The Idaho legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill to drop requirements for new teachers, leaving it to districts to write their own standards.
In Idaho, anyone can teach so long as they have a BA degree, pass a criminal background check, and don’t have an infectious disease.
In short, teaching in Idaho is no longer a profession. The charter industry considers this a victory.
Peter Greene tells the story caught on tape when Larry Arnn, president of rightwing Christian Hillsdale College, tells Tennessee Governor Bill Lee that teachers are the dumbest, trained by the dumbest, and you don’t need to know anything to be a teacher.
Governor Lee listens abjectly. He invited Hillsdale to open 100 charter schools across Tennessee. Hillsdale agreed to open 50.
Greene writes about Arnn’s tirade, which was taped:
“The teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”
“They are taught that they are going to go and do something to those kids…. Do they ever talk about anything except what they are going to do to these kids?”
“In colleges, what you hire now is administrators…. Now, because they are appointing all these diversity officers, what are their degrees in? Education. It’s easy. You don’t have to know anything.”
“The philosophic understanding at the heart of modern education is enslavement…. They’re messing with people’s children, and they feel entitled to do anything to them.”
“You will see how education destroys generations of people. It’s devastating. It’s like the plague.”
“Here’s a key thing that we’re going to try to do. We are going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child because basically anybody can do it.”
Someone should have told Arnn that America was built by people who attended public schools, not by graduates of Hillsdale.
Governor Lee didn’t have the guts to stand up for the teachers of Tennessee. Probably he thinks the people who voted for him are the dumbest of the dumb.
Anne Thomas-Abbott, a teacher in Knoxville, did respond to Larry Arnn, whose contempt for teachers is abhorrent and ignorant.
Greene adds:
If you are shaking your head at Tennessee, I suggest you look around your own state first, because these public education-hating faux Christian right wingers are all over the country, and when he’s selling his product in public, Arnn is rarely as blunt as he was before the Tennessee crowd. Make sure everyone gets to hear what he really thinks.
South Carolina’s public schools, teachers, and students are in for some tough times. Republicans went to the polls and selected a rightwing ideologue as their candidate for state superintendent. Ellen Weaver does not have the master’s degree that state law requires the state chief to have. She has signed up to get a master’s in “Christian Leadership” at Bob Jones University and expects to get her degree in eight months.
Weaver has made her hostility to public schools and professional teachers clear. She (and the SC media) refer to education professionals as “the education establishment.”
Ellen Weaver, president and CEO of the Palmetto Promise Institute, handily defeated teachers advocate Kathy Maness in Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff, a development with potentially major implications for the state’s public schools…
Weaver, who does not currently meet the statutory requirements to hold officebecause she lacks an advanced degree, has cast herself as a bold reformer fighting to eradicate liberal ideologies like so-called critical race theory that she claims are seeping into public education.
“The fight to save our schools is a fight to save that American dream for the next generation,” she said at a debate last week. “If we don’t stand in the gap for our kids and against the wokeism and sexualization agendas that are coming out of Washington, we have lost our country.”
Weaver will face Democrat Lisa Ellis, a Richland 2 teacher and student activities director, in the general election. Ellis, who is best known for founding the grassroots teachers organization SC for Ed, won the Democratic primary outright earlier this month.
Weaver refers to a master’s degree as “letters behind your name.” Presumably, at a better time, when politicians weren’t putting a wrecking ball to public education, they set that qualification there to assure that the state superintendent was an experienced educator, not an ideologue who is contemptuous of the state’s most important public institution.
Sadly, South Carolina got the kind of leader that the law was supposed to bar. Teachers are upset about what happens next, as well they should be.
South Carolina needs a leader who will fight for more funding, especially for its most vulnerable children. If Weaver beats her Democratic opponent, the state will have a leader who dabbles in nonsense about race and gender instead of improving the schools.
If you are a parent, a teacher, or a concerned citizen, help elect Lisa Ellis. She’s a teacher, she has experience, she knows what students need and will fight for it.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a football coach who conducted prayers in the 50-yard line.
You read it here first: This case may be a prelude to overturning the Supreme Court’s ban on prayer in schools, a decision that evangelicals have complained about since it was issued. As we have seen in the past week, this Court is indifferent to precedent. They are rightwing ideologues who want to redraw the well-understood rights, freedoms, and boundaries of American life. No one knows what to expect: Will they outlaw contraception? Will they outlaw same-sex relationships and marriage? Will they outlaw interracial marriage? Will they overturn Brown v. Board of Education? Will they restore the power to impose racial segregation to the states? The Trump three plus Alito, Thomas, and Roberts are a supermajority; they are appointed for life. They will do whatever they want, with no accountability.
Peter Greene writes that the Court has no understanding of the duties of a school official.
It has become increasingly clear—blindingly obvious—that this Court will always favor religious expression over all competing claims. Six justices have completely abandoned the Founding Fathers’ explicit belief in separation of church and state and their determination to avoid any “establishment” of religion.
Greene writes:
I am absolutely gobsmacked. I expected that SCOTUS would okay school prayer via Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. I did not expect that their decision would be based on a disconnecting themselves from reality.
The result is here. I’ll walk you through the highlights (sputtering as I go). Sorry. I don’t have time to make this short.
This is the case of the football coach who wanted to pray at the 50 yard line after games, and when the district told him to stop, decided he’d get his fifteen minutes of holy fame out of it. Full summary here.
Justice Gorsuch wrote this one, and he’s in an alternate reality in the very first paragraph.Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks.
Nope. Joseph Kennedy decided not to put in for the job for another season.
Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters.
This line of reasoning will be followed throughout. If you’re on the clock, but can get away with dividing your attention, that counts as personal time. Not for the last time, Gorsuch and the berobed conservative activists of the court will demonstrate no understanding of how school jobs work. As a teacher, if I’m on my computer or phone while I’m supposed to be supervising students, I’m asking for trouble. And if I’m a coach or activity advisor, and my students have not officially left the building for home, then I had better be doing my job, which is keeping an eye on them.
What follows is a glowing version of Coach Kennedy’s history with the school, putting emphasis on how quiet and personal and totally not while performing his duties as a government employee Kennedy’s praying was. We will have to wait for the dissent to get the full story from this planet. What Gorsuch gets semi-right is that this practice stayed below the radar for a while, until Kennedy had expanded it enough that word got back to district officials, who had a church-and-state-separation freakout.
But Kennedy had an epiphany driving home one night, and felt “compelled” to do the prayer, and send a big letter to the district, in which he offered to do the prayer quietly “while students were busy with other activities–whether heading to the locker room, boarding the bus, or perhaps singing the school fight song” which–no! The offer of “I’ll just slip a prayer in when I’m supposed to be doing my job” is not a great offer!
On October 16, “some members of the community” joined him and “this event spurred media coverage.” Well, yes– as the dissent points out, Kennedy spurred, courted, welcomed and recruited media coverage, as well as (not for the first time) participation from the other team. The district continued to put pressure on, feeling that to not do so would suggest they were endorsing a school prayer, and that their understanding of the Constitution would be that such an endorsement was wrong. How very old school of them.
The district noted in their evaluation that Kennedy failed to supervise students after games and failed to follow district policy regarding religious expression. Kennedy decided not to put in for the job for the coming year….
Please open the link and read Greene’s post in full. Will students now have to put up with teachers opening and closing their classes with a prayer?
We have a Supreme Court that will privilege every form of prayer, in every setting, and will allow those with religious convictions to discriminate against those who do not share their views.
Is theocracy the right word?
Thomas Jefferson must be rolling in his grave.
Until recently, teachers in Ohio were allowed to carry weapons to school but they had to take the same 700 hours of instruction as peace officers in the state.
The New York Times reported that a new Ohio law allows teachers to carry weapons with no more than 24 hours of training.
Teachers and other school employees in Ohio will be able to carry firearms into school with a tiny fraction of the training that has been required since last year, after Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law on Monday.
While employees have for years been allowed to carry guns on school grounds with the consent of the local school board, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that state law required them to first undergo the same basic peace officer training as law enforcement officials or security officers who carry firearms on campus — entailing more than 700 hours of instruction.
That ruling, Mr. DeWine said on Monday, had made it largely impractical for Ohio school districts to allow staffers to carry firearms.
Under the new law, a maximum of 24 hours of training will be enough for teachers to carry guns at school, though the local board will still need to give its approval. Twenty-eight states allow people other than security personnel to carry firearms on school grounds, with laws in nine of those states explicitly mentioning school employees, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Polls in recent years show that a majority of Americans, and a large majority of teachers, oppose the idea of arming teachers…
The governor emphasized that local school districts would still have the ability to prohibit firearms on school campuses. “This does not require any school to arm teachers or staff,” he said. “Every school will make its own decision.”
Last week, Justin Bibb, the mayor of Cleveland, said his city would continue to ban teachers and other non-security employees from carrying guns in schools.
Ohio’s new law, which moved suddenly and swiftly through the State Senate after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, passed on June 1 along roughly partisan lines, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against it. The bill passed the House in November, also on a nearly party-line vote; one Republican joined the Democrats in voting against it.
In a speech on the Senate floor, State Senator Niraj Antani, a Republican, dismissed the “crocodile tears” of lawmakers who saw the bill as dangerous, arguing that armed teachers would deter school shootings and calling the bill “probably the most important thing we have done to prevent a school shooter in Ohio.”
A sizable opposition against the bill had grown against it during its journey through the Legislature. Hundreds packed into committee rooms for the bill’s hearings, with all but two or three speakers testifying against it. The opposition included gun control groups as well as teachers, school board members, police union representatives and police chiefs.
Robert Meader, who recently retired as commander of the Columbus, Ohio, Division of Police, called the training requirement in the bill “woefully inadequate,” arguing that it would “cause harmful accidents and potentially even needless deaths.”
The bill is the second major gun bill that Mr. DeWine, a Republican, has signed into law this year. The first, which went into effect on Monday, eliminates the requirement for a license to carry a concealed handgun.
Imagine this: a school shooter enters the building armed with an automatic assault weapon. Will teachers have equally powerful weapons? How terrifying will school be if teachers are carrying assault weapons? Terrifying not only for students, but for teachers and administrators.
Stephen Dyer, former legislator, writes that two of every three voucher students in Ohio’s Edchiice program this year never attended public schools.
Yet legislators want to expand it.
No more nonsense about “saving poor kids from failing public schools.” The voucher program is simply a transfer of public funds to parents who never sent their children to public schools. It’s a giveaway of public dollars to parents whose children are in private schools.
And public schools are better than the private religious schools that get public money. The public schools have certified teachers, more advanced classes, a broader curriculum, and extracurricular activities that religious schools do not offer.
Dyer writes:
Ok. My jaw literally dropped when I read this bill analysis of House Bill 583 — a bill originally intended to help alleviate the substitute teacher shortage, but thanks to Ohio Senate Education Chairman Andrew Brenner, is now a giveaway to school privatizers.
Tucked away on page 7 of this analysis, I read this:
… (R)oughly 33% of the new FY 2022 income-based scholarship recipients entering grades 1-12 were students who attended a public school the previous year.
That’s right.
2 of every 3 EdChoice Expansion recipients this year never attended a public school before they received their taxpayer-funded private school tuition subsidy…
And remember that families up to 400% of poverty qualify. How much is that? For a family of 4, $111,000 qualifies as 400% of poverty That would qualify about 85% of Ohio households for this taxpayer funded private school tuition subsidy.
Oh yeah, the bill also eliminates the prorated voucher for EdChoice Expansion. What’s that mean? Well, until this bill, families between 250% and 400% of poverty would qualify for a subsidy, but at a reduced rate from the $5,500 K-8 voucher or the $7,500 high school voucher.
Not anymore. Under HB 583, those prorations go away. What else goes away? The recipient’s loss of a voucher if their income grows beyond 400%.
That’s right.
Someone could make $100,000 one year, qualify their kids for a full, $5,500 Grade 1 private school tuition subsidy, change jobs, make $200,000 a year or more for the next 11 years and keep the full voucher as long as their kid was in school.
Look, I don’t need to keep repeating this, but I will: In nearly 9 of 10 cases, kids taking a voucher perform worse on state testing than kids in the public schools they leave behind. Not to mention the racial segregation the program exacerbates.
Yet here Ohio lawmakers go and dump another $13 million or more of public money into a program that will undoubtedly subsidize the private school tuitions of wealthy, disproportionately white families whose kids never attended public schools.
Who loses? The 90% of kids who don’t take a voucher because the money comes out of their schools’ budget.
Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, is now a significant chronicler of the Destroy Public Education movement. He attended the recent national conference of the Network for Public Education in Philadelphia and recapitulates the excitement we shared at being in person after a 2-year hiatus.
After every conference, attendees say, “This was the best one yet.” They enjoy meeting people who are doing the same work to fight privatization of their public schools. By the end of the conference, attendees say they feel energized, hopeful, and happy to know that they are not alone.
I urge you to read Tom’s post. You will get a sense of the embarrassment of riches available to attendees.
I should add that the Nebraska Save Our Schools group shared the Phyllis Bush Award for Grassroots Activism. Nebraska is one of the few states that has managed to protect its public schools and keep out both charters and vouchers, despite being a Red State.
The Pastors for Texas Children, a co-winner of the award, has repeatedly blocked vouchers in the Texas Legislature and has consistently fought for funding for public schools. PTC has opened chapters in other Red states, where they mobilize clergy to support public schools.
A high point for me was interviewing “Little Stevie” Van Zandt, a legendary rock star and actor (“The Sopranos”), who is dedicated to getting the arts into schools, not as an extra, but across the curriculum. we had a wonderful conversation. He has funded lesson plans based on rock and roll, available free at his website TeachRock.
All of the general sessions were taped. I will post them when they become available.
The Intercept published a stunning confession by a young man about his “grooming” by an elementary school teacher.
Jon Schwarz writes:
Anyone following the news knows the U.S. right is now obsessively accusing public school teachers, especially ones who are LGBTQ+, of being “groomers” — i.e., pedophiles. It’s both astonishingly vile and horrifyingly cynical.
This kind of propaganda — that some minority group is plotting to harm our children — has always been the specialty of history’s most vicious political movements. Today’s version is just one step away from the Taliban’s violent loathing of education, and two steps from declaring that teachers are using the blood of children to make their unleavened bread. Ignorant audiences have always been vulnerable to these fairy tales, which is why the abuse of children is a popular theme of literal fairy tales.
At the same time, the right-wing figures who spew out this sewage are absolutely indifferent to the actual sexual abuse of children. For instance, one of the most hateful proponents of the groomer narrative is Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at a conservative think tank called the Manhattan Institute. Rufo recently proclaimed on Twitter: “The public school system has a child sex abuse problem.”
That’s all you need to know about Rufo. He has no interest in the sexual abuse of children in private or charter schools. Nor did he mention churches. For that matter, he has nothing to say about the Republican Party: Its longest-serving speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, was a child molester, and the next GOP Speaker of the House may be Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has been accused by eight former studentsof helping cover up the sexual abuse of wrestlers at Ohio State University.
That’s because, for Rufo and his compatriots — such as the playwright David Mamet; Christina Pushaw, the press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; andDonald Trump Jr. — the victims of genuine sexual abuse don’t matter at all. They and the lifelong pain many experience are simply useful tools in the right’s centurylong attack on public education. Rufo and company understand that democracy is impossible without public education and so are willing to do anything to destroy it.
We know where this path leads, and we must step off it immediately. The people doing this are cruel and sadistic, but they’re also mewling cowards — and with pushback now, they will slink back into the holes from which they emerged.
At the same time, we should be telling the full truth about public school teachers. The one good thing I can say about this awful current phenomenon is that it’s made me remember all the beautiful teachers I’ve had, and how much better they made my life. Here’s my story of how my elementary school teacher.
Please read his memories of teachers who taught him to love learning.
He says:
From encouraging me to read and write, to nudging me to think for myself, their pernicious influence burdens me to this day.
Teachers are receiving apples, donuts, and lovely notes to thank them for their service. But that’s not enough. Many states are reporting severe shortages of teachers and support staff. This means larger class sizes and curtailed curricula. This means denial of a good education to millions of children.
The Economic Policy Institute lays out the problems and the solution in this post: Raise wages.
It begins:
A 2022 report reviews EPI research on teacher pay and presents the evidence showing that K–12 schools are facing a staffing crisis. The pandemic made clear that our economy cannot function if schools don’t have the staff they need to operate safely and effectively.
Policymakers need to invest in K–12 education now, the report’s authors emphasize. They can start by tapping into hundreds of billions of dollars of available federal COVID relief funds. Read the report.
NPR released a new poll showing that, despite the loud mouths attacking public schools, most parents like their public schools and teachers.
They like their schools despite the hundreds of millions, if not billions, invested in promoting school choice, charter schools, vouchers, and privatization.
This poll suggests that Democrats should go after people like Ron DeSantis and other politicians trying to harm a civic institution that most Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, appreciate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 