Archives for category: Separation of church and state

This discussion, led by Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, is the most important information you will read today, this week, this month. It explains the theocratic movement that is taking control of the seats of power, imperiling democracy. It describes who they are. You will learn about “dominionism,” about “the Seven Mountains,” about a distorted view of religion that seeks power. They play the long game, with the goal of controlling our society.

This is the only post today. We really have to focus on the root issue in American political life today, the one that makes it impossible to address any problems. Religious extremism is it.

Lithwick is a lawyer, journalist, and senior editor at Slate. She interviews Rachel Laser, the president and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State—a nonprofit education and advocacy organization that works in courts, legislatures, and the public square to protect religious freedom—and Katherine Stewart, an author and journalist who has closely covered religious extremism for the past fifteen years; her latest book is The Power Worshippers: Inside The Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Her new book, Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, will be published next February.

Please open the link to Slate to read the arntire discussion. It’s terrifying.

Dahlia Lithwick: So Katherine, I think we’re going to start with you, and we’re going to talk about this movement. I would love to define it, because we put a lot under this rubric of white Christian nationalism.

Katherine Stewart: Let’s talk about what Christian nationalism is and what it isn’t. Christian nationalism is not a religion—it’s not Christianity. I think of it as a mindset, and also a machine. The mindset is this ideology, the idea of America as essentially a Christian theocracy or a Christian nation whose laws should be based on the Bible, and a very reactionary reading of the Bible. It’s also a political movement that exploits religion in this organized quest for power. As a political movement, it is leadership-driven and it’s organization-driven. It has this deeply networked organizational infrastructure that is really the key to its power. There has been five decades of investment in this infrastructure, and it’s the leaders of this network who are really calling the shots.

We can group their organizations into categories. I’ll throw out a few names, but this is by no means comprehensive. There are these right-wing groups like the Family Research Council. You have networking organizations like the Council for National Policy, which gets much of the movement’s leadership cadre on the same page, and brings them together with these very deep-pocketed funders. There are think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. And there’s a vast right-wing legal advocacy ecosystem that includes groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, with its $100-plus-million-per-year budget; also, the Becket Fund, Liberty Counsel, First Liberty Institute, Pacific Justice Institute—and they align with the aims of the Federalist Society and related organizations that mobilize enormous sums of money to shape the courts.

Another feature of this movement that is often overlooked is the pastor networks like Watchmen on the Wall and Church United, or groups like Faith Wins, that draw together and then mobilize tens of thousands of conservative or conservative-leaning pastors as movement leaders. If you can get the pastors, you can get their congregations. Often pastors are the most trusted voices in their congregations. So they reach out to these pastors, draw them into networks, and give them tools to turn out their congregations to vote for the far-right candidates that they want.

And then, of course, there’s this information sphere—or propaganda sphere—of the type that the Alitos, with their “Appeal to Heaven” flag, are clearly tied into. It’s a kind of messaging sphere that outsiders often simply don’t know about, but it’s incredibly self-contained and repeats over and over again a certain core set of messages.

Rachel, I think we know about the ways in which these movements and groups have targeted Congress and targeted the executive branch. We have seen the laying on of hands of the clergy when Donald Trump assumed office. We know a lot about Mike Johnson, we know a lot about Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the ways in which these religious ideas have embedded themselves in the other two branches of government.

But it’s harder and murkier to understand how it intersects with the courts. I would love for you to explain when this movement really turns its attention to the courts, and how this movement manages to bring this sprawling network to making change at the federal judiciary.

Rachel Laser: I think we have to start with the Federalist Society, which was founded in 1982. That was around the time when all of the religious-right groups were getting active. They were intentionally shifting their focus from school segregation to abortion. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, we saw this shadow network of legal groups forming. That accompanied what the Federalist Society was doing with the judiciary. The Alliance Defending Freedom was founded in the early ’90s, the Becket Fund in the early ’90s, First Liberty in 1997, Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice back in 1990, Liberty Counsel in 1989. So when we were seeing the “moral majority,” and this sort of burgeoning religious extremist movement in the country, they got really smart and decided to focus on the courts, and, boy, are we seeing the rewards of that today.

Stewart: And the movement is extremely strategic. Very patient. I think the key to their success is that long-range thinking and their strategy.

From the very beginning, they set about picking the right cases to bring to the right courts and they created these novel legal building blocks that would sideline, and in some cases obliterate, the establishment clause. They’ve turned civil rights law on its head, and expanded the privileges of religious organizations substantially, including the right to taxpayer money.

Katherine, you wrote a piece in 2022 describing how the movement gets supercharged. You flagged three things that happened after Dobbs: First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appears to have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years. Second, the theology of dominion—that is the belief that right-thinking Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society—is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Can you talk about how those three themes are playing out now? I mean, we live in that world. That’s mifepristone, that’s EMTALA, that’s the in vitro fertilization decision out of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Stewart: By acknowledging the legitimacy of a state interest in zygotes and blastocysts and fetuses, they really provide a legal system with a set of purely religiously grounded rights that can be used to strip women of all kinds of rights and basically turn our bodies and lives over to federal and state authorities.

But Dobbs is really just the inevitable consequence of this movement’s power. They’re not stopping here. The movement leaders are determined to end all abortion access everywhere. When they say abortion, they also mean some of the most effective and popular forms of birth control, as well as miscarriage care that’s necessary to save women’s lives and health. We’re seeing the consequences of this all over the country, where women are suffering devastating health consequences when they can’t get the miscarriage care that they need.

I’ve been attending right-wing conferences and strategy gatherings for 15 years for my research, and they tell us over and over again what they intend to do, and then they do it, and then they boast about what they’ve done. They’re really not hiding, and their aims are not hard to discern if you’re paying attention.

In the last 15 years, the rhetoric of violence has become more extreme. Fifteen years ago, the religious right sometimes wanted to portray itself as just wanting a seat at the table in the noisy forum of American democracy, saying, “We just want to have our voices heard and be counted.” But the calls for dominion, the calls for total domination, have become louder and more explicit. And part of that is a consequence of the rise of a spirit-warrior style of religion, embodied in movements like the New Apostolic Reformation, which is a sort of charismatic Christian evangelical movement. It’s a relational network, rather than a formal denomination, and it’s grown enormously in recent years. It has deep roots in Christian Reconstructionism and Calvinism, but it didn’t really get going until Loren Cunningham and Bill Bright, these two Christian-right leaders, both said they had a dream.

They both seemed to have the same dream that God told them that they needed to take over the seven “mountains,” or spheres, of culture, which they identified as things like government, education, business, media, and the like. They shared these ideas with some figures like Lance Wallnau and Peter Wagner. Wagner was a key figure in the “church planting” movement—a movement of establishing or planting new churches. Wagner ran with the idea of taking over the seven mountains as taking back dominion from Satan.

That notion of “Seven Mountains” dominionism has spread very quickly—not just among networks like the New Apostolic Reformation and other charismatic networks, but the language and style of “Seven Mountains Dominion” and this sort of spirit-warrior religion has spread to other sectors of the movement that are not remotely identified with the NAR or charismatic Christianity.

NAR churches often cite the Watchman Decree, a very theocratic prayer, which references the seven mountains. They often fly the “Appeal to Heaven” flag. Now you have people like Mike Johnson, who’s affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, displaying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside his office and appearing on podcasts run by very overt “Seven Mountains” dominionists, and you have a lot of white-power and militia groups that were not particularly religious before—they were more focused on race—but now they’re adopting the language and style of “Seven Mountains” dominionism. So when you see Mike Johnson’s “Appeal to Heaven” flag, when you see the Alitos flying the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation, or that they’re members of these militias at all, but it really tells us who they’ve been talking to.

Most people in the mainstream, at the center right, really don’t know anything about this flag. They wouldn’t think to fly it. It’s like a relic of the revolutionary period. And it’s been revived now, and it’s being promoted by people on the extreme far right. So when they fly it, they’ve reinterpreted it as taking a stand for the idea of America as a Christian theocratic nation rather than a pluralistic democracy. They see it as a call for profound, and even violent, revolution. It’s really astonishing to see it flying over the Alitos’ beach house. Again, it doesn’t mean that they’re paid-up members of militia groups or charismatic Christian groups. It just means they spend their time in the same information and propaganda bubbles where this flag stands for God and country and armed insurrection.

Laser: If you believe that rights are God-given, instead of given by the people, then you can see how you can jump quickly to “and I can use violence to protect those rights.” That’s what has shown up in the polls.

PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute] did a poll on Christian nationalists, and they found Christian nationalists are about twice as likely as the rest of us to believe in political violence. That’s what we saw on Jan. 6 with the parading “Appeal to Heaven” flags that were at the insurrection. I think another important point to make here is the authoritarian nature of this Christian nationalist movement. This movement is rooted in the belief that America is a country given to European Christians, and that our laws and policies must reflect the same. If you believe that, you are antidemocratic, because democracy is rooted in equality. So the end goal of this Christian nationalist movement has to be the toppling of democracy to achieve their goal. And that’s why we saw so many of them fueling the insurrection.

The antidote to Christian nationalism is the separation of church and state, because it refuses to let Christian privilege into the law, it refuses to let conservative Christianity be the guiding principle in America. It insists that America keep to its promises that are embedded in our Constitution, of religious freedom as a basic human right. And that’s why Christian nationalists have gone after the separation of church and state, and that’s why their allies at the Supreme Court are on a crusade to eradicate church–state separation—because they are in lockstep with a movement that must get rid of church–state separation in order to accomplish its goals.

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My comment:

Will we be a theocracy or a society struggling to improve democracy? Please open the link. After reading this, you can understand why it is so important to the theocrats to destroy the separation of church and state and to funnel public money into religious organizations. That’s one of the crucial issues on the ballot in November. If you don’t want to be controlled by these power-hungry zealots, get active.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Stephen Dyer: Public School Funding in Ohio Drops Dramatically as “Choice” Expands

By dianeravitch

June 4, 2024 //

Stephen Dyer, former state legislator in Ohio, wrote in his blog “Tenth Period” that the 85% of Ohio’s children who attend public schools are being shortchanged by the state. First the state went overboard for charter schools, including for-profit charters and virtual charters and experienced a long list of money-wasting scandals. Then the state Republicans began expanding vouchers, despite a major evaluation showing that low-income students lost ground academically by using vouchers. As the state lowered the restrictions on access to vouchers, they turned into a subsidy for private school tuition.

He writes:

Since 1975, the percentage of the state budget going to Ohio’s public school students has dropped from 40% to barely 20% this year — a record low.

This is stunning, stunning data. But the Ohio General Assembly and Gov. Mike DeWine today are committing the smallest share of the state’s budget to educate Ohio’s public school kids in the last 50 years. And it’s not really close.

What’s going on here?

Simple: Ohio’s leaders have spent the last 3+ decades investing more and more money into privately run charter schools and, especially recently, have exploded their commitment to subsidize wealthy Ohioans’ private school tuitions. This has come at the expense of the 85% of Ohio students who attend the state’s public school districts.

Look at this school year, for example. In the budget, the state commits a little more than $11 billion to primary and secondary education. That represents 26.6% of the state’s $41.5 billion annual expenditure. However, this year, charter schools are expected to be paid $1.3 billion and private school tuition subsidies will soar to $1.02 billion (to give you an idea of what kind of explosion this has been, when I left the Ohio House in 2010, Ohio spent about $75 million on these tuition subsidies). So if you subtract that combined $2.32 billion that’s no longer going to kids in public school districts, now Ohio’s committing $8.7 billion to educate the 1.6 million kids in Ohio’s public school districts. That’s a 21.1% commitment of the state’s budget.

Some perspective:

That $8.7 billion is about what the state was sending to kids in public school districts in 1997, adjusted for inflation.
The 21.1% commitment currently being sent to kids in public school districts is by far the lowest commitment the state has ever made to its public school students — about 7% lower than the previous record (last year’s 22.2%) and 20% lower than the previous record for low spending in the pre-privatization era.
The voucher expenditure alone now drops state commitment to public school kids by nearly 10%.
The commitment to all students, including vouchers and charters, represents the fifth-lowest commitment since 1975. Only four years surrounding the initial filing of the state’s school funding lawsuit in 1991 were lower. The lowest commitment ever on record was 1992 at 25.2% of the state budget. Don’t worry, though. Next year, the projected commitment to all Ohio students will be 25.3% of the state budget.
What is clear now is that every single new dollar (plus a few more) that’s been spent on K-12 education since 1997 has gone to fund privately run charter schools and subsidize private school tuitions mostly for parents whose kids already attend private school.

What’s even more amazing is that even if charters and vouchers never existed and all that revenue was going to fund the educations of only Ohio’s public school students, the state is still spending a smaller percentage of its budget on K-12 education than at any but 4 out of the last 50 years. And next year it’s less than all but 1 of those last 50 years.

Ohio’s current leaders have essentially divested from Ohio’s greatest resource — its children and future — for the last 30 years.

Please open the link and finish reading the post. Ohio has also slashed funding for public higher education.

Does this disinvestment in children and higher education make any sense? Who benefits?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Politico: Explosion of Choice in Florida Dooms Many Public Schools

By dianeravitch

May 29, 2024 //

Ron DeSantis has been determined as governor of Florida to privatize the funding of schools, and he has had a compliant legislature to help him achieve his goal of destroying public schools.

Andrew Atterbury of Politico wrote about the fiscal crisis of many public school districts as they lose students to private schools, charter schools, religious schools, and home schools.

Most vouchers are claimed by students already enrolled in private schools—a subsidy for the rich and upper-middle-class—but the public funds are causing serious enrollment declines in some districts. Those districts are now considering closing public schools as tax money flows to unaccountable private schools.

Atterbury writes:

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have spent years aggressively turning the state into a haven for school choice. They have been wildly successful, with tens of thousands more children enrolling in private or charter schools or homeschooling.

Now as those programs balloon, some of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools.

The emphasis on these programs has been central to DeSantis’ goals of remaking the Florida education system, and they are poised for another year of growth. DeSantis’ school policies are already influencing other GOP-leaning states, many of which have pursued similar voucher programs. But Florida has served as a conservative laboratory for a suite of other policies, ranging from attacking public- and private-sector diversity programs to fighting the Biden administration on immigration.

“We need some big changes throughout the country,” DeSantis said Thursday evening at the Florida Homeschool Convention in Kissimmee. “Florida has shown a blueprint, and we really can be an engine for that as other states work to adopt a lot of the policies that we’ve done.”

Education officials in some of the state’s largest counties are looking to scale back costs by repurposing or outright closing campuses — including in Broward, Duval and Miami-Dade counties. Even as some communities rally to try to save their local public schools, traditional public schools are left with empty seats and budget crunches.

Since 2019-20, when the pandemic upended education, some 53,000 students have left traditional public schools in these counties, a sizable total that is forcing school leaders to consider closing campuses that have been entrenched in local communities for years.

In Broward County, Florida’s second-largest school district, officials have floated plans to close up to 42 campuses over the next few years, moves that would have a ripple effect across Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood.

The district has lost more than 20,000 students over the last five years, a decline that comes as charter schools in particular experienced sizable growth in the area. Enrollment in charters, which are public schools operating under performance contracts freeing them of many state regulations, increased by nearly 27,000 students since 2010, according to Broward school officials.

Broward County Public Schools claims to have more than 49,000 classroom seats sitting empty this year, a number that “closely matches” the 49,833 students attending charter schools in the area, officials noted in an enrollment overview.

These enrollment swings are pressing Broward leaders to combine and condense dozens of schools, efforts that would save the district on major operating costs. So far, some of the ideas are meeting heavy resistance…

Enrollment among charters has increased by more than 68,000 students statewide from 2019-20 to this school year, according to data from the Florida Department of Education. More than a third of that rise happened in Broward, Duval and Miami counties alone.

Private school enrollment across Florida rose by 47,000 students to 445,000 students from 2019-20 to 2022-23, according to the latest data available from the state. Much of that growth is from newly enrolled kindergartners, with only a small fraction of these students having been previously enrolled in public schools, according to Step Up for Students, the preeminent administrator of state-sponsored scholarships in Florida.

A growing number of families also chose to homeschool their children during this span, as this population grew by nearly 50,000 students between 2019-20 and 2022-23, totaling 154,000 students in the latest Florida Department of Education data.

As all of these choice options ascend, enrollment in traditional public schools across the state decreased by 55,000 students from 2019-20 to this year, state data shows. But enrollment isn’t down everywhere. While Duval County has lost thousands of students, enrollment is up by more than 7,700 students at neighboring St. John’s County, the state’s top-ranked school district…

The state’s scholarship program is expected to grow, which could lead to more students leaving traditional public schools. While most new scholarship recipients previously attended private schools already, there is space for 82,000 more statewide — nearly 217,000 total — to attend private school or find a different schooling option on the state’s dime next school year.

Across the state, public schools are facing budget cuts, layoffs. and school closures, all to satisfy Gov. DeSantis’ love of school choice. Over time, billions of public dollars will flow every year to unaccountable private schools that are allowed to discriminate. And the outcomes will be worse, not better, as students flock to low-cost schools whose teachers and principals are uncertified.

It the main win for DeSantis is to subsidize the cost of private schools for parents whose children were already enrolled in private schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Texas: Governor Abbott’s Maniacal Passion for Vouchers

By dianeravitch

May 28, 2024 //

Politico reporters Liz Crampton and Andrew Atterbury report on Governor Greg Abbott’s determination to purge the Republican Party in Texas of any elected official who opposes vouchers. He managed to defeat some rural Republicans who put the needs of their communities over the demands of the governors. He has driven the state party to the extremist right by targeting moderate Republicans. He is fighting for a voucher program that will cost the state $2 billion a year by 2028 and serve mainly students already in private schools. In effect, the state would transfer billions to the mostly white, affluent kids in private schools while underfunding the public schools that enroll five million children, mostly black and brown.

Today are the runoffs that will determine whether Abbott has enough votes to pass a voucher bill. If he wins, he can deliver a plum to his wealthy and upper-middle-class supporters who send their kids to private schools.

Crampton and Atterbury write:

When nearly two dozen Republican state lawmakers defied Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to oppose a centerpiece of his agenda — the creation of a school voucher program — they knew they’d face political payback.

But Abbott’s vengeance has been ferocious, even by Texas standards.

He helped knock off seven incumbents in the Republican primary in March and is targeting a handful more contests at the end of the month by handpicking conservative challengers and collecting millions of dollars from donors in Texas and beyond. Another two anti-voucher incumbents lost even though they weren’t specifically blacklisted by Abbott.

The enormous amount of money pouring into Texas Republican primaries from national pro-school-choice groups sets a new precedent as national interests become increasingly intertwined in state legislatures. Abbott’s targeting of former allies has escalated a Republican civil war that is defining Texas politics today, all in pursuit of enacting a voucher law that stands to remake K-12 education in the nation’s second biggest state.

“It’s just so unusual for an incumbent governor to campaign against members of his own party,” John Colyandro, a Texas lobbyist and former top aide to Abbott, said in an interview. “He was the pivot around which everything turned here.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott arrives to speak at the State Capitol during a rally in support of school vouchers. — Gov. Greg Abbott’s targeting of former allies has escalated a Republican civil war that is defining Texas politics today. | Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman via AP

Backed by deep-pocketed conservative figures like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, the school-choice movement has leveraged Republican majorities in state legislatures across the country to pass laws that provide families with lump sums to spend on private school tuition. The efforts, according to supporters, are meant to bolster parental rights by giving families the financial freedom to choose a different option for schooling their children.

Anti-voucher Republicans “thought they had a stronghold,” said Hillary Hickland, a candidate who was backed by Abbott and won her race in March. “They had this elitist air, that they know better for a community than the taxpayers, or the parents. And they were wrong.”

[Of course, it’s the height of irony to refer to the supporters of public schools as “elitists.” Abbott could not have knocked off his critics without the millions sent by out-of-state billionaires DeVos and Yass and in-state billionaires Dunn and Wilks.]

Ten states passed or expanded school-choice laws in 2023 alone. There are now 18 states that have education savings accounts, which allow parents to spend state funding on a variety of choices including private schools. Students are flocking to these programs, yet data shows that the majority of scholarships or vouchers are going to wealthier families already enrolled in private schools — not students leaving their traditional public schools.

But despite all the momentum across the country, voucher bills have repeatedly failed in Texas. That’s why Abbott and pro-school-choice advocates are continuing their big money push as early voting is underway for the primary runoffs next week. Even after knocking out a number of party defectors in March, Abbott and aligned Republicans are teetering on securing enough votes to pass school-choice when the Legislature returns with a new class in January 2025.

“We’re not counting our chickens, not stopping, not laying off,” said David Carney, a consultant with Abbott’s campaign, in an interview.

Abbott’s vendetta comes as other GOP figures are also going after fellow Republicans for perceived crimes against the party, notably Attorney General Ken Paxton’s targeting of incumbents for voting to impeach him. House Speaker Dade Phelan is among those under siege as he fights to defend his own hold on power in the runoffs next Tuesday.

In prior years, state legislature races in Texas typically cost about $250,000. But spending in some of these primaries has been upwards of $1 million, thanks to the involvement of pro-voucher interests attacking Republicans.

“We are outgunned here big time,” said Rep. DeWayne Burns, a Republican lawmaker fighting to keep in his seat representing a district encompassing Cleburne, Texas, a town on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth. “This is a true David v. Goliath situation and I’m the David here.”

The negative attacks on anti-voucher Republicans financed by PACs have gone beyond school-choice and targeted the incumbents for lacking conservative bona fides on issues like guns and the border — often in false or misleading mailers, texts and advertisements.

In one example, residents of Mineral Wells, Texas received mailers paid for by Libertarian PAC Make Liberty Win going after incumbent Rep. Glenn Rogers, who lost his primary in March to an Abbott-backed challenger. That mailer accused him of being “anti-gun” and warned that “if we don’t vote Rogers out, he will only drift further left.”

Rogers, a fifth-generation rancher and veterinarian who was first elected in 2021, said that he was also accused of being soft on the border, an attack line he believes Abbott chose because that issue resonates more with voters than vouchers.

“If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes truth to a low-information voter,” Rogers said. “Unfortunately we have a lot of low-information voters. That doesn’t have anything to do with their mental ability, it has to do with them keeping up. Eventually it becomes truth in their minds.”

Although Republicans boast big majorities in both chambers and control the governorship, school-choice proposals were repeatedly swatted down in 2023, even after Abbott made them a top priority and called special sessions to address the issue. The latest proposal would have given around 40,000 students access to about $10,500 in vouchers for private schooling or $1,000 toward homeschooling.

Republicans, many from rural areas, who have long been opposed to vouchers over concerns that it would jeopardize public education funding, banded with Democrats for an unlikely alliance that proved to be a thorn in Abbott’s side. Those lawmakers were spooked by an estimate that the vouchers program would cost the state more than $2 billion annually by 2028.

“I voted for my district and I have no regrets,” said San Antonio Rep. Steve Allison, who lost his primary. “What the governor did is extremely wrong. Me and the others that he came after have been with him 100 percent of the time on every issue except this one.”

Abbott has major money on his side. Among the constellation of PACs and donations from wealthy political players dumping money into Texas elections this year, there’s Pennsylvania billionaire Yass. A major school-choice supporter, Yass personally cut a check to Abbott for $6 million last year, which the governor called the largest single donation in Texas history.

Yass has also given to PACs backing pro-voucher candidates, like the School Freedom Fund, which is affiliated with the Club for Growth and has run multi-million-dollar TV blitzes.

DeVos’ PAC, the American Federation for Children Victory Fund, has pumped $4.5 million into the races — nearly half of what the PAC has promised to spend nationwide this cycle. Of the 13 anti-school-choice lawmakers zeroed in on by the PAC, 10 candidates either lost their race or were forced into an upcoming runoff.

“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school-choice and freedom in education — you’re a target,” Tommy Schultz, CEO of AFC, said when the fundraising organization was createdin 2023. “If you’re a champion for parents — we’ll be your shield.”

Another group, the Family Empowerment Coalition PAC, launched in June 2023 with the singular goal of defending incumbents from both parties who voted for school-choice. But the organization expanded its mission a few months later to include supporting primary challengers to incumbents who voted against the measure — and has spent at least $1.4 million this election cycle, according to data from Transparency USA, a political spending database.

Texas is just one state where the groups are getting involved. Make Liberty Win is also singling out anti-voucher Republicans in Tennessee and Ohio.

All that outside money comes on top of typical spending from big-name conservative donors in Texas, like Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks who each have donated at least $1.7 million to various lawmakers since July 2023, according to data from the Texas Ethics Commission compiled by Chrisopher Tackett, a campaign finance watchdog.

Abbott’s own PAC has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars this cycle to candidates seeking to unseat incumbents who opposed vouchers. He has handed out endorsements to challengers and shown up for appearances to back them on the campaign trail.

The Abbott campaign is projected to spend some $11 million during the primary races, including $4 million on the runoffs alone, Carney said. That’s a massive jump from the $500,000 he would typically spend for primaries, he said.

The governor touts school-choice as a means for parents to leave struggling campuses, often using districts in Houston and Dallas as punching bags. He recently pointed to Dallas schools having a resource guide about students identifying with a different gender and a Lewisville teacher dressing in drag as examples of why vouchers are needed — demonstrating how Republicans are leveraging the culture war to bolster support for vouchers.

“If you’re a parent in that situation, should you be trapped within a school district that’s focusing on issues like that?” Abbott said during a keynote address to the Texas Public Policy Foundation in March. “Of course not.”

By Abbott’s math, the Texas House is sitting at 74 votes in favor of school-choice considering who won their primary race and the candidates that reached a runoff. That count, though, would still put the House two votes shy of passing the landmark policy — upping the stakes for the runoffs.

“I came out with no ambiguity about where I stood or what I expected,” Abbott said. “If the governor puts something on the emergency item list, that means this is something that must pass. And if it doesn’t pass, there’s going to be challenges to deal with.”

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

The Ominous Flag that Flew over Justice Alito’s Vacation Home

By dianeravitch

May 25, 2024 //

We learned recently that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito flew an upside-down America flag in front of his home, a flag carried by January 6 insurrectionists to protest the 2024 election. He blamed his wife.

Now we learn that Justice Alito flew another seditious flag in front of his vacation home. It’s called “Appeal to Heaven,” and it’s closely tied to white Christian nationalism.

Justice Alito’s arrogance and disregard for judicial ethics is staggering. He has a lifetime appointment on a Court with a 6-3 conservative majority. He thinks he is above the law.

Sarah Posner wrote on the MSNBC site:

News that an Appeal to Heaven flag was seen flying outside the beach house of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito marks the second report in the space of a week that a symbol used by Jan. 6 insurrectionists was seen outside one of his residences. According to the report from The New York Times, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the flag was photographed flying at the home on multiple occasions between July and September 2023. Alito has remained silent about how and why the flag came to be flying at his property, but the more one knows about the background of the flag, the more chilling its presence at his house becomes.

This flag, which bears the words “Appeal to Heaven” and an image of a green pine tree, is an unmistakable emblem for an influential segment of Christian nationalists who claim the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, contrary to God’s will, and that believers’ spiritual warfare is essential to restoring God’s anointed leader to his rightful office. It was one of numerous Christian nationalist flags and other iconography carried by Trump supporters Jan. 6 and at the Jericho March, a series of prayer rallies that were like jet fuel for the insurrection. The Jericho March featured right-wing evangelical and Catholic speakers alongside militants such as conspiracist Alex Jones, Trump’s disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Oathkeepers founder Stewart Rhodes, now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy and other crimes.

After years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation.

The Appeal to Heaven flag originated in Revolutionary times as a call to take up arms against unjust rulers who ignored the pleas of their citizens. But after years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR’s founder, C. Peter Wagner, drew on existing strands and trends in charismatic Christianity to create a powerful network of self-proclaimed apostles and prophets who claimed to be leading a revolution in Christianity. NAR’s adherents, as religion scholar and MSNBC columnist Anthea Butler has written, believe “the government should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming.” They promote spiritual warfare, including spiritual “mappings” to identify demonic forces in communities, and “power encounters” like exorcisms “to cleanse not only people, but cities and communities.” They envision not only a Christian nation, but also a new Christianity at the head of it.

Sheets is a prominent “prophet” in the world of the NAR. He claims to receive dreams and visions from God about world events, including the 2020 election and its aftermath. According to the Times, in his 2015 book Sheets maintained that God had “resurrected” the Appeal to Heaven flag and urged his readers to “Wave it outwardly: wear it inwardly. Appeal to heaven daily for a spiritual revolution that will knock out the Goliaths of our day.” Sheets made multiple appearances in Christian media after the 2020 election, claiming that the election was stolen and that demonic forces were behind this supposed fraud. Christian nationalist support for Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results was suffused with themes of spiritual battles against mighty, seemingly unbeatable forces. The Jericho March’s overriding message was that the participants were brave warriors against forces of “corruption,” whose prayers were going to cause the “walls” of the “deep state” to fall, like the walls of Jericho in the Bible.

Matthew D. Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, and the author of a forthcoming book about the New Apostolic Reformation, told me that Sheets “believes he has a special anointing on his life, and a special anointing to bring the American government into alignment with his interpretation of Christianity, including, especially, the Supreme Court.” Sheets has claimed, for example, that his “apostolic decrees” helped swing the 2000 election to George W. Bush and that he prophesied changes at the Supreme Court after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist (who were replaced by Alito and John Roberts, respectively).

“Christian supremacists,” as Taylor describes Sheets and his allies, “would like to see the Supreme Court rule according to his interpretation of the Bible, that the law of God would become the supreme law of the land.” The court’s 2015 decision legalizing marriage equality dismayed Sheets, like many on the right, and he took a particular interest in the 2016 election. “They are praying for total changeover in American culture to restore America to its original covenantal purposes and covenantal arrangement with God,” Taylor said. “Abortion and same-sex marriage are seen as impediments to this.” While Sheets claims to be calling for a spiritual revolution, Taylor said, the Appeal to Heaven flag nonetheless signals “an implied threat of violence.”

After Sheets’ book, the flag’s use skyrocketed in evangelical communities connected to the NAR. It even received a boost from former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who said Sheets gave her one of her own. In 2020, the flag increasingly became highly associated with Trump and then the insurrection. Taylor said neo-Nazi and other extremist groups have since adopted it, as well.

According to Taylor, the flag’s use and significance spread like wildfire in some evangelical communities, even as other Americans were unaware of its popularity or meaning. But Alito is not just an ordinary citizen; he’s one of the nine most powerful jurists in the country. The leading proponent of the flag has very specifically taken an interest in the actions of the high court, and we already know from previous reporting that Alito is cozy enough with some evangelical activists to dine with them.

Legitimate questions need to be answered about who else had access to the justice. And Americans cannot be kept in the dark about how this radical antidemocratic symbol came to fly outside his house. The public particularly needs to know before the court decides, in the coming weeks, Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution for Jan. 6. If Alito acquired the flag on his own and chose to fly it, the public needs to know why. The flag’s proponents want a Christian supremacist revolution against the government. Does Alito?

Sarah Posner is the author of “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Religion, Separation of church and state

Mercedes Schneider: Louisiana’s Very Bad, Horrible Voucher Plan

By dianeravitch

May 22, 2024 //

Mercedes Schneider takes a close look at Governor Landry’s awful voucher plan. He wants a universal voucher plan, one that every student can apply for, no matter how rich they are, no matter if they ever attended public school. And the cost is staggering: more than $500 million a year.

She begins:

Louisiana governor Jeff Landry wants to expand school vouchers in the state. On May 16, 2024, Landry attended two town halls(both at private schools) to push the idea.

One might think that Landry’s promoting school vouchers at private schools as odd, except that a few years down the road, the legislation Landry is championing could help subsidize private school expenses for Louisiana residents who can already afford to send– and, indeed, are already sending– their children to private school.

And so, the day following Landry’s school voucher speechifying at private schools (and for private schools), on May 17, 2024, the Louisiana senate approved SB 313, “SCHOOLS. Creates the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program to provide educational savings accounts for parental choice in K-12 education.” Only weeks earlier, on April 30, 2024, the Louisiana senate had sidelined the bill; it seems that Landry’s multifaceted efforts (Louisiana Illuminator notes Landry’s TV ads, town halls, and discussions with individual senators) paid off for him.

As of this writing, the senate’s version of the GATOR bill has moved to the Louisiana House, thereby potentially setting the stage for a universal school voucher program in Louisiana. The Louisiana House had already passed its own version, HB 745, on April 08, 2024. The two versions are similar.

If it passes in its current form, SB 313 will end Louisiana’s previous school voucher program, the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program, in 2024-25, and begin phasing in the new, eventually-universal, GATOR voucher program. Beginning in 2025-26, all children beginning kindergarten become eligible, as do all students “enrolled in a public school for the previous school year.” Families of students not previously enrolled in public school but “with a total income at or below two hundred fifty percent of the federal poverty guidelines” are also eligible. The major change for year two is the inclusion of students not previously enrolled in public school but “with a total income at or below four hundred percent of the federal poverty guidelines.” After that, the program basically becomes universal.

Universal and expensive.

Categories Education Industry, Louisiana, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Steve Suitts: The New Segregation Looks Like the Old Segregation

By dianeravitch

May 17, 2024 //

Steve Suitts wrote an important essay on the continuity between the “school choice” movement of today and its roots in the fight against the Brown decision in the 1950s.

Charter schools and vouchers are not innovative. Their most predictable outcome is not “better education,” but segregated schools.

Suitts’ essay delves into the issue, state by state. I encourage you to open the link and read it in full. I skipped over large and important sections. Read them.

He begins:

Overview

On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education—the US Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s public schools—Steve Suitts reveals an emerging, seismic shift in how southern states in the United States are leading the nation in adopting universal private school vouchers. Suitts warns that this new “school choice” movement will reestablish a dual school system not unlike the racially separate, unequal schools which segregationists attempted to preserve in the 1960s using vouchers.

INTRODUCTION

On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in the nation’s public schools, the states of the southern US are pushing to reestablish publicly financed, dual school systems—one primarily for higher-income and white children and the other primarily for lower-income and minority children. This seismic shift in how states fund K–12 education through universal vouchers isn’t confined to the South. But it is centered among the states that once mandated racially separate, unequal schools and where segregationists in the 1960s attempted to use private school vouchers to evade the watershed US Supreme Court decision.

More than thirty-five states have created voucher programs to send public dollars to private schools. At least nineteen, including most in the South, have adopted or are on a path to enact legislation making state-funded “Educational Savings Accounts” (ESAs)—the newest type of voucher approach—available to all or most families who forego public schools. These families can use the funds to send their children to almost any K–12 private school, including home-schooling, or purchase a wide range of educational materials and services, such as tutoring, summer camps, and counseling.

In recent times, private school vouchers were pitched to the public for the purpose of giving a targeted group of disadvantaged children new educational options, but legislatures are now expanding eligibility and funding for vouchers to include advantaged students. By adopting universal or near universal eligibility for ESAs, states will be obligating tens of billions of tax dollars to finance private schooling while creating a voucher system for use by affluent families with children already attending or planning to attend private school.

States are rushing to enact ESAs while they still have the last of huge federal COVID appropriations to distribute among public schools. This timing allows ESAs’ sponsors—Republican legislative leaders and governors—to entice once-reluctant, rural legislators to support vouchers. It also camouflages the severe fiscal impact this scheme will have on routinely underfunded public schools after the special federal funds run out.

The states adopting ESAs are also structuring this emerging, publicly funded, dual system so that private schools and homeschooling remain free of almost all regulations, academic standards, accountability, and oversight. These sorts of rules and regulations are always imposed by state legislatures on public schools and are understood as essential to protect students and to advance learning. Even as legislatures are adding restrictive laws on how local public schools teach topics involving race, sex, ethnicity, and gender they are providing new state funding for private schools and home-schooling that will enable racist, sexist, and other bigoted teaching.

If state legislatures succeed in establishing and broadening this dual, tax-funded system of schools, the tremors will transform the landscape of US elementary and secondary education for decades to come. Calling for “freedom of choice,” a battle cry first voiced by segregationists who fought to overturn the Brown decision,¹ predominantly white Republicans will take states back to a future of separate and unequal education.

THE UNIVERSAL VOUCHER SYSTEM

By the seventieth anniversary of Brown, five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) have enacted ESA programs that allow all or a vast majority of families with school-age children to send their children to private schools with state funds that equal or closely match the states’ per pupil expenditures for public schools. South Carolina adopted a “pilot” ESA last year, and a bill making its program permanent has already passed one chamber. The lower house of the Louisiana legislature passed a bill for a statewide universal ESA program to start next year, but the state senate is likely to delay adoption for another year to confirm estimated costs. Both states have governors who are likely to push adoption again next year.²

The Tennessee legislature adjourned in April without passing either of two pending universal ESA bills—only because Governor Bill Lee and legislative leaders failed to agree on which voucher bill to enact. They vow to pass legislation next session. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott used campaign funds from a Pennsylvania billionaire in the state’s Republican primary to defeat a handful of legislators who blocked his ESA bill last year. Abbott expects to defeat the two remaining state house members who failed to vote for his legislation—giving him the number he needs to pass his bill, while sending a political message that will keep his supporters in line…³

The historical context is shameful. Five of the southern states that now have universal vouchers also enacted open-ended vouchers in the 1960s—attempting to defeat Brown’s mandate for school desegregation. All but three of the states that have already embraced publicly financed ESAs were the only states authorizing segregated public schools on the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision.⁹

The fiscal impact of this rush to fund private schooling will be devastating to public schools. In 2018, all fifty states allocated $2.6 billion to finance private school vouchers. In 2021, legislatures increased the total amount to $3.3 billion and more recently to over $6 billion. If the eleven southern states enact the bills currently adopted or pending in their legislatures, their total funding for vouchers will be as much as $6.8 billion in 2025–26 and, according to independent estimates, as much as $20 billion for private schooling in 2030. This sum would equal the total state funds to public schools among six southern states in 2021.¹⁰

In 1950, about 400,000 students in the South attended private schools. By 2021-22, the number of private school students was about 1.8 million.

In 2021-22, 38.9% of white students attended public schools, and 63% enrolled in private schools.

AS VOUCHERS SPREAD, BROWN’S PROMISE DIES

During the last seventy years, the nation’s public schools have struggled in meeting the promise of Brown, despite clear proof that racially integrated, well-funded schools improve outcomes for Black children.³⁹ This promise has been especially important to the South, where the states’ first education laws prohibited Black persons from being taught to read or write; where racially segregated schools offered children of color an inferior education across more than a half century. Due to stubborn, racially defined housing patterns, increasing class disparities, adverse, even hostile Supreme Court decisions, a lack of local, interracial community support, and, as recent research confirms, the growth of school choice, public schools continue to face far too many hurdles in providing all children with a good education.⁴⁰

The South’s new dual school system renounces and annuls the mandates and hopes of Brown v. Board of Education. As universal vouchers spread, Brown’s promise dies. By their design, vouchers are an abandonment of Brown’s goal of equality of educational opportunity.

Reestablishing a dual school system will damage the prospects of a good education for all who attend public schools—not just low-income and minority children. The southern states were not able to finance two separate school systems during the era of segregation, even though Black students received a pittance of funding. Today that inability remains. The South continues to be far behind the rest of the nation in state and local funding of public schools. The new schemes of universal Education Savings Account vouchers will exacerbate the lack of sufficient funds for all except those higher-income families whose school-age children can attend private schools or home-schools and enjoy the enhancements and enriching experience that vouchers will subsidize.

Parents, grandparents, and others who support public schools and the democratic promise of public education must raise our voices against this reactionary movement and in furtherance of the importance of public schools. Like democracy itself, public schools may be the worst system for delivering all children an equal opportunity for a good education—except for all the others. We must not betray or abandon public education if we are committed to the democratic goal of a more perfect union and a good society for all.

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Funding, Racism, Segregation, Separation of church and state

Ryan Walters Wants to Turn Our Schools into Religious Indoctrination Centers

By dianeravitch

May 3, 2024 //

Juan Perez Jr. of Politico painted a portrait of the State Superintendent who is leading the charge to put God into America’s classrooms. Whose God? The God of Protestants? Catholics? Jews? Muslims? Buddhists? Hindus? Or which sect of any of these religions or the scores not listed here? And what about atheists?

There is good reason that our Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state. They were well aware of the havoc and wars that religious sectarians had inflicted on Europe for centuries. They did not want to import that religious divisiveness here. So while they were perfectly willing to praise religion in general, they wanted every sect to practice its own religion and they wanted to bar the state from imposing any religion. They made that clear in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Ryan Walters of Oklahoma is leading the charge to make America’s schools religious. He knows that the rightwing domination of the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a sledgehammer to the wall that was supposed to separate church and state in recent rulings; consequently, states may now fund religious schools. SCOTUS unleashed the recent wave of voucher legislation in red states.

TULSA, Oklahoma — “You are at Ground Zero of the left’s war on education,” Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters told the crowd inside a barbecue joint on a blazing August afternoon last year.

The day’s Tulsa County Men’s Republican Club meeting opened with a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance and an ovation for the gathering’s featured speaker. Walters, a 38-year-old ex-teacher, was not here just to chat up a friendly audience and raffle off some Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh books. He was here to make a case that, in a country he sees as corrupted by liberal indoctrination and beset with a civil war over young minds, God has a place in public schools.

“I’m going to get to the biggest assault that you see,” Walters said to the hushed gathering of predominantly older, white voters. Something, he said, “that makes the left the most mad”: “If you say a prayer. If you mention God. If you were to even quote the Declaration of Independence and say we’re endowed — by who? — our Creator with certain inalienable rights. Folks, that is key to our young people’s understanding of what made this country great.”

Walters became superintendent, a role that oversees all public education in the state, a year ago after winning a commanding margin during 2022’s midterm elections, and he’s quickly catapulted himself to the forefront of social conservatives’ influence over education just as the 2024 presidential election promises enormous consequences for American schooling. Wielding a doctrine of brimstone-salted classroom policy, he is the incarnation of a post-pandemic GOP school takeover attempt that has boiled over from local boards to higher-profile jobs like state superintendent and beyond.

Walters has tried to use his office to back a courtroom battle over the nation’s first public religious charter school — a Catholic institution that would be financed by taxpayers but free to teach, enroll and expel students based on faith-based doctrines just like a private parochial school.

Supporters view the concept as the natural outcome of a growing school choice movement that claims legal backing from a conservative-controlled Supreme Court. Opponents say it’s the next frontier in a “full-on assault on church-state separation and public education.” Either way, Walters and his allies are advocating an enormous shift in how schools work in the United States.

But he hasn’t restricted himself to just that cause. He’s instead interjected himself into a consistent string of news cycles. He’s described teacher unions as Marxist terrorist organizations (in the same state where domestic terrorists bombed a federal building and killed 168 people three decades ago). He explored a takeover of the Tulsa Public Schools system, Oklahoma’s biggest, after a fight with the district’s former leader that ultimately led to her resignation. He appointed Chaya Raichik, the far-right social media star who runs the Libs of TikTok account, to a state library committee in January, months after her criticism of a satirical video from a Tulsa school librarian sparked bomb threats.

His staunch opposition to LGBTQ+ rights has come under increasing national focus over the past month following the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student in Owasso who, according to a preliminary medical examiner report, died from an apparent suicide after a bathroom altercation at their high school. Last week, Benedict’s family released more detailsthat documented “numerous areas of physical trauma over Nex’s body that evidence the severity of the assault” while calling on public officials and schools to “come together to prevent any other family from having to suffer through the heartache now borne by Nex’s loved ones.”

Hundreds of civil rights, education and LGBTQ+ organizations have demanded legislators remove Walters from office and investigate his department, asserting his conduct “shows a willful rejection of his duty to protect the health and welfare of the children in Oklahoma’s public schools.” In response, his office said: “Superintendent Walters will never back down to a woke mob.”

Walters has addressed lawmakers in Washington on Capitol Hill and spoken at the past year’s biggest conservative gatherings. He endorsed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid — after, he said, receiving a call from the former president himself.

But unlike some of his ideological allies, Walters must tend to more than messaging. He is responsible for running a massive, complex government agency that oversees more than $3 billion in spending plus the education of hundreds of thousands of young people. While his hard-line politics have put him at the vanguard nationally, and often in line with the Republican base, his views have alienated an unexpected cohort of former allies and fellow conservatives in Oklahoma — and prompted a battery of unflattering coverage from a dogged corps of local journalists.

Last year state Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt removed Walters as education secretary, another role he’d been appointed to and in which he was serving simultaneously. A flood of employees has abandoned the state education agency, including high-profile departures who have publicly criticized Walters’ leadership and sued him for wrongful termination. An Oklahoma City-area school district is also suing Walters’ office, challenging orders to remove two books — including the 2003 novel The Kite Runner — from its high school libraries after the state library committee proclaimed they contained pornographic material. The superintendent’s office used state resources to hire a communications firm tasked with boosting Walters’ national profile, according to one local investigation that has raised questions about improper spending.

“What’s a shame is that he and I — we didn’t agree on a lot of things — but we agreed on public education and educating our kids,” said Republican state Rep. Mark McBride, an assistant floor leader and education appropriator who now is one of Walters’ fiercest conservative critics. “Since he got elected, he just has gone off the rails. I can’t support much of anything he does.”

Walters is also facing more potential legal trouble; the FBI and Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond have looked into questions surrounding Walters’ campaign and a prior role he held leading a prominent education nonprofit once known as Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, according to four people familiar with the probes. Democrats have sought to impeach him. Republicans have subpoenaed him.

“My speculation, and I have heard that he’s made this comment, is that he would like to run for governor,” said McBride, who proposed legislation to curb the superintendent’s power soon after Walters took office. “I’m sure that he might consider himself as a [federal] secretary of Education … or something like that if he’s crazy enough.”

Yet if Walters is chastened by his array of opponents, he does not show it publicly. In a statement to POLITICO Magazine, Dan Isett, a Walters spokesperson, said staff departures were necessary to “end a union stronghold in Oklahoma’s education,” that Walters has never been interviewed or subpoenaed by federal investigators, and that “the liberal media and jealous liberal activists” have sought to undermine the superintendent.

And after Tulsa’s GOP gathering emptied, Walters compared his work to one of his political idols. “He took some hard-line stands,” Walters told me of Winston Churchill in a slight Oklahoma drawl, between sips of sweet tea. He wore a black “W.W.J.D.” band around his wrist. Dressed in designer blue jeans, a navy sportcoat and brown roper boots, Walters seemed at ease as he deployed Fox News-ready talking points, peppered his answers with ‘Yes, sir’ and never raised his voice.

“Oklahomans see very clearly, the left are the ones who politicized the classroom,” Walters told me. “My goal is to take those politics and rid them from the classroom.”

Years before he captivated crowds at national rallies for influential conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty, Walters was his hometown’s star teacher.

He grew up in McAlester, a predominantly white southeastern Oklahoma town of about 18,000 people that is home to the state’s infamous penitentiary, a major Army ammunition plant and a string of prominent state Democrats.Walters said he was enchanted as a kid by classroom lessons on American history. He credits his childhood educators, plus supportive parents who serve as a minister and elementary education director at a local church, for nurturing his interest in teaching. He left home for college, attending Harding University, a private Christian institution in Arkansas. But a year after he graduated in 2010, he was back at McAlester High as a teacher.

His first year in the classroom was challenging. He later remembered that it hit him “like a ton of bricks.” But he proved popular both with students and the administration at his alma mater and soon was teaching Advanced Placement history and government courses. He was named McAlester’s teacher of the year in February 2015 and five months later was picked as one of 12 finalists for the state’s highest teaching honor. “An outstanding educator,” Walters was quoted as saying at the time, “can transcend racism, poverty, and all other barriers that stand between a child and success.”

He developed a reputation as a charismatic instructor and tennis coach with a Twitter habit and a regular classroom wardrobe of suits and skinny ties. But in the early days, he largely kept his politics to himself. His online feed was filled with posts admiring Bachelor in Paradise and Game of Thrones, and predictions that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election. “You can hear this from my former students; they didn’t know I was conservative,” Walters said.

Walters does not offer much detail on the precise events that shaped his current politics. Former students and some of his onetime colleagues have told me and other journalists that they have trouble reconciling Walters’ political persona with the person they once knew. Walters didn’t seem keen on answering more questions about his evolution, either. He and his advisers were eager to talk when I first started reporting this story last year. But Walters canceled follow-up interviews as controversies piled up through the winter and spring.

Walters did suggest, though, that some of his political views intensified around the time he was nominated for the state’s teacher of the year award. He claims educators he encountered during that time “lashed out” at his support for school choice, though it’s not clear how stridently he made his views known publicly. He also remembered defending Thomas Jefferson during one teacher training that he said criticized the founder’s legacy as a slaveholder. His hard-right views later “crystallized” during his campaign, he said.

“I had these moments where I started to see what’s going on,” Walters said. “There was this dramatic shift, even in a state like Oklahoma, towards these associations and groups in place that are pushing a viewpoint that I just don’t see out of most Oklahomans.”

He started writing op-eds for conservative media outlets The Federalist and Daily Caller, where he suggested defying “unconstitutional court rulings” and criticized the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage. Yet he hadn’t fully adopted his current culture warrior persona. In 2018, he served on a committee that helped write the state’s straightforward social studies curriculum — and praised the final product in 2019 without a single complaint about the type of “woke ideology” he denounces today.

Randy Hughes, McAlester’s former superintendent, would later describe Walters as “one of the most remarkable educators to have served students at McAlester Public Schools.”

And that could have been the extent of Walters’ career, if it wasn’t for a major political patron.

“This guy is nothing without the governor,” said one knowledgeable Oklahoma power broker who requested anonymity to discuss Walters because of the volatile political situation. “He is coaching tennis in McAlester without Kevin Stitt.”

The governor has said the two became friends after meeting at high school tennis tournaments during Stitt’s 2018 campaign while his daughter was competing, and Walters was coaching one of the other teams. “I just knew that his heart was all about kids, it was all about outcomes and it was all about becoming top 10 in education,” Stitt said of Walters in a 2021 Harding University video feature about Walters.

After the governor took office in 2019, Stitt appointed Walters to serve as a member of the state’s Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability. Weeks later, Walters became the executive director of Oklahoma Achieves, a nonprofit established by the state Chamber of Oklahoma in 2013 to advocate on education with the business community.

When he took the job, Walters insisted that he be allowed to continue teaching at McAlester — and start a new second teaching gig at an Oklahoma City high school — in a kind of hybrid in-person and virtual role that augured the sort of classes endured by millions beginning the following year. In the first Covid-19 summer of 2020, Oklahoma Achieves folded into a new nonprofit — with Walters still at the helm — called Every Kid Counts Oklahoma.

Stitt soon announced a $30 million federally funded school pandemic assistance program that featured private education tuition subsidies and grants for families to purchase remote learning curriculum, technology or tutoring. Every Kid Counts Oklahoma and Walters were responsible for awarding the remote learning funds.

The U.S. Education Department and local investigators later documented significant problems with how Oklahoma administered and spent school pandemic assistance funds. Authorities said Walters, in his role at Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, organized a meeting with a company known as ClassWallet before the state gave the firm a no-bid, $18 million contract to help administer Stitt’s tuition and remote learning initiatives. Those programs were also beset with improper spending and insufficient documentation, authorities said.

Back in 2020, though, those issues weren’t yet public knowledge. That September, Stitt cited Walters’ pandemic spending leadership when the governor appointed him as the state’s education secretary. Less than a year later, Walters launched his campaign for state superintendent.

Walters’ entry into electoral politics came at a time when Covid-19 and the country’s racial reckoning had Oklahoma primed to fight over education. Two months before Walters officially launched his campaign in July 2021, Stitt signed state laws that curtailed school mask mandatesand barred educators from requiring courses or teaching concepts that cause individuals to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race or gender.

During the campaign, Walters praised H.B. 1775, the state’s race and gender teaching requirement, when the American Civil Liberties Union launched a still-ongoing lawsuit to overturn the law. He said the Biden administration was “way out of line” after a state mask mandate ban sparked a fight with the White House. “Only a parent should be able to make the decision if their child receives the vaccines or wears a mask to school,” Walters said while hundreds of mask and vaccine opponents rallied at the state capitol.

By early 2022, Walters’ campaign was defined by taking stances on everyday education issues — such as early childhood reading, school choice, and private sector-friendly school reform — and weaponizing them with a culture war message that resonated with social conservatives. Republican Govs. Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis had already pioneered similar models in Virginia and Florida, noted Matt Langston, Walters’ main campaign aide who would eventually become his chief policy adviser after he took office.

“You can take education and put it into a much broader worldview,” Langston told me. “And that becomes a way of building a very credible base of individuals who may not be ‘education voters,’ but they are looking at it and saying ‘We’re very frustrated. We are very disenchanted with a lot of things that are happening within the country and the state.’”

Social media became a focal point for the campaign’s strategy. That left Walters facing a choice between positive messages that garnered a handful of retweets and impressions, or something darker.

“To be clear, in Oklahoma, our schools are not going to go woke,” Walters said in a widely shared March 2022 video that praised the country’s Christian roots after a religious group criticized his embrace of the state race and gender law. He then wrote in a Fox News op-edthat “the far-left’s attempts to destroy our nation’s history and indoctrinate our children must be stopped.”

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The next month Walters attacked a Stillwater Public Schools policy that had allowed students to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, a policy that had been in place for years without incident, according to the district. “You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety,” Walters told the board. The firestorm garnered more media coverage and culminated later in the year with a state law that restricted transgender students’ restroom use.

“When you start looking at those comparisons,” Langston said, “whether he weighs in on ‘We need more teacher pay’ or ‘Our teachers are the greatest here in the state and this is why’ versus rolling out a position on ‘We have to stop porn in schools,’ or ‘We have to stop liberal indoctrination’ — it’s not even close to the amount of attention either one of those gets.”

The strategy paid off. Walters won 41 percent of the vote in a four-way GOP primary, then 53 percent in a party runoff. During the general election, he didn’t stray from appealing to the conservative base. He called to revoke the licenseof a high school teacher who resigned in opposition to Oklahoma’s banned-concepts law and accused his opponents of supporting “radical gender theory.” Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her spouse each donated to Walters. Americans for Prosperity and other national conservative groups sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Walters. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was another backer, and Walters posed for selfies with Youngkin ahead of the election.

Walters won with nearly 57 percent of the general election vote — putting him at the forefront of a new wave of Republican state school chiefs in Arizona, Idaho, Georgia, South Carolina and Wyoming.

The protesters crowded against the barricades outside Moms for Liberty’s summit in Philadelphia last summer may not have known about the teacher from McAlester. But one of the country’s most influential conservative education groups offered an ideal venue to build Walters’ national profile.

“The reality is the forces that you all are fighting — these are folks that want to destroy our society,” Walters told the gathering’s Republican audience during a panel with education chiefs from South Carolina, Arkansas and Florida.

“They want to destroy your family,” Walters said. “And they want to destroy America as we know it. This is the fight that we’re in, folks. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”

Walters has asserted that his political opponents are waging “civil war” against children and conspiring to topple religion, and he’s defended a highly disputed conservative philosophy that rejects the separation of church and state. “There’s no basis for it in the Constitution,” Walters told me. “This was not something the Founders talked about. This wasn’t a core fundamental principle. And what we’ve seen is the left weaponize this term to actually mean the state will promote atheism and target any other faiths.”

Instead, Walters wants to inject religion into public schooling. Last year, he called to enforce an Oklahoma law that requires a daily minute of silence at schools — and said students must be told they can pray during that time. He seized onto a dispute over a graduation ceremony prayer delivered by a Tulsa Public Schools board member amid a broader clash with former district chief Deborah Gist over academics and financial controls. (Walters even floated a state takeover of the district before Stitt downplayedthe idea and Gist stepped down amid pressure from the superintendent and his allies.)

But most significantly, Walters has used his megaphone to support Oklahoma’s campaign to open explicitly religious public charter schools.

Religious liberty and public schools have tangled in the Supreme Court for decades. Yet church leaders and conservative advocates say Oklahoma’s campaign for religious public schools promises a monumental leap for school choice and religious liberty. Instead of simply giving families subsidies they can use on private school tuition — as other states have implemented — this new model promises a direct injection of taxpayer funds into religious schools that can hire educators, enroll students and teach classes based on church doctrine.

“We’re all looking at the same end in mind,” said Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, “which is ultimately breaking the monopoly of public schools on education so that parents have real, universal choice. That’s the end goal.”

A series of conservative arguments lie at the center of this campaign: Judeo-Christian beliefs are historically bound with education in the United States. Government has improperly imposed secular standards on public schools in an infringement on religious liberty. And public funding must support religious schools if the public is going to pay for education at all.

Some of those views got a boost from three Supreme Court cases that expanded faith-based institutions’ access to public funds — Carson v. Makin in 2022, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, and Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer in 2017.

Former Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor, while leaving office after losing his primary to now-AG Drummond, cited those cases when he declared in 2022 that the state could not block churches from using taxpayer dollars to create public schools that teach religion like private schools.

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Catholic authorities used O’Connor’s nonbinding opinion to justify their attempt to open the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the country’s first public charter to function as a religious institution. Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, have promoted the publicly funded Christian school in the hopes of creating a test case that would change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.

“The Supreme Court has been wrong. There is no separation of church and state in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. It doesn’t exist,” Walters told a convening of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., last fall. “So we will bring God back to schools and prayer back in schools in Oklahoma, and we will fight back against that radical myth.”

The idea has divided even conservatives. Drummond withdrew O’Connor’s opinion under the argument that it misused “the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion” and he is suing to stop the school from opening. An array of civil rights groups, faith leaders and secular organizations have also sued to block the school and excoriated the embrace of religious orthodoxy in public education.

“What’s happening with Ryan Walters and his cabal is happening all around the country, as part of this emboldened Christian nationalist movement,” said Rachel Laser, who leads Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “And one of their key frontiers for making America a Christian nation and retaining their power and privilege in America is a takeover of public schools.”

Walters had weathered a bumpy start in office. Stitt reappointed him to continue serving as education secretary in January 2023, which would have granted Walters sweeping authority in an unusual double-barreled state role if lawmakers approved. But Drummond, the new Republican AG, soon opined that Walters could not legally hold two state offices, and later said the superintendent’s unilateral attempt to require schools to notify parents if their child changed their gender identity and ban “pornographic” library content should be voided. Just months into the job, Walters’ new employees told journalists the education department had become “toxic” after he took office.

“The culture changed within a matter of weeks,” said one of Walters’ former colleagues, who requested anonymity to discuss the superintendent’s tenure. “The real fear that people felt across the agency was not only that they might be fired but that they would be caught up in something illegal and they would be responsible for it. I had never seen a culture like that.”

In response to written questions about the staffing turmoil, Dan Isett, the department’s director of communications, said: “Many of the staff departures have been necessary and long needed to end a union stronghold in Oklahoma’s education. Change is sometimes difficult and necessary.”

In April 2023, Stitt replaced Walters as education secretary with an Oklahoma State University professor. People close to the situation told me Walters was furious to be cut from a second role.

His replacement, Katherine Curry, then resigned just months after taking office citing the “complexity and political environment” surrounding the secretary job. Curry later told The Oklahoman that the state superintendent’s office would not turn over information on how the agency budgeted and spent money. Another department grant official, Pamela Smith-Gordon, abruptly left her office in the fall citing similar concerns. She also told the Tulsa Worldthat she never saw Walters in the office.

“I don’t know if he doesn’t know what the job is that he ran for, or if he’s scared to do the job that he ran for, or he doesn’t know how to do the job that he ran for. What I do know is that he isn’t doing it,” Gist, the former head of Tulsa schools, told me a few days before she resigned. “The superintendent’s actions have made it clear that he’s focusing on political talking points rather than the real work of serving the community.”

‘We’re being overshadowed by the antics of our state superintendent’

New controversies continue to blossom. Walters pushed out an Oklahoma City-area principal who moonlights as a drag queen. Walters reposted an altered version of a librarian’s satirical video that spurred school bomb threats when it was amplified by the Libs of TikTok account. Benedict’s death is now the subject of a federal Education Department civil rights investigation. Hostile onlookers are not an unusual presence at state board meetings.

And questions swirl about the superintendent’s potential legal entanglements and ability to work with policymakers. The FBI and state attorney general have investigated Walters’ stewardship of federal pandemic relief funds and activities related to campaign and nonprofit roles he held before winning office, according to four people with knowledge of the investigations who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. (Walters resigned his nonprofit job upon taking the superintendent position last year.) The Oklahoman first reported the existence of the FBI’s investigation.

Walters has not been formally accused of criminal wrongdoing. Drummond’s office declined to comment, saying it does not speak on the existence or nonexistence of any investigation. FBI policy prohibits confirming or denying the existence of an investigation, a bureau spokesperson said. Allegations of criminal conduct are reviewed by the FBI for their merit, the spokesperson added, but such reviews do not necessarily result in a full investigation.

Walters told me in August that he was not aware of whether he was a target of any state or federal investigation. “Ryan Walters has never been subpoenaed or questioned by federal law enforcement,” the superintendent’s spokesman said this month in a statement. “This has been an active lie promoted by the liberal media and jealous liberal activists. Superintendent Walters is transparent with taxpayer dollars and every program that he’s involved in.”

People with knowledge of the matter said federal agents have asked some of Walters’ former colleagues and supporters about the superintendent’s campaign fundraising and reporting practices. Former colleagues told me they witnessed the superintendent’s executive assistant at Every Kid Counts Oklahoma collecting campaign donations for Walters at fundraisers, raising questions about whether firewalls were in place to isolate Walters’ government work from the nonprofit and his political campaign. Authorities have also sought information on lax controls related to the millions of federal pandemic relief dollars that Walters helped oversee in his former nonprofit role.

Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd’s office is in the final stages of conducting a forensic audit of the state education department, a highly detailed investigation that often helps prosecutors investigate criminal allegations. The U.S. Education Department also conducted a routine review of the state’s implementation of federal programs earlier this year and is finalizing a report that will be shared with Walters’ office.

At the same time his national profile has increased, Walters has at times been sidelined on education policy at home. Oklahoma lawmakers have approved a massive tax credit program for private school tuition, teacher pay raises worth thousands of dollars, a $150 million school safety program, literacy programs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new education funding. “We did every bit of that without our state superintendent,” Republican state Rep. Rhonda Baker told me. “Because we knew that he could not be part of it or the whole thing would blow up.”

“In Oklahoma, the legislature is really trying to move the needle in education,” said Baker, a veteran educator and chair of key education committees in her chamber. “And frustratingly enough, we’re being overshadowed by the antics of our state superintendent.”

McBride, Baker and state House Speaker Charles McCall subpoenaed Walters for a series of records in late December, including his emails from his tenure at Every Kid Counts Oklahoma. Walters responded to most of their inquiries but said he couldn’t provide any emails. Lawmakers have managed to obtain a trove of his messages anyway, McBride told me. Ongoing controversy over Walters’ national media campaign has prompted notable criticism from Stitt and McCall. Walters’ office did not respond to questions about whether the superintendent believes he still has the governor’s support.

But even as he faces dissent from sectors of his party at home, his meteoric rise in the national spotlight hasn’t slowed down. Walters demurs when asked about his political ambitions, including a gubernatorial run. His spokesman added: “While he has many options for the future, those choices are for a later date.”

Even some of Walters’ detractors agree that he’s tapped into deep-seated anger over a changing country. “He has become a lightning rod for decades of frustration,” Robert Franklin, a former Democrat who switched parties and leads the state’s virtual charter school board, told me.

You can hear that from the voters at the Tulsa County Men’s Republican Club, or the Christian radio personalities who urge followers to take back their schools on long stretches of interstate that span between Oklahoma City, Tulsa, McAlester and beyond. A new generation is now in power.

“Folks are sick and tired of people that say one thing to get elected and go in and do the exact opposite once elected,” Walters told me last summer. “I looked every voter in the eye throughout the entire campaign and I told them what I was going to do.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bigotry, Education Reform, Freedom, Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

Tune in! I Discuss “Slaying Goliath” Tomorrow with Tim Slekar

By dianeravitch

April 24, 2024 //

Tim Slekar is a fearless warrior for public schools, teachers, and students. I will be talking to him about Slaying Goliath and the struggle to protect public schools from the depredations of billionaires and zealots.

This Thursday on Civic Media: Dive Back into “Slaying Goliath” with Diane Ravitch

Grab your pencils—BustEDpencils is gearing up for a no-holds-barred revival of Diane Ravitch’s game-changing book, *Slaying Goliath*, live this Thursday on Civic Media.

Launched into a world on the brink of a pandemic, *Slaying Goliath* hit the shelves with a mission: to arm the defenders of public education against the Goliaths of privatization. But then, COVID-19 overshadowed everything. Despite that, the battles Diane described haven’t paused—they’ve intensified. And this Thursday, we’re bringing these crucial discussions back to the forefront with Diane herself.

This Thursday at 7pm EST on BustEDpencils, we’re not just revisiting a book; we’re reigniting a movement. Diane will dissect the current threats to public education and highlight how *Slaying Goliath* still maps the path to victory for our schools. This isn’t just about reflection—it’s about action.

**It’s time to get real. It’s time to get loud. It’s time to tune in this Thursday at 7 PM EST on Civic Media.**

If you believe that without a robust public education system our democracy is in jeopardy, then join us. Listen in, call in (855-752-4842), and let’s get fired up. We’ve got a fight to win, and Diane Ravitch is leading the charge.

Mark your calendars and fire up Civic Media this Thursday at 7pm Central.

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Courage, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Injustice, Privatization, Propaganda, Resistance, School Choice, Separation of church and state, State Takeover, Supporting public schools, Teachers, Unions, Vouchers

Hindu “Statesman” Will Move to Florida if DeSantis Signs the Bill to Let Him Guide Students

By dianeravitch

March 21, 2024 //

The legislature in Florida passed a bill to allow school districts to hire religious chaplains to help students in need of counseling. The bill awaits DeSantis’ signature. Pastors, priests, imams, ministers, rabbis, and other spiritual counselors are standing by.

The Miami Herald reports:

Gov. Ron DeSantis has yet to sign a bill that would allow chaplains to offer counseling in public schools, but one colorful religious figure says he is already eager to volunteer.

He’s a self-described “Hindu statesman” from Nevada who says he would like to bring “the wisdom of ancient Sanskrit scriptures” to students — perhaps not exactly what Florida lawmakers had in mind when they approved a bill that supporters tout as a way to make up for a shortage of mental health counselors in many schools.

The offer from Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, may amount to just his latest effort to raise his organization’s profile, but it also underlines concerns from critics. Mainly, that the bill’s vague definition of “counseling” will invite religious groups — whether they are Hindu, Christian or otherwise — to use it as a door to teaching their beliefs in secular school systems.

Florida has a shortage of guidance counselors, and the religious chaplains are supposed to replace the missing counselors.

“This is the beginning … of them trying to implement religion in some type of capacity back into our schools,” said Sen. Shevrin D. “Shev” Jones, D-Miami Gardens, referring to lawmakers who support the bill. “It just opens up the gate for other things.”

Jones, whose father is a pastor, said he’s concerned that the bill may lead to some schools allowing chaplains to preach to students who may not hold the same beliefs, putting them in uncomfortable situations.

“In the words of one of my colleagues on the floor, ‘We need God back in our schools.’ But what about the child who doesn’t believe in God? What if some of the chaplains don’t resonate with the lives of those kids?” Jones said.

He used an example of a chaplain dealing with an LGBTQ child or a child battling depression. “Has the chaplain been trained enough? Once they hear those concerns, where do they direct that child to go to?”

Categories DeSantis, Florida, Religion, Separation of church and state

Dahlia Lithwick: How Religious Zealots Gained Control of the Courts and the GOP

Stephen Dyer: Public School Funding in Ohio Drops Dramatically as “Choice” Expands

Politico: Explosion of Choice in Florida Dooms Many Public Schools

Texas: Governor Abbott’s Maniacal Passion for Vouchers

The Ominous Flag that Flew over Justice Alito’s Vacation Home

Mercedes Schneider: Louisiana’s Very Bad, Horrible Voucher Plan

Steve Suitts: The New Segregation Looks Like the Old Segregation

Overview

INTRODUCTION

THE UNIVERSAL VOUCHER SYSTEM

AS VOUCHERS SPREAD, BROWN’S PROMISE DIES

Ryan Walters Wants to Turn Our Schools into Religious Indoctrination Centers

‘We’re being overshadowed by the antics of our state superintendent’

Tune in! I Discuss “Slaying Goliath” Tomorrow with Tim Slekar

This Thursday on Civic Media: Dive Back into “Slaying Goliath” with Diane Ravitch

Hindu “Statesman” Will Move to Florida if DeSantis Signs the Bill to Let Him Guide Students

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Overview

INTRODUCTION

THE UNIVERSAL VOUCHER SYSTEM

AS VOUCHERS SPREAD, BROWN’S PROMISE DIES

‘We’re being overshadowed by the antics of our state superintendent’

This Thursday on Civic Media: Dive Back into “Slaying Goliath” with Diane Ravitch

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