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Sara Stevenson: Fully Fund Texas Public Schools Instead of Handouts for the Wealthiest

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2025 //
5

Sara Stevenson is a retired school librarian and Catholic school English teacher. She is a fearless advocate for public schools. Her article was published in The Austin American-Statesman. At this very time, the Texas Legislature is debating voucher legislation. It has already passed the State Senate. It is now being considered in the House.

She writes:

Many years ago at a school financing conference, I approached an East Texas House member from a rural district. I asked him, “Do y’all even have private schools for vouchers in your district?” He answered, “Hell, no. Private school vouchers are a tax break for families that already send their kids to private schools.” I thanked him for clearing that up.

Now most of those rural House Republicans opposing private school vouchers are gone. Jeffrey Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire investor in TikTok, gave Governor Greg Abbott $10 million to primary them out of office.

Texas has been trying to pass a school voucher or (ESA: Educational Savings Account) bill since 1995, but the bills keep failing session after session. In their earlier forms, these bills called for ESAs (using public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition) as a way to help poor children or those with disabilities trapped in Texas’s “failing public schools.”

Sidenote: If Texas schools are failing, the Republican party is responsible since it has dominated the Legislature for more than two decades and has controlled the governor’s office since 1994.

But over time, the proposed bills kept demanding more, not only in the amount of tuition money offered, but in the expanding pool of students qualified to receive them.

With this year’s version, Senate Bill 2, which passed the Senate, the GOP is saying the quiet part out loud. No longer are the ESAs solely for the families who can’t afford private school tuition or those with disabilities; now a family of four, making as much as $161,000 a year, five times the federal poverty level, can still receive up to $10,000 toward private school tuition or $11,500 for students with disabilities.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick then reassures us that 80% of the vouchers will go to special needs or “low-income” children. Since eligibility is universal, 20% will go to families making more than $161,000 per year.

I remember in 1976 when Ronald Reagan talked about people who abused the welfare system by getting government handouts they didn’t need. He called them “welfare queens.” In those days the GOP praised the working poor for their dignity in refusing a government handout.

Fast forward to 2025. Now families making over $161,000 per year are entitled to your tax dollars to send their children to private schools with little to no accountability. In fact, Sen. José Menendez’s Amendment 36, requiring the state to collect data to determine if the program is even successful, failed.

In earlier iterations, the student had to be enrolled in a failing public school before receiving a voucher. Now children already enrolled in private schools are eligible. Promoters argue this is only fair because private school families pay thousands each year in property taxes to schools their children don’t attend. Well, if they deserve a taxpayer refund, what about all the Texas property taxpayers, including seniors, who have NO children currently attending Texas schools?

No, because contributing to public education is a common good; an educated citizenry benefits all Texans and the Texas economy.

And speaking of children with disabilities, this bill clearly states that these students receiving vouchers must waive any rights for accommodations guaranteed by IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).

Although SB 2 boosters contend the bill promotes school choice for parents, the bill really means “schools’ choice” for private schools. While public schools must accept every child, private schools, including those receiving vouchers, are free to turn away or expel any child for any reason. For instance, they can continue to prefer legacies and the siblings of current students.

SB 2 earmarks $1 billion for this program in order to give vouchers to just 100,000 students. In contrast, 5.4 million Texas students currently attend public school, 10% of all U.S. school children.

Let’s first pass Senate Bill 1, the budget bill, and include increasing the basic student allotment to fully fund our public schools. Since Texas ranks 44th among the states in per pupil spending, let’s first invest in the school system we already have rather than spend a billion dollars to fund another one.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Hoax, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame, Texas

Florida: Vouchers Are Helping Affluent Families Pay Private School Tuition

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2025 //
6

Annie Martin and Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel have repeatedly exposed the fraud baked into Florida’s voucher program. It began in 1999 with the modest ambition of offering choice to low-income students in “failing schools.” It expanded to provide vouchers for students with disabilities. In past articles, they surveyed voucher schools and identified academic deficiencies, such as uncertified teachers and principals, and Bible-based textbooks. Now, they report on what happened after the state removed all income limits in 2023. Florida now offers money for all students, regardless of family income.

Most of the students getting the voucher money are not low-income, do not have disabilities, and are not escaping bad public schools.

The students getting vouchers are already enrolled in private schools. They don’t need the extra money but they are happy to take it.

They write:

A block from Winter Park’s tony Park Avenue sits St. Margaret Mary Catholic School, where tuition can top $14,000 a year for a K-8 education.

But at this school in the heart of one of Central Florida’s wealthiest communities, about 98 percent of students used taxpayer-funded scholarships worth roughly $8,000 to help pay tuition last year.

Only three percent of St. Margaret Mary’s students got that state financial aid just one year earlier.

The change – repeated at schools around the state – is one powerful measure of how a 2023 Florida law has supercharged a school voucher initiative that was already the nation’s largest.

Once reserved for low-income students and those with disabilities, state scholarships, often called vouchers, are now available to all – and they’re fueling an unprecedented pipeline of public money, estimated at $3.4 billion this year, into private, mostly religious schools across the Sunshine State.

All that money is doing more than just expanding Florida’s voucher program. The new rules are transforming it.

Since their emergence as a conservative educational talking point four decades ago, vouchers have been pitched as a way to provide “school choice” – the opportunity for families who couldn’t otherwise afford private education to escape a substandard neighborhood public school.

But when lawmakers dropped the income limits on Florida’s programs, the key element of the 2023 law, the system became something else:

Choice for lower-income families plus a wide-open taxpayer subsidy for the better off.
More than 122,000 new students started using vouchers for the first time in the 2023-24 school year, and nearly 70 percent were already in private school, many in some of Florida’s priciest institutions, according to data from Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers most of the state’s scholarships. About 40 percent came from families too wealthy to have qualified previously.

So in many cases the new law did not expand these new families’ options. Instead, it provided state subsidies for the choices they had previously made and were able to afford on their own.

The implications of that shift are vast, an Orlando Sentinel analysis has found.

• Voucher use has jumped by 67% since the new law was approved.
• Individual private schools are seeing even bigger surges, creating new reliance on taxpayer funding. The Sentinel found nearly 250 schools where the number of students using vouchers jumped by at least 100 children in the first year after the law changed. At St. Margaret Mary, the growth pushed total annual voucher funding from $65,000 to $3.5 million – in just one example of the multi-million dollar windfalls.
• A significant amount of the money is flowing to Florida’s most expensive private schools, many of which served few voucher students in the past: Campuses that advertise annual tuition of $15,000 or more added more than 30,000 voucher students last year.
• The proportion of private school students with state scholarships has topped 70% this school year. Ten years ago it was less than a third.
• More Florida students use vouchers — a total of 352,860 — to attend private campuses than are enrolled in public schools in Osceola, Orange and Seminole counties combined.

Program critics say Florida is now spending an inordinate amount of its education resources on the wrong people – rather than focusing on system improvements that would be good for all students.


“This is just a subsidy for wealthier people — people who already have the advantage,” said state Rep. Kelly Skidmore, a Democrat from Boca Raton who voted against the expansion.


Skidmore is among those who fear the impact of the voucher explosion on public schools – which are losing money as students shift to private education – and the implications of handing millions in taxpayer dollars to private schools over which the state has little control.


These schools are free, as the Sentinel has reported previously, to hire teachers without college degrees, teach history and science lessons outside mainstream academics and discriminate against LGBTQ students and staff. They do not face the same accountability requirements as their public counterparts, whose students’ test scores and graduation rates are publicly reported. Without such numbers for private schools, it’s difficult to assess the impact of Florida’s voucher program on the quality of education students receive.

Nevertheless, the voucher push shows no signs of abating, with more than 10% of all K-12 students in Florida now receiving the subsidy.

On Jan. 10, Gov. Ron DeSantis celebrated Florida’s “choice revolution” at Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville, which now enrolls more than 1,200 voucher students.

“The debate about school choice I think is over. Clearly you’re better offering choice than not offering choice,” DeSantis said.

An Orlando mother of four sent them to The First Academy, affiliated with First Baptist Church of Orlando, where high school tuition is more than $24,000 a year. Nearly 90% of the students use vouchers now, up from about 20% two years ago. She paid the full cost for her two oldest, who graduated, and can afford to pay for her two youngest, but is delighted to take the state subsidy.

Florida is spending $3.4 billion annually to subsidize the state’s most affluent families.

Is it surprising that Florida’s NAEP scores fell to their lowest point in 20 years? The state is not investing in its public schools, which enroll the overwhelming majority of its students.

Categories DeSantis, Education Industry, Ethics, Florida, Funding, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Diseases Eliminated by Science or RFK Jr. or Prayer

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2025 //
15

I borrowed this from Andrea Junker at BlueSky:

DISEASES ERADICATED OR DECIMATED BY SCIENCE:

  1. Chickenpox
  2. Diphtheria
  3. Measles
  4. Pertussis
  5. Pneumococcal Infection
  6. Polio
  7. Tetanus
  8. Typhoid
  9. Yellow Fever
  10. Smallpox

DISEASES ERADICATED OR DECIMATED BY RFK JR. OR PRAYER:
1.


    1. 4.
      5.
      6.
      7.
      8.
      9.
Categories Health, Religion, Science

Texas: Public Schools Are Imposing Austerity Measures While State Holds Huge Surplus

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2025 //
14

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is holding hostage the more than five million students in public schools while he demands vouchers for kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools. Abbott has refused to increase funding for the state’s public schools unless the legislature approves vouchers, most of which will subsidize the affluent.

Last year, the legislature refused to approve vouchers. Since then, Abbott engineered the defeat of several anti-voucher Republicans. He’s hoping to win approval in the current session. Vouchers will pass easily in the state senate. We will see what happens in the House, where rural Republicans stood against vouchers in the past, before Abbott’s purge.

Abbott is playing Reverse Robin Hood. He is stealing from the poor to pay for the rich. Billionaires like Jeff Yass, the richest man jnnOennstlvsnia, and Betsy DeVos of Michigan, are funding his intransigence with millions in campaign contributions.

The Texas Monthly reports that school superintendents are increasing class sizes, laying off teachers, eliminating electives, and doing whatever they can to keep their doors open.

The article says:

Two years ago, during the 2023 legislative session, superintendents of Texas schools were optimistic that state lawmakers would boost public-education funding. After all, soaring inflation was straining the already meager finances of districts across the state, and lawmakers had at their disposal a $32.7 billion budget surplus. Spending some of that money on the urgent educational needs of the state’s children might have seemed like an uncontroversial proposal. 

Instead, the unthinkable happened: Legislators left Austin without putting any significant new money into schools or giving teachers a raise. The consequences have been dire.

Texas’s public schools were already among the most poorly resourced in the country: Our per-student funding is about 27 percent less than the national average. The basic allotment—the minimum amount of funding per student that school districts receive from the state—has been stuck at $6,160 since 2019. That would need to be upped by about $1,400 just to keep pace with rising costs. Public education advocates worry that lawmakers will provide only face-saving increases to the basic allotment in 2025 while diverting billions to private schools.

Many school leaders have had to undertake draconian austerity measures. Nearly 80 percent of districts have reported challenges with budget deficits. Given the stakes, 2025 could be a pivotal year for Texas’s public-education system….

Texas Monthly spoke to a group of superintendents to ask about how they were coping. They all spoke about the budget cuts and unfunded mandates (like requiring the hiring of police officers without providing funding). One superintendent, Jennifer Blaine of Spring Branch, said:

JB, Spring Branch: We don’t have anywhere else to cut. We are cut to the bone. I consolidated everything I could, and I cut everything that I could. If we have to cut further, you’re talking about severely impacting academics in the classroom and, quite frankly, safety and security. Five and a half million kids are in Texas public schools, and I don’t understand how our legislators and our governor don’t see this as a crisis. If we don’t educate these kids to the highest levels and prepare them for postsecondary success, we’re going to crumble as a state. I don’t know where the disconnect is. Education is the great equalizer. But nobody is talking about that, and I think it’s a missed opportunity because this is not going to end well. 

The title of the article in the print edition was  “A Legislature That Will Spend at Least as Much Per Pupil as Louisiana.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

The Christian Case for Separation of Church and State

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2025 //
11

Benjamin Cremer is a Wesleyan minister in Idaho. He posted an important commentary, making the Christian case for separation of church and state.

I believe in the separation of church and state as a Christian, not because I’m against Christianity, but because I know the history of Christianity.

It is because I have studied all about the tremendous harm that is caused whenever the church crawls into bed with the empire. The crusades, inquisitions, genocides, slavery, and subjugation of women, and persecution of people who don’t believe the way “the church” demands, all done in the name of “preserving our Christian faith.”

Whenever a government mandates Christianity, it ceases to be a matter of faith pursued by human freewill and therefore it ceases to have anything to do with Jesus and just becomes another tool to oppress people that are seen as “outsiders” by those in power.

I believe in the separation of church and state because of the teachings of Jesus. One of them being, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

So if I wouldn’t want another religious group mandating my civic life, legislating their scriptures to be read in our public schools to my children or posting the commands from their god on public spaces, then I wouldn’t want that done with my religion either to people from other religious and nonreligious backgrounds.

I believe in the separation of church and state because there are numerous Christian sects within our country alone, let alone within the entire world. Each sect has their own unique theology and interpretation of the Bible. So which Christian sect gets to dictate the kind of Christianity that is mandated?

As a Protestant, I don’t want my civic life to be mandated by Catholics, nor would Catholics want their civic life mandated by Protestants. We’ve seen the horrors of that fight already in the conflicts since the Protestant reformation.

As a Christian in the Wesleyan tradition, I don’t want my civic life mandated by Calvinist Christians or Baptists or Fundamentalists. As I am sure they wouldn’t want their civic life dictated by Wesleyan Christians either. 

Just imagine if Amish Christianity was mandated over all civic life. How would you feel about a “Christian nation” that made sure you couldn’t use your car or any modern technology? Now apply that same logic to certain Christian sects dictating public education or the decisions people can make regarding their own healthcare.

History has shown us that mandating one form of Christianity through the government leads to oppressing all outsiders, which even includes faithful Christians from other traditions as well.

That is another part of Christian history we often forget. Before the United States was founded, many fled here from a “Christian nation,” which was Britain, which was mandating one form of Christianity over everyone else. Repeating that here would be to not only ignore the reasons why many people came here in the first place, but it would just show the world that we refuse to learn from our mistakes in the past and repent from them.

As an American and a believer in the 1st Amendment, I believe everyone should be free to live according to their own beliefs and not be mandated by the government to live according to a set of beliefs from a single religious group. Including my own. Only a government that is free from religious control can guarantee religious freedom for all.

This is why I believe in the separation of church and state and I am staunchly opposed to Christian Nationalism, which is both unAmerican and unChristian. Not only does it violate religious freedom, but Jesus called us to love our neighbors as ourselves, which I believe includes not shoving our religion down their throats and dictating their life decisions by mandate of law. That is simply not loving at all. 

This is why I believe it is a bankrupt Christianity that insists on legislating its beliefs over everyone else. It is a hypocritical Christianity that demands things like everyone be subjected to Bible readings and the Ten Commandments in our public schools, yet would claim to be “persecuted” if another religion did those exact same things.

I deeply believe that when we Christians arrive at the point of needing our beliefs mandated by the government, it is because we have ultimately concluded that the truth of the message we claim to have from Jesus no longer has the power to stand on its own merit, so we need the government to do it for us instead. It declares to the world that we don’t actually believe in the power of our beliefs at all. It declares to the world that the church has failed to be the church on its own, failing to rely on the power of God, and therefore needs the government to intervene.

Far too many people in our society have witnessed a kind of Christianity that insists its particular beliefs need to be legislated over others, yet opposes legislation that would help hungry students be fed in schools, bring increased wages for people working to take care of their families, paid family leave, affordable childcare, healthcare for all, teachers being paid well, curbing gun violence, funding the education system better and supporting it rather than vilifying it and constantly attacking it, or caring for our planet, and the list goes on and on.

Is this the kind of selfish and callous reputation we want as Christians? Where we see the government as a tool only to mandate our particular beliefs instead of seeing it as an opportunity to work together towards a society where all people are free, don’t have to struggle to just have their basic needs met, and can live flourishing lives? 

Is that the kind of legacy we want to leave behind? Are we really that fearful of other beliefs stamping out the gospel of Jesus that we have to resort to government mandates and using taxpayer dollars to legislate our beliefs? Isn’t that just functioning out of fear rather than faith?

I encourage anyone who is unsure about this topic to go study church history for themselves. You can begin with the Holy Roman Empire and the Doctrine of Discovery. Or even more recently the British Empire and Christian imperialism and colonialism. We have tried having nations run by a Christian sect far too many times before and we must learn from those examples or we will repeat them. 

I encourage all Christians to consider how we might be destroying the very gospel we claim to hold so dear by wanting it mandated over others rather than living it out ourselves. Because mandating our beliefs by force of law against people’s free will is one of the most effective ways of causing people to reject the God we claim to believe in with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I believe in the separation of church and state because it not only allows the church to be the church and the state to be the state, but it also prevents the church from giving into the temptation to worship political power and allows it to faithfully embody the gospel of Jesus, including speaking truth to the powers of this world. The church simply can’t speak truth to the power of the state when it has become one with the power of the state.

Jesus rejected Satan’s temptation to control the kingdoms of this world and I believe we as his followers should too.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” -Jesus

Now I’d like to hear from you!

Remember, you can now view this and all previous newsletters as well as invite friends to join through this link: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile.

Categories Idaho, Religion

Tennessee: Legislature Passes Universal Vouchers, State Will Pay for All Students

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2025 //
13

Governor Bill Lee was determined to get a universal voucher bill, regardless of which families get the money or what it costs the state. Since Republicans control the legislature, he got what he wanted. The plan will be phased in.

The legislature knows that most vouchers will subsidize private school tuition. They probably know that vouchers don’t raise academic achievement. They surely know that Tennessee students did well on the national test, NAEP, compared to most other states. And they know that paying the tuition of all the students who attend religious schools and private schools will be a heavy financial burden.

The only thing that is not clear is which billionaire or billionaires was behind the state Republicans’ readiness to sabotage their public schools.

None of that matters.

Marta A. Aldrich reported for Chalkbeat:

Tennessee lawmakers on Thursday approved Gov. Bill Lee’s universal private school voucher bill, creating a new track for educating K-12 students statewide.

The 54-44 vote in the House, where Democrats and some rural Republicans joined to oppose the program, came after four hours of debate, including dozens of failed attempts to add amendments aimed at strengthening accountability and protections for students with disabilities, among other things.

The Senate later voted 20-13 to pass Lee’s Education Freedom Act.

The Republican governor called the bill’s passage “a milestone in advancing education in Tennessee.” He is expected to quickly sign his signature education bill.

“I’ve long believed we can have the best public schools & give parents a choice in their child’s education, regardless of income or zip code,” he said on social media.

Tennessee joins a dozen states that have adopted similar programs allowing families, regardless of their income, to use public tax dollars to pay for alternatives to public education for their children.

President Donald Trump this week signed an executive order that frees up federal funding and prioritizes spending on school choice programs.

Lee’s office did not immediately respond when asked if the federal order has implications, financial or otherwise, on Tennessee’s Education Freedom Act.

Also this week, results of a major national test show that Tennessee students held their ground in math and reading, in a year when average student test scores declined nationwide.

The new voucher program is scheduled to launch in the upcoming school year with 20,000 “scholarships” of $7,075 each to aid families toward the cost of a private education. Half of them will be for students whose family income is below a certain threshold — $173,000 for a family of four. Those income restrictions will be lifted during the program’s second year. The number of available vouchers can grow by 5,000 each year thereafter.

About 65% of the vouchers are expected to be awarded to students who already attend private schools, with 35% going to students switching out of public schools, according to the legislature’s own analysis of the proposal….

The packages will cost almost $1 billion this year in a state that has seen its revenues drop because of tax breaks for corporations and businesses enacted in 2024 under another initiative from the governor.

The Education Freedom Act itself will cost taxpayers at least $1.1 billion during its first five years, state analysts say, under a provision that allows the program to grow by 5,000 students annually.

In addition to providing some families with vouchers, the legislation will give one-time bonuses of $2,000 each to the state’s public school teachers; establish a public school infrastructure fund using tax revenues from the sports betting industry that currently contribute to college scholarships; and reimburse public school systems for any state funding lost if a student dis-enrolls to accept the new voucher.

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers

Pete Hegseth’s Un-American Religious Views

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2025 //
21

The Founding Fathers were unequivocally opposed to creating a theocracy. The Constitutuon they wrote provided that there would be no religious tests for any government office. The First Amendment guaranteed freedom of religion and asserted that Congress would make no law to establish any religion. They did not want the new United States of America to be a Christian nation.

Yet there has always been a vocal minority that does want the U.S. to be a Christian nation.The more diverse we are, the more these extremists want to impose their religion on everyone.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s new Secretary of Defense, is apparently a Christian nationalist. He has Christian nationalist tattoos. Too bad for non-Christians and atheists. He will probably assume that every woman and person of color I a high-ranking position is a DEI hire. Only straight white men, he assumes, are qualified. Like him.

The Guardian reported:

In a series of newly unearthed podcasts, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, appears to endorse the theocratic and authoritarian doctrine of “sphere sovereignty”, a worldview derived from the extremist beliefs of Christian reconstructionism (CR) and espoused by churches aligned with far-right Idaho pastor Douglas Wilson.

In the recordings, Hegseth rails against “cultural Marxism”, feminism, “critical race theory”, and even democracy itself, which he says “our founders blatantly rejected as being completely dangerous”.

For much of the over five hours of recordings, which were published over February and March 2024, Hegseth also castigates public schools, which he characterizes as implementing an “egalitarian, dystopian LGBT nightmare”, and which the podcast host Joshua Haymes describes as “one of Satan’s greatest tools for excising Christ from not just our classrooms but our country”.

Elsewhere in the recordings, Hegseth expresses agreement with the principle of sphere sovereignty, which, in CR doctrine, envisions a subordination of “civil government” to Old Testament law, capital punishment for infringements of that law such as homosexuality, and rigidly patriarchal families and churches.

Julie Ingersoll, a professor and director of religious studies at the University of North Florida who has written extensively about Christian reconstructionism and Christian nationalism, told the Guardian: “When these guys say they believe in the separation of church and state, they’re being duplicitous. They do believe in separate spheres for church and state, but also in a theocratic authority that sits above both.”

Hegseth’s far-right beliefs have garnered attention as his nomination to lead the world’s largest military has proceeded. The former Fox News television star and US National Guard officer, decorated after deployments that included special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, has also garnered negative attention over media reports on his allegedly excessive drinking and allegations of sexual assault.

On Hegseth’s probable assumption of a high-ranking cabinet position in the Trump administration, and how he might view his constitutional role, Ingersoll said: “These folks are not particularly committed to democracy. They’re committed to theocracy.”

She added: “If the democratic system brings that about, so be it. If a monarchy brings it about, that’s OK, too. And if a dictatorship does, that’s also OK. So their commitment is to theocracy: the government of civil society according to biblical law and biblical revelation.”

Logan Davis, a researcher, consultant and columnist from Colorado, grew up in a reformed Calvinist church similar to Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, which Hegseth now attends, and spent middle and high school in a classical Christian school affiliated to the one Hegseth’s children now attend.

In November he wrote a column entitled “Pete Hegseth and I know the same Christian Nationalists”.

Asked how Hegseth would understand his oath if sworn in as secretary of defense, Davis said: “Hegseth will be swearing to defend the constitution that he, to the extent he is aligned with Doug Wilson, does not believe includes the separation of church and state.”

Asked if Hegseth’s performance of his duties might be influenced by the belief that, as Wilson put it in a 2022 blogpost, “We want our nation to be a Christian nation because we want all the nations to be Christian nations,” Davis said: “I can tell you that the reformed leaders around him … are all sincerely hoping that that is how he will view his mandate.”

Open the link to finish reading the article.

Categories Democracy, Freedom, History, Religion, Separation of church and state, Trump

U.S. Supreme Court Will Decide Case of Oklahoma Religious Charter School: CODE RED!

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2025 //
40

The U.S. Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will rule on whether Oklahoma taxpayers should pay for a religious charter school. The Court has been inching closer to shattering the wall of separation beteeen church and state. Its 6-3 rightwing majority seems to be eager to find a case where they can rule that states that refuse to pay tuition at religious schools are denying freedom of religion.

Is this the case?

If the Court does decide that Oklahoma must pay tuition for students at religious schools, the majority will have to stop claiming that they are Originalists, bound by the original intent of those who wrote the Constitution. It has never been the policy of any state to pay tuition at any religious school. The Supreme Court has issued a long line of decisions that rule against taxpayer responsibility for religious school tuition.

The effects of such a ruling would be to reduce funding for public schools, which enroll 85-90 percent of all students, to promote racial and religious segregation, and to endorse discrimination since religious and private schools are exempt from federal laws requiring the admission of students without regard to race, religion, gender, or disability.

Troy Closson of The New York Times reported:

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to consider a high-profile case that could open the door to allowing public dollars to directly fund religious schools.

The widely watched case out of Oklahoma could transform the line between church and state in education, and it will come before a court whose conservative majority has broadly embraced the role of religion in public life.

The case centers on a proposal for the nation’s first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The school would be online, and its curriculum would embed religious teachings throughout lessons, including in math and reading classes.

As a charter school, it would be run independently from traditional public schools. But public taxpayer dollars would pay for the school, and it would be free for students to attend.

The question of whether the government can fully finance a religious school has proved especially divisive within the school choice movement and across Oklahoma. Some conservative Christian leaders, including Gov. Kevin Stitt and Ryan Walters, the firebrand state superintendent who has sought to require teaching from the Bible in public schools, have backed St. Isidore’s creation.

They urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, believing the conservative-leaning court would decide in the school’s favor.

A coalition of religious leaders, advocates of public schools and some other state Republicans say the proposal is unconstitutional. Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, argued it would “open the floodgates and force taxpayers to fund all manner of religious indoctrination, including radical Islam or even the Church of Satan.”

After St. Isidore was approved by a state board in June 2023 in a narrow 3-to-2 vote, the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked its creation. The justices wrote in a majority opinion that the school would “create a slippery slope” that could lead to “the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.”

Still, as more Republican state legislatures move to support school vouchers and other options for parents to use public money to educate their children in private schools, including religious schools, some legal experts believe that charter schools would become another major arena in the debate.

Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School, said that a Supreme Court decision that allows religious charter schools “would represent nothing less than a sea change in constitutional law.”

“It is difficult to overstate the significance of this opinion for our constitutional order and the larger American society,” Mr. Driver said.

The case will present new education questions for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 conservative majority, which has shown an openness to religion in the public sphere. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the conservative bloc, recused herself from the case but did not explain why.

In a 2022 ruling, the court ruled that a high school football coach had the right to pray on the field after his team’s games.

Other recent cases have barred Maine and Montana from excluding religious schools from state tuition programs or scholarships to students in private schools. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in both cases that states are not required to support religious education, but that those that opt to subsidize private schools cannot discriminate against religious ones.

Supporters of St. Isidore argue that blocking a religious charter school from receiving funding violates the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom. Jim Campbell, the chief legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group representing the Oklahoma state charter board, praised the court’s decision to hear the case.

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” Mr. Campbell said in a statement. “There’s great irony in state officials who claim to be in favor of religious liberty discriminating against St. Isidore because of its Catholic beliefs.”

The school was initially set to open in August and would be managed by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa. Leaders of the school say it would accept students of all faiths.

But opponents say that it would run into conflict with the constitutional prohibition on government establishment of religion, infringing on religious freedom. “Converting public schools into Sunday schools would be a dangerous sea change for our democracy,” several organizations, including Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a joint statement on Friday.

For decades, the hybrid nature of charter schools — sharing features of both public schools and private institutions — has made it difficult for courts to determine how different education issues should apply to them, according to Preston Green, a professor at the University of Connecticut who studies educational law.

Still, Mr. Green said he believes St. Isidore’s argument “could be very attractive” to the conservative justices — and that if the court ultimately sides with the charter school, “the implications are potentially huge.”

In the movement to remove barriers to funding religious education, “charter schools are really the next frontier,” Mr. Green said. “And it doesn’t end here.”

Categories Disruption, Extremism, Religion, Segregation, Separation of church and state

A Very Important Letter to Pete Hegseth

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2025 //
8

The following letter appeared on the blog of Steve Nelson. I think you can guess who sent it. He calls himself “the Prince of Peace.” He also signed the letter, but used only his first name. Steve is a retired headmaster of the Calhoun School.


Dear Pete,

I watched your confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee with great interest, Don’t feel either singled out or special. I watch everything on Earth with great interest.

It was somewhat disappointing to hear your regular references to me. First, I have no place in the secular proceedings of Congress, as my inclusion contradicts the 1st Amendment of your Constitution. The fact that such contradictions are increasingly commonplace makes them more, not less, problematic.

Two aspects of your testimony were particularly troubling. 

As you know, perhaps, the Bible refers to me as the Prince of Peace. I’m actually not a biblical literalist, as it gets many things wrong, but that part is essentially accurate. It is, therefore, deeply troubling that you uttered the words “warrior” and “lethal” throughout your answers. While justifications for war are seldom convincing, your posture and rhetoric were those of a man spoiling for a fight; your right, I suppose, but not a personal or professional quality with which I wish to be associated. 

If you know your Bible, this may be familiar:

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

   And the government will rest on His shoulders;

   And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

   Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

I am that son. 

While, God forbid, the government does not rest on My shoulders, it may partially rest on yours. I fear your inclinations seem more belligerent than peaceful. 

Also, about that tattoo you’re so proud of that got you kicked off the security detail:

Leviticus 19:28 (YLT)- “`And a cutting for the soul ye do not put in your flesh; and a writing, a cross-mark, ye do not put on you; I [am] Jehovah.” 

The other thing that troubled me deeply was your apparent belief that I have offered or could offer you redemption. 

“I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully I’m redeemed by my lord and savior Jesus.”

I might offer the retort,”Who says so?” Your public assertion, reverting to my original faith, takes a lot of chutzpah.

But let us stipulate that I can offer redemption. Given that redemption, whether through good works, 12-step programs or profound honesty and remorse, is possible, you have not earned such grace. (By the way, the claim that I could turn water to wine was metaphorical, not a suggestion to drink wine like water.)

In response to questions about your serial infidelities, sexual assault and many episodes of public and private drunkenness, you could only say, “Anonymous smear.” While that might have served as cover for your MAGA enablers, the so-called “smears” are not anonymous. Inconveniently for you, at least as redemption goes, I remind you that I’ve seen it all – and I don’t mean that in the, “Well, now I’ve seen it all!” sense. I’ve actually seen it all.

The victims of your aggressions, assaults and indecency were absent in the testimony, both by affidavit or by any acknowledgment or statement of remorse on your part. And to think that you dodged those issues in part by alluding to a child born of your affair with a mistress while married! Chutzpah on steroids….

To finish reading this stern reprimand of Pete Hegseth, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Lies, Religion

Texas Adopts Bible-Based Lessons for K-5 Classes

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2025 //
9

Texas is offering a curriculum for K-5 classrooms that is infused with Biblical stories. It is called the Bluebonnet Learning Materials. Its proponents contend that this cultural knowledge will prepare students to understand art, literature, and history, but the children are way too young to absorb the religious lessons as part of their lifelong knowledge. Critics also complain that one religion is favored above all.

The Houston Chronicle reported:

Controversy has surrounded new state-approved lessons referencing the Bible that are being offered as part of the Texas Education Agency’s elementary reading curriculum, with some confusion on financial incentives to adopt the materials. Months after the State Board of Education approved the materials created through House Bill 1605, some districts still don’t know exactly how the funding will be used and what the limitations are….

The TEA’s Bluebonnet Learning materials are free educational resources owned by the state of Texas. The resources Texas has commissioned include textbooks for grades K-5 in reading and math materials through algebra.

The bill bans materials associated with “Balanced Literacy.”

All materials approved had to meet certain requirements, such as being free of three-cueing content in kindergarten through third grade, the practice of using context clues to find the meaning of unknown words before sounding them out. The law also mandated that materials not be obscene or include harmful content, as delineated in the Texas Penal Code, and that they have parent portal compliance. ..

The resources were built off materials from Amplify, a New York-based publisher, that were purchased during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Amplify declined to supply further revisions, according to a story from The 74, after they were allegedly asked to create lessons around certain stories from the Bible but not other world religions. TEA officials said this claim was “completely false” and the material “includes representation from multiple faiths…”

If districts choose a resource from the State Board of Education’s approved list for high-quality instructional materials, they receive an extra $40 per enrolled student on top of the instructional materials and technology allotment, or IMTA, of $171.84 per student. If the district chooses to adopt Bluebonnet, they would also receive an extra $20 for printing the materials, totaling $60 per student…

Both Republicans and Democrats have condemned the Bluebonnet resources for their inclusion of certain Bible-specific lessons and stories. Other religions are referenced in the resources, but according to a study commissioned by the Texas Freedom Network,the religious source material addressed is overwhelmingly Christian. Hinduism is briefly mentioned, despite the significant population of Hindus in Texas. Buddhism and Sikhism are also briefly mentioned. The first version of the Bluebonnet Learning did not include references to Hinduism, Buddhism or Sikhism, and some deities were characterized as “mythical,” while the truthfulness of the Christian God was not qualified. 

In one kindergarten lesson, students are asked to use sequencing skills to order the creation events as portrayed in Genesis. 

Critics also had concerns that the textbooks whitewashed historical events by using gentler language to describe colonization, such as “share” or “introduce.” In some units, the lessons teach students that abolitionists used their beliefs in Christianity to argue against slavery, without noting that Christianity was also used as a justification for slavery in U.S. history. 

“I really struggled with the Bluebonnet materials, especially on the (English Language Arts) side of things, because, while there was representation from other religions, other faith-based communities, it was overwhelmingly written with Christian bias,” Perez-Diaz said. 

Texas law does require districts to include “religious literature, including the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and New Testament, and its impact on history and literature” in curricula, but critics felt that the reliance on Christianity at an early age for students goes beyond what the law requires. Conservative critics had said that the interpretation of certain Bible passages was not in-line with all Christian belief systems and that only parents should have the right to teach their children about their religion. 

Categories Bias, Curriculum, Ethics, Extremism, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Texas
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