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Arizona: A Rightwing Bigot Takes Over as Superintendent of Schools

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2023 //
15

Linda Lyon, former president of the Arizona School Boards Association, writes in her blog “Restore Reason” about the newly elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, who held the same office from 2003 to 2013.

He intends, she says, to stop “critical race theory” and “social-emotional learning.” He seems to think that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are nothing more than left wing propganda. He’s a get-tough guy who will crack down on students and teachers.

She writes:

You’ve heard it said that an old dog can’t learn new tricks. AZ Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is the living embodiment of this saying. His campaign gave us a preview that he was not going to change his ways. After all, he didn’t tout plans to improve our public schools (he was vying for the position overseeing “public” instruction after all), but rather, posted countless campaign signs shouting, “STOP CRITICAL RACE THEORY”. Never mind that actual CRT, (which rests on the premise that racial bias – intentional or not – is baked into U.S. laws and institutions), is not taught in elementary or secondary schools, but at the university level, most often in law schools. For Republicans, however, the term became synonymous with being “woke” and their focus on “owning the libs” carried Horne back to his old office.

This isn’t a new fight for Horne. After his recent election, MSNBC called him,

a pioneer in the right-wing crusade against school teachings centered on nonwhite people and social inequality.

As evidence, MSNBC cited his fight against “ethnic studies” which led to a ban on such instruction in Arizona schools in 2010. He also banned bilingual education services that same year which the Justice Department found illegal. The ban on ethnic studies held until 2017, when a federal judge overturned it, finding that it had an,

invidious discriminatory racial purpose, and a politically partisan purpose.

At 77, it is no surprise Horne hasn’t changed his spots. After all, it mostly works for him as evidenced by his previous elections to serve as State Superintendent from 2003 to 2011, as well as his election to a term as AZ Attorney General. Now, he’s swept into office on his STOP CRT broom, promising to,

eradicate teaching on diversity and equity and eliminate the use of social emotional learning in Arizona schools.

He’s off to a running start, canceling previously approved diversity presentations at the education conference hosted by his department and wrapping up today. Michaela Rose Classen, an education consultant originally scheduled to speak, expressed worry to the AZ Daily Star about excising social-emotional learning from schools saying,

When students enter the classroom, I think the assumption by some folks is that they just enter ready to learn. But there are different levels of experiences and often trauma that students are bringing into the classroom with them,’ Claussen said. ‘And they’re not quite developed yet emotionally, like we are as adults, to leave it at the door. So we have to really be cautious about how are we paying attention to student needs.

Horne doesn’t believe this type of learning has any place in the classroom. A 2022 Pew Research Poll, however, showed that about two-thirds of parents believe it is important their children’s school teaches social-emotional skills. These skills, in a nutshell, are:

  • Self-Management – managing emotions and behaviors to achieve one’s goals
  • Self-Awareness – recognizing one’s emotions and values as well as one’s strengths and challenges
  • Responsible Decision Making – making ethical, constructive choices about personal and social behavior
  • Relationship Skills – forming positive relationships, working in teams, dealing effectively with conflict
  • Social Awareness – Showing understanding and empathy

As a school board member in my 11th year of service, I can unequivocally say that many of our students need help with social-emotional skills. Should parents and communities teach these skills? YES, ABSOLUTELY!! But, in many cases, this isn’t happening and the global pandemic exacerbated difficulties with students trying to learn and interact with friends remotely. In fact, I’m guessing most would agree that our society in general needs help with these skills more than ever.

Horne, no doubt, thinks our kids just need to “man up” and stick to learning “readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic” with his stated focus on improving academics and increasing test scores. Unfortunately, the narrowing of curriculum and “teaching to the test” are making our students less prepared for the real world. And speaking of that, I noted he allowed presentations on suicide prevention at the education conference. Does he not understand the relationship social-emotional learning has on student mental health relating to not only suicide prevention but also the mass shootings plaguing our schools?

Another of Horne’s first acts was to eliminate the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Department at ADE, stating that in the context of CRT “equity has come to mean equal outcomes by racial groups”. That may be how sees it, but Google’s Dictionary defines equity as “the quality of being fair and impartial”. Doesn’t this mean we recognize not every child is born with the same opportunities to succeed and we should do what we can to make the opportunities available for those who are willing to apply themselves?

There will no doubt be many battles to fight with Horne, (with his “politically partisan purpose”), leading Arizona’s public schools. The inefficiency of jerking our teachers and students around with policy reversals is frustrating. But it is the potential for setting back another generation of our students that really worries me. As the slogan for the United Negro College Fund states, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Arizona, Censorship, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Racism, Republicans

Missouri: GOP Rejects Ban on Children Openly Carrying Weapons Without Adult Supervision

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2023 //
43

This is one of the most bizarre stories I have ever read. The Republican-dominated Missouri legislature voted down a ban on children openly carrying weapons on public grounds without adult supervision. To this insane political party, no one is too young to carry a weapon.

The Washington Post reported:

The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have banned children from being able to openly carry firearms on public land without adult supervision.

The proposal, which was part of a long debate in the chamber on how to fight crime in St. Louis, was defeated by a vote of 104-39, with just one Republican voting in support of the ban. After the amendment on the open-carry restrictions for minors was initially supported by the Republican legislator sponsoring a broader crime bill, GOP lawmakers on a committee that he leads removed the firearms provision last week.

“Every time we talked about the provision related to guns, we knew that was going to be difficult on our side of the aisle,” state Rep. Lane Roberts (R) said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
State Rep. Donna Baringer (D), who represents St. Louis and sponsored the amendment to H.B. 301, said she brought the proposal to the chamber after police in her district requested tighter regulations to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”

“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”

While critics and Democrats denounced Republican lawmakers for defeating the proposal, some GOP lawmakers, such as state Rep. Tony Lovasco, defended the decision.

“Government should prohibit acts that directly cause measurable harm to others, not activities we simply suspect might escalate,” Lovasco, who represents the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon, told The Washington Post in a statement. “Few would support banning unaccompanied kids in public places, yet one could argue such a bad policy might be effective. While it’s reasonable to be wary of minors’ carrying guns, any solution to juvenile crime needs to be crafted properly and respectful of individual rights…”

Since 2017, Missouri residents have not been required to have a permit for concealed carry, after lawmakers in the Missouri House voted to override a veto by then-Gov. Jay Nixon (D) of a broad gun-rights bill. The law does not require gun owners to take safety training or have a criminal-background check to carry concealed firearms in most public places. The move was celebrated by Republicans, but law enforcement officials warned that the law was “going to make officers a lot more apprehensive,” St. Louis Public Radio reported at the time….

The Republicans must figure that a child is a citizen, and every citizen has the right to bear arms. Even if that citizen is only six years old.

One Republican, Rep. Lane Roberts supported the bill.

“This is about people who don’t have the life experience to make a decision about the consequences of having that gun in their possession,” Roberts said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why is an 8-year-old carrying a sidearm in the street?”

But Roberts’s sentiment was not supported by his GOP colleagues on the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee, who removed the provision.

“I just have a different approach for addressing public safety that doesn’t deprive people, who have done nothing to any other person, who will commit no violence, from their freedom,” Republican state Rep. Bill Hardwick, who represents Pulaski County and Fort Leonard Wood, told the Post-Dispatch.
Critics noted how quickly the momentum shifted on the proposal.“I am old enough to remember when Missouri Republicans were pretending to care about gun violence in St. Louis. Like, 2 days ago,” Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger tweeted on Friday. “That was short-lived.”

On Wednesday, Baringer offered an amendment to try to add the provision back into the broader crime bill that was being voted on by the chamber, but it was overwhelmingly voted down.

The vote was met with blowback from Democrats and gun control advocates. Among those was Shannon Watts, founder of the gun violence prevention nonprofit Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “Republicans can’t claim to be tough on crime when they’re soft on guns,” she wrote on Twitter.

State Rep. Peter Merideth (D) argued that the state cares more about drag shows than children openly carrying guns. One bill currently proposed in Missouri notes that it wants to change “the definition of a sexually oriented business to include any nightclub or bar that provides drag performances.” Another proposed bill would categorize drag performances on public property or viewed by minors as Class A misdemeanors.

You do have to wonder what legislation the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee passes. What do they do?

Categories Guns, Insane, Missouri, Republicans

Great News! Virginia Legislature Turns Down Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2023 //
4

Yesterday, both houses of the Virginia Legislature rejected Education Savings Accounts, aka Education Scam Accounts.

The Virginia Mercury reported:

All four bills put forward by Republicans this year to let parents use state education funding to cover the costs of educational opportunities outside the public school system failed to make it through this year’s General Assembly.

One bill carried by Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, died in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Two others carried by Dels. Phillip Scott, R-Spotsylvania, and Marie March, R-Floyd, failed in Republican-controlled House Education subcommittees

The most promising, House Bill 1508 from Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach, initially cleared the House Education Committee, which Davis chairs, but ran into trouble later in the legislative process.

That bill, which gained the support of numerous Republicans including Lt.-Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, would have created the Virginia Education Success Account Program, a proposal that would allow parents to set up a savings account funded with state dollars that could be used to cover educational expenses outside public schools in Virginia. Funds could be used for costs like tuition, deposits, fees and textbooks at a private elementary or secondary school in Virginia.

Last month, Davis estimated that an average of $6,303.25 could have been available per student. The program would only have applied to students previously enrolled in public school or who were starting kindergarten or attending first grade for the first time….

Davis said when the bill reached the House Appropriations Committee Friday, he was one vote short of what he needed to pass the legislation and agreed to send it back to the Education Committee in hopes of fast-tracking it through the approvals it still needed. He told the Mercury he considered adding a delayed enactment clause to the proposal to skirt concerns about the current budget cycle but said the committee was “one day short” of exercising that option.

But that bill died in committee.

Democrats opposed all of these measures, because they would take funding away from public schools.

Categories Democrats, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Virginia, Vouchers

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner: Race Matters

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2023 //
35

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner write a blog called Steady. Their voice is always thoughtful, reasonable, informed, and…steady. I think that they, like me, are old enough to remember when we believed that overt racism was ebbing and that white supremacy was dead. Our hopes have been shattered since 2016. It takes the use of critical race theory to understand why we were so naive. Here is their take on the big Education story of the day:

Photo credit: Octavio Jones

Editor’s note: this is an ironic banner in front of DeSantis. Florida is not free for those who don’t share his ideology. If you think racism exists today in Florida, you are not free to discuss it in school or college. You are free to agree with him.

Rather and Kirschner write:

Much of American history is entangled with racism and white supremacy. That is the reality of our beloved nation, no matter how much we wish it were not.

As we sit here nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century, it is obvious that we need to have the maturity to look back to our past as well as ahead to the future. Can we do this with our eyes wide open? Will we study and learn from the lessons of history?

You can’t grapple with the truth if you hide it from view. Yes, our national narrative is an inspiring one — of freedom, rights, and new opportunities. But it is also a narrative of pain — of the bondage, rape, and murder of enslaved people. It is a story of mass death, broken treaties, and land stolen from Native people. And it is a story of persecution of the “other,” time and again.

The chasm between the noble promises of our founding documents and our historical realities continues to obstruct our national journey toward a more perfect union.

Yes, ours is a country that has facilitated exploration, innovation, and growth, but it is also one built upon families torn apart at the auction block, bodies whipped, and police dogs and fire hoses set against children.

Cities were redlined. Public schools were segregated. And despite our carefully cultivated national image as a meritocracy, throughout our history we have seen talent overlooked and our common humanity diminished on account of people’s race, religion, and sexual orientation.

The ripples of injustice continue to destabilize our society.

It shouldn’t be controversial to say any of this. But acknowledging these truths today is a political act, because it threatens the privileged narratives of those who seek to sugarcoat our past. These are men and women who serve their own ambitions by fortifying their cynical holds on power, delighting in division, feeding off fear, and applauding anger.

And that brings us to Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis.

Listing all of his efforts to leverage the power of his office to attack equity, empathy, and justice would stretch this post immeasurably. But doing so would also jeopardize the central point: DeSantis is an opportunist. He is not weighing the merits of any one campaign. Rather, he wants headlines as a culture warrior standing up to “wokeness,” a term he has eagerly redefined to suit his own purposes. It allows him to sneer at and dismiss any attempt to reckon with American injustice.

DeSantis has focused his assaults on two of our society’s most traditionally marginalized groups: Black Americans and the LGBTQ community. While these populations have thus far felt the brunt of his targeting, we need to see clearly that his rhetoric is a threat to all who care about a democratic, peaceful, empathetic, and just America. Those of us with the greatest privilege should bear a special burden in rejecting this hate.

DeSantis’s pugilism has enabled him to consolidate power in Florida. Any opposition to his toxic initiatives must contend with the uncomfortable truth that voters validated his message and style via his landslide win in November. Now DeSantis thinks he can take his show on the road with a presidential bid. That remains to be seen. Florida has been trending Republican in recent years, and success there might not translate to the current battleground states, many of which saw big Democratic wins in the midterms.

All that being said, there is a great danger to framing this struggle primarily through the lens of electoral politics. This normalizes a discourse that should be rejected by society’s mainstream. Just as the outright bigotry of the past became socially unacceptable, so too should these latest attempts at divisiveness.

It should not surprise us that DeSantis is making schools — both K-12 and college — a central target. He wants to teach a distorted view of America. He wants to make dissenting speech not only suspect but even criminal. He wants to silence the voices of his critics and of critical thinking more generally. This is a playbook that has been followed by demagogues before to very dangerous ends.

It is essential that DeSantis not be covered by the press through a false equivalence paradigm. We can debate what we should teach and how to teach it. But we can’t replace the truth, as unsavory as it may be, with sanitized narratives that suit those already in power. This is a battle for the minds of the voters of the future. This is about what kind of nation we will become.

But DeSantis primarily cares about what kind of country we are now. He wants to appeal to fear because he thinks he can mine that fear for votes. That is his game plan. And he’s not hiding it. There can be no appeasement. DeSantis has already shown that he isn’t interested in deliberations or good faith compromise. Those would disrupt his approach of means to an end.

History illustrates that hatred can be taught, but so can empathy and justice. We are on a winding journey as a nation. And we have much farther to go. But we have made progress in the face of bigots and autocrats because people had the courage to forge the inequities of our past into a more equitable future.

This history, this truth, is what scares people like DeSantis the most. But it is one that can give us hope if we are determined not to look away.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Curriculum, DeSantis, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Inequity, Injustice, Race, Racism, Republicans, Shame

New Hampshire: GOP Wants to Pay for Vouchers with Funds Earmarked for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2023 //
4

Garry Rayno of InDepthNH reports on opposition to the funding of New Hampshire’s expansive voucher plan, which has never been submitted to a public referendum. A lawsuit has been filed to block the use of public school funds for unaccountable vouchers. The voucher program, serving mostly kids who already attend students in private and religious schools, is far more expensive that its sponsor low-ball projections.

CONCORD — A bill to expand the uses for the state’s Education Trust Fund ran into opposition Friday as opponents said it would give the new Education Freedom Account program a blank check without accountability.

The prime sponsor of House Bill 440, Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro, said the bill simply “cleans up and codifies” what is in legislation elsewhere in statutes and comes at the Department of Education’s request. He noted the current trust fund statute does not address money for kindergarten or leases for charter schools.

“This bill clarifies (sections of law),” Cordelli said, “so there is a full picture of what comes out of the Education Trust Fund.”

However, those testifying in opposition at a public hearing Friday before the House Education Committee, said the bill is not a “housekeeping measure” but an attempt to divert millions of dollars to the Education Freedom Account program from public schools without sufficient accountability.

“The program was funded for two years as a pilot program and now you are giving it a blank check,” said David Trumble. “Why take a huge gamble. You built a program with no foundation for it and now you want to build a tall skyscraper on it.”

HB 440 would allow the Education Trust Fund to be used to pay for Education Freedom Account grants to parents and for phase-out grants to school districts losing students to the program.

The bill also changes the funding for the state’s portion for charter school leases from the general fund to the Education Trust Fund.

The Department of Education would be able to use 1 percent of the money in the Education Trust Fund to administer the EFA program, under the bill.

The Legislative Budget Assistant was not able to determine the cost of the changes in the bill because the department had not responded at the time of the bill’s printing, but noted the 1 percent going to the department would be $10.6 million in the current fiscal year, and $11 million in fiscal year 2024 and $11 million in fiscal year 2025.

The use of the fund for the EFA program is being challenged in court as the plaintiffs claim the program uses money earmarked for public education for private programs.

The suit challenging the funding for what has been described as the most expansive voucher program in the country, claims money raised by the Lottery Commission, and money from the Education Trust Fund may only be used for adequate education grants to school districts, citing the law creating the fund in 1999.

The suit, brought by Deb Howes as a citizen taxpayer, who is also president of AFT (American Federation of Teachers)-New Hampshire, seeks an injunction blocking the state from using any more of the Trust Fund Money to fund the EFA program.

Speaking at the public hearing, Howes reiterated her opposition to the bill, saying it is not a housekeeping measure.

“If money is coming out of (the Education Trust Fund),” she said, “does not mean it should be coming out of it.”

Public school and district tax money is not limitless, Howes said, noting it is all coming out of taxpayers pockets.

“When you run short of money,” Howes said, “you are going to shortchange the 160,000 kids in public schools.”

Please open the link to read the rest of the article.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding, Hoax, New Hampshire, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Texas: Republicans File Multiple Bills to Suppress the Vote

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2023 //
4

Republicans in Texas are obsessed with voter fraud. Trump won the state in 2020, as did the Republican Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and other statewide offices. Apparently Republican legislators think it’s suspicious that Democratic candidates won any votes at all. So they are launching a fusillade of bills to make it harder to vote.

Michael Hardy of The Texas Monthly reports:

For decades, Texas has maintained one of the worst voter-turnout rates in the country. Less than 61 percent of eligible Texans voted in the 2020 presidential election, placing us forty-third out of fifty states. (In Minnesota, the highest-turnout state, nearly 80 percent of eligible voters participated.) In November, 42.5 percent of eligible Texans cast ballots in the midterm election, placing us thirty-ninth in the nation. Embarrassed by these dismal figures, Texas political leaders will spend the Eighty-eighth Legislature passing laws to encourage more participation in the democratic process.

Just kidding! Instead of removing obstacles to voting, Republican legislators are introducing a slew of new bills that could disrupt elections and further depress turnout. GOP lawmakers say the bills are designed to prevent fraud and ensure election integrity. But several of the proposals—such as a bill by Republican representative Bryan Slaton, of Royse City, that would shorten the early-voting period from two weeks to one week—have no obvious rationale other than to make voting less convenient. (Slaton did not respond to an interview request.) Indeed, this and many other bills seem to proceed from the assumption that too many Texans are taking advantage of their constitutional right to select their leaders. Narrowing the franchise has long been a national Republican priority, although politicians are seldom as explicit as former president Donald Trump, who warned that 2020 voting reforms proposed by congressional Democrats would lead to “levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Trump’s concern was probably unfounded. There’s no consensus among political scientists on whether higher turnout benefits one party over another. Indeed, rising turnout in recent Texas elections has simply led to more Republican victories. The Texas GOP, it would appear, has little to fear from more election participation. But that doesn’t seem to have dampened the party’s enthusiasm for making it harder to vote. On the contrary: fueled by Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, Texas Republicans have become obsessed with the specter of voter fraud. Attorney General Ken Paxton has spent at least $2.2 million on an Ahab-like quest to find incidents of voter fraud. Between January 2020 and September 2022, he opened nearly four hundred investigations into potential election crimes yet secured only five election-related convictions.

In 2021, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 1, a far-reaching “election integrity and security” package, into law. The measure prohibited 24-hour voting and drive-through voting, pandemic-inspired innovations in Harris County that drove up turnout in 2020. It also imposed confusing new vote-by-mail requirements, including forcing each voter to write the ID number with which they registered to vote—either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number—on the ballot. (If they forgot which ID they used to register and picked the wrong one, they were out of luck.) Failure to meet the new requirements led to an unprecedented 12 percent of mail-in ballots being rejected in last year’s primary. (The rejection rate fell for the general election, as Texas voters learned to include both their driver’s license and Social Security numbers.) The bill, Abbott proclaimed in 2021, would “make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.” The same year, Texas secretary of state John Scott launched a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 presidential election in four large Texas counties. The audit, which wrapped up in December 2022, found significant administrative dysfunction in Harris County, but no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Scott, who resigned in December after a little more than a year on the job, has urged “Stop the Steal” activists to accept President Biden’s victory in 2020, blaming their concerns on “a lack of information.”

But as noted philosopher Donald Rumsfeld liked to say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just as Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction was an article of faith in the Bush White House, the existence of widespread election fraud has become an article of faith for many in the Texas GOP. To cite just one example, Republican representative Steve Toth, of the Woodlands, author of a bill requiring unique electronic codes for absentee ballots, has accused Democrats of using paper ballots to commit voter fraud and defended MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s crusade to prove that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. At its summer convention, the Texas GOP adopted a platform calling President Joe Biden’s victory illegitimate and urging politicians to focus on “election integrity.” To this end, Republican lawmakers have filed more than a dozen bills designed to root out supposed electoral chicanery. To be sure, Democrats have filed plenty of their own election bills, most of them intended to encourage voter registration and make it easier to cast a ballot. But with Republicans controlling the House, Senate, and Governor’s Mansion, there is little chance of the Democratic bills becoming law. Nor will every Republican-authored bill ultimately pass.

With those caveats out of the way, here’s a preview of the major voting bills filed so far in the Eighty-eighth Legislature.

HB 52 & HB 1243 / SB 166

Authors: Representatives David Spiller (R-Jacksboro) and Cole Hefner (R-Mount Pleasant) / Senator Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola)

Purpose: Increases penalty for voter fraud from a Class A misdemeanor to a felony.

Background: In 2021, Governor Abbott signed SB 1, the controversial voting bill that Democrats attempted to block by fleeing to Washington, D.C. The bill eventually passed, but not before a conference committee added a provision lowering the offense of voting illegally from a second-degree felony to a Class A misdemeanor. Less than a month later, after receiving blowback from fellow Republicans, Abbott called on lawmakers to make voter fraud a felony again. These bills answer his call. Class A misdemeanors are punishable by up to a year in jail, while a second-degree felony is punishable by up to twenty years in prison.

HB 125

Author: Representative Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City)

Purpose: Requires district attorneys, under penalty of removal from office, to enforce state election laws.

Background: Republicans have accused the Democratic district attorneys in large cities such as Dallas and Austin of failing to pursue election fraud with sufficient vigor. Attorney General Ken Paxton has sought to prosecute election cases himself, but in September, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that he must receive permission from local prosecutors to pursue such cases.

HB 161

Author: Representative Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands)

Purpose: Requires each absentee ballot to include a unique electronic code to verify its authenticity.

Background: For years, right-wing activists have claimed that voting by mail is uniquely vulnerable to election fraud. Former president Trump urged his supporters to vote in person, and he cast efforts to encourage voting by mail during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for Democrats to steal the election. This bill appears designed to prevent voters from photocopying absentee ballots—a phenomenon for which there is no evidence.

HB 549 / SB 220

Authors: Representative Valoree Swanson (R-Spring) / Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston)

Purpose: Establishes a cadre of “election marshals”—law enforcement officers appointed by the Secretary of State to investigate election fraud. Calls for regional task forces of judges to adjudicate allegations of election fraud on and before Election Day.

Background: This bill is one of numerous GOP proposals in the current Legislature inspired by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In this case, the new office of election marshal appears modeled after Florida’s Office of Election Crimes and Security, which has charged 20 Floridians (out of 11 million voters in 2020) with voting illegally since it was established last year. The Texas bill prohibits judges from overseeing election challenges in their own counties, apparently under the assumption that these judges would be biased against the candidates challenging the election.

Open the link and read about more bills that are supposedly necessary to protect “election integrity” but whose actual result will suppress the vote by confusing voters and making the process of voting more complicated than at present.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Fraud, Republicans, Texas

Education Week: Red States Rush to Pass Voucher Laws

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2023 //
11

Libby Stanford of Education Week reports on the sudden explosion of voucher legislation in Republican-controlled states. She quotes a spokesman for the Heritage Foundation, who says that school choice is expanding because of parent dissatisfaction with public schools.

But this acceleration is not a consequence of parental dissatisfaction, as the spokesman claims. It is the result of a well-organized, well-orchestrated, lavishly-funded campaign to defame public schools, led by the religious right and such organizations as the Koch network, the Heritage Foundation, The American Legislative Exchange Council, Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children, and the front groups they fund, such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Freedom. ALEC undoubtedly prepared model legislation and handed it out to their far-right allies in state legislatures.

None of these funders or their puppet groups are mentioned in the article. It is no accident that multiple red states are debating bills to enact vouchers for private and religious groups or that 75-80% of the voucher funding in every state will end up in the bank accounts of families whose children never attended public schools. The legislation should be characterized as a handout to families whose children never attended public school.

It doesn’t take much digging to understand that the crusade against “critical race theory” (which is taught in graduate classes in law and education, not in K-12), against any mention of homosexuality, against “dangerous” books in school libraries, against fictional children who need litter boxes in the classroom because they think they are cats or dogs—is absurd propaganda designed to discredit public schools and pave the way for public funding of religious schools, which freely discriminate against students and families and openly indoctrinate their students into their dogma.

Instead of identifying the Heritage Foundation as a major player in the war to destroy public education, Stanford quotes its spokesman, who spouts the line that school choice is the result of parent dissatisfaction. What she does not mention is that voucher supporters maneuver to avoid public referenda because they know the public is opposed to vouchers. Right wingers go to great lengths to avoid the word “vouchers” and to quash referenda, because they are afraid of the voters.

Students and teachers from East High School in Salt Lake City walk out of school to protest the HB15 voucher bill, on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023. Several years of pandemic restrictions and curriculum battles have emboldened longtime advocates of funneling public funds to private and religious schools in statehouses throughout the country.

Students and teachers from East High School in Salt Lake City walk out of school on Jan. 25, 2023, to protest legislation that would create private-school vouchers in the state. Several years of pandemic restrictions and curriculum battles have emboldened longtime advocates of funneling public funds to private and religious schools in statehouses throughout the country.

Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP

Stanford begins:

Emboldened by frustrations with pandemic-era policies and battles over what schools are teaching, conservative parents and politicians have accelerated a push for school choice policies that would funnel public funds into private schools.

Though school choice has been debated for decades, the movement is in a unique moment as advocates use parent concerns over COVID-era mask requirements; curriculum addressing race, gender, and sexuality; and library book content to bolster their argument that families should have more options outside of traditional public schools. And the school choice proposals states are considering—and, in some cases, have already passed—are more sweeping than previous iterations.

Already this year, lawmakers in at least 11 states—Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia—have introduced and, in some cases, passed school choice bills. Although they vary in scope, many of the bills would establish or expand private school voucher and education savings account programs that give families public funds to pay for tuition at private schools, cover the costs of homeschooling, or pay for other schooling expenses.

The resurgence of school choice action shouldn’t come as a surprise. During the 2022 midterm election cycle, 19 Republican gubernatorial candidates advocated for school choice, mostly in the form of vouchers and education savings accounts, on campaign websites. This year, seven governors so far have talked about school choice policies in their state of the state addresses, according to the Education Commission of the States.

The policies are a result of parents’ declining satisfaction with schools following the pandemic, said Jonathan Butcher, an education policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that advocates for school choice policies.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers

Florida: Republicans Plan to Offer Vouchers for All Students, But No Details on How It Will Be Financed

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2023 //
10

Now that Florida is a red state, the legislature plans to offer vouchers to every student. The legislators expect to do maximum damage to public schools, which will inexorably lose funding and students. Nothing has been said about how to pay for the proposal. Voucher schools in the state are mostly religious and are completely unregulated. Neither their principals nor their teachers need to be credentialed. They are also free to discriminate on any grounds.

The Miami Herald reports:

Florida Republican lawmakers this year will consider offering every K-12 student thousands of dollars each year for their families to spend on education.

Parents would have access to state-funded accounts and use them to pay for private school tuition plus a wide variety of school-related expenses.

The proposal, if approved, would make the state’s school voucher program bigger than ever. But one key fact about the pitch remains elusive: its cost. It could total billions of dollars.

House Speaker Paul Renner said last week he plans to make the proposal, House Bill 1, a priority during the annual legislative session, which starts March 7.

The measure is already being fast-tracked. It will have its first committee hearing Thursday morning in Tallahassee.

So far, the measure carries no financial impact statement. That’s despite the knowledge that hundreds of thousands more children would be eligible for annual payments of about $8,000 each.

The cost, according to the staff analysis, is “indeterminate.” And that “is not reasonable,” said Norín Dollard, a senior research analyst at Florida Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on quality of life issues for Floridians. The group issued a report on voucher funding in September.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS NEW STUDENTS WOULD BE ELIGIBLE

About 266,000 Florida children attend private schools without using any current state scholarship or voucher, Dollard notes. All would be eligible for education savings accounts under the proposal. In addition, approximately 150,000 children receive home schooling.

HB 1 would provide accounts to as many as 10,000 of them in the first year, with more to come in following years. Conservative back-of-the-napkin math suggests that if just 25% of the newly eligible students participate, and those currently in the program remain, the added cost would reach $600 million, Dollard said.

As participation grows, the total could approach $4 billion or more within five years, she added. If that’s the policy decision in leadership, so be it, Dollard said. But it needs to be funded somehow.

A RECURRING FINANCIAL OBLIGATION

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, focused on that issue during a hastily called Monday evening Zoom meeting to discuss the measure with public education advocates.“

“We have very, very serious concerns,” Eskamani said during an interview. “This is an annual shift of money. Where is it coming from?”

When unveiling the measure at a news briefing, Renner said it was too early to know how much money might be needed. Much depends on how many children want to avail themselves of the vouchers, he said, and where the Legislature sets per-student funding for the year.

At the same time, Renner stressed his goal is to further open school choice so “no one is left out.” The bill would eliminate most eligibility restrictions, though it would prioritize children whose family income is at or below 185% of the federal poverty level — or $55,500 for a family of four.

It also would broaden uses of the money beyond private school tuition to include education expenses such as tutoring, testing and college courses. It would allow students to bank up to $24,000 for those uses, and further permit children already attending private schools without state support to request a share of the funds.

“To effectively deliver a quality education, policy makers and education advocates must accept that every student has unique learning needs, that education dollars belong to the student and not a system, and that public school choice offers every student an opportunity to customize their own education,” Renner said Tuesday, when asked about the associated costs.

A SPIKE IN PARTICIPATION IS EXPECTED

Dollard and others said they anticipate wide interest in participation, with much of it coming from families already paying for private schools. In Arizona, which has a similar education savings account program, the state reported 80% of applicants never attended public schools.

That flips the idea of money following the student on its head, Dollard suggested, because those students never had their education covered by state money in the first place.

School district finance officers said they understood the leadership’s position that the details aren’t firm enough to know the full financial impact.

But using the state’s most recent voucher expansion plan as a guide, they had concerns that this initiative would take money away from district budgets and leave them little ability to plan.

That’s what happened the last time the state expanded vouchers in 2021 with the taxpayer-funded Family Empowerment Scholarship. Officials touted the program as adding $200 million for vouchers, allowing 61,000 more children to afford private school.

Districts saw some money go out the door, but nothing like what happened in 2022. Halfway through the 2021-22 school year, school budget officers across the state learned that three times the amount of money they had set aside to send to voucher programs would be required, based on updated attendance figures from the state.

In some counties, such as Pasco, efforts to provide employee raises were derailed as the money officials expected to use was diverted to the vouchers. All told, the cost had grown to $1 billion.

The current year has provided similar sticker shock. The Legislature approved a budget with no specific amount set for the scholarships. By the second education funding calculation in July, the price tag had increased to $1.3 billion.

That meant the Miami-Dade County school district would have to send $225 million from its budget to the voucher program, for example, and the Hillsborough County school district would send $75 million.

When the third calculation came out this week, districts learned they would be losing even more. If the state lifts the eligibility restrictions, Pinellas County Schools chief finance officer Kevin Smith predicted, it will become even more difficult to predict the financial impact.

He suggested the state should at least consider taking the money out of the public education funding program and create a separate line item.

That way, schools would know what to expect and they could budget appropriately. In recent years, the DeSantis administration has taken the position that unexpected changes in enrollment can pose a financial strain on local school districts.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article271630112.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Politics, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Guns in America: How Many More Must Die Before Congress Takes Action?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2023 //
62

After especially awful massacres, the public expects Congress to take meaningful steps to limit access to guns. Sandy Hook. No action. Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, Florida. No action. The Pulse Nightclub. No action. The Las Vegas music festival massacre. No action. Uvalde. No action. The recent massacres in California? What do you think? Why no action? The Republicans block every attempt to enact meaningful restrictions.

CNN posted a summary of where America stands internationally a day before the killing of 11 people in Monterrey Oark, California.

CNN) – Monterey Park. Atlanta. Orlando. Las Vegas. Newtown. Parkland. San Bernardino. Uvalde.

Ubiquitous gun violence in the United States has left few places unscathed over the decades. Still, many Americans hold their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct. But critics of the Second Amendment say that right threatens another: The right to life.

I insert here that my understanding of the Second Amendment is that it pertains not to the right of every individual to “bear arms,” but to the maintenance and arming of a “well-regulated militia.”

For a time in the 1990s, the Supreme Court agreed, and let stand a decade-long ban on assault weapons.

The 2nd Amendment says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The CNN article continues:

There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS). No other nation has more civilian guns than people.

More guns than people!

Read the article.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Guns, Politics, Republicans

Dana Milbank: Can You Govern Based on Lies?

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2023 //
22

Dana Milbank, my favorite columnist at The Washington Post, wrote about the chaos that has been normalized in the House of Representatives, now that it’s controlled by the Republican Party.

Ryan Zinke stepped up to the microphone and into the Twilight Zone.

“Despite the ‘deep state’s’ repeated attempts to stop me, I stand before you as a duly elected member of the United States Congress and tell you that a deep state exists and is perhaps the strongest covert weapon the left has against the American people,” he told the House. The Montana Republican, who has returned to Congress after a scandal-plagued stint in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, informed his colleagues that “the deep state runs secret messaging campaigns” and is trying “to wipe out the American cowboy.”

Yee-haw! Zinke was speaking in support of a new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, or, as Democrats call it, the “Tinfoil Hat Committee.” In substance, it’s the QAnon committee, with a remit to probe the “deep state” and other wacky conspiracy theories. With the panel’s creation, QAnon completes its journey from message board for the paranoid to official policy of the House Republican majority.

After the chaos of the first week of the 118th Congress, many Americans wondered: If it took them 15 ballots just to choose a speaker, how could Republicans possibly govern? Now we know. They are going to govern by fantasy and legislate on the basis of fiction.

On Monday, their first day of legislative business, they voted to repeal funding for a fictitious “87,000 IRS agents” who don’t exist and never will. On Wednesday, they approved legislation purporting to outlaw infanticide, which is already illegal and always has been. In between, they set up the deep state committee.

What next? Sorry, that’s secret. And therein might be the biggest falsehood of all. After numerous promises of “transparency” from the new leaders, they are refusing to reveal multiple backroom concessions Kevin McCarthy made to secure the speakership. You might even call it a conspiracy of silence.
···
Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the GOP conference chair, boasted this week that “we passed the most … transparent rules package in history.” McCarthy tweeted that the new rules would “increase transparency” and that “Republicans are keeping our commitment to make Congress more open.”
Alas, the transparency claims could not survive the light of day. Punchbowl News reported that McCarthy’s team had inked a secret three-page “addendum” to the rules package outlining the giveaways he bartered with holdouts blocking him from becoming speaker.

McCarthy, in a caucus meeting Tuesday, reportedly denied the addendum existed. Alas for McCarthy, other Republican lawmakers claimed to have read the document whose existence McCarthy denied.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) told Axios he was personally reviewing the document. Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) acknowledged that “it has to be out there.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), leaving the caucus meeting in the Capitol basement Tuesday, told a group of us that there remained “questions that I think many of us have about what side deals may or may not have been made.”

On the floor, where Democrats were hollering about the “secret three-page addendum,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), who negotiated much of the deal, countered that it was “classic swamp speak” to be “talking about secret deals.” But negotiating such secret deals is totally fine?

One change Republicans did reveal is the gutting of the Office of Congressional Ethics (it won’t be able to hire new staff when current employees leave), which will help shield lawmakers’ wrongdoing from public scrutiny. Also made known: a commitment to vote on abolishing the IRS and eliminating income taxes.


The one beacon of transparency in this sea of opacity? McCarthy’s leading critic, Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). He wants to free C-SPAN cameras to film the House floor the way they did during last week’s speaker-vote chaos — during which the incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee was physically restrained from lunging at Gaetz.
···
Steve Scalise is the ideal majority leader for the post-truth era.


Boasting to reporters about passage of “the bill to repeal those 87,000 IRS agents,” he claimed that the Congressional Budget Office “confirmed” that those agents would “go after people making less than $200,000 a year,” including “the single mom who’s working two shifts at a restaurant.”


In reality, the IRS is only hiring about 6,500 agents — and that’s over a decade. In reality, the CBO said that only “a small fraction” of revenue from increased enforcement will come from taxpayers earning less than $400,000 a year.


Here’s what else CBO said: The Republicans’ bill to cut funds to the IRS — the new majority’s first legislation — would add $114 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.


But Republicans spent the entire debate repeating the outright falsehood that 87,000 “agents” would “target American working-class families” (Jason T. Smith, Mo.) and “harass and spy on middle-class and low-income families” (Michelle Steel, Calif.). Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) falsely said the CBO had projected “as many as 700,000 more audits, [of] Americans making less than $75,000 a year.”

Beth Van Duyne (R-Tex.) added the inventive claim that the fake agents would “make the IRS larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI and Border Control together.” The Defense Department alone employs about 3 million people.

Former majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told the House it was the “most dishonest, demagogic rhetoric that I have seen.” But he hadn’t yet witnessed the infanticide debate.
···
“If a baby is born alive, outside the womb, alive, how could you kill that baby and that be legal?” Scalise asked during debate on the Republicans’ “born-alive” abortion bill. “And yet in a number of states, it is legal and happening today.”


No, it isn’t. Infanticide, of course, has always been murder, and a 2002 “born alive” law affirmed that.
The dispute is limited to rare cases, typically involving a fetus born or aborted with a medical condition that isn’t survivable: Should it be treated with heroic measures or compassionate care? Infanticide isn’t on the table.


The bill was one of three antiabortion measures House Republicans prioritized in their first week of legislating: New House rules promising a vote on permanently banning federal abortion funds, a denunciation of violence against antiabortion groups and the born-alive bill.


It was a curious response to the 2022 elections, when voters angered by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade propelled Democrats to better-than-expected results, and abortion rights supporters prevailed even in red states such as Kentucky and Kansas. “We learned nothing from the midterms if this is how we’re going to operate in the first week,” complained Mace, the South Carolina Republican. “What are we doing to protect victims of rape and victims of incest? Nothing.” She said her GOP colleagues were only “muddying the waters and paying lip service.”

Perhaps that’s to be expected from a GOP leadership in which, as Business Insider pointed out, there will be more guys named “Mike” running committees — six — than there are women in charge of them (just three of the 21 chairs). The old boys of the House Republican caucus might benefit from a Mike drop.
···
What will be the priorities of this new House majority? Well, let us take them at their word.
Fox News host Sean Hannity visited the Rayburn Room off the House floor this week where, under the watchful eye of a George Washington oil portrait, he broadcast interviews with McCarthy and his leadership team.


Total mentions of inflation: 1.
Total mentions of jobs: 1.
Total mentions of the economy: 2.
Total mentions of investigations: 20.


“Thank you, brother,” McCarthy said to Hannity before they got down to probing all of the planned probes: investigating the FBI, DOJ, China, the “weaponized” feds, the Afghanistan pullout, covid-19’s origins, Anthony Fauci, the “Biden family syndicate,” Hunter Biden’s laptop and more.
And now: President Biden’s handling of classified documents. Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (Ohio), who dismissed Trump’s hoarding of classified documents as a “bookkeeping issue,” now demands “a full and thorough review” of Biden’s conduct. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (Ky.), who said probing the Trump documents would “not be a priority,” said of Biden’s documents: “We’re probing it.”


Oversight is important, but the deep state committee in particular goes beyond oversight and into the realm of vengeance. Under the chairmanship of the voluble Jim Jordan (Ohio), it gives lawmakers powers to interfere in active criminal investigations — including, potentially, investigations into themselves. (Six House Republicans requested pardons from then-President Trump for their role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.)

On the floor, the committee’s proponents didn’t hide their conspiracy beliefs. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) meandered into remarks about the FBI spying on Frank Sinatra before proclaiming: “Mr. Speaker, today we are putting the deep state on notice. We are coming for you.”


House Republicans gave themselves another tool of vengeance by reviving the Holman Rule, which allows lawmakers to cut the salaries of individual federal employees. They’re also planning to kick Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) off the Intelligence Committee, explicitly as punishment for handling Trump’s first impeachment.


By contrast, McCarthy has promised committee assignments to George Santos (R-N.Y.), who won election on a fabricated life story and résumé. Santos faces multiple investigations, and New York Republicans (including members of Congress) have called him a “fraud” and a “joke” and demanded he resign.


But McCarthy is having none of it. “He is seated,” said the man who chose to seat Santos. “If there is a concern, he will go through Ethics,” said the man who just disemboweled the Office of Government Ethics. McCarthy’s logic is as obvious as it is unprincipled: Without Santos, his four-vote majority would become a three-vote majority.
Even the four-vote majority is confounding McCarthy. House Republicans had planned this week to vote on a pair of symbolic resolutions expressing support for law enforcement. But they had to pull the bills from the floor; they didn’t have the votes.


If McCarthy can’t get his fractious caucus to agree on the easy stuff, what happens when he has to avoid defaulting on the federal debt in a few months? McCarthy, who promised not to approve a debt-limit increase without massive spending cuts, has no room to maneuver — and he has legislative rookies running key committees.

House Republicans and their usual allies in the media had already been trading epithets: “fraud.” “Harlot.” “Benedict Arnold.” “Insurrectionists.” And now comes word that Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and other Republican moderates, in a sign of their lack of faith in McCarthy, have begun talks with Democrats about a “discharge petition.” That would circumvent GOP leaders, increasing the debt limit without them.


Republican leaders are right to be paranoid about “weaponization.” But the biggest conspiracy might come from within.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Republicans, Stupid
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