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Texas: The Smell of Burning Books is in the Air

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2021 //
49

The heated debate over “critical race theory,” “indoctrination” and “socialism” in the schools, and attacks on teachers for teaching books like Beloved has unleashed the native fascism that usually hides under a rock.

We saw it in Virginia, where the Republican winner in the election played on these issues in his campaign and vowed that he would pass a law to allow parents to opt their children out of reading stuff that made them “uncomfortable.”

A Texas legislator aims to be on the front lines of book banning. Rep. Matt Krause assembled a list of 850 books that he thinks should be removed from the schools. The books must go “because they might cause students to feel “discomfort.”The list is heavily weighted towards titles about gender, sexuality, racism, and other topics that he thinks should not be taught or read about in school. He probably would ban them for college too if he could.

My guess is that these books were chosen simply by their title, not because Rep. Krause read them.

Here is the list of 850 books that he wants to eliminate from the schools. Krause has no idea whether any of them are taught in the schools.

In the age of the Internet, when teens can see anything and everything mentioned in these books, this crude censorship is ridiculous.

I can’t tell whether the odor in the air is the burning of books or is the stench of McCarthyism.

What do you think?

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Ignorance, Racism, Texas

Texas: Insanity Erupts at School Board Meetings Over Critical Race Theory

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2021 //
40

Under the combined influence of Donald Trump and Governor Gregg Abbott, a considerable number of Texas parents have become convinced that their public schools have become hotbeds of Marxism and malignant “critical race theory.” Any discussion of racism is interpreted to mean CRT. Opponents of CRT oppose any recognition of racism in the past or present. This story in The Texas Monthly documents the mass hysteria now sweeping the Republican Party.

It describes a meeting in one of the state’s most successful schools: high test scores, high graduation rates, high college acceptance rates, award-wining teams. Yet the parents are furious because the school hired a diversity consultant from Teachers College, Columbia University!

About 99 percent of the 2021 senior class at Westlake High School was accepted to college, superintendent Tom Leonard tells the audience at the June 22 meeting of Eanes’s board, recapping another year of high achievement. The robotics team won a state championship, he adds, which could improve the school’s third-place standing in the Lone Star Cup, awarded to the state’s winningest schools. Westlake also won a state football championship, and the boys’ golf team won state too, as it has four years running. By the standards of Texas public schools, Eanes is an idyll.

Soon after Leonard stops speaking, however, loud yelling commences, and it continues for the better part of an hour. According to most of the 38 people who have come to give public testimony, the district’s schools have become beholden to “post-Marxist critical theory,” as one speaker puts it—“an updated version of Marxism focusing on differences between people.” The school board, says another, has opened the doors of Eanes to “antifa and BLM,” forces that “salivate after war” and “burn down” communities.

On the agenda today are two items that might seem unlikely reasons to go to battle. One is the contract of Mark Gooden, a professor at the Teachers College at Columbia University, in New York City, and, since 2020, the diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant for Eanes. The second is a rewrite of the district’s mission statement. After workshopping the document for more than a year, the board had settled on “Unite. Empower. Inspire . . . Every Person, Every Day.”

The angry parents are certain that these two items are evidence that the district has become “woke,” even anti-white.”

Mass madness.

Categories Insane, Parents, Racism, Texas

Texas: Teachers Told to Teach “Opposing Views” of Holocaust and Slavery

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2021 //
93

As part of the Republican effort to eliminate teaching about slavery, racism, and other injustices, the state has banned “critical race theory” and requires teaching “both sides” of controversies.

In the Carroll Independent School District, teachers were told that if they teach about the Holocaust in Europe, they must teach “the other side.” Understandably, teachers were confused. Are they supposed to give equal time to the genocide of millions of men, women, and children, and those who say that the genocide never occurred? When they teach about slavery, must they give equal time to the atrocities of enslavement and to apologists who say that slavery was benign?

Teachers in a Texas city have been told that if they have a book on the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also have one that offers an “opposite” view.

A school head’s instruction to staff in Southlake, which is 26 miles northwest of Dallas, was secretly captured on an audio recording obtained by NBC News.

Gina Peddy, executive director of the Carroll Independent School District, spoke during a training session on what books teachers can keep in classroom libraries.

It came four days after the Carroll school board, in response to a parent’s complaint, voted to reprimand a teacher who had an anti-racism book in her classroom.

In the recording, Ms. Peddy told staff to “remember the concepts” of a new state law that requires teachers to present different points of view when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” topics.

Referring specifically to the Nazi genocide of six million Jews in wartime, he said: “And make sure if you have a book on the holocaust that you have one that has an opposite, that has other perspectives. “

In response, a teacher said, “How do you oppose the Holocaust?”

Mrs. Peddy told them, “Trust me. That has come up.”

Speaking later, a teacher from Carroll told NBC News: “Teachers literally fear that we will be punished for having books in our classes.

“There are no children’s books that show the ‘opposite perspective’ of the Holocaust or the ‘opposite perspective’ of slavery.

“Are we supposed to get rid of all the books on those topics?”

Another teacher hung caution tape in front of books in a classroom after the new guidelines were distributed.

In a statement issued following Ms. Peddy’s comments, Carroll’s spokeswoman Karen Fitzgerald said the district was trying to help teachers comply with the new state law and an updated version that will take effect in December.

Subsequently, the district superintendent publicly apologized.

As the Superintendent, I express my sincere apology regarding the online article and news story. During the conversations with teachers, comments made were in no way to convey the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history.

This statement does not explain how Texas teachers can teach both sides of every issue. There is no doubt that the purpose of the law is to make teachers fearful of teaching anything about racism or any other atrocities that are matters of fact.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, History, Texas

Texas: The District Needed Funding for More Schools. Instead, the Commissioner Opened More Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2021 //
9

Enrollments in the Cleveland Independent School District in Texas was growing rapidly. Voters passed bond issues, but it wasn’t enough. The superindent turned to the state for help. Sadly, Governor Gregg Abbott and his hand-picked State Commissioner Mike Morath are obsessed with charters, despite the fact that their academic results are below those of public schools.

Here is the sad story of Abbott and Morath’s devotion to charter expansion.

TEXAS MONTHLY BREAKS STORY ON FAST-TRACK CHARTER EXPANSION IN EAST TEXAS
Texas Monthly, October 6, 2021

Texas Monthly writer Bekah McNeel breaks the story of how Commissioner Morath fast-tracked the approval of five new International Leadership of Texas (ILT) charter schools in Cleveland ISD within only three business days, skirting TEA’s own rules and process, and despite concerns raised by 12 area Superintendents whose districts will be affected.

The Superintendents co-signed a letter to the Commissioner that questioned ILT’s track record, especially with low-income students who are English Learners, and TEA’s rapid approval of the amendment application without input from the affected school districts.

The article also reinforces the concerns that local communities and school districts have been raising for years: The Commissioner ignores the impact of new charter campuses on local school districts and communities when he approves an unlimited number of new charter campuses without public notice or opportunities for input from the public.

The article is attached.
Link: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-charter-school-expansion-cleveland/

Key Excerpts:

  • Instead of offering funding and flexibility to the public schools…the state fast-tracked the expansion of charter schools that aren’t held to the same standards of community accountability or required to find a seat for every student regardless of ability or disciplinary status.
  • Public school advocates worry that the process circumvents public accountability. Charter growth is driven by decisions made in Austin and charter network headquarters, not by the communities where those schools will be located or their elected school boards.
  • Kevin Brown, the executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators, said that when decisions are made in a public school district about anything from curriculum to adding new schools, democratically elected boards create a conduit for parents and community members to offer their views. Charters, by contrast, whose appointed boards often do not live in the cities and towns whose students they serve, do not need a community’s approval to open a new school next door. “To a local community, it often feels like an invasion from outsiders,” Brown said.
  • On that same day, Conger and ILTexas chief financial officer James Dworkin broke the good news of their expansion on a call with investment managers. “If somebody’s looking for ‘where’s the local school?’ they’ll be pointed to an ILTexas school,” Dworkin said. “That is a change to the charter industry as I’ve seen it in my time here, and I’m proud to be part of ILTexas leading the way.”
  • In response to concerns that ILT is allowed to expand under state rules even though it currently has 2 F rated campuses and 6 D rated campuses out of a total of 32 campuses, State Board of Education member Pat Hardy from Fort Worth responded, as Texas Monthly wrote: “Hardy accepted that the policy allowed expansion, but pushed back: ‘I really think that any charter school that has an F should not have the privilege to expand.’ Morath advised her, politely, to take up the issue with the Legislature.”
  • For the record:
  • 884 new charter campuses have been approved between 2010 – 2021 in Texas through charter expansion amendments approved solely by the Commissioner of Education.
  • 586 new charter campuses have been approved since 2015.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Texas

John Tanner: Why Do Politicians Cling to Failed Education Policies?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2021 //
21

John Tanner is a blogger in San Antonio. In this post, he asks a question that I have asked myself many times: Why do ”reformers” and politicians keep funding failure? Why do they demand more charters and vouchers when neither has matched their claims, neither has closed achievement gaps or dramatically higher scores (except when they cherrypick their students)?

Tanner asks the question about test-based accountability, which Texas has embraced for decades.

He begins:

It is inexplicable to me how the failed policies of test-based accountability continue to be championed as if they have worked in the past and will continue to work into the future. The position of those espousing the effectiveness of test-based accountability can only be valid if at some point in the past all schools were essentially equal, and then good or bad educators created the disparities between what are now labeled “good” and “bad” schools. Then, the current accountability systems might reflect the efforts of those educators and the judgments would be warranted.

Of course, that is a joke. Schools never started at a level playing field. The first time anyone administered a standardized test to the universe of students in America what it showed were the effects of an inequitable society as well as the size and scope of a problem. But it was much easier for Americans to ignore the problem and instead declare that poor children were just dumber than rich children and that the cause of that was the educators in their lives. Pretending that at some point everything had been equal and then it just so happened that all the bad educators migrated towards the bad schools now serving poor children was easier than admitting the truth—that we were a society rooted in inequity and that our approach to schooling reflected that fact.

Reality is a good bit different than the test-based accountability crew would have you believe. The Coleman report pointed out way back in the 1960s that an effective, research-based approach to creating a great educational system for all students required two major policy efforts: address the ravages of generational poverty and make teaching into a position as revered as medicine and the law. So far, more than half a decade later, we are 0/2.

Now, instead, we look askance at the schools that serve students who are the victims of generational poverty and who are as a result behind their wealthier peers. We pretend that what we are seeing in these schools is not the consequences of ignoring Coleman, but of laziness and incompetence on the part of the educators in them.

And because test scores of the types used by states are designed to order students from the furthest below to the furthest above average within a content area as of a certain date (that’s a mouthful—sorry), they make for a beautiful tool for confirming the bias that schools serving poorer children became bad because of bad teachers that just need to try harder. That denies the reality that student exposure to academic content occurs in two places: inside and outside school, and that exposure differs a great deal as a direct result of generational poverty. Make no mistake—schools and teachers matter, as they will account for about 1/3 of the difference in test scores between students (and could account for more with the right supports that do not now exist). But what happens outside of a school will account for almost 2/3 of the difference. Any judgment based on a test score that fails to acknowledge that very real fact is unethical and needs to be dismissed as specious.

Read on. He nails the failure of test-based accountability.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Fraud, Poverty, Standardized Testing, Texas

Public Health Specialist: The Ban on Abortion in Texas

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2021 //
26

A friend who works in a government health agency sent me the following thoughts about the Texas abortion ban. The bill does not permit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, which amounts to a ban since very few women know they are pregnant at that time. Citizens are offered a bounty of $10,000 for identifying any woman who obtained an abortion or who helped her get an abortion. The author requested anonymity.

She writes:

You have probably already read a great deal about the SCOTUS decision upholding (for now) the Texas ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Below are a few notable excerpts (articles by Lithwick, Tribe, and some others are worth reading in their entirety) and, as usual, some comments.

Note that “Jane Roe,” the plaintiff in the 1973 Roe v Wade SCOTUS decision, was a Texas resident who protested the unconstitutional abortion laws in her state.

Note also Michelle Goldberg’s useful framing of the crowdsourcing of anti-abortion enforcement as yet another illustration of the Republican embrace of vigilantism. (e.g.: Jan 6 insurrection, the call for military insubordination in defiance of civilian control, celebration of Kyle Rittenhouse in WI, praise for the Texas mob that attempted to force Biden’s campaign bus off the road, violence at anti-vaccine protests, Trump’s frequent promotion of assault.)

One of my questions today has still not been answered:

Are suits possible against individuals in other states who in any way help Texas women obtain an abortion out of state, i.e., if someone outside of Texas contributes money to an organization that helps Texas women leave the state to have an abortion, can the donor be sued? By anyone?

Dahlia LIthwick asserted on Rachel Maddow’s show tonight that the answer is not clear, and that that lack of clarity and the consequent chilling, self-censoring effect it has are deliberate. I’m sure clarity will be quickly forthcoming.

Another huge question is whether there will be sufficient political agitation (mostly among women) to make reproductive rights an issue with impact in the 2022 and 2024 elections. In theory, every legislator will now have to publicly take a position, and some are already lining up on either side. Dems see it as a winning issue – finally some serious motivation for our base and greater peril for Repubs.

A few points of clarification re misleading media reports:

– The Texas law is called a “heartbeat” bill. But there is no real “heartbeat” at 6 weeks because there is no real heart. At that point, the embryo is less than ½” long and has a slight pulse of electrical activity and a tiny tube that will eventually become a heart. After all, every living cell uses electric energy, including plants. So do cell phones. The term “heartbeat” bill is another form of emotionally manipulative, right wing branding which all journalists seem to be buying into.

– SCOTUS did not “give” women the right to abortion. The Roe v Wade decision agreed, as Jane Roe’s lawyers argued, that women have a Constitutional right to abortion based on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides a “right to privacy.”

Here is what the Roe v Wade decision actually held. Note the differing terms and stipulations for each trimester:

State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother’s behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman’s qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman’s health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a ‘compelling’ point at various stages of the woman’s approach to term. Pp. 147-164.

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician. Pp. 163-164.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health. Pp. 163-164.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164—165.

– An embryo is not an “unborn child.” An embryo is not even a fetus until week nine, and not viable outside the womb until 24-28 weeks. The Texas, Mississippi, and other laws outlawing abortion before “viability” are clearly unconstitutional.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” introduced in 2017, 2019, and again in Jan 2021 with the co-sponsorship of 42 Republican Senators, duplicitously claims viability (and capacity for pain) at 20 weeks, counting from the date of conception/fertilization, rather than the standard obstetric calculation, which is from the first day of the woman’s last period – that is, two weeks prior to conception and easier to determine. (Muddying the water about the time of “viability” is another deceitful tactic designed to push a ban back at least to 20 weeks.) In either case, according to the Executive VP of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

“…in no way, shape or form is a 20-week fetus viable. There is no evidence anywhere of a 20-week fetus surviving, even with intensive medical care.”

Further, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

“the neural circuitry necessary to distinguish touch from painful touch does not, in fact, develop until late in the third trimester.”

– Why are we only discussing the responsibility of women and penalizing those who help them? If a fetus is a child, isn’t the father a parent, guilty of child neglect if he walks away from a pregnant partner and guilty of aiding an abortion if he knows she will seek one? And why are women expected to fight for their human rights on their own? Where is the outrage of regular men, other than the liberal TV pundits and civil rights lawyers?

As Dahlia Lithwick, points out,

“…It’s almost impossible ..not (to)..declare that the court opted to end virtually all abortion rights in Texas, in the full knowledge that they were blessing an unconstitutional and brutal piece of lawless vigilantism, because it’s only about women…..

…..a court that comes to you in the dark of night, without logic or reason, whispering soothing words about how “this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law” as it upends the constitutionality of Texas law? That is the stuff of ancient gaslighting, reserved for those moments in which Power is explaining to Women that they are just being hysterical, and to kindly lie back and enjoy it…..” 

Re suggested next steps and remedies:

– Presidential “whole government” study commissions are clearly not going to meet the urgent, desperate need for action.

– Likewise, voting rights reinstatement (in order to elect new judges and leaders who will appoint different judges) and court reform (expanding the Supreme Court and other changes) are supremely (pun intended) worthy goals, but will take years or decades to achieve. Further, Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court is not chargedwith actually making recommendations, and Biden has not expressed support for court expansion.

– Codifying national abortion rights through Congresswoman Judy Chu’s “Women’s Health Protection Act” would face highly likely defeat in the Senate (Dem Senators Manchin and Casey are anti-choice) and, if it survived that, a challenge and likely defeat by SCOTUS, which, after all, couldn’t even wait to hear normal public arguments in the Mississippi anti-abortion case (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization), which comes before the court this fall and specifically requests the overturn of Roe.

I know there are many pro choice orgs desperate for funds at this moment, but the Center for Reproductive Rights (4-star rating) will argue the Dobbs case at SCOTUS and is a very focused and potentially impactful place to put some money:

https://reproductiverights.org/

https://reproductiverights.org/texas-abortion-ban-supreme-court-ruling-sb8/  (background and highlights from dissents.)

– 19 states have already banned abortion via telehealth using pills (despite Covid), and many are rushing to ban sending abortion pills by mail. Keep in mind that anti-abortion people, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh, consider some types of birth control to be “abortion-inducing.” As Laurence Tribe, discussing this “grotesque” Texas law, statedtoday in The Guardian, there will be many other downstream consequences:

“The prospect of hefty bounties will breed a system of profit-seeking, Soviet-style informing on friends and neighbors. These vigilantes will sue medical distributors of IUDs and morning-after pills, as well as insurance companies. These companies, in turn, will stop offering reproductive healthcare in Texas…….. if a young woman asks for money for a bus ticket, or a ride to the airport, friends and parents fearful of liability might vigorously interrogate her about her intentions. This nightmarish state of affairs burdens yet another fundamental constitutional privilege: the right to interstate travel….”

– Neighboring states are not going to offer safe haven. As of June 2021, 12 states already have anti-abortion bans ready to be “triggered” with the fall of Roe, and 15 have early gestational age abortion bans ready to go. Per the Guttmacher Institute, abortion would almost immediately be illegal or severely restricted in 22 states. At least half a dozen states (e.g., FL, AR, MS) are now considering draconian laws modeled on that of Texas. (The idea is not new: In 2014, a Pennsylvania woman was imprisoned for buying her daughter abortion drugs.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/01/texas-abortion-law-faq/  (Note the few purple states.)

In any case, as Michelle Goldberg and others have pointed out, the goal was never just overturning Roe. Despite the professed commitment to state determination of abortion laws, the right will never be satisfied with a patchwork of state laws. Their goal has always been a total, national abortion ban.

“Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan. Each wrote their own dissents calling for the law to be blocked.”  

Four Justices dissented from the SCOTUS ruling re the Texas law:

In case you missed the strong dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the SCOTUS ruling:

“The Court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”

More from Sotomayor:

  • “In effect, the Texas Legislature has deputized the State’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.”
  • “Taken together, the Act is a breathtaking act of defiance—of the Constitution, of this Court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas.”
  • “Today, the Court finally tells the Nation that it declined to act because, in short, the State’s gambit worked. … It cannot be the case that a State can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry.”

Categories Health, Texas

Texas Eliminates Accountability in Charter Schools for ELLs and SPED

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2021 //
16

Texas has gone overboard for charter schools, even though they consistently post worse results than public schools. In the state’s new plans, charter schools will not be held accountable for the performance of English-language learners or students with disabilities. That is grossly unfair to public schools but it should raise the ratings of charter schools.

A trusted friend who works for the Texas Education Agency sent this information:

The proposed Texas Charter School Performance Framework for 2020 has been posted for public comment. On page 19, in the Operations standards, “Program requirements: Special populations” and “Program requirements: Bilingual education/English as a second language populations” are marked as “N/A for 2020” instead of each counting for one point. These indicators, 3b and 3c, are struck out on page 20. There does not appear to be an explanation for these changes.
Appropriate handling of assessments is another deletion from the Operations standards on pages 23-24.
Due to the lack of academic accountability, the manual will reflect fiscal and operational indicators only, not academic indicators.

https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/fidsreg/202103289-1.pdf

There are no academic indicators, which makes sense because there were no tests in 2020. But the state officials removed the program indicators for bilingual and special education populations from the Operations standards on which charter schools will still be rated. These indicators measure if charters meet program requirements such as employing certified teachers in these areas.

This is not the only exception made for charter schools. Those that get a D or F rating three years in a row are supposed to be closed by the state, but that accountability is seldom enforced. Indeed, the state allows failing charters to expand.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Data, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Special Education, Texas

Dana Milbank: Texas Shows What a Post-Democracy Society Looks Like

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2021 //
74

Dana Milbank is a regular opinion writer for The Washington Post. As a native Texan, who still has strong emotional ties to the state, I found his analysis to be deeply upsetting. Since the Supreme Court’s decision not to overturn the Texas abortion ban, I can no longer buy anything from Texas, including Tito’s, my favorite vodka. When the anti-vaxxers show up at school board meetings proclaiming “My body, my choice,” I wonder why they don’t feel the same about women’s reproductive rights.

Milbank wrote:

Texas this week showed us what a post-democracy America would look like.
Thanks to a series of actions by the Texas legislature and governor, we now see exactly what the Trumpified Republican Party wants: to take us to an America where women cannot get abortions, even in cases of rape and incest; an America where almost everybody can openly carry a gun in public, without license, without permit, without safety training and without fingerprinting; and an America where law-abiding Black and Latino citizens are disproportionately denied the right to vote.
This is where Texas and other red states are going, or have already gone. It is where the rest of America will go, unless those targeted by these new laws — women, people of color and all small “d” democrats — rise up.


On Wednesday, a Texas law went into effect that bans abortions later than six weeks, after the Supreme Court let pass a request to block the statute. Because 85 to 90 percent of women get abortions after six weeks, it amounts to a near-total ban. Already on the books in Texas is a “trigger” law that automatically bans all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. At least 10 other states have done likewise.


Also Wednesday, a new law went into effect in Texas, over the objections of law enforcement, allowing all Texans otherwise allowed to own guns to carry them in public, without a license and without training. Now, 20 states have blessed such “permitless carry.”


And on Tuesday, the Texas legislature passed the final version of the Republican voting bill that bans drive-through and 24-hour voting, both used disproportionately by voters of color; imposes new limits on voting by mail, blocks election officials from distributing mail-ballot applications unless specifically requested; gives partisan poll watchers more leeway to influence vote counting; and places new rules and paperwork requirements that deter people from helping others to vote or to register. At least 17 states have adopted similar restrictions.




All three of these actions are deeply antidemocratic.
Texans overwhelmingly object to permitless carry. Fully 57 percent of Texas voters oppose such a law and only 36 percent support it, according to a June poll by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune. The partnership’s April poll found that, by 46 percent to 20 percent, Texans want stricter gun laws — and support for tougher laws is 54 percent among women, 55 percent among Latinos and 65 percent among Black voters.


Texans also oppose banning all abortions if Roe is overturned, with 53 percent against a ban and 37 percent for one. Women oppose the ban, 58 percent to 33 percent. A narrow plurality (46 percent to 44 percent) oppose the six-week ban, too.


Furthermore, pluralities of Texans opposed the ban on drive-through voting and restrictions on early voting hours. The drive-through ban was particularly objectionable to Black voters (52 percent opposed to 30 percent in the April poll) and Latino voters (44 percent to 36 percent), as were the limits on early voting hours, opposed 52 percent to 28 percent among Black voters and 46 percent to 31 percent among Latino voters.


And that’s the whole point of such voter-suppression laws. Texas became a “majority minority” state more than 15 years ago — and the country as a whole will follow in about two decades. But White voters still dominate the electorate. Latinos are about 40 percent of the Texas population, but only 20 to 25 percent of the electorate.
Texas legislators aren’t answering to the people but rather to the White, male voters that put the Republicans in power. The new voting law, by suppressing non-White votes, aims to keep White voters dominant. As demographics turn more and more against Republicans in Texas, their antidemocratic actions will only get worse.


Bad things happen when leaders don’t reflect the will of the people. This is happening already in Texas and some other red states. It will be happening more nationally if Republicans get their way.




Categories Democracy, Texas

Texas: School Cancels Award-Winning Elective in Government to Avoid Conflict with New “Critical Race Theory” Law

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2021 //
24

The McKinney, Texas, school district canceled its successful Youth and Government elective course. Officials feared that the program might violate the state’s new law forbidding the teaching of critical race theory.

In Texas, as in other states that have passed such legislation, the result is predictable: it has a chilling effect on freedom to discuss controversial issues, especially anything related to racism, as it allegedly might make white students feel guilty because of their race.

The Texas Tribune reports:

McKinney school officials long took pride in their students’ participation in the nationwide Youth and Government program, calling the district a “perennial standout”.

Every year, students researched current issues, proposed and debated their own public policy, and competed in a mock legislature and elections process for statewide offices. Since the program’s arrival to McKinney in 2005 as a club, seven of the district’s middle school students have been elected governor — the program’s top honor — at the statewide conference in Austin. In 2017, the district added an elective option: Seventh and eighth graders in two of the district’s middle schools could now receive course credit for participating in the program.

But in June, the district canceled the elective option in response to a social studies law passed during this year’s regular legislative session. In an email to middle school administrators obtained by The Texas Tribune, a social studies curriculum coordinator wrote that “in light of” the new law’s ban on political activism and policy advocacy, “we will no longer be allowed [to] offer Youth & Government as an elective course for credit.” As the law puts restrictions on courses, not on extracurricular activities, the original club remains available.

The teacher who led the program resigned two months ago.

Categories Education Reform, Race, Racism, Texas

Texas: Disability Advocates File Federal Lawsuit Against Governor Abbott’s Masking Ban

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2021 //
15

In Texas, a federally authorized organization filed a federal lawsuit to block Governor Greg Abbott’s ban on masking mandates. Abbott has repeatedly said that the decision to wear a mask should be made by parents, not by school boards.

CONTACT:
Edie Surtees, Communications Director
esurtees@drtx.org
512-407-2739

First Federal Lawsuit Challenging Mask Mandate Ban Filed Against Texas Governor and TEA Commissioner Says It Violates ADA, Section 504

AUSTIN—Today, Disability Rights Texas, the federally mandated protection and advocacy agency for Texans with disabilities, and pro bono partners Winston & Strawn LLP filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 14 child plaintiffs against Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath.

The complaint states that the Governor’s Executive Order GA-38 prohibiting school districts and charter schools from implementing mask mandates is putting students with disabilities at significant risk, is discriminatory, and violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected students with disabilities, beginning with the closure of the public school system in the spring of 2020. These students lost critical instruction and services, continuing into the 2020-21 school year. Now, the Delta variant and a surge in cases is threating this school year. Students with disabilities need in-person schooling more than other student groups, but they must be able to receive instruction and services safely. Many of these students have underlying health conditions and are at high risk for illness and even death due to COVID-19.

One of the student plaintiffs, J.R., lives in Bexar County and attends San Antonio ISD. J.R. is eight years old and lives with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a growth hormone deficiency, and moderate to severe asthma.  Her mother, Julia Longoria, doesn’t get much sleep right now because of the very real worry that her daughter, who needs in-person instruction to succeed in school, is at greater risk of serious illness, hospitalization and even death if she gets the virus. This is a very real possibility if schools are open at full capacity, with optional masking and the current level of community spread. “Having to make a choice between my daughter’s education or her life – what kind of choice is that?” said Ms. Longoria. “My child has the right to an education and to be safe at school. I shouldn’t have to choose.”

This is the first federal lawsuit to challenge the Governor’s Executive Order. The complaint explains how the order is a barrier to public schools for students with disabilities and that no family should be forced to choose between health and their child’s education. It also states that Texas needs to follow the recommendations of public health officials to include the mandated use of masks in areas with significant exposure.

“Under Gov. Abbott’s order, parents of these children face an untenable choice: educate their children at school and expose them to potential severe illness, long COVID, and even death or keep their children home, where they will receive a fraction of their education in one of the least integrated settings available with limited to no exposure to non-disabled peers,” said Tom Melsheimer, attorney from Winston & Strawn. “Either outcome is a violation of students’ rights under the ADA and Section 504, and both are wholly avoidable.”

The lawsuit asks for a temporary restraining order that requires Governor Abbott, TEA, and the districts named to cease violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 and allows local school districts and local public health authorities to require masks for its students and staff as they determine is necessary.

Read the full complaint attached below.

ADDITIONAL STATEMENT ADDED AUGUST 18, 2021:

The case filed on August 17, 2021, has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel. Today, Plaintiffs filed a request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction enjoining Defendants from prohibiting local school districts from requiring masks for their students and staff. The full motion is attached below along with the original complaint.

The filing includes sworn statements from the parents of the young plaintiffs with disabilities about their health conditions and risks. It also includes compelling declarations from two medical experts explaining the harm posed to children with serious health conditions in schools not allowed to implement mask mandates with the exploding spread of the Delta variant.

The brief explains that plaintiffs will prevail because it violates federal disability laws to exclude them from school or make them risk their lives to get an education.

Plaintiffs also argue they will succeed because the Governor’s order violates the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, in which Texas districts received over $11 billion dollars in funding so that they can adopt plans for a safe return to in-person instruction.

“The injunction is required to protect the lives of children with disabilities and their basic right to attend school,” said Dustin Rynders, Supervising Attorney with Disability Rights Texas.

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Disability Rights Texas is the federally designated legal protection and advocacy agency (P&A) for people with disabilities in Texas established in 1977. Its mission is to help people with disabilities understand and exercise their rights under the law, ensuring their full and equal participation in society. Visit www.DRTx.org for more information.

Categories Accountability, Health, Safety, Science, Texas
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