.” As the Oklahoma Voice had reported, months ago, Senator Treat had “warned Gov. Kevin Stitt against targeting Republican senators who are up for reelection.” Treat cited “strong rumors” that Stitt “is seeking to take out good members of the Republican caucus.” He said that Republicans had supported Stitt on school choice and outlawing abortion, but “some Republican senators have been at odds over tax cuts, gaming compacts and other issues.” Treat tactfully said, “I know he (Stitt) is fairly new to it, but all of us talk and so it is even a smaller group of people who fund these ventures.” And, “senators have heard from people who have been “hit up” by Stitt’s operation to go after some Republican senators.”

Who knows if the pushback against Walters and Stitt is a prelude to the inner conflict that the Washington Post reports is growing in the Trump campaign? It reports:

Some of the internet’s most influential far-right figures are turning against former president Donald Trump’s campaign, threatening a digital “war” against the Republican candidate’s aides and allies that could complicate the party’s calls for unity in the final weeks of the presidential race.

For instance, the rightwing extremist Nick Fuentes “said on X that Trump’s campaign was ‘blowing it’ by not positioning itself more to the right and was ‘headed for a catastrophic loss,’ in a post that by Wednesday had been viewed 2.6 million times.” And, “Candace Owens, a far-right influencer … described the conservative infighting in a podcast Tuesday as a ‘MAGA Civil War.’”

Whether we’re talking about Oklahoma’s or national MAGA-ism, they have grown, in large part, because it is easier to tear down a barn, than build one.  Now, that truth may be wrecking Trumpism.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, Disruption, Extremism, Oklahoma, Religion

Oklahoma: Tips on Teaching the Bible in Your Public School Classroom

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2024 //
29

State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters is eager to inject religion into the public schools. He has mandated the introduction of the Bible into every classroom. Some teachers in Oklahoma have begun assembling a collection of helpful lessons. Of course, as they show, you can integrate local places into your lessons. If you have some ideas, please pass them along.

For you teachers in Oklahoma, beginning this fall:  This was posted on Facebook. Walters has become the butt of jokes nationwide. 

Hallelujah! Thank you to my creative friends for all these great Biblical math problems. They’ll really help the Oklahoma school superintendent’s goal of inserting biblical content into math and science! I’ve collected a multitude of the problems into one post for ease of reading:

1) Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If he lay with one wife or concubine every night at the Mayo Hotel or The Skirvin but took off one day per week for rest, how many days would it take him to lay with all of his wives and concubines? 

2) David captured the foreskins of 200 Philistines (1 Samuel 18:27). If David split those foreskins into baskets of 40 foreskins each, how many baskets would he need? That is the math. The science problem to solve: Since he ‘captured’ them, how did the foreskins run from David?

3) The prophet Elisha summoned two she-bears to kill 42 children after they mocked him for being bald (2 Kings 2:24) One she-bear mauled twice as many children as the other she-bear. How many kids did each she-bear maul? (Use fractions) (Courtesy of Margo Evans)

4) Jael killed General Sisera by driving a tent peg into his skull. (Judges 4:21) If Jael could hammer 1.5 inch per blow and the peg was 9 inches long, how many blows would she need to drive the peg all the way in? (Courtesy of Julie Brady Murdoch)

5) Moses parted the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21). If he moved the water in the Red Sea at 1,000 cubic liters per second, how long would it take him to part the Hudson River / Deep Fork River? (Courtesy of Lynn Nesmith) 

6) There are 8.7 million animal species on Earth. If Noah took two of each of them onto the ark (substitute the Blue Whale in Catoosa) how many square cubits of space were required to accommodate all 17.4 million passengers? (Courtesy of Todd Kreisman) 

7) Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40). If it took him one minute to lethally inject / kill each pagan prophet, how long would it take him expressed in hours (Courtesy of James Frese)

8) Adam and Eve had two sons. One killed the other. So where did all the people come from? 
Rephrase question as: So where did all the people in McCurtain County come from?  (Courtesy of Hilary Dumitrescu)

9) Jezebel was thrown from a window off the Devon Tower or atop the Golden Driller) and died (2 Kings 9:33). If the window was 30 feet high, and she fell at a rate of 16 feet per second squared due to gravity, how many seconds did it take for her to reach the ground? (Use the formula \ (s = \frac {1}{2}gt^2 \), where \( s \) is the distance, \( g \) is the acceleration due to gravity, and \( t \) is the time in seconds). (Courtesy of Dana Kienzle) 

ALSO, I have started to craft an introduction to the Biblical Math book. Something like: The Bible and mathematics make a perfect match. Just consider the name of the Bible’s fourth book: Numbers. So, students of Oklahoma go forth and multiply (and add, and subtract, and divide). Once again, thank you all for your help in this project for the students of Oklahoma!

Categories Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

Oklahoma: Is the State Superintendent too Radical for the Public?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2024 //
13

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, sees a ray of hope in the pushback against State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ efforts to impose some version of the Christian religion on the public schools.

Thompson writes:

As Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters’s ramps up his attacks on public schools, it must be asked why is he becoming even more extremist when it seems so obvious that he’ll lose these battles? I won’t try to get into his mind, but I believe that four types of responses make it unlikely that Walters can implement his agenda.  He’s losing due to resistance from educators, the courts, legislators, and the press, which is revealing his agenda in a professional manner.  

As the Oklahoma Voice explained, Ryan Walters recently mandated “grade-level specific guidelines” for 5th through 12th grade classes. “They require students to analyze literary elements of biblical stories and to identify how those have impacted Western culture.” Moreover, “Every classroom must also have a physical copy of the Bible, the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments.”

As the Oklahoman reports, eight mostly large suburban school districts say they “would not be altering their curriculum.” One district superintendent, Rick Cobb, said, “The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled this summer that selection of instructional materials is a matter of local control. … I hope that remains the law and continues to be our practice.”

I must add that these school systems’ leaders, like Cobb and Bixby’s Rob Miller, had previously been disproportionately courageous in defending their students from corporate school reform. (Miller is currently protesting the loss of teaching talent due to Walters, and how schools haven’t received their Title I allocations, which were due on July I.) 

In what the Oklahoman characterized as a “veiled threat,” State Superintendent Walters doubled down on his orders, “Some Oklahoma educators have indicated they won’t follow the law and Oklahoma standards, so let me be clear: they will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.” And as the Frontier reports, Walters says that “teachers who don’t comply could lose their teaching licenses.” 

But, Walters hasn’t been successful defending his mandates in court. As the Frontier’s Fact-Checkerreported, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office has said that Walters has no legal authority to require certain content be taught by sending a memo to school districts.  And KFOR reports that Drummond has already informed Walters that he can’t continue to ban legislators serving on Education Committee from his executive committee meetings. 

As the Oklahoma Voice reported, the Education Department ordered the Edmond schools to remove “The Kite Runner” and “The Glass Castle” from its high school library shelves, and “threatened a potential downgrade to Edmond’s accreditation status if it didn’t comply.” However, the “Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Edmond Public Schools that the state Department of Education overstepped its bounds.”

And the Oklahoman reports, the “Walters-led state Board of Education created an administrative rule prohibiting school districts and local schools from ‘altering sex or gender designations in past student records’ without the board’s authorization.” They did so after Walters insisted, “We’re not going to tolerate the woke Olympics in our schools, left-wing ideologues trying to push in this radical gender theory. It is the most radical concept we’ve ever come across in K-12 education, that you can be gender fluid (or) change your gender constantly.”

The Oklahoma Equality Law Center and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit to protect the identity of a student who challenged Walters’ mandate. As Walters was imposing his demands on curriculum, a Cleveland County judge “granted a protective order sought by a Moore Public Schools student against state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters and members of the State Board of Education.”

During the same week the Republican Representative Mark McBride discovered discrepancies between the information he received from the State Department of Education about state funding for Walters’ and his Chief Policy Advisor Matt Langston’s political trips, and the data presented to KFOR news by the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES). McBride “says it’s time for Attorney General Drummond’s office to step in and investigate whether OSDE violated the Open Records Act in this case.” The Lost Ogle added that one of the expenses that taxpayers paid for was Walters riding a hot air balloon; and he didn’t tip his Uber driver.

And below is Rep. Mickey Dollens‘ (D) latest critique of Walters and Stitt, listing “recent proposals introduced in the Oklahoma rooted in Christian Nationalism.”

– Bible mandate in public schools.

– Designating the Bible as the Official State Book. 

– Establishing the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. 

– Displaying the Ten Commandments at the state capitol. 

– Mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. 

– Using Bible verses to justify spanking children with disabilities in school. 

– Religious school tax credits. 

– Banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. 

– The governor claiming the state of Oklahoma for Christ in his inaugural speech.

Fourthly, we should take note of the number of excellent articles this piece cites. The Tulsa World’s Ginnie Graham is just one example of reporters presenting the evidence that districts are obeying the law when they reject Walters’ orders. Although the press is seriously underfunded, these local for-profit and nonprofit news organizations have done a fantastic job of documenting how Walters, and other local and national campaigns (like the Project 2025) are threatening both, public education and our other democratic institutions.  

Finally, it was so exciting to be a part of the overflow crowd (not including the thousands who listened on Zoom) in Oklahoma City’s Mayflower Church when Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, spoke on Walters and the Project 2025. So I will end with her concluding words in The Hill about Walters:

The goal of all of these strategies is to assert Christian favor and privilege in America and to fight democracy’s steady march towards equality for all. It’s very much a backlash to all the progress that our society has made in recent times towards LGBTQ equality, towards women’s equality, towards racial equality and Black and brown equality.

Until recently, I doubt many Oklahomans believed that so many people would oppose his agenda. 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, Extremism, Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

Chris Tomlinson: Project 2025 Was Born in Texas

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2024 //
16

Chris Tomlinson, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle, explained the origins of Project 2025, the extremist agenda for Trump’s second term. It was born in Texas, where it merged Republican thought with the demands of rabid white Christian nationalism.

He wrote:

What starts here changes the world, the University of Texas at Austin’s motto says, and one Longhorn’s plan for a second American Revolution, known as Project 2025, offers a return to white supremacy, patriarchy and theocracy.

Before Kevin Roberts became president of the Heritage Foundation and the impresario behind a radical agenda for a second Trump administration, he was a doctoral student in the UT history department and later head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Many of the ideas found in Project 2025 originated in the Lone Star State.

TPPF, with backing from Christian nationalist billionaires such as Tim Dunn, has long called for defunding public schools, banning abortion, repealing climate change legislation, deporting undocumented immigrants and imposing burdensome voting restrictions.

The Austin-based think tank is an official contributor to Project 2025. Many policies pioneered by TPPF in Texas appear in the 900-page roadmap officially known as the “2025 Presidential Transition Project.”

Heritage, founded in 1973, radically changed when Roberts took over in 2021. Roberts transformed the traditional country club conservative organization into a group committed to “institutionalizing Trumpism,” he told the New York Times. Heritage under Roberts is much closer to TPPF’s Christian fundamentalist politics than former President Ronald Reagan’s.

Disclosure: Roberts used his perch at TPPF to convince Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to cancel a scheduled appearance by Bryan Burrough and me to discuss our book “Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth” at the Bullock State History Museum. Roberts has since deleted his Twitter posts, but his quotes condemning us and praising Patrick’s acquiescence live on.

In addition to the hot-button, culture-war issues, the plan drafted by 140 former Trump administration officials would overhaul the Department of Commerce to privatize the National Weather Service, slash the Census Bureau’s economic data gathering and restrict economic development programs.

At the Treasury Department, Project 2025 calls for shutting down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government agencies that make most mortgages possible. Conservatives also want to end programs to fight discrimination in the banking and securities industries and efforts to address climate change.

Of particular interest to Texas businesses is the abolition of the Export-Import Bank. The federal agency has helped 938 businesses export $16 billion in products and services over the past decade. The bank guarantees financing when commercial banks will not with an almost perfect success rate.

Lastly, the most radical economic proposal is to end the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate to set interest rates in a way that will maximize employment while limiting inflation. Project 2025 proposes limiting the central bank to limiting inflation with no regard for unemployment rates. The game plan also limits the Fed’s authority to prevent bank failures.

Conservative deregulation of the banking and financial industries led to the Great Recession. If repealing civil rights and raising the Social Security retirement age don’t frighten you, Project 2025 would remove many economic guardrails designed to avoid another Great Depression.

Project 2025’s radical ideas put off most Americans, which is why Trump has recently distanced himself from it. But he was there at the inception and welcomed Heritage’s help drafting an agenda for his first 180 days in office.

“This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what you’re movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America,” he told a Heritage fundraiser in April 2022.

Trump’s choice for vice president, J.D. Vance, also praised Heritage and Project 2025 before polling showed it was poisonous to their campaign. He wrote the forward to Roberts’ new book “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.”

“Never before has a figure with Roberts’s depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” Vance wrote. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lie ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”

Texas has become a workshop to test conservative ideas, and Roberts’ ascendancy to Heritage Foundation president is only one example. If Trump is reelected, what started here will undoubtedly change the world, but not necessarily for the better.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Religion, Republicans, Trump
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