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Denis Smith: What Ohio Can Learn from Texas

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2023 //
13

Denis Smith is a retired school administrator in Ohio who worked in the State Education Department’s office for charter schools. He writes here about the strong resistance to vouchers in Texas, compared to the collusion between legislators and religious leaders in Ohio.

You read that headline correctly.

It may come as a shock to readers to know that with all the issues confronting Ohio, it hasn’t been listed in recent surveys as the worst place to live and work. That honor, according to a new CNBC survey, goes to Texas.

The survey methodology targeted a range of issues facing the Lone Star State, with reproductive rights, health care, and voting rights identified as leading deficits that are adversely affecting the state’s citizens.

Noticeably absent from the CNBC list of top issues was education, which might come as a surprise to observers who have long deplored the low per-pupil spending for schools in one of the fastest growing states in the nation.

But there might be another reason why education didn’t pull Texas even deeper into the deficit column. As of now, and unlike Ohio, Texas does not have a universal education voucher program. In this year alone, Ohio joined 14 other states that have passed such legislation which allows taxpayers to pick up the tab for tuition at private and religious schools.

But universal vouchers haven’t happened yet in Texas, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strong advocacy of spreading public money around to unaccountable non-public schools.

Opposition to vouchers comes from the state’s vast rural areas, where there are few private and religious schools to choose from. That same anti-voucher argument was made in Ohio during the past legislative session, where families in rural counties would not have the same level of access for those living in metropolitan areas.

But if there is one person in the Buckeye State who almost singlehandedly pushed through the voucher bill despite spirited opposition, it would be Senate President Matt Huffman, whom Statehouse watchers have described as the bully- in-chief of Ohio politics and an aggressive champion of conveying public funds to religious schools.

By contrast, if there is one person in Texas who has been a principled leader in championing public schools and opposing vouchers for religious schools, the Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, leader of Pastors for Texas Children, would be that positive force.

What a contrast. In Ohio, we have a schoolyard bully in the person of Matt Huffman. In Texas, we have a principled pastor using a bully pulpit, a la Theodore Roosevelt, who popularized that term. But let’s not conflate the two terms, as Pastor Johnson respects constitutional limits, unlike the Ohio Senate President.

As a bully, Huffman respects nothing, and where the word principled is not followed by the term leadership. One specific example of Huffman’s lack of respect for societal norms and conventions is the Ohio Constitution and Article VI, Section 2, which clearly states a prohibition against the use of public funds to support private and religious schools:

The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.

By contrast, Pastor Johnson and his organization on September 19 released this statement opposing vouchers for religious schools in Texas. Here are some key excerpts from the statement of Pastors for Texas Children in opposition to vouchers:

Vouchers are a clear violation of the American ideal of separation of church and state.

In an unprecedented violation of God’s law of religious liberty and the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, Governor Greg Abbott this afternoon called on ministers and pastors to use God’s pulpit to push his private school voucher program.

The use of public tax dollars to subsidize religious instruction is a sin against God.

Pastors for Texas Children stands strong for the universal education of all God’s children, provided, and protected by the public trust. We oppose all attempts to privatize it for sectarian, religious, and political reasons.

As we examine the use of the bully pulpit by a Texas pastor in providing principled leadership compared to unconstitutional and unprincipled bullying by Ohio’s senate leader, the behavior of Ohio’s Catholic bishops in joining Republicans in supporting an assault on the Ohio Constitution through their advocacy of Issue One in the recent special election is a study in contrasts with the Texas pastors.

Those critical of the church’s role in trying to make it more difficult to amend the state’s constitution and thus block a popular abortion measure on the November ballot see its strong working relationship with Ohio’s Republican leadership. That relationship resulted in a gift, the universal education voucher program funding unaccountable religious schools, embedded in the new state budget.

And the constitutional prohibition for using public funds otherwise earmarked for public schools to support religious schools? Never mind Article VI, Section 2.

“We can kind of do what we want,” Huffman famously said in 2022.

And he does. Clearly these words depict the image of the bully-in-chief, intent on destroying public education regardless of a clear constitutional mandate to use public funds to support a “system[note the singular form] of common schools.”

So while it is true that Texas was ranked last in the recent CNBC survey, it has allowed us to view the contrasts with Ohio as seen in its political and religious leaders. Greg Abbott is clearly the bully in Texas, and Matt Huffman plays that role in Ohio.

But we also see differences in religious leadership, where a group of courageous Texas pastors has taken a position found in their organization’s vision statement:

Pastors for Texas Children believes that public education is a human right, a constitutional guarantee, and a central part of God’s plan for human flourishing. When this sacred trust and provision of God’s common good comes under attack by the forces of privatization, we respond with prayer, service, and advocacy.

This vision is in sharp contrast with that of Ohio’s Catholic hierarchy, which has been working diligently with the state Republican leadership to scoop up public money for private purposes.

Again, never mind Article VI, Section 2.

While Ohio does not have a faith-based organization like Pastors for Texas Children to advocate for the separation of public and private monies for schools, Vouchers Hurt Ohio, a group of nearly 200 Ohio school districts, has united to sue the state and stop the unconstitutional voucher scheme. Fair minded Ohioans should pray for the success of groups like VHO who wish to honor constitutional government.

In the meantime, the blatant sabotage of public education, a slow-motion trainwreck precipitated by Matt Huffman and his church allies, is underway in Ohio. In the name of the rule of law and the constitution, let us pray for their total and unmitigated defeat.

But let us also pray for the success of Pastors for Texas Children. Despite the likes of Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ted Cruz, there are good people of faith working hard to preserve and protect democracy and constitutional government, and in every neighborhood, the public school is the most visible form of community and democracy.

Ohio pastors, let us learn and model civic virtue as practiced by a group of Texas pastors.

Amen.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Extremism, Ohio, Religion, Texas, Vouchers

James Talarico: Governor Abbott Wants to Kill Our Public Schools! Don’t Let Him!

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
13

James Talarico is a former teacher who was elected to the Texas State Legislature in 2018. Republicans tried to push him out by redistricting, but he moved to another district and was handily re-elected. He is a staunch supporter of public schools and serves on the House Public Education Committee. In this tweet, he announces his collaboration with Moms Against Greg Abbott. The good MAGA works tirelessly to evict the tyrant Greg Abbott, who boasts about his cruelty and is determined to defund public education in Texas. Governor Abbott has vowed to call as many special sessions as necessary to get vouchers. Of course he must know that most vouchers will be claimed by students already enrolled in private schools. This gambit is a way he can reward his religious voters, the evangelical and Catholic voters who would like to have a public subsidy for their private school tuition.

Categories Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Texas, Vouchers

Houston: The Canary in the Coal Mine

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
14

Nick Covington and Chris McNutt of the Human Restoration Project warn that everyone should pay attention to what is happening in Houston. The state takeover of a B-rated majority black-and-brown district demonstrates how far a rightwing governor will go to crush democracy and dissent.

They write:

Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, is at the center of a controversial state takeover by the Texas Education Agency. After working its way through the legal system for several years, last winter the Texas Supreme Court greenlit the replacement of district superintendent and the locally elected board of trustees by the head of the TEA, appointed directly by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. And last month, school was back in session under the newly appointed superintendent, Mike Miles – former US State Department ambassador, charter school CEO, and scandal-ridden Dallas ISD superintendent – amid dozens of pedagogical and policy changes that left teachers, parents, and students confused, frustrated, and afraid.

In an effort to return “back to basics” and reinforce content knowledge to bolster test scores, the district has fundamentally transformed how educators can operate their classrooms in many schools across the district. Despite receiving an acceptable “B” score on the Texas School Report Card, New superintendent Miles stated in a recent district meeting, “We have a proficiency problem, we in HISD have not been able to close [the reading] gap for over 20 years.”

Among the most troubling changes is a strict “multiple-response strategy” where teachers must adhere to a four-minute timer to pause instruction and assess students for understanding – an intervention with seemingly no pedagogical justification. These strategies are paired with heavily scripted activities that are centered on drill and kill: repeat information over and over to memorize content. There has also been an increase in invasive admin walkthroughs to check for compliance with the scripted methods, which teachers and students have described as a distraction from learning. Teachers are required to keep a webcam on in their classroom at all times and their door must remain open. Defending these changes, Miles stated:

“Every classroom has a webcam and a Zoom link, and it’s on 24/7, if a kid is disruptive, we pull that student out of class. We put them in what we call a team center, and they’re being monitored by a learning coach, and they Zoom right back into the class they get pulled from.”

‍Libraries in many schools have been transformed into disciplinary spaces where students are housed for infractions and receive instruction over Zoom. As a result, classrooms are recorded and broadcast at all times. The Houston Education Association and Houston Community Voices for Public Ed have done incredible work documenting dissenting voices. These policies mirror those found in “no excuses” charter schools that police, monitor, and dehumanize students to raise test scores at any cost.

A veteran Houston ISD teacher, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of administrative backlash, reached out to back up these claims, describing the impact these reforms have had on teachers and students:

‍…I left to teach at a Title 1 Houston ISD campus, so I’m getting the luxury to watch this mess unfold, and I assure you, there’s definitely ‘something rotten in Denmark” with what’s happening to us.

My school is not NES nor NES-aligned, but Miles has carved his path in such a way that we’re being evaluated multiple times a day, being forced to follow this horrible curriculum in a lesson cycle that as far as my research has found–has no pedagogical roots. It’s literally drill and kill. Apparently this is a trend or something. Miles is something else and when you Google him or any of the administrations around him calling the shots, you’ll not see any pedigree of education, but multi-millionaire board members whose backgrounds are in gentrification projects and such.

I’m exhausted by the end of the day. Texas teachers are evaluated all the same, using the T-Tess system–well except us now. Their move to push through that District of Innovation leads me to believe they simply want to weed anyone who was part of the old system out. It absolutely feels like he’s pushing to make us all quit. We were notified that although we’re given 10 sick days for the year, if we’ve taken 4 days leave by November or so, we will be terminated. We had an impromptu faculty meeting and had to sign that we’d gotten notification of this. Plus that we’ll be evaluated different.

Before the takeover, HISD was told to shape up or that’s the end of the line. We scored a “B” as a district in the last ratings and still are being taken over. The Abbot/Morath/Miles steamroller is moving right along.

Being a District of Innovation will be the coup de gras for us, really. He wants to add weeks to the school year, he’s already firing any teachers who simply ask questions, and he’s even gaming the system in many ways to ensure that he’ll have “results.” Special Education? Accommodations? Support structures for at-risk students? All gutted. It’s hard to believe this stuff is legal.

I’m stressed and miserable. It’s hard to believe some of the insane stories about his demands–but I assure you they are true. Teaching with doors open, such a security risk. Stuff like no snack time in elementary if it’s not tied to a Texas standard. I at least teach…But we all were forced to watch an hour or so musical he put on that would rival anything out of North Korea.

At this pace and the way things are going, I just can’t sustain it. I can’t stand seeing such a grift ruin education as it’s doing. We definitely had issues as a district but this can’t be the best solution. I’ll try to make it this year, but I’m beginning to apply elsewhere. My students were often successful at the state test, but it’s a crazy world when I teach…and am afraid to ask to take a class day to show my students the library and have them check out books. It’s nuts.

Of course please don’t use my name or anything that might come back to bite me… As Miles promised in his introduction to us that “he’d find out whose spreading dissent and act” and by most accounts that’s exactly what’s been occurring.

‍Parents and community members have flooded school board meetings with accounts from teachers who are similarly afraid to speak out, for fear of losing their jobs, as teachers who question the changes have been labeled “insubordinate” and had their jobs threatened. Parents have also spoken publicly about how the changes have affected their own children, as one mother recounted to the board before having her mic cut-off:

“For the last week, I’ve had a kid that cries every morning and every evening. Crying not to go to school, and beginning not to go in the morning. She says school’s boring, she’s not learning, and she’d rather be homeschooled at this point…She’s miserable. Her confidence is plummeting, and she’s starting to lose her joy for learning.”

‍At a board meeting on September 14th, a 12-year-old HISD student delivered prepared remarks about the disruptive timers, distracting admin walkthroughs, and palpable teacher stress. The board cut her mic, too:

“Due to the new open door policy, I and many other students have a hard time concentrating due to the many distractions in the hallways. Isn’t it your first priority to have kids in HISD like me learn? Students should be in a place they want to go to inst- (mic is cut off)”

Please open the link and finish reading. Miles apparently wants to turn HISD into a “no-excuses” district.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Houston, State Takeover, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Texas

Texas: Why Ken Paxton Was Acquitted

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
3

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on multiple charges of corruption. The charges were based on statements by deputies who worked in his office and resigned. They filed whistleblower complaints. Paxton, they said, was accepting gifts and favors from a real estate investor. That individual even gave a job to Paxton’s paramour.

The judge of the trial in the Senate was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The Texas Observer reported that Dan Patrick received a gift of $1 million and a loan of $2 million from billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, who were supporting Paxton. As it happens, the biggest supporters of vouchers in Texas are Dan Patrick and those billionaires, These billionaires want to help Dan Patrick in his next campaign, which occurs in 2026.

The Wilks brothers and Dunn are rabid evangelicals who think that all children should attend religious schools.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is presiding over the impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, received $3 million in campaign support last month from a top group campaigning against Paxton’s impeachment.

In a campaign-finance report published Tuesday, Patrick — who is not up for reelection until 2026 — reported a $1 million contribution and a $2 million loan from Defend Texas Liberty PAC. The political action committee was by far his biggest benefactor on the report, which covered Patrick’s fundraising from June 19-30. It was the first opportunity state officials had to fundraise since the House impeached Paxton in late May.

Meanwhile, impeachment trial over, the whistleblowers said they are not quitting but will pursue Justice in the courts:

The whistleblowers who helped trigger the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday that they will continue the legal fight against their former boss in “real court” after the state Senate chose to acquit the Republican.

“The impeachment process is over, but we are not going away,” said Blake Brickman, the former deputy attorney general for policy and strategy initiatives under Paxton.

“For us, this case has always been about more than money,” he said. “It’s about truth. It’s about justice. And although political pressure may have thwarted justice this month, we will continue our fight.”

In their first public statement since the verdict, Brickman joined fellow former deputy attorney generals Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar at a news conference at the Texas Capitol on Monday. They sued Paxton’s office in late 2020, alleging they were fired for reporting him to the FBI for alleged corruption.

The sides had reached a tentative $3.3 million settlement agreement early this year, but the deal withered when the Texas House refused to fund it and instead launched its impeachment effort. The suit is now pending before the Texas Supreme Court.

Paxton, who was reinstated as attorney general last week, did not respond to a request for comment. On Monday, his office threatened legal action against the state’s comptroller for withholding Paxton’s salary while he was suspended from office awaiting trial.

At the news conference, the whistleblowers praised senators who voted to convict Paxton for not “wilting under political pressure” and criticized Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for publicizing his disdain for the impeachment directly after the verdict. During the historic trial, they testified that they had no other option but to report Paxton to authorities and that their careers suffered as a result.

C’mon, when the staff you hired accuses you of corruption, but the Senate acquits you, the question naturally arises: is there Justice for public corruption in Texas? Can Justice be bought by the highest bidder? Will Paxton escape accountability? And will Tucker Carlson make him a national hero for beating the rap?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Extremism, Religion, Texas, Vouchers

Houston Chronicle Editorial: Three Theocratic Billionaires Threaten U.S. Democracy

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
2

The Houston Chronicle published a blistering editorial about the power of three billionaires who control Republican politics in Texas and threaten American democracy—not only in Texas. The three are adherents of Christian nationalism and dedicated funders of school vouchers. Their dream is to abolish public schools and enroll every student in a Christian school or home-schooled. They funded State Attorney General KennPaxton’s impeachment defense, and they are now funding Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign for vouchers.

The editorial board wrote:

Since its founding in the early 1880s, the little town of Cisco, 45 miles east of Abilene, has been in the news twice. In 1919, Conrad Hilton paid $40,000 for the Mobley Hotel in downtown Cisco, which eventually gained fame as the first in a worldwide chain of Hilton hotels. Eight years later, two days before Christmas 1927, Santa Claus and three of his helpers robbed the First National Bank of Cisco.

National notoriety will again fall on Cisco if Texas voters — Republican, Democrat and independent — don’t get engaged with their democracy sometime soon. The little town is home to the Wilks brothers, Dan and Farris, oil and fracking billionaires who, by playing Santa Claus to Republican officeholders receptive to far-right extremists, are on a mission to transform Texas into a Christian nationalist state. Their efforts, in conjunction with an even more influential West Texas oil billionaire, Tim Dunn of Midland, was on insidious display during the recent impeachment trial of the most corrupt state attorney general in America.

Ken Paxton skated, not necessarily because he was innocent of the charges that 121 House members, including 60 Republicans, brought against him. He’s back on the job and baying for RINO blood because most Republicans in the Texas Senate are either in thrall to the West Texas triumvirate or they tremble in terror at the prospect of being “primaried” by a Wilks-and-Dunn-anointed challenger. All 19 Republican senators and at least half of the Republican House members have taken money from the West Texas billionaires or their affiliated PACs and organizations.

The biggest recipient by far in this state is none other than Paxton himself. It’s likely that the Wilks and Dunn trio paid for his $4 million impeachment defense, which included the time and effort of very expensive Houston lawyers, Tony Buzbee and Dan Cogdell.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the judge during the impeachment trial, also is beholden to the West Texans. Their Defend Texas Liberty PAC donated $1 million to the lite guv, while loaning him another $2 million. The PAC largesse came shortly before Patrick began presiding over Paxton’s trial, a trial that ended with a fiery Patrick speech denouncing the impeachment process.

In addition to being fossil-fuel billionaires, both Dunn and Farris Wilks are Christian nationalist evangelists — Dunn as a lay preacher for the Midland Bible Church, Wilks as a preacher for a Cisco congregation founded by his father called the Assembly of Yahweh Seventh Day Church. Dan Wilks and his wife oversee the Heavenly Fathers Foundation, a group funded with a portion of the $3.2 billion the brothers made when they sold the majority stake of their Cisco-based oil field trucking company, Frac Tech Services.

From the pulpit to the campaign pockets of politicians, the West Texans are on what they see as a God-imbued mission to transform Texas and beyond. Over the past 20 years, they’ve contributed nearly $100 million to think tanks, nonprofits, fundraising committees, websites and Texas candidates who support their crusade.

In their preaching and practice, climate change is merely God’s will; homosexuality is an evil on par with incest, bestiality and pedophilia; abortion is murder, unlawful with no exceptions; gun owners enjoy a God-given right to carry their weapons in public without permits or training; only Christians have the God-given right to hold leadership positions in government (which, as Texas Monthly reported, left former House Speaker Joe Strauss, who is Jewish, beyond the pale). Also, oil and gas is a gift from God to be used with gratitude. (They don’t mention God’s gift of sunlight and wind.)

Kel Seliger, a longtime GOP state senator from Amarillo, ran afoul of the triumvirate in recent years. Reasonable, affable and conservative, Seliger is no longer in the Legislature. “It’s a Russian-style oligarchy, pure and simple,” he told CNN last year. “Really, really wealthy people who are willing to spend a lot of money to get policy made the way they want it — and they get it.”

What those “really, really wealthy people” want these days is to destroy Texas public education, a hotbed, as they tell it, of critical race theory and other elements of what one Dunn-and-Wilks-backed group calls “Marxist and sexual indoctrination,” all funded by “far-Left elites for decades.” (That would be the Texas taxpayer.) [Bold-face added by DR, here and below.]

Their strategy, as Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, told Chron.com, is to recruit a generation of Wilks and Dunn-funded mouthpieces in state and local positions to push the narrative that public schools are harmful to students and their parents. Once public education is weakened beyond repair, they offer private religious schools as “a better way.”

With an insidious, well-funded effort, our home-grown theocrats will make sure that Gov. Greg Abbott has all the financial ammunition he needs in the next few weeks for his last-ditch, special-session effort to persuade lawmakers to use taxpayer money in the form of vouchers for private, often Christian-based schooling. Abbott calls it “school choice.” Rural lawmakers, who’ve fought the plan for years, know it’s school suicide.

The West Texans “want to destroy the public school system as we know it and, in its place, see more home-schooling and more private Christian schools,” former state Sen. Bob Deuell, a northeast Texas Republican, told CNN. Deuell, a physician, got crossways with the West Texans when he supported a bill that updated the state’s end-of-life procedures. Dan Wilks, falsely claiming that the legislation would “strengthen Texas’s death panels,” backed tea party activist Bob Hall, who defeated Deuell in 2014. Hall was one of Paxton’s most outspoken supporters during the impeachment trial.

Texas is a big state, but the West Texans have Christian nationalist ambitions beyond our borders. They are reliable supporters of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and, of course, former President Donald Trump, who decried Paxton’s “shameful impeachment.” In an expansive, post-impeachment mood these days, Paxton seems to be pondering a larger field of dreams for himself. He told Tucker Carlson last week he may challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. “His time is done,” Paxton told a radio talk-show host.

If Trump wins the presidential election next year, the disgraced Texas AG would be a prime candidate to head the U.S. Justice Department. (His paramour, the woman he brought from San Antonio to Austin, could be installed in a Georgetown townhouse, only a short Uber ride away from Justice.) He (they) would be right at home in a Trumpian Washington, where, as U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney said to The Atlantic writer McKay Coppins, “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

The party’s presidential nominee in 2012 has said he worries about the survival of America’s democratic experiment.

Whether it survives depends in large part on what happens here in Texas, where the national far right comes for funding and ideas. Decades of one-party rule have contributed to voter apathy and made our state a fertile testing ground for extreme policies. It’s telling, for example, that the AG was reelected last year with the support of about 13 percent of the populace (4 million votes out of a population of nearly 30 million). Paxton and other Dunn and Wilks dependents only have to listen to their West Texan Santa Claus trio, not to the people of Texas.

On a Friday morning in Cisco nearly a century ago, a little girl was among the first to notice that the Santa who stepped out of a stolen Buick and into the lobby of the First National Bank was a fake (and a dangerous one, at that). In Texas these days, maybe we’ve grown jaded. Perhaps it will be young voters of all political persuasions who will take the lead in calling out — and rejecting — the dangerous extremists in our midst. Perhaps taking heart from the brave Republicans who dared impeach an errant AG, they’ll elect representatives of the people, not altar boys and girls on call for Christian nationalists.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Dark Money, Democracy, Freedom, Funding, Home Schooling, Religion, Republicans, Texas, Trump

PEN: Book Bans Rise Sharply, with Florida Banning the Most Books

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2023 //
12

PEN America released a report documenting that book bans had increased sharply over the past year, with the largest number of books banned reported in Florida, followed by Texas.

The freedom to read is under assault in the United States—particularly in public schools—curtailing students’ freedom to explore words, ideas, and books. In the 2022–23 school year, from July 1, 2022, to June 31, 2023, PEN America recorded 3,362 instances of book bans in US public school classrooms and libraries. These bans removed student access to 1,557 unique book titles, the works of over 1,480 authors, illustrators, and translators. Authors whose books are targeted are most frequently female, people of color, and/or LGBTQ+ individuals. Amid a growing climate of censorship, school book bans continue to spread through coordinated campaigns by a vocal minority of groups and individual actors and, increasingly, as a result of pressure from state legislation.

The Miami Herald reviewed what had happened in Florida.

One example in Florida is the expanded “Parental Rights in Education” law, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year and dubbed by critics the “Don’t Say Gay” bill as it prohibits discussions of sexuality and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.

In this year’s session, state lawmakers expanded the restrictions through the eighth grade. The expanded law, which DeSantis signed, also allows a parent or community member to object to instructional material or library books, and requires a school to remove the book or books within five days of a challenge and remain off library shelves until the review is completed.

The process is a “guilty until proven innocent policy” that leads to the removal of more books for more time, said Raegan Miller, director of development at the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a nonprofit that advocates for school libraries being accessible to all students.

Moreover, she said, books are expensive to purchase and public libraries are not accessible to all students — especially young students whose parents are unable to accompany them.

Governor DeSantis insists that there is no book banning:

Desantis, who has championed the bills, has called the “whole book ban thing” a “hoax.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called book banning in Florida a ‘hoax.’

During his May 24 presidential campaign launch on Twitter Spaces, he said, “there’s not been a single book banned in the state of Florida. You can go buy or use whatever book you want.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article279568719.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Libraries, Texas

Pastors for Texas Children Call on Governor Abbott to Respect Separation of Church and State

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2023 //
3

Governor Greg Abbott convened a tele-town hall of Christian faith leaders that he would convene a special session of the legislature in October to push for vouchers. If the don’t pass, he will call another special session. He will reconvene the legislature again and again until they pass a voucher that will give about $8,000 to every eligible student. The Texas Senate supports vouchers; the Texas House does not.

The Legislative Budget Board estimated that legislation would cost Texas $4.9 billion through 2028. It failed to get out of the House Public Education Committee.

“I’m never going to be in support of sending our precious taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools that don’t have to meet any of the requirements that our public schools have to meet. This is going to destroy public education in the state of Texas,” State Rep. James Talarico, D-Round Rock, told Nexstar Tuesday.

The Pastors for Texas Children have steadfastly defended public schools and opposed vouchers for religious schools. Under the leadership of Pastor Charles Foster Johnson, PTC has inspired similar organizations in other states where public schools are besieged by religious groups and politicians who want the taxpayers to fund religious schools. PTC makes clear that church and state should remain separate as a matter of principle. The Founding Fathers understood that, which is why the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing any law regarding the establishment of religion and protects the free exercise of religion.

Pastors for Texas Children issued the following statement in response to Governor Greg Abbott’s aggressive lobbying for voucher legislation.

PTC Responds to Governor’s Town Hall

In an unprecedented violation of God’s law of religious liberty and the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, Governor Greg Abbott this afternoon called on ministers and pastors to use God’s pulpit to push his private school voucher program.

Specifically, October 15 has been designated as pro-voucher Sunday.

“The people of Texas know an eternal truth that seems to escape Gov. Abbott, that all genuine faith is voluntary and cannot properly be endorsed or supported by the authority of the state,” said Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, executive director of Pastors For Texas Children.

“The use of public tax dollars to subsidize religious instruction is a sin against God.”

The governor’s initiative today is in direct response to Pastors For Texas Children’s decade long-opposition to the diversion of public funds for private and religious schools.

PTC is very intentional in its messaging to keep politics out of our pulpits. Our engagements are conducted by individual clergy outside formal times of religious gatherings.

Furthermore, the threats made by the governor this afternoon against pro-public education State Representatives is an inappropriate and desperate attempt to intimidate dedicated public servants representing the interests of their people.

This crass bullying is particularly odious.

The truth of the matter is that the House of Representatives of the State of Texas opposes private school vouchers, as they have for over two decades.

That will not change no matter how many special legislative sessions the governor calls.

Pastors For Texas Children stands strong for the universal education of all God’s children, provided and protected by the public trust, and opposes all attempts to privatize it for sectarian religious and political reasons.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas

Texas: Trump-Appointed Judge Enjoins Law Requiring Bookstores to Rate Books

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2023 //
13

Small bookstores in Texas sued to block a law passed in June requiring them to rate every book they ever sold to the state by its sexual content. The bookstores maintained that the law was so burdensome and arbitrary that it would put them out of business.

A Trump-appointed judge agreed and enjoined enforcement of the law. (Thanks to reader FLERP for bringing this important decision to my attention)

Publishers Weekly reported:

After nearly three weeks of waiting, federal judge Alan D. Albright delivered a major victory for freedom to read advocates, issuing a substantive 59-page written opinion and order officially blocking Texas’s controversial book rating law, HB 900, from taking effect. The decision comes after Albright orally enjoined the law at an August 31 hearing and signaled his intent to block the law in its entirety.

Signed by Texas governor Greg Abbott on June 12, HB 900 would have required book vendors to review and rate books for sexual content under a vaguely articulated standard as a condition of doing business with Texas public schools. Under the law, books rated “sexually explicit” (if the book includes material deemed “patently offensive” by unspecified community standards) would be banned from Texas schools. Books rated “sexually relevant” (books with any representation of sexual conduct) would have required written parental permission for students to access them. Furthermore, the law would have given the state the ultimate power to change the rating on any book, and would have forced vendors to accept the state’s designated rating as their own, or be barred from selling to Texas public schools.

In suing to block the law, the plaintiffs (two Texas bookstores—Austin’s BookPeople and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop—together with the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund) argued that the law is blatantly unconstitutional, and would impose an untenable burden on vendors and publishers. After two hearings held in August, Albright agreed in an opinion handed down September 18.

“The Court does not dispute that the state has a strong interest in what children are able to learn and access in schools. And the Court surely agrees that children should be protected from obscene content in the school setting,” Albright concluded. “That said, [the law] misses the mark on obscenity with a web of unconstitutionally vague requirements. And the state, in abdicating its responsibility to protect children, forces private individuals and corporations into compliance with an unconstitutional law that violates the First Amendment.”

In defending the law, Texas attorneys had moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the law, and that the state has the right to regulate vendors who wish to do business with Texas public schools—essentially asserting that rating books would simply be part of the cost of doing business in Texas. Albright demolished those arguments in his opinion, and harshly criticized the ill-conceived law in denying the motion to dismiss.

At one point, Albright observed that the burden placed on vendors by the law are “so numerous and onerous as to call into question whether the legislature believed any third party could possibly comply.”

Please open the link to read more.

Categories Censorship, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Texas

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Paxton’s Acquittal is Evidence of Authoritarian Lawlessness

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2023 //
16

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an expert on fascism and authoritarianism. She teaches European history at New York university. I subscribe to her blog Lucid, where this post appeared. The acquittal of a corrupt State Attorney General is a warning to the nation about what the GOP has become (if further warning were needed).

She writes:

For two reasons, it’s unsurprising that Paxton was acquitted of all charges by his cronies in the Texas Senate. The Texas GOP is one of the most extreme in the nation. Paxton has been a vociferous supporter of Trump’s claim that Trump won the 2020 election. In October 2021 Paxton, a hard-core Trump defender, characterized Joe Biden’s presence in the White House as an “overthrow” –the word implying that Biden pulled off a coup to take power.

A 2022 Texas GOP resolution expands on this attempt to make Biden a lawless figure: it calls him an illegitimate and “acting” president. For those who study authoritarianism, this is a red flag: it not only discredits Biden but implies that he won’t be there for long and can be removed at any time..

The logic of corruption also matters here. The GOP has embraced the methods and values of authoritarianism. It now depends on propaganda (the “Big Lie”), intimidation, and corruption –election denial being a form of corruption–for its identity and to maintain itself in power. In particular, it is a party that has remade itself in Trump’s image, with the goal of protecting the corrupt and the criminal dictating its actions.

With its leader and many luminaries now indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election, and those running for president pledging on live television that they will support a convicted criminal as nominee, it is dangerous for the GOP to stand up at the state level for accountability. How much more appropriate to keep a corrupt attorney general in office. Authoritarianism is rule by the lawless. At its peak, as in the states of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, authoritarianism becomes political rule in support of kleptocracy.

The dangers of accountability, transparency, impartial investigation and other bedrock values of democracy for authoritarian leaders and parties is why these inevitably go after members of the press and the judiciary and often the intelligence sector as well. In the American case, this motivates attacks against the FBI, which is still investigating Paxton (who also faces a state securities fraud case).

In the short term, Paxton will be further emboldened to aggressively undermine the rule of law in his state. On cue, Paxton denounced the “weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences.” No matter that the GOP as a whole is seeking to impeach Biden, at Trump’s bidding, to “settle political differences” and take revenge on Biden for having committed the sin of having been legally elected to the office of the presidency.

For the authoritarians of the GOP, who no longer see free and fair elections as valid ways of deciding America’s leadership, that amounts to an “overthrow,” to use Paxton’s word. This is where the GOP is now.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Texas

Texas Observer: No Justice for Corrupt Republican Ken Paxton

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2023 //
4

The Texas Observer is a feisty journal that specializes in investigative journalism. Like all such media that live to fight the powerful and the corrupt, it survives by a shoestring. I have a special fondness for the Ibserver because that was where I published my first article after finishing college.

What can one say about disgraced Attorney General Ken Paxton’s acquittal in his impeachment trial other than there seems to be no justice or accountability for flagrant public corruption in Texas. “While Paxton is back in power, his troubles aren’t over,” writes Senior Staff Writer Justin Miller. “Next month, he’ll finally go to trial on the state securities fraud charges for which he was indicted nearly a decade ago. Then, there’s the federal investigation into him for the very same allegations that brought his impeachment.”

Justin Miller wrote:

Impeached but not convicted, Ken Paxton is returning to helm the Texas Attorney General’s office.

After a nearly-two week trial and hours of private deliberation, the Texas Senate voted to acquit Paxton on all 16 of the articles of impeachment that were brought to trial by the House. No single vote came close to reaching the two-thirds majority required to convict, and only two Republicans—Senators Kelly Hancock and Robert Nichols—joining Democrats on most articles.

Having spent his political career dodging legal and ethical challenges, Paxton’s acquittal of impeachment charges involving serious and sweeping corruption allegations marks a whole new level of victory for the attorney general.

His impeachment stemmed from several of his top deputies reporting him to the FBI after coming to believe that Paxton may have committed crimes and abused his office by providing extraordinary access and favors to his friend and campaign donor Nate Paul, a real estate investor in Austin. All of those deputies then either resigned or were fired.

Some of those deputies filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the AG’s office, which was fought for over two years, and finally reached a settlement in the beginning of this year. Then, a Texas House committee began secretly investigating the nature of that settlement and the whistleblowers’ complaint, culminating in a sudden-onset impeachment vote against Paxton at the every end of the 2023 legislative session.

Paxton’s impeachment trial in the Senate was full of drama and tension, with the public hearing directly from many of the people—including the whistleblowers—involved in these allegations for the first time. One of the strangest moments came on Thursday, when Paxton’s adulterous girlfriend Laura Olson showed up at the capitol to testify, only to leave before taking the stand—explained only in an announcement by Lieutenant Governor that she was deemed “unavailable” to testify.

In the defense’s closing arguments, Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee condemned, vilified, mocked and threatened the House, the prosecution team, the “so-called whistleblowers,” the media, and the political establishment for trying to take down Paxton on a bunch of unverified “maybes” and “could-be’s.” This echoed the defense’s consistent theme throughout the trial that this was all part of a dark conspiracy by establishment Republicans to take down Paxton after failing to defeat him at the ballot box….

After the final votes were taken, Dan Patrick–who presided over the trial as judge—didn’t waste a second letting his true feelings be known after being largely silent over the preceding three months.

He unleashed a tirade against the House and its Speaker Dade Phelan for the rushed and half-cocked process for impeaching Paxton in the first place. Patrick promised that he would push to pass constitutional amendments in the next session that would reform the state’s impeachment laws. Prior to the trial, Patrick’s campaign received $3 millionfrom the pro-Paxton PAC Defend Texas Liberty…

While Paxton is back in power, his troubles aren’t over. Next month, he’ll finally go to trial on the state securities fraud charges for which he was indicted nearly a decade ago. Then, there’s the federal investigation into him for the very same allegations that brought his impeachment.

With the help of an outside pressure campaign led by billionaire allies, Paxton survived this political trial. Can he do the same in an actual court?

Who were his billionaire allies? The Texas Monthly says that Paxton’s bills were paid by the same evangelical Texas billionaires who are funding the voucher campaign.

Much of that money [for Paxton’s defense] came from a Midland oilman named Tim Dunn. Dunn was a strong, ideological right-winger and an evangelical Christian who had helped Republicans beat back the Democratic wave and shore up control of the House in 2010. (Dunn was joined by other donors, and later his money was greatly supplemented by oilmen Dan and Farris Wilks, but he was, and is, the whale.) After the election, Straus invited Dunn to breakfast at the Capitol, hoping to establish some rapport and lines of communication. Dunn seemed uninterested for many reasons, but one in particular: Straus was the state’s first Jewish Speaker. Only Christians should be in leadership positions, Dunn told the Speaker. Straus settled in for a long siege.

Funny how issues like vouchers, vote suppression, abortion, attacks on gay rights, and disrespect for Black history get intertwined.

Categories Accountability, Justice, Texas
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