John Thompson: Can the Joy of Teaching and Learning Be Revived?

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2024 //
23

John Thompson laments the barrage of attacks on the public schools of Oklahoma City; over the past four decades, the assaults on teachers and public schools have only grown worse. He urges educators to resist and reclaim their profession.

He writes:

During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s deregulation and Supply Side economics wiped out high-quality blue collar jobs and prompted the collapse of banks and Savings and Loans, as the Housing and Urban Development scandal left hundreds of abandoned houses in our part of Oklahoma City. This resulted in crack houses on every block, and it looked like the world was coming to an end. I grew close to the kids growing up in drug houses and became a mentor and then a teacher. 

In the early 1990s, when I started teaching in the inner city, those crises combined with the legacy of the Oklahoma City Public School System’s (OKCPS) obedience to the Reagan administration’s “A Nation at Risk” high-stakes testing, which contributed to a mass exodus of students. So many times, along with other overwhelmed teachers, we’d pause from trying to control the interlocking crises, and ask whether the chaos in the hallways was real, or whether we were just sharing a nightmare.

Today, I wonder if the OKCPS is facing even greater risks. Since No Child Left Behind, test-and-punish, competition-driven corporate reforms have undermined meaningful teaching and learning. Moreover, the lack of funding, as in many other states, made it impossible to tackle the inter-connected obstacles to improving schools that serve extreme concentrations of children from generational poverty who have endured multiple traumas. 

Then came Covid. Now, rightwingers like Gov. Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent Ryan Walters are going for the kill.  As Education Week reports, all of these challenges lead:

To a vicious cycle of sorts: Low pay, coupled with the heavy scrutiny of teachers and their teaching practices, [which] causes the teacher pipeline to contract. There’s a scramble to fill vacant positions. Certification standards are lowered to get more bodies into classrooms. As the new teachers come in, many others leave.

During this era, enrollment in Oklahoma’s teacher-preparation programs “plummeted” by 80 percent from 2010 to 2018. And by 2022-2023 “Oklahoma’s teacher turnover rate was 24 percent, the highest in a decade.” And today, EdWeek reports, “Even first-year teachers are often asked to mentor emergency certified teachers, teacher-educators and union leaders say.” And it quotes a teacher who dared to say the obvious, “The disrespect and the unfunded mandates just keep coming.” 

As is true across the nation, our schools are facing a surge of mental health crises. As KOSU reports, Oklahoma “has had limited mental and behavioral health services available for youth for decades.” But, “Over the past five years, Oklahoma has sent a growing number of children out of state for mental or behavioral health treatment. It’s often a last resort after families have searched for months or years for effective in-state help.” So, “communities rely on public schools to provide significant on-site services to kids,” even though their “special education programs are often short-staffed and under-funded.”

Even worse, federal Covid funds that helped schools address trauma and mental illness are about to run out. As the Frontier now reports, “A crisis team that helps schools around Oklahoma address emergencies like student deaths and natural disasters lost federal funding under State Superintendent Ryan Walters.” This follows the resignation of Terri Grissom who “wrote grants that have guaranteed Oklahoma about $106 million, but only if all of the work is completed.” She protested:

Without access to department documentation, she estimated that between $35 million and $40 million of that money is unspent, and she said that if those grant programs are not fully completed, some federal agencies likely will demand repayment of the grants in full.

Now, due to Walters’ refusal to apply for “federal grants that run counter to “Oklahoma values,’” concerns are being raised that Oklahoma could lose much more of its 800 million a year federal dollars. Moreover, Gov. Stitt has pressured the State Senate to drop its modest $100 million request for additional school spending to $25 million for an education system that already underserves its 700,000 students.

And the loss of those funds is one reason why the OKCPS will have to increase class sizes. For instance, “Pre-K class sizes are projected to increase from 20 to 22 students,” while “High school teachers are projected to take on 155 students, an increase of 10.”

And who knows what will happen if the next stage of Ryan Walters’ assault on public education survives in court? As the Oklahoman reports: 

In February, the State Board of Education passed a slew of proposed rules regarding school accreditation, prayer in schools, teacher behavior, training of local school board members, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) procedures in Oklahoma schools, among other topics. 

And schools will be challenged by a new rubric for reviewing K-12 school textbooks which “asks whether learning materials ‘degrade traditional roles of men and women,’ promote ‘illegal lifestyles’ or neglect the importance of religion in preserving American liberties.”

Apparently drawing upon the tactics of the Houston Superintendent Mike Miles, Walters’ plan is to takeover districts where the number of students scoring “Basic” doesn’t quickly rise to 50%. Since 63% of OKCPS students score Below Basic, it could be facing an existential threat.

While it seems to be common sense that schools need transparent, evidence-informed public discussions, in my experience, top administrators in Oklahoma tend to keep their heads down and try to obey top-down mandates. Schools love to issue public relations statements about the endless number of “transformational” changes they are introducing, while pretending they can handle an impossibly long to-do list of projects, while focusing on accountability metrics. So, I feel bad about urging the schools I know best to adopt a new priority.

Even as educators face greater and greater assaults by rightwingers, they first need an open discussion of the 21st century paths that they must follow. Do teachers, students, or patrons want schools to continue to comply with teach-to-the-test mandates? Or do they want educators to reclaim the autonomy necessary for holistic, meaningful instruction? Do they want teachers to receive the clear message that their job is to join a team effort to teach Standards of Instruction in a culturally meaningful way, as opposed to teaching to the standardized tests?  Does the public want children to be treated like numbers, future workers, or as full human beings? Should our kids be subject to worksheet-driven, skin-deep “basics,” or should they be taught how to “learn how to learn?”

I understand colleagues who will protest that their hands are already full, trying to fend off the Ryan Walters. But I’d urge a different mindset. The decline of student learning due to test-driven, charter- and voucher-driven reforms weakens our institutions, making them more vulnerable to the politics of destruction.  So, if the educational culture of compliance continues, and threats to learning grow, will ideology-driven assaults on public education become more unstoppable?

I understand why many education leaders, who are intimidated by accountability-driven, competition-driven mandates, believe they are protecting children when they avoid battles with the “Billionaires Boys Club” or, worse, anti-democratic MAGAs. But they need to take inventory of the 21stcentury mandates which have undermined the joy of teaching and learning. They should openly discuss what is really needed to tackle mental health challenges and chronic absenteeism; and to build trusting, loving relationships. Unless we can reclaim those principles, how can we protect our schools from assaults that are getting crueler and crueler, and more overwhelming?  

Categories Education Reform

Harvard Abandons Mandatory Diversity Statement

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2024 //
40

The Boston Globe reported on Harvard’s decision to ban mandatory diversity statements. In recent years, many universities required applicants to the faculty to write a statement demonstrating their fealty to diversity, equity and inclusion. One of Harvard’s most prominent African-American professors—Randall Kennedy of the Harvard Law School—wrote an opinion piece in the campus newspaper opposing the requirement as a breach of academic freedom. Other universities, including MIT and the University of North Carolina, have already dropped the diversity pledge, likening it to a loyalty oath.

Less than five years ago, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences followed a trend that was then sweeping across American higher education. It instituted a requirement that professors who wished to work at Harvard submit an essay explaining how they would advance “diversity, inclusion, and belonging” in their work.

On Monday, the university’s largest division announced it had reversed course, eliminating the requirement after receiving “feedback from numerous faculty members” who were concerned about the mandatory statements.

A seemingly routine part of academic hiring, diversity statements have become the focus of intense scrutiny as universities grapple with the question of whether well-intentioned efforts to diversify the elite ranks of American institutions have sometimes collided with other core values of academia.

“By requiring academics to profess — and flaunt — faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom,” Randall Kennedy, a scholar of race and civil rights at Harvard Law School, wrote in an April op-ed in the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.

That essay was widely read in academic circles. It was also cited approvingly in a recent Washington Post editorial that criticized mandatory diversity statements and praised the recent decision by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to ban their use…

In an announcement Monday, dean of faculty affairs Nina Zipser, said that going forward candidates for tenure-track positions would be required to provide a more broadly focused “service statement,” instead of a statement focused specifically on “diversity, inclusion, and belonging.” A service statement could include a candidate’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, but is not required to focus on those topics….

Ryan Enos, a Harvard political scientist and director of the Center for American Political Studies, said he generally pays little attention to diversity statements when vetting candidates. “You got the impression that they reflected more about candidates knowing the right things to say rather than an actual commitment to improving the department on diversity and other matters,” he said.

Of course, critics of the decision complained that universities were backing down from their commitment to diversity due to political harassment by rightwing politicians who object to diversity. But where values are deeply embedded, they are unlikely to disappear.

Categories Equity, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

Dr. Peter Offit: What Is “Gain-of-Function” Research? Why Republicans Are Wrong to Harass Dr. Fauci

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2024 //
18

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, there has been intense interest in how the pandemic started. Was it started by a leak of the virus from a dirty seafood market stall in China? Did it begin because the virus leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan, China?

Republican elected officials in Washington became convinced that it began because the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, that researching dangerous viruses; that the lab was involved in gain-of-function research; that the research was funded by the United States; and that Dr. Anthony Fauci knew and must be held accountable.

In other words, a worldwide pandemic that caused millions of deaths was Dr. Fauci’s fault. They launched hearings yesterday at which Dr. Fauci was grilled.

Dr. Paul Offit is an infectious diseases specialist. He blogs at “Beyond the Noise” and recently wrote a book about COVID. He wrote the following post to explain what scientists know about these issues.

He wrote:

On February 13, 2024, National Geographic published a book I wrote called, TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DECIPHERING COVID MYTHS AND NAVIGATING OUR POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. For the past few months, I have been writing about various issues discussed in that book.

In the wake of some emails that recently came to light, the question of whether the United States government knowingly funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has resurfaced. Does this new information prove the lab-leak theory?

First, what is “gain-of-function” research? Second, did gain-of-function research give birth to SARS-CoV-2 virus? One way to understand gain-of-function research is through the prism of rabies virus. People get rabies when they are bitten by a rabid animal. Once under the skin, the virus travels up the nerves and enters the brain, where it causes delirium, seizures, coma, and invariably death. Rabies is without question the deadliest infection of humans.

Now, imagine that a scientist engineers rabies virus so that, instead of being transmitted by animal bites, it is transmitted by small droplets from the nose and mouth, like the common cold. This new virus would be highly contagious and uniformly fatal. In the absence of an effective vaccine, it could eliminate humans from the face of the earth. The good news is that no one has tried to make rabies virus more contagious. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible or that no one would be willing to try. Indeed, in 2011, one experiment so frightened U.S. public health officials that within two years federal regulators made gain-of-function research illegal.

The worrisome experiment took place at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Researchers took a strain of influenza virus found in birds and altered it to grow in ferrets (which, like humans, are mammals). In other words, these researchers had taken a strain of influenza virus that was limited to birds—to which no one in the world had immunity—and altered it so that it might cause disease in people. They had created a potential pandemic virus.

In 2016, three years before SARS-CoV-2 virus entered the human population, the lead researcher studying coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was Dr. Zheng-Li Shi. Her studies were funded in part by the United States government through EcoHealth. Dr. Shi was studying a coronavirus strain called WIV1 (Wuhan Institute of Virology-1): a bat coronavirus that could grow in monkey cells in the laboratory but didn’t cause disease in people. The WIV1 strain bears no resemblance to SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Shi wanted to see what would happen if she combined WIV1 with each of eight different bat coronaviruses that had been found in caves in and around Wuhan. None of the combination viruses that she created, however, were more dangerous than the strain she had started with (WIV1). None of them, like WIV1, could cause disease in people. Although Dr. Shi had performed gain-of-function studies that would have been illegal in the United States, she didn’t create a coronavirus strain that was dangerous to people.

So, while it was true that the United States government funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, no function was gained. The recent seemingly endless posting of hidden emails and secret communications by government officials—all breathlessly claiming conspiracy and coverup—has, in the final analysis, been much to do about nothing.

Indeed, overwhelming evidence continues to support an animal-to-human spillover event that occurred in the western section of the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market at the end of 2019. This is consistent with many other animal-to-human spillover events in history. Influenza virus (birds), human immunodeficiency virus (chimps), Ebola virus (bats), mpox (rodents), and the coronaviruses SARS-1 (bats) and MERS (bats) were all originally animal viruses. Indeed, about 60 percent of human viruses and bacteria have their origins in animals.

For a lengthy but complete discussion about why it is now clear that SARS-CoV-2 was an animal-to-human spillover event, you might want to check out a podcast called Decoding the Gurus, which features evolutionary biologists Michael Worobey, Kristian Anderson, and Eddie Holmes.

Categories Extremism, Research, Science

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

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2024 //
3

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

He writes:

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

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

What’s going on here?

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

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

Some perspective:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Colbert on the Travails of Convicted Felon Donald Trump

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2024 //
2

Stephen Colbert is a very funny guy. In his deadpan style, he cracks some good jokes about the conviction of Trump on 34 counts. Trump’s blaming the outcome on Joe Biden, but the decision to convict him was made by a dozen jurors, a jury of his peers. All the jurors were approved by Trump’s legal team.

Please watch and enjoy.

Categories Humor, Justice, Trump

Trump Denies He Ever Said “Lock Her Up” about Hillary

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2024 //
17

I thought it was a joke when I read a comment on the blog saying that Trump denied saying “Lock her up” during the 2016 campaign. That’s good one, I thought. Like saying that Trump denied saying that Mexico would pay for a border wall. No, he wouldn’t do that.

But it’s true. CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale wrote about the latest mammoth lie.

Categories Elections, Hillary Clinton, Lies, Trump

Marco Rubio Wants to be the VEEP to the Guy He Denounced as a “Con Man”

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2024 //
24

It’s sad but not unexpected that Republican politicians who once denounced Donald Trump are now bowing down to him. They are singing his praises, kissing his ring, his toes, his backside.

Nikki Haley said he was “unhinged” and that he was “not fit” to be President. That was only a few months ago. We all heard her. But now she has endorsed the unhinged one.

Ted Cruz insulted Trump repeatedly in 2016. He suggested that Trump had ties to the Mafia; he called him “a sniveling coward,” and “a pathological liar,” who lies with every word that comes out of his mouth. He also called him “a serial philanderer” who is “utterly amoral.”Trump, in turn, mocked Cruz’s wife and suggested that Cruz’s father had some role in the assassinatiin of President Kennedy. Now they are best buddies.

Marco Rubio takes the cake, if a lapdog deserves a cake. Here is a video of Rubio denouncing Trump as a “con man” who has failed again and again. Now Rubio is hoping to be chosen as the Vice-presidential candidate by the Master Con Man.

At long last, these ambitious politicians have no integrity and no shame. They long to serve an unhinged con man and pathological liar who has been ranked by historians as the worst president in American history.

Categories Corruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Trump

Jan Resseger: Why Do Ohio Republicans Hate Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2024 //
11

In Ohio, as in every other state, most children go to public schools. You would think that their elected officials would work hard to ensure that their district’s public schools are well-funded. In red states like Ohio, you would be wrong. Safe in their gerrymandered districts, Republicans are shoveling money to charters and vouchers, not public schools. Their generosity to nonpublic schools ignores the long list of scandals associated with charters, as well as their poor performance. Nor are Republicans concerned by the lack of accountability of voucher schools, not to mention their discriminatory practices.

Jan Resseger wonders whether Republicans care about the education of the state’s children. Answer: No. They have higher priorities, religious and political.

She writes:

On Tuesday, the Ohio Capital Journal’s Susan Tebben reported: “Ohio House Democrats have laid out a plethora of bills targeting the education system in the state, impacting everything from teacher pay to oversight of private school vouchers and the overall funding of the public school system…’Our principles are pretty clear on that front,’ said House Minority Whip Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati. ‘There is no better investment we can make in the future of our state than investing in the education of our students, and that every kid, no matter which corner of the state they grow up in, deserves a world class education.’

There is a problem, however, blocking most pro-public school legislation. Only 32 of 99 Ohio House members are Democrats, and in the Ohio Senate, only 7 Democrats serve in a body of 33 members. Due to gerrymandering, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the district maps that are being used today, but the Court did not enforce its ruling. This means that, except in the state budget where compromises sometimes are demanded, most of the Democratic priorities languish.  In the recent budget, the legislature enacted a second stage of the three-budget, phase-in of a new public school funding formula, but it was accompanied by a universal private school tuition voucher expansion.

Here, according to Tebben, is what has happened to a bill to prioritize and protect the new public school funding formula:

“At the top of the (Democrats’) list is House Bill 10, which seeks to hold legislators to the six year phase-in plan that was assigned to the Fair School Funding Plan, legislation that funds public schools based less on property values and more on the needs of individual school districts.  HB 10 is a bipartisan bill which simply ‘expresses the intent of the General Assembly to continue phasing in the school financing system,’ which was inserted in the 2021 budget bill, ‘until that system is fully implemented and funded,’ according to the language of the bill.  The bill was introduced in February 2023 and quickly referred to the House Finance Committee, but has not seen activity since.”

Ohio’s gerrymandered Republican supermajority won’t commit to the eventual full funding of the state’s public school system because, they say, revenue projections are unsure in the context of growing privatization and years of cutting taxes in budget after budget.

Ohio’s gerrymandered Republican legislators instead operate ideologically and far to the right.  After Governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill to deny medical care for transgender youths last winter, legislators immediately overrode the veto.  Far-right bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council and other bill mills, and bills endorsed by the extremist but powerful Columbus lobby, the Center for Christian Virtue, now housed in the building it purchased across the street from the Statehouse, dominate legislative deliberation and get lots of press.

Please open the rest of this important post.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, For-Profit, Funding, Ohio, Vouchers

Carol Burris: Betsy DeVos Pays This Guy to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2024 //
15

One person who takes credit for the rapid advance of vouchers, which send public dollars to private and religious schools, is named Corey De Angelis. You probably never heard of him. He works for Betsy DeVos. He hates public schools, although he is a product of public schools. The taxpayers paid for his free education, but now he wants to divert money from public schools to private ones. We now know that most vouchers are claimed by families whose children are already enrolled in private schools. The voucher is a subsidy for them. Frequently, the school hikes its tuition by the amount of the voucher. Why does Corey hate public schools? It’s a puzzlement.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, wrote this post:

Corey De Angelis works for Betsy De Vos’s American Federation for Children, which pays him to travel the country hawking ESA vouchers. He directs its PAC to destroy candidates who oppose vouchers.


De Angelis obsessively hates teacher unions, calls public schools “government schools,” believes that telling the truth is, at best, a suggestion, and has dubbed himself the “school choice evangelist.”


During a recent interview at the Heritage Foundation, De Angelis defined public schools like this: “failing unionized indoctrination centers that we call schools.” His contempt for public education was apparent from beginning to end. Here is a clip from that interview and NPE’s response on his mission to destroy our public schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Vouchers

Texas: Money Can’t Always Buy Elections (But It Helps)

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2024 //
8

Texas has one of the most extreme Republican parties in the nation, and it’s worth watching what happens there. Being a native Texan, I care about my home state. It’s hard to believe this is the same state that elected Ann Richardson as governor. The far-right has taken over the state.

The party primaries were held last Tuesday, and there was an internal war among the Republicans. Governor Abbott—who competes with Ron DeSantis for title of meanest governor—decided to defeat every rural Republican who opposed schoool vouchers. With the help of billionaires from on-state and out-of-state, Abbott targeted those who voted against vouchers. He won most, but not all, of the contests.

My friends in Texas were encouraged because they believe that some of the Republican seats might flip to Democrats because the GOP candidate is so extreme. Governor Abbott crowed about his victories. He now has enough votes to get vouchers for his evangelical friends and his billionaire donors.

The insiders I trust tell me that some Republicans who voted for vouchers are likely to switch sides because they know that vouchers will hurt their rural communities.

Chris Tomlinson, columnist for The Houston Chronicle, put the elections in perspective. He contends that big money is most effective in low-turnout elections. But when voters show up, they can defeat big money:

Gov. Greg Abbott declared victory Tuesday in his campaign to defeat Republican lawmakers who oppose public financing for religious schools. Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan declared victory in his fight against big-moneyed outsiders trying to oust him from his hometown seat.

The lesson from the runoffs is that well-financed culture warriors will win low-turnout elections, while reasonable Republicans can defeat anti-democratic activists if voters show up.

Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick went on a jihad against rural Republican lawmakers who recognized that school vouchers would damage small-county economies where public schools are the largest employers.

The governor deployed $6 million from Pennsylvania billionaire gambler Jeff Yass to betray loyal, conservative Republicans. On Tuesday, Abbott’s challengers defeated four incumbents to receive the GOP nomination for the November general election.

If all his chosen candidates win, the Texas House could pass a school voucher bill with a two-vote majority. However, turnout in those races was low, proving that Abbott could motivate the party base with campaign spending but not mainstream Republican voters.

Phelan’s victory in Beaumont suggests Abbott’s candidates are not guaranteed victory in November. Outsider financiers turned the GOP runoff for House District 21 into the most expensive in Texas history. Self-respecting voters turned out for their hometown hero to fight the barbarians at the gate, and Phelan won

A similar dynamic played out in the Republican runoff of Congressional District 23, which stretches from San Antonio through Uvalde to Eagle Pass. Rep. Tony Gonzales defeated the “AK Guy” Brandon Herrera, who had the support of Matt Gaetz, the controversial Florida congressman.

A higher turnout was the deciding factor in Phelan’s and Gonzales’s victories. But that’s only by comparison. Phelan’s runoff saw a 20% turnout of registered voters, compared to less than 10% for the others. 

Attorney General Ken Paxton, who expended enormous energy to punish Phelan for impeaching him, cried foul Tuesday night. He accused Democrats of voting in the Republican primary to keep Phelan in office.

I know many ticket-splitters who vote in the Republican primary because those are often the most important races. Only ideologues vote strictly along party lines. 

I’ll be interested to see what happens in the high-turnout presidential election in November. Can Democrats use school vouchers to make inroads with reasonable Republicans? The Gonzales and Phelan races suggest they can, especially as the GOP becomes more dogmatic.

As a footnote, the Texas Republican Party wants to change party rules so that Democrats can’t vote in the GOP primaries, only the faithful. That will keep the party pure and drive out dissenters and centrists.

 

Categories Billionaires, Education Industry, Elections, Texas, Vouchers
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