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Excuse Me While I Keep a Close Watch on Texas

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2026 //
5

Over the next couple of weeks, I will write several pieces about the upcoming election in Texas. More than any other state. I will explain why.

First of all, I was born there, and I’m tired of Texas being a laughing stock. Texans are better than that.

Second, if Texas flips blue, it will be a political earthquake. The state has been owned by oil and gas billionaires for decades. It’s time for a change. It’s time for leaders who care for the people of Texas, not the 1%.

Third, Texas has two great candidates in James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa. Talarico is a religious man, actually a seminarian, who speaks eloquently about our obligations to one another. Gina Hinojosa is running to give the regular people of Texas a voice.

Fourth, Gina understands the sham of Abbott’s “vouchers for all” program. She has pledged to roll back the voucher scheme and invest in the state’s public schools, where almost 90% of the state’s 5.5 million children are enrolled. Under the voucher regime, rural schools are at risk of closing. Gina will fire State Commissioner of Education Mike Morath, who has used his power to take control of entire urban districts, despite the well-documented history of the failure of state takeovers.

Fingers crossed for a new day in Texas, free of the control of billionaires, corrupt politicians, and grifters.

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Republicans, Rural Schools, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Students, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Students Pay the Price for Failing Voucher Programs Where Education is a Fiction

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2026 //
0

Bruce Baker has written a sterling article about the real price of voucher programs. Who pays? Students.

Universal voucher programs like those of Arizona and Florida provide little, if any, educational benefit to students. They attend schools where teachers need not be certified or experienced. Their curriculum is non-existent. Their standards are phony.

The state pays for them not to get an education. The same may be said of home schooling, where in many cases uneducated parents are sharing their lack of an education with their children.

The result of this negligence is that these young people will earn less money over their lifetimes and have limited opportunities because of their mediocre or non-existent education.

The parents and the state are stigmatizing children by giving them a voucher.

The infamous federal report called “A Nation at Risk” warned about “a rising tide of mediocrity.” Today’s vouchers and home schoolers are responsible for “a rising tide of failure.”

Baker writes:

Back in January 2013, I wrote about three Kansas judges who saw right through the state’s claim that deep funding cuts would cause no harm. The Shawnee County District Court panel in Gannon v. State of Kansas (decision, p. 188) put it this way:

Simply, school opportunities do not repeat themselves and when the opportunity for a formal education passes, then for most, it is most likely gone. We all know that the struggle for an income very often – too often – overcomes the time needed to prepare intellectually for a better one.

If the position advanced here is the State’s full position, it is experimenting with our children which have no recourse from a failure of the experiment.

The Kansas experiment was a legislature cutting school budgets and betting that nobody would be hurt. That was bad enough. But at least in Kansas, the children were still in schools. There were still teachers, curricula, and test results that a court could look at.

A decade later, Arizona and Florida are running a different experiment. They hand public money to parents, place few limits on how it is spent, and ask almost nothing about whether the child learned anything. If that experiment fails for a particular child, who answers for it? Who does the 18-year-old sue?

The new experiment: money out, no questions asked

Arizona’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, expanded to all students in 2022, now serves more than 100,000 children and is expected to cost over $1 billion a year. Florida followed in 2023 with universal eligibility and a homeschool ESA, the Personalized Education Program (PEP), worth roughly $8,000 per child.

Consider what the statutes actually require of the parent. Under A.R.S. § 15-2402, the Arizona parent signs an agreement to use “a portion” of the money to provide instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies and science. That is the whole of the academic obligation. Then comes the remarkable part, subsection I: a signed agreement “constitutes school attendance” for purposes of the state’s compulsory attendance law. The contract is the education, as far as the state is concerned.

There is no testing requirement for ESA students in Arizona, no curriculum approval, no portfolio, and no evaluator. Even homeschool guides that are friendly to the program say so plainly. The state checks receipts, not learning.

Florida asks slightly more. PEP families must submit a student learning plan and have the child take a nationally norm-referenced test each year, with results sent to the scholarship funding organization (FLDOE PEP FAQ; Step Up PEP Family Handbook). But what triggers loss of funding is failing to take and submit the test, not the score. A child can test at a first-grade level in tenth grade and the money keeps flowing.

That is the experiment. The state funds the choice, defines the choice as compliance, and measures nothing that would tell anyone whether the child is learning.

What the money has bought

Reporters in both states have spent three years documenting what this money buys. Some of it was approved under the rules. Some was flagged as improper only after the fact. All of it was spent from accounts that exist, by law, to educate a child.

Baker here posts a chart that includes tickets to theme parks, video games, pianos, lingerie, jewelry, gift cards, payments to parents, trampolines, kayaks, appliances, paddle boards, LEGO sets, dolls, stuffed animals, surfboards, treadmills, swing sets, and much more. Open the link to see his chart.

In fairness to the programs’ defenders, Arizona’s education department maintains that most purchases are valid and that misspending is a small share of the total. Florida’s administrator, Step Up For Students, requires a statement of educational benefit for theme park tickets and caps them at $500 a year (WFTV). When Florida legislators tried to tighten the list in 2024, families lobbied against it and the restrictions failed.

But “small share” is the wrong frame. Arizona auto-approved purchases under $2,000 — over a million requests and $124 million — to clear a backlog, with plans to audit later. Of 18,000 parents flagged for $10.3 million in banned purchases, only six were referred for prosecution. And every audit is an audit of purchases. None asks the only question that matters to the child: was anyone teaching me to read?

The legal question: who does the 18-year-old sue?

Imagine a young woman turning 18 in Phoenix or Orlando. For a decade, her ESA paid for theme park passes, a television, a trampoline and a lot of LEGO. Nobody ever taught her to read beyond a primer. She has no transcript and no diploma. The state that funded all of it called her “in attendance” the entire time. What are her options?

I’m not a lawyer, and what follows is a policy researcher’s tour of the doctrinal terrain, not legal advice. But the terrain is not encouraging.

1. Sue the parent. Arizona abolished parental immunity in Broadbent v. Broadbent (1995), replacing it with a “reasonable and prudent parent” standard. Florida has never gone that far. So in Arizona, at least, a negligence claim against a parent is not barred at the door. But she would then run into the doctrine of educational malpractice. Since Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District (1976), courts have refused to recognize a duty of care for academic outcomes. They cite the lack of a workable standard of care, uncertain causation, and the burden on schools. If courts won’t hold trained, licensed educators to a duty to teach a child to read, a court is unlikely to impose one on a parent the legislature expressly freed from any measurable standard.

A narrower theory may be stronger: misappropriation. The Arizona statute says ESA money may be used “only” for the expenses of the qualified student. A diamond necklace or a family Disneyland trip is not that. A custodial-account or constructive-trust theory, treating the parent as having diverted money held for the child’s benefit, at least fits the facts. But that recovers the misspent dollars, not the lost education. And a judgment against a parent with no assets is worth little.

2. Sue the vendor. The private school, the online program, the tutoring center or the “ESA-approved” camp are private actors. A contract or consumer-fraud claim might reach a vendor that took money and delivered nothing. But a vendor that delivered exactly what was purchased (a ski pass, a paddleboard) did nothing wrong. And educational malpractice bars claims that the instruction itself was inadequate.

3. Sue the state, under the federal Constitution. This is where the Kansas panel’s warning bites hardest. San Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973) held there is no fundamental federal right to education. DeShaney v. Winnebago County(1989) held the Due Process Clause generally imposes no duty on the state to protect a child from harm inflicted by a private actor, including a parent. The one federal appellate ruling to recognize a right to a basic minimum education, Gary B. v. Whitmer (6th Cir. 2020), was vacated when the full court took it up after the case settled. She might argue that the state created the danger by funding the deprivation and deeming it lawful attendance. That theory is untested in this setting.

4. Sue the state, under the state constitution. Both states have education clauses. Florida’s is among the strongest in the country, declaring education a “paramount duty” and requiring a “high quality system of free public schools.” In Bush v. Holmes (2006), the Florida Supreme Court struck down a voucher program for diverting public funds to private schools outside that uniform system. But in Citizens for Strong Schools v. State Board of Education (2019), a divided court held that “high quality” offered no judicially manageable standard. More fundamentally, state adequacy litigation produces prospective, system-wide remedies. It is not a damages action for an individual who already aged out.

5. Ask the state to step in. Ordinarily, a child receiving no education might trigger truancy enforcement or an educational neglect inquiry. In Arizona, that door is closed by statute: the signed ESA agreement constitutes school attendance under § 15-2402(I). When the state does catch misspending, its remedy is to suspend the account or send it to collections. Any money recovered goes back to the state, not to the child whose education it was meant to buy.

So the honest answer to the legal question is: almost none. The 18-year-old is, in the Kansas panel’s words, a subject of an experiment with no recourse from its failure. The difference is that in Kansas, the state was cutting the budget of institutions still obligated to teach her. In Arizona and Florida, the state has written itself out of that obligation and handed the obligation, and the money, to someone the law does not hold to any measurable standard.

Please open the link and finish reading this excellent critique.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, School Choice, Students, Vouchers

John Thompson: The Absurd Attacks on Randi After She Criticized Tech in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
8

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, thought that AFT President Randi Weingarten’s recent speech on the dangers of technology in the classroom was balanced and thoughtful. Yet the Trump administration attacker for raising valid questions. Trump and McMahon have such a knee-jerk aversion to unions, especially the teachers’ unions, that they had to attack her, even if what she said made sense.

Thompson wrote:

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave an impressive speech at the National Press Club, explaining that students are “drowning in tech,” and they “need their teachers, real human beings, not robots and not chatbots.”

As I will explain, Weingarten’s presentation synthesized both – scholarly research and communication with diverse groups of educators and AI users. It was a perfect example of bridging political differences. When I first read the transcript of her plan, I thought it would be hard to understand how anyone who wants to improve education would not want to join her team effort to make life better for young people in the 21st century.   

But, not surprisingly, I was wrong. The Trump administration then attacked Weingarten because early in the Covid pandemic, the AFT pushed for safety measures before reopening schools.  It ignored her research and recommendations, and claimed that Weingarten “is the last person who should be weighing in about what is best for American students.”

When NewsMax interviewed Linda McMahon after Weingarten’s presentation, McMahon first criticized Weingarten for closing schools during the Covid pandemic (although the truth was that she proposed science-based protections to facilitate safe school openings.) Then, McMahon effusively praised AI in classrooms. Then the discussion returned to condemning unions for suposedly placing the good of teachers over that of students.

And Weingarten’s speech on AI was also condemned as a part of an AFT policy that “lines up perfectly with the ‘China First’ agenda.” And the AFT was accused on Substack for “evolving into some type of content-policing organization.”

But, getting back to Weingarten’s speech, NBC reported that she called for blocking most students from using computers in class until they reach third grade, and controlling Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs that are designed to act like real people. She would thus prohibit “student-facing AI in elementary schools” and ban “social companion (chatbots) until age 16.”

Weingarten further explained, “I’m  wary of the dangers of AI, but it is here to stay.” 

NBC News also reported that Weingarten proposed an “independent research consortium to study the effects of AI and screens on student learning.” She explained, “I am not calling for an AI ban or a Chromebook bonfire,” … “What I am calling for is getting the balance right to harness the benefits of technology while mitigating the harm.”

NBC further explained that “some states recently began limiting school-issued devices for the youngest students, and a handful of school districts crafted policies this year to scale back technology in the classroom.” But, “many states and districts are also rushing to require AI literacy education for students, and AI in schools is rising.”

That reporting connects with Dana Goldstein’s recent reporting that “across the educational landscape, from suburban districts and urban charter schools to community colleges and the Ivy League,” schools are pushing back against misuse of A.I. Unfortunately, though, “schools serving low-income students … are often under the most pressure to show that they are embracing innovative technology and preparing students for the working world, where it may soon be standard to rely on generative AI.”

Weingarten’s narrative was also consistent with what the Washington Post recently reported, “Most teachers use artificial intelligence, but relatively few — just 18 percent — have received any formal guidance on how to use it.”

Seeking multiple perspectives, Weingarten had recently visited a school where they used Sal Kahn’s AI for teaching. Khan once predicted it would be a “revolution” in learning, but now he acknowledges, “So far, the revolution hasn’t happened,” and AI tutoring “doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.

Kahn concluded, “I think our biggest lever is really investing in the human systems.”

An educator at that school also explained, “there’s been more enthusiasm for the product among administrators than teachers in her school.” Moreover, some of the “most advanced students have taken advantage of AI to learn new topics. But, as far as she can tell, more students are using it to just find answers, which has created a massive headache for teachers.”

Weingarten  also drew on research funded by the AFT, and supported by Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI showing that:

Critical thinking is directly connected to the content in math, history, and science classes. This is an essential reality often absent from discussions about how schools should respond to the spread of generative AI.

Indeed, the common refrain that teachers should focus on abstract critical thinking skills, disconnected from content, risks de-emphasizing the very thing — fluency with a broad set of facts — that supports critical thinking.

“Domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill,” wrote University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in 2020 for the American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers. “Critical thinking for open-ended problems is enabled by extensive stores of knowledge.”

And Weingarten challenged a number of Democrats, saying that “too many want to resurrect the failures of high-stakes testing, [and] are pushing privatization.” 

After following the AFT’s footnotes, learning from the evidence Weingarten drew upon, and the insights she gained from educators, I agree with Diane Ravitch, who wrote, “Randi has given many speeches. This is one of her best.” 

I see no way we can deny that AI is dangerous, especially for children, and that we must come together in a nonpartisan way to reduce its harms, while building on its strengths. I see no rationale for seeking simple solutions. And any solutions require listening to a broad spectrum of outlooks.

Regardless of what others see as other causes of the decline of meaningful learning, what sense does it make to attack Weingarten’s efforts to address this rapidly emerging crisis?

I’d argue that today’s attacks make no more sense than the rightwing’s refusal to work with Weingarten’s to build the infrastructure necessary for opening schools during Covid. 

Categories Education Industry, Students, Technology, Trump, Unions

How Tech Companies Hooked Kids in School on Social Media

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2026 //
2

The New York Times broke a story about how tech companies have quietly pushed kids to be dependent on social media. The link takes you to a gift article, which you can open and read for free.

The article was written by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, an investigative reporter who covers technology.

The Times opened the article with this overview: Internal documents show how tech giants grabbed children’s attention throughout the day, a strategy that schools say has undermined education.

The article begins:

Snapchat sent phone alerts to adolescents during school hours, urging them to share what was going on in their classrooms.

Meta paid “teen ambassadors” to promote Instagram and hand out swag to their friends at school.

TikTok gave the National PTA millions of dollars, in part to throw school events about online safety and provide favorable comments to journalists.

Again and again, the world’s leading social media companies have targeted students, even as complaints have mounted that they are hurting teenagers’ mental health and academic performance, according to a New York Times review of internal documents that lay bare for the first time these tactics to hook young users.

The documents emerged from lawsuits filed by more than 1,400 school districts against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube amid a rising backlash against social media, with parent movements and best-selling books blaming the platforms for loneliness, bullying, eating disorders and sexual exploitation.

The outcry, long focused on social media’s harm to mental health, has now shifted to its upending of the classroom. Many school districts are banning smartphones, and some are re-evaluating their reliance on devices like Chromebooks, the inexpensive laptops made by YouTube’s parent company, Google.

The companies’ push to keep children glued to their screens has overshadowed concerns from parents, teachers and even their own trust and safety teams about interfering with school, according to the documents and interviews with dozens of parents, teachers and former tech company employees.

TikTok’s leaders decided not to disable notifications during school hours, rejecting a change that its safety teams had pushed for years. A Snapchat strategy document referred to classroom phone use as “under the desk” time. Google managers knew YouTube was recommending videos to students during the school day that had nothing to do with their lessons.

The school districts contend that the apps’ addictive designs made teachers’ jobs more difficult. “It is so constantly tempting to these kids to be on a platform that promises endless, infinite, varied entertainment rather than actually focusing on what they should be at school to do,” said Previn Warren, one of the lead lawyers for the schools.

The companies argue that the Covid pandemic and other factors have harmed adolescents’ mental health, and that parents, schools and cellphone makers bear responsibility for children’s phone habits. They also say that they have made their platforms safer with parental-control features and account restrictions for minors.

All four companies recently settled with Breathitt County Schools, a small district in rural Kentucky that served as a test case for the litigation nationwide. The district, which has about 1,500 students, had sought $3 million in damages and about $60 million that it had planned to put toward a long-term education and mental health plan. The companies agreed to pay Breathitt $27 million: $9 million from Meta, $8 million each from Snap and TikTok and $2 million from Google, according to documents released on Friday and first reported by Bloomberg.

While it’s hard to say how the ongoing litigation might ultimately affect classrooms, it poses a substantial financial risk to the companies, possibly costing billions of dollars, said Alexandra Lahav, a civil litigation professor at Cornell Law School. She noted that the companies were also facing a barrage of claims from families and state attorneys general.

Message to Big Tech: Leave our kids alone!

Categories Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Students, Technology

Pasi Sahlberg: The Making of an “Education Warrior”

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2026 //
8

This article by Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg tells the story of how he became an “education warrior.”

Pasi is one of the best-known education gurus in the world. He is an articulate advocate of a “whole child, child-centered” view of education. He believes in the power of teachers. He has stood strongly against standardized testing, incentives, punishments, and markets throughout his career.

He is one of my personal heroes.

Categories Accountability, Character, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Creativity, Curriculum, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Play, Students

The Corporate Takeover of Public Schools in Indianapolis

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2026 //
4

So-called reformers continue to pursue a fantasy: they believe that changing the governance of public schools will lead to improvement in the education of children.

And so they advocate for mayoral control, state takeovers, charter schools, vouchers.

They choose to ignore the overwhelming consensus among education researchers that the home lives of children has a far greater impact on children’s school performance than the governing structure.

Here is a case in point, offered by In the Public Interest.

If you’re worried about corporations taking over public schools, this next sentence will not allay your worry: The state of Indiana just turned over much of the responsibilities for the city of Indianapolis’ schools–public and charter–to something called the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation (IPEC).

“This new organization will be charged with building and transportation management for both charter and traditional public schools,” reports Governing. “It will also be charged with creating a single set of evaluation criteria for both types of schools.”

Admittedly, it’s a nonprofit corporation and its nine board members are appointed by the mayor with statutes to determine the corporate board’s membership: three come from the Indianapolis Public Schools [IPS] board of commissioners–which still exists, three from the charter school industry, and three with administrative and financial expertise. 

In reality, however, four board members are from the charter industry. Its board chairman is David Harris, who founded the Mind Trust-Indianapolis, the driving force pushing the charterization of the district. Harris is the President and CEO of Christal House International that operates the Christal House Academy charter chain. According to the organization’s 990 tax form, in 2025, Harris received $554,148 in compensation.

But IPEC inserts a layer of control and bureaucracy beyond–or, better put, around–Indianapolis’ elected school board. At least as troubling as that is the fact IPEC was given the authority to levy property taxes that it can use to fund–with public money–charter schools. This puts charter schools on equal footing–and funding–with public schools–a dangerous precedent that is certain to be attempted elsewhere. 

One of IPEC’s first orders of business is likely to be placing on the November ballot an operating referendum since IPS’ expires at the end of this year. While Indianapolis Public Schools expects a $40 million deficit for the year, that might have been addressed if IPS’s attempt to place an operating referendum on the 2023 ballot hadn’t been derailed by the charter school industry and the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. 

For public school advocates, the implications of the new, non-elected board are clear–and disturbing.

“What is occurring in Indianapolis is part of a growing movement to destroy the neighborhood school governed by the community and replace it with a corporate vision of schooling that sees the marketplace and competition as the primary drivers of quality,” Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, tells In the Public Interest. “We are now more than thirty years into the charter school experiment, and we have yet to see the miracle.”

Jeff Hagan
Communications Director

Categories Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Parents, Research, Students

The Artemis II Astronauts Graduated from Public Schools! THANKS to their TEACHERS!

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2026 //
6

Categories Students, Teachers

Pennsylvania: Teenagers Arrested During Anti-ICE Protest Face Jail Time

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2026 //
6

High school students across the nation have staged walkouts and protests against ICE since the killings and brutality in Minneapolis. This is the story of a protest that went wrong.

Officials have released few details about the arrests, but two people with knowledge of the case who asked not to be identified to discuss an ongoing investigation confirmed the charges. The police department and the district attorney’s office have declined to disclose the teens’ names, ages, or charges they face.

A melee broke out in Quakerstown, Pennsylvania, when the chief of police, out of uniform, plunged into the midst of a group of teens protesting ICE and began beating them. They and their friends responded in kind. The kids were arrested, jailed, and criminally charged.

This is a “which side are you on” moment in Quakerstown.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

Five teenagers arrested during a protest in Quakertown last week face charges of aggravated assault and related crimes after a judge ruled Tuesday that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case against them to proceed, according to sources.

The teenagers had been held since Friday, when they were taken into custody after a scuffle with Quakertown police officers — including the department’s chief, Scott McElree.

After the more than three-hour hearing in Doylestown, which was closed to the public, prosecutors left the courtroom without answering questions. The teenagers’ parents, speaking through intermediaries, also declined to comment Tuesday.

But Ettore Angelo, a lawyer representing one of the teenagers, said his 15-year-old client had been released to her parents and placed on house arrest. He said she faces an aggravated assault charge — a felony offense that, if sustained in juvenile court, can carry a penalty of up to five years in a detention facility.

The teenagers who were arrested had been taking part in a protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that began at Quakertown Community High School and moved off campus to Front Street. Witnesses have said that a confrontation erupted there, in front of Sunday’s Deli and Restaurant.

McElree, the police chief, who was dressed in plain clothes, grabbed a teenage boy and placed a teenage girl in a chokehold, they said, prompting other students to intervene and a larger scuffle to break out.

Angelo said the central allegation against his client is that she struck McElree during the melee, an accusation she denies. He contended that students reacted in confusion and fear when a man rushed into the crowd.

He said McElree “put himself smack in the middle and created a melee” when he charged up to the teenagers while out of uniform and without announcing who he was. “I think he owes the community and these teenagers an apology,” the lawyer said.

He added that, in his view, some of the teenagers had acted instinctively to protect one another. Speaking by phone Tuesday afternoon, a 17-year-old girl who participated in the protest but was not among those arrested described what she said had been a peaceful demonstration even as counterprotesters drove past in vehicles, honking and shouting. The teen, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said teenagers were gathered on the sidewalk and speaking with a uniformed officer when a man pushed through the crowd and “barged onto the sidewalk.”

The man — whom she later learned was McElree — grabbed a teenage boy by the back of the neck, she said. “All the kids thought he was a counter protester,” she said. “So everyone started to protect their friends.”

The girl said she saw McElree throw one student to the ground and place another in a chokehold. At least three students were injured, she said — one with a broken nose and another who required stitches to his chin. McElree, too, was injured, she said, and left the scene bleeding from his head.

She recorded portions of the confrontation and shared the videos with The Inquirer.“It was really scary, because it was a group of kids versus this really angry man,” the teen said, adding that it took what felt like several minutes for uniformed officers to step in. “It was the kids doing what the police should have.”

The girl said she did not realize that the man at the center of the fight was the police chief until she returned home and showed the footage to her father, who recognized McElree.

Manuel Gamiz, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said Monday that the investigation remains ongoing and that no additional information was available.

Police initially said an adult had also been arrested during the confrontation. But the district attorney’s office later said no adults had been charged in the melee.

Outside the courthouse and along the hallway leading to the courtroom of Denise M. Bowman, more than two dozen community members gathered in quiet support Tuesday. Some held handmade signs: “We support Quakertown students” and “Keep families together.”

Among them was Lolly Hopwood, 47, of Doylestown, who held a poster reading, “We stand with you.” She said she and others wanted to counter what she described as harsh online criticism directed at the families.

“There’s a lot of negativity online right now that the parents are seeing,” Ms. Hopwood said. “We wanted to show them the community is really here for them.”

On Monday night, the episode had spilled into borough politics. At a Quakertown council meeting, several residents called for the teenagers’ release and demanded the resignation of McElree, who also serves as the borough manager. After the public session, the council met privately with its attorney. As of Tuesday morning, it was unclear whether any action would be taken against the chief.

Members of the borough council and the borough’s attorney, Peter Nelson, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

A GoFundMe campaign created to help cover the teenagers’ legal expenses had raised more than $41,000 by Tuesday afternoon. The funds will be divided evenly among the five families, said Heidi Roux, director of immigrant justice at the Welcome Project PA, which organized the drive.

I don’t know about you, but based on what this article shows, I’d say the mess would have never happened if the chief of police had been in uniform. He just into a group of students and started assaulting them. They didn’t know who he was and they defended themselves and their friends. If I were on the grand jury, I would set them free.

According to Dan Froomkin of Press Watch, writing on BlueSky:

3 of the 5 Quakertown high school students arrested for anti-ICE walkout are free–after 4 days! Not sure about 2 others, who are accused of felony assault against the police chief–when it was the chief who actually attacked them, putting one girl in a chokehold!

As of last night at midnight, the GoFundMe had raised $106,000 for the legal defense of the students. If you open the GoFundMe, you will see the Chief of Police pinning a girl in a chokehold. Chokeholds are actually very dangerous; police in NYC are not allowed to use them.

Categories Disruption, Pennsylvania, Resistance, Students

Nancy Bailey: Will School Choice Kill School Sports?

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2026 //
5

Nancy Bailey is a retired educator and a dedicated ally of public schools. She understands the importance of public schools as the heart of communities, which bring parents together and teach citizenship.

In many communities, Friday night lights are an important civic ritual. Why should they be dimmed?

In this post, she voices a concern that many parents and educators share: Will school choice kill school sports?

Bailey writes:

Americans love sports, but what happens to athletic programs when democratic public schools close? Privatizing public education, so-called school choice, means drastic changes, as school officials grapple with the effects of school choice legislation.

Communities rally behind high school football in the fall, basketball during the winter, and track and field in the spring. Public schools might offer swimming, soccer, and other sports, critical for helping young people obtain college scholarships. Even though they aren’t easy to obtain, about 180,000 NCAA D1 and D2 student-athletes earn athletic scholarships each year.

School choice, including charter schools, vouchers, homeschooling, and open enrollment, alters who plays sports and undermines community pride in public schools. Defunding public schools ruins sports programs. Which students get access? Will only the wealthiest private schools get sports?

In 2023, West Virginia headlined How lawmakers helped ruin high school football in West Virginia reflecting on game “blowouts” in that state. When private schools corral all the best players, it changes the competition. It also makes for boring games. Brooke High Coach Mac McLean, whose team always struggled in the AAA class, said it’s only going to get worse: The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

School choice crusaders seem not to have thought through what happens with sports. Olivia Nutter recently wrote in Athletics Directors 411:

Proponents of school choice argue that parents should be free to choose what’s best for their children, including athletic opportunities. But that freedom raises difficult questions about fairness and competitive balance. If top talent continually migrates to a handful of programs, the very structure of high school sports could change, creating a system where access to success depends less on effort and more on ZIP code flexibility.

Consider that between 2010–11 and 2021–22, 4,000+ public secondary schools closed due to declining enrollment, unaffordable housing, lower birth rates, and an overall defunding of public education by school privatizers seeking to create schools for profit.

Parental school choice is also deceptive. Private schools, not parents, ultimately choose students. Gifted athletes will likely be welcome at a private school that prioritizes sports. Wealthy private school teams will compete with other private schools, but what about students who never got swept up in the choice program, never got identified in their poor charter schools, or in their homeschools?

Undiscovered students who haven’t yet shown their prowess in sports may not have the opportunity to do so, relegated to a fledgling public school that has lost its resources, a charter school, or homeschool, where they remain unrecognized. What if they never get the opportunity to practice sports under the eyes of a good coach?

Charter schools often lack the budget or incentive to offer quality sports programs. Sports facilities, football fields, tracks, or access to swimming pools is costly. Some may rent facilities or partner with community organizations for practice, but this can be expensive.

States like Florida allow charter school and homeschool students (7.d) to participate in traditional public school sports, but this is controversial. It dismisses the community school pride factor, a significant all-American feature of school sports. If parents don’t want their child at that public school, take tax dollars elsewhere; why get the advantage of a public school sports program? What happens when the school ultimately closes?

Missouri is another state that permits homeschool students to participate in public education sports.

Students might also leave public school sports programs for sports clubs, which have become synonymous with college recruitment across areas, though in football, they appear less so.

Athletic organizations see the problems with school choice. Both the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) and the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) ran into difficulties with their states choice programs.

As one parent puts it:

Private schools often have access to resources that public schools do not – such as better facilities, more experienced coaches or even the ability to attract top talent through scholarships. This creates an uneven playing field during playoff competitions. According to a study by The Atlantic (2013), private high school students are over twice as likely as public school students to reach Division I college sports.

Some private schools are small and also lack resources, but will be expected to compete against wealthier private schools.

School board members in Hamilton, Tennessee, voiced concern that the state’s Education Freedom Scholarship, allowing students to attend private schools, siphons desirable athletes from public schools. They worry about a drop in public school attendance, likely related to the school choice program. Sports success skews toward wealthier super schools, leaving fewer high school teams for competition.

Texas exemplifies the problems school choice creates for sports. At 2.22 on the video below they discuss how football, basketball, and track, public school sports programs beloved in that state, could be affected. It might mean laying off school coaching staff.

Cultural overemphasis and concernsabout sports injuries leave critics to advocate for the end of school sports altogether. But athletics are an ingrained American tradition, and it’s hard to see public schools successfully survive without vibrant sports and extracurricular programs.

Sports aren’t only about making future successful athletes, of course. Students benefit physically and mentally, and team sports promote positive socialization and all around good health. Students learn how to win gracefully, build confidence, but also how to lose and accept defeat without always quitting.

But if public education is fully privatized, once unimaginable, public school sports could end. Most Americans are not on board for school choice and want to see better and more support of public schooling. The loss of sports might be added in as a reason to reject school choice. It may be time for pushback and Americans rallying around their democratic public schools. Could it be?

Consider Mississippi where football in small towns is called “the fabric of the community.” Parents worried about their public schools, and the Mississippi legislature recently killed the school choice bill which would have sent public school funding to private schools.

Maybe there’s hope, not only for school sports, team building, but for democratic public schools. Perhaps we’ll soon see a public school renaissance and a great refocus on the greatness of our country and its children and their schools, not only with sports but learning. Now that’s truly a winning idea!

Categories Accountability, Charters, Ethics, Home Schooling, Parents, Students, Vouchers

The Kind of Schools That We Need Right Now

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2026 //
10

Some years back–actually it was 2019–I read an article that gladdened my heart. It was written in The Atlantic by gazillionaire Nick Hanauer. It was titled “Better Schools Won’t Fix America.”

Nick is an interesting guy. He is an entrepreneur in Seattle. He works alongside other successful venture capitalists, and for a time, partnered with Bill Gates to persuade the Washington legislature to endorse charter schools as a remedy to replace “failing” public schools.

But somewhere along the way, he had a change of mind and heart. He realized that the basic problem in the U.S. was income inequality, not “failing schools.”

He began his 2019 article:

Long ago, I was captivated by a seductively intuitive idea, one many of my wealthy friends still subscribe to: that both poverty and rising inequality are largely consequences of America’s failing education system. Fix that, I believed, and we could cure much of what ails America.

This belief system, which I have come to think of as “educationism,” is grounded in a familiar story about cause and effect: Once upon a time, America created a public-education system that was the envy of the modern world. No nation produced more or better-educated high-school and college graduates, and thus the great American middle class was built. But then, sometime around the 1970s, America lost its way. We allowed our schools to crumble, and our test scores and graduation rates to fall. School systems that once churned out well-paid factory workers failed to keep pace with the rising educational demands of the new knowledge economy. As America’s public-school systems foundered, so did the earning power of the American middle class. And as inequality increased, so did political polarization, cynicism, and anger, threatening to undermine American democracy itself.Great public schools are the product of a thriving middle class, not the other way around.

Taken with this story line, I embraced education as both a philanthropic cause and a civic mission. I co-founded the League of Education Voters, a nonprofit dedicated to improving public education. I joined Bill Gates, Alice Walton, and Paul Allen in giving more than $1 million eachto an effort to pass a ballot measure that established Washington State’s first charter schools. All told, I have devoted countless hours and millions of dollars to the simple idea that if we improved our schools—if we modernized our curricula and our teaching methods, substantially increased school funding, rooted out bad teachers, and opened enough charter schools—American children, especially those in low-income and working-class communities, would start learning again. Graduation rates and wages would increase, poverty and inequality would decrease, and public commitment to democracy would be restored.

But after decades of organizing and giving, I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that I was wrong. And I hate being wrong.

What I’ve realized, decades late, is that educationism is tragically misguided. American workers are struggling in large part because they are underpaid—and they are underpaid because 40 years of trickle-down policies have rigged the economy in favor of wealthy people like me. Americans are more highly educated than ever before, but despite that, and despite nearly record-low unemployment, most American workers—at all levels of educational attainment—have seen little if any wage growth since 2000.

To be clear: We should do everything we can to improve our public schools. But our education system can’t compensate for the ways our economic system is failing Americans. Even the most thoughtful and well-intentioned school-reform program can’t improve educational outcomes if it ignores the single greatest driver of student achievement: household income.

Hanauer recognized that the hollowing out of the middle class was harming our entire society:

In short, great public schools are the product of a thriving middle class, not the other way around. Pay people enough to afford dignified middle-class lives, and high-quality public schools will follow. But allow economic inequality to grow, and educational inequality will inevitably grow with it.

Hanauer’s turnaround resonated with me. He was boldly breaking ranks with his peers. I doubt he suffered ostracism, because many of the elites toy with education; it is not a vital interest to them. In my limited experience, watching the uber-rich participate on behalf of charter schools, it appeared that many were going along with the crowd, while some thought that privatization was a miracle cure.

Hanauer understood that children need a good start in life and they need a stable, secure home life to do their best in school. He understood that economic inequality undermined many children’s interest in school, which was less important than survival or a warm winter coat or medical care. He even understood that the decades-long efforts to stamp out unions contributed to economic inequality.

We spoke on the phone. I did a podcast with him. I was impressed by his keen intellect and independence of mind.

With each book I wrote about privatization, I insisted that schools are vital institutions in educating children, but they can’t do it alone. In Reign of Error, I spelled out what I considered a life-course approach to improving the chances of giving children the education they need and deserve.

In the competition between public schools and charter schools, the only measure that outsiders considered was test scores. But I knew that was not right. For many young people, it’s miraculous when they manage to show up for school. They chose to go to school, not to babysit a younger sibling, not to take a part-time job delivering to customers, not to hang out in the local park.

What kind of a school was that? I came to understand that the closest approximation of a school that I imagined was a community school. Community schools provide wraparound services to students and their parents.

Categories Community Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Funding, Health, Innovation, Medicine, Parents, Philanthropy, Students, Teachers
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