Houston: Congressmember Calls for Federal Investigation of HISD under Miles

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2024 //
12

After Spectrum News reported that millions of dollars had been sent from Texas charter schools founded by Mike Miles to Colorado charter schools in the same chain, parents and students demanded Miles’ resignation as superintendent of Houston Independent School Disttrict. Elected officials have called for an investigation but recognize that neither the State Commissioner (Mike Morath) nor Governor Abbott are likely to criticize Miles, whom they appointed.

HOUSTON — U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia formally requested that the U.S. Department of Education investigate the issues at Houston ISD and the financing of schools in the area, according to a letter obtained by KHOU 11 News.

In the letter dated May 15, the Congresswoman refers to recent news stories that reported Ector ISD near Midland, Texas allegedly sent state funds from Texas to Third Future Schools, a charter school operated in Colorado. She requested that an audit be conducted on Ector ISD.

A Spectrum News Texas report highlighted a pair of million-dollar-plus checks allegedly sent from Third Future Schools in Texas to its campuses in Colorado. The report accused Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Milesof sending Texas tax dollars out of state.

Miles has issued a statement responding to the report, saying the report “either intentionally or through gross incompetence, mischaracterized commonplace financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them.” 

RELATED: HISD Superintendent Mike Miles responds to report he funneled TX taxpayer money to Colorado | TEA commissioner, Third Future Schools also respond

Garcia expressed concerns over the financial stability of HISD following last year’s takeover by the state of Texas. This comes after widespread layoffs were announced leading to protests from those affected and HISD families.

RELATED: More Houston ISD parents protest over principals reportedly being forced out

RELATED: She was principal of the year in 2023. A year later, she said HISD forced her to resign

Texas Education Commissioner Mick Morath has confirmed that the TEA complaints team will look into allegations against Miles. 

The congresswoman also requested the issuance of federal funds by the state from the pandemic that were to be used to supplement public education at HISD be audited.

“It pains me that my home school district has been taken over and is seemingly being intentionally run into the ground and (I) request any additional assistance you can provide to protect our schools and our students,” Garcia said in the letter.

Garcia went on to claim that the state is punishing HISD.

“Houston is a vibrant and diverse community, and our state government is punishing us for that; we need your help,” she said in the letter.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Houston, Texas

Alexandra Petri: A Message from the Worm That Ate Part of RFK Jr.’s Brain

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2024 //
15

Alexandria Petri is a humorist for The Washington Post. This article is one of her best!

Good afternoon, fellow Americans, from the interior of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain. I am a parasitic worm. You might be wondering how I got here, or perhaps not! Most people who learned that a piece of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain was missing because a worm ate it responded with what I would characterize as “disappointment but not exactly surprise.”

Maybe you heard about me from the New York Times. Or possibly you got the news directly from the Kennedy campaign announcing that the worm that ate part of the candidate’s brain and then died in there would not affect his ability to serve as president. You know what they say: no such thing as bad publicity! Indeed, RFK Jr. has gone so far as to offer to eat five more brain worms. This is not the first time one of his statements have given me pause.

When I first arrived here, I was so excited to discover all the knowledge that the human brain must hold. But when I looked around, all I saw were conspiracy theories and mercury poisoning. Candidly, if you had said, “What do you recommended the holder of this brain do next?” I would not have said, “Run for president.” I would have said, “Get somebody else to do that. This person should go sit down.”

That is why, today, I have an announcement to make. I am eliminating the middle man and running for president myself. Yes, I am the worm that ate part of RFK Jr.’s brain, and I’m asking for your vote. I am the only candidate brave enough to say: I am a parasitic worm, and I don’t understand what is best for the country.

To those who ask, “Why should I vote for you? You are a worm somewhere around one-third of an inch in length with a knob-like attachment at one end called a scolex that sometimes is mistakenly referred to as its head!” I say: That is more medical transparency than you are going to get from any of the other candidates! I bet they have not even disclosed whether they have body cavities. (I don’t! I’m an acoelomate!)

To those who reply, “We don’t actually know that! That’s just what the symptoms are consistent with! We haven’t done a complete examination of the exact type of worm that died in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain after eating part of it,” I say: That is fair, and I am worm enough to grant it to you. Thank you, and I hope to receive your vote in November. Please just write in “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s WORM, NOT THE MAN, THE WORM” on your ballot. As long as you are throwing away your vote, throw it away on a worm. That’s also my slogan.

There are many issues on which people are basing their votes in this election. Bodily autonomy. Keeping our democracy a democracy. Do you want to know my stance on the issues? I will tell you: I have no stance! I am a worm who died no later than 2012. I do not possess higher brain functions, although I have attended several, at which I feasted.

And that is exactly the sort of plenty I promise you will enjoy under rule by worm. Just look at life under Leto II, God Emperor of Dune! Jabba the Hutt (an honorary worm) ran Tatooine with very few problems for a very long time until the intervention of a rude woman in a metal bikini.

If there are worms in the brains of the other candidates, I hope they will join me in issuing statements of their own. Perhaps a simple statement covering whether they exist and whether they consider what they may or may not have eaten to be mission critical.

RFK Jr. has justified his candidacy by saying that people are overwhelmingly frustrated with the options presented to them and need a third choice. Well, I see that third choice and raise you a fourth choice: a candidate you can trust not to have any brain worms because that candidate is a brain worm. I am also not currently under indictment for any reason.

So, good people of these United States, I exhort you: Ask not what this parasite can do for you. Ask what you can do for your parasite!

Categories Elections, Humor

Haaretz: There Will Be a Palestinian State

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2024 //
35

Alon Idan writes regularly for the Israeli publication Haaretz, which is outspokenly opposed to the government of Israel. In this article, he speaks bluntly about the inevitability of a Palestinian state.

Here’s a simple fact: There will be a Palestinian state.

The reason: There are many Palestinians.

Location of the Palestinian state: Palestine.

Everything we Israelis experience right now, this whole “situation,” the lingering despair of “now what?,” this dead end we’re caught in, the helplessness, this immense human tragedy – this entire situation is nothing but the outcome of our sheer stupidity. Yes, we are unfortunately terribly stupid. Smart, but also really dumb.

We are infantile, soon to be 76 years old but still just babies. Where’s the breast? Where’s the milk bottle? Mama, I’m hungry!

I say we are dumb because we refuse to accept the obvious. We refuse to see what the whole world sees. We continue to act like children who close their eyes and believe that if they don’t see anything, reality doesn’t exist. We’re in the infantile stage. We are infantile, soon to be 76 years old but still just babies. What’s ridiculous is that we’re sure we’re really smart.

But only a fool doesn’t understand that eventually there will be a Palestinian state.

Only a fool doesn’t understand that a Palestinian state will be established because there are Palestinians.

Only someone infantile doesn’t understand that there will be a Palestinian state in Palestine. Here, right next to us, five minutes away from the city of Kfar Saba.

An old baby

When you think of the so-called Israeli right you realize that it represents nothing more than the infantile side of us all. It’s the omnipotent side – the part of us that thinks we’re all-powerful and if we only imagine a certain reality, it will indeed be realized. 

When a toddler behaves like this, the parents give him or her a pacifier and try to calm things down. When an adult behaves like this, it’s called psychosis.

National Missions Minister Orit Strock is infantile and suffering from psychosis. Orit Strock is a baby. A baby who has been living for many years now. An old baby.

On Wednesday, Strock said that we shouldn’t stop the war “to save 22 people or 33 people.” It’s madness and a disconnect from reality.

From a theoretical, almost philosophical perspective, we should have felt sorry for her. We might have tried to trace back to the roots and branches out of which such rotten leaves grew and such bleak words sprang. We could have also tried to understand what happened – how a person becomes less of a person; what makes one’s heart harden and one’s soul darken; how sadness stiffens into a rage and how compassion turns into anger.

But we’re not in a theoretical or a philosophical world. We’re in reality, in actual being. We’re in life, death, pain and blood; we’re in longing, in the urge to save others, and every word is a word, every letter is a letter and every syllable has its own weight, significance and meaning.

Strock said “22 or 33.” The difference between 22 and 33 is 11. And in this case, 11 means 11 hostages held in Gaza. 

That’s 11 people. 11 lives. Every “1” was once a baby who had chicken pox and woke up in the middle of the night. Every “1” is “Did you see? She’s walking!” and “Did you hear? She said dada,” and then she had a fever, and you got the nebulizer and then ran with her to the emergency room, and the fear you felt, and “I hope it will be all right.”

The wisdom of the fools

On March 26, 2018, during a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the deputy head of Israel’s Civil Administration, Col. Uri Mendes, provided the following figure to the lawmakers: about 5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This number didn’t include the residents of East Jerusalem and the Israeli Arabs who – according to the Central Bureau of Statistics – numbered 1.8 million. According to the bureau, about 6.5 million Jews lived in Israel at that time. These figures show that more Arabs than Jews lived between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Following the presentation of this data, an uproar broke out among right-wingers. They listened to the bits of reality presented to them at the Knesset and began to employ the foolish sages’ favorite weapon: an infantilization of reality. Lawmaker Moti Yogev of Habayit Hayehudi claimed that Mendes was inflating the numbers since – according to Yogev – in 2016 “about 80,000 births and 8,000 deaths were reported, which is a life expectancy that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world.”

This is what the wisdom of the fools looks like. They go into the forest of numbers and find undocumented trees or over-documented bushes, then declare: “There is no forest!” Like in “The Naked Gun,” when Leslie Nielsen stands with the whole city burning behind him and tells the people, “Nothing to see here!” The same goes for the infantile right: It looks at millions of Palestinians and says: “Go home, there’s nothing to see here, there are no Palestinians.”

Stupidity has a price. An expensive one. Dead people, wounded, mutilated, kidnapped. And then there’s a sense of futility, of existential anxiety and clinical depression. Then come brutalization, madness, ranting, bragging and crashing.

There will be a Palestinian state. It’s not up to us and it’s not about us. It’s about reality. The only question is whether we’ll enter reality or continue to live in fantasy; if we’ll come to our senses at the last moment, or if we’ll continue being so utterly stupid.

Categories International

Why the Cost of Vet Care Has Soared

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2024 //
8

Helaine Olen wrote in The Atlantic about the quiet transformation of veterinary care. You may have noticed that vet bills are high. She blames it on the takeover of large number of independent veterinary practices by private equity. Many once-local vets are now part of big corporate chains.

I see an analogy to privatization in education. Granted, independent vets are private, not public. But I think it’s only a matter of time until private equity invests in charter chains and religious schools. They are a safe investment, backed by a steady stream of government revenue. Private investors will look for ways to cut costs and maximize profits. One obvious path: replacing teachers with computers and AI. Machines don’t care about pensions or healthcare or working conditions.

Olen writes:

As household pets have risen in status—from mere animals to bona fide family members—so, too, has owners’ willingness to spend money to ensure their well-being. Big-money investors have noticed. According to data provided to me by PitchBook, private equity poured $51.6 billion into the veterinary sector from 2017 to 2023, and another $9.3 billion in the first four months of this year, seemingly convinced that it had discovered a foolproof investment. Industry cheerleaders pointed to surveys showing that people would go into debt to keep their four-legged friends healthy. The field was viewed as “low-risk, high-reward,” as a 2022 report issued by Capstone Partners put it, singling out the industry for its higher-than-average rate of return on investment.

In the United States, corporations and private-equity funds have been rolling up smaller chains and previously independent practices. Mars Inc., of Skittles and Snickers fame, is, oddly, the largest owner of stand-alone veterinary clinics in the United States, operating more than 2,000 practices under the names Banfield, VCA, and BluePearl. JAB Holding Company, the owner of National Veterinary Associates’ 1,000-plus hospitals (not to mention Panera and Espresso House), also holds multiple pet-insurance lines in its portfolio. Shore Capital Partners, which owns several human health-care companies, controls Mission Veterinary Partners and Southern Veterinary Partners.

As a result, your local vet may well be directed by a multinational shop that views caring for your fur baby as a healthy component of a diversified revenue stream. Veterinary-industry insiders now estimate that 25 to 30 percent of practices in the United States are under large corporate umbrellas, up from 8 percent a little more than a decade ago. For specialty clinics, the number is closer to three out of four.

This is an excerpt. You might want to read the story in full by subscribing to The Atlantic.

Categories Funding, Health, Privatization

Houston: Mike Miles Denies Transfer of Millions to His Colorado Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2024 //
22

Brett Shipp of Spectrum News posted a video asserting that the Texas charter schools in the network founded by Mike Miles sent millions of dollars to Miles’ Colorado charter schools. His report was amply documented.

Miles was imposed as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District after the state took control of HISD, based on the low performance of ONE school, Wheatley High School. Miles was selected by State Superintendent Mike Morath, who served on the Dallas school board when Miles was superintendent for three years and failed to meet any of his lofty goals. Neither Morath nor Miles is an educator. Morath was in the software business, and Miles was in the military before joining Eli Broad’s Superintendent Academy, which emphasized top-down management and disruption.

Ana Hernandez, a Houston legislator, wrote Mike Morath to call for an investigation of Miles. Morath is unlikely to conduct a serious probe since he chose Miles. The State Attorney General Ken Paxton is under indictment for corruption, so he’s not likely to dig deep into Morath’s choice; Morath was picked by Governor Gregg Abbott.

Sam Gonzalez Kelly of The Houston Chronicle reported that Miles denounced Shipp’s charges:

HISD’s appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is vehemently denying reports that his former charter network, Third Future Schools, illegally used money from its Texas campuses to subsidize its schools in Colorado. 

Miles, in a late night email to “friends, partners and board members,” wrote that the story by Spectrum News in Dallas “badly misunderstands, or worse, intentionally misrepresents the financial practices of Third Future Schools.” The story, by reporter Brett Shipp, who covered Miles during his tenure as Dallas ISD superintendent, accuses Third Future Schools of charging fees to its Texas network to subsidize one of its campuses in Colorado, and reported that Third Future Schools Texas had run a deficit due to debts to “other TFS network schools and to TFS corporate.”

The Spectrum report cites recordings of TFS corporate board and investor meetings, as well as the charter network’s financial records. The Houston Chronicle’s review of the documents confirmed that TFS Texas had sent funds to Colorado campuses, which a charter school finance expert said is generally permitted by state law.

“While I have not worked at the Third Future Schools network for more than a year, I find the piece irresponsibly inaccurate, and I cannot let this kind of misinformation go uncorrected,” Miles wrote. 

Miles wrote that Third Future Schools “was always a responsible steward of every public dollar received” and that school finances were approved by local school boards and partner districts. He acknowledged that Texas schools paid “administrative fees” to the central Third Future office, which is headquartered in Colorado, to provide network-wide supports in areas, including finance and human resources, but said that such payments are common practice for charter networks.

“Spectrum News either intentionally or, through gross incompetence, mischaracterized these common place financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them,” Miles wrote. 

Neither Spectrum nor Shipp immediately responded to requests for comment. 

Spectrum’s story immediately prompted outrage among HISD community members and some elected officials, who are demanding the superintendent’s resignation and a federal investigation over the charter network’s use of Texas taxpayer money in Colorado schools. 

The Texas Education Agency said in a statement Tuesday that it was aware of Spectrum’s report and was reviewing the matter.

The “charter school finance expert” consulted by The Houston Chronicle worked for the state charter school association. It is not clear that state law allows charter schools in Texas to send Texas public funds to its offices or other charters in Colorado.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Texas

U of California at Berkeley Reaches Agreement with Student Protestors

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2024 //
2

The Los Angeles Times reported that officials at Berkeley reached an agreeement with pro-Palestinian protestors:

Pro-Palestinian protesters at UC Berkeley took down all but a few tents on a central campus plaza Tuesday, in an agreement that appears to end for now one of the largest and longest student encampments in the country as Chancellor Carol Christ said she would consider demands for the university to divest from weapons companies. Christ said that the university would examine complaints of discrimination against Palestinians and others in academic partnerships and that she supported examining Berkeley’s investments in firms involved in the weapons manufacturing, mass incarceration and surveillance industries. But the university will not support divestment or academic boycotts aimed at Israel.

Categories California, Higher Education

Bob Shepherd: The Most Important Burden on Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2024 //
35

Bob Shepherd—author, editor, assessment developer, textbook writer, classroom teacher, and all-purpose polymath, wrote this comment. After a long career in education publishing, Bob closed out his career by teaching school in Florida.

He wrote:

THIS is the most important thing about teaching, at least at the middle- and high-school levels. Teachers have far, far too many students and a laughably small amount of prep time (that is, laughably small to anyone who actually bothers to prepare significant lessons for his or her classes), and literally impossible amounts of add-on work in the form of mandates to watch other teachers’ classes, oversee car or bus line or cafeteria sittings, do test prep, proctor tests, fill out (often in duplicate) ridiculous amounts of paperwork (grades, attendance, IEP and 501 reports, evaluation materials, lesson plans, bellwork professional development paperwork, and so on). If anyone ever bother actually to sit down and sum up the number of hours required of middle-school and high-school teachers, he or she would soon see that these requirements exceed the amount of hours in the day or week, and so, the fact is, that people are fudging the work, submitting bs material whenever they can, thrown together rather than reasoned out. A high-school teacher might have 180-200 students, and he or she is supposed to give each individual, differentiated attention.

Right. MIGHT AS WELL REQUIRE TEACHERS TO FLAP THEIR ARMS AND SO FLY. Or to locate objects by remote viewing. Or make sense of any proposal by Donald Trump. Or enter that parallel dimension and recover the lost ships and airplanes of the Bermuda Triangle. Or bring back a golden apple from the tree at the edge of the world. Or net the Salmon of Doubt.

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Trump Is Selling Pieces of the Suit He Wore When He Was Booked in Atlanta

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2024 //
30

Trump sells Bibles; Trump sells whatever he can brand. He recently realized he could monetize the suit he was wearing when he was booked in Atlanta. To Trump lovers, a piece of the suit he wired when he was booked in Atlant—no matter how small—is akin to buying a thread of the Shroud of Turin.

“It was a great suit, believe me, a really good suit. It’s all cut up, and you’re gonna get a piece of it,” Trump said in a video announcing the sale.

Of course, he made a point of glowering for his mug shot, making a face that is now sold on mugs, T-shirts, and other items. other people might feel ashamed to be booked. Trump immediately recognized it as a chance to make money.

Trump is utterly shameless.

The Guardian reported:

Trump wore a blue suit when he was arrested and had his mugshot taken at an Atlanta jail in August. The former Apprentice host has already monetized the mugshot: on his campaign website, people can buy coffee mugs, T-shirts and Christmas stockings bearing the image.

The move into fabric sales is a new one, however.

To buy a piece of the suit, people first have to buy 47 “digital trading cards”, each featuring an illustration of Trump, through the Collect Trump Cards website. Buyers will then receive a bit of the suit, or tie, that Trump wore when he was arrested – on charges related to his attempts to overturn the election – at Fulton county jail in August 2023.‘

The suit, according to the website description, is “the most historically significant artifact in United States history”.

The suit is described as “priceless”. People can buy a piece of it for $4,699.53.

Categories Elections, For-Profit, Trump

Scandal! Millions of $$ Flow from Texas to Colorado Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2024 //
18

Mike Miles, the Superintendent imposed on the Houston public schools by a state takeover, set up a chain of charter schools in Colorado. His charters are running a big deficit. They are also getting poor academic results. One of them closed.

Miles is still getting paid as a consultant to his charter chain.

Miles opened charter schools in Texas.

Investigative reporter Brett Shipp learned that millions of dollars are being transferred from Miles’s Texas charters to his Colorado charters, to pay down their debt.

When he asked the charter leaders about this transfer, he was told that all the charters are in the same chain, so no problem.

But Texas parents complain that their schools are underfunded. When Shipp interviewed them, they were shocked to hear that their tax dollars were being sent to underwrite the deficit of charters in Colorado.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Colorado, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Houston, Privatization, Texas

Trump Offers Oil Industry a Deal: Give Me $1 Billion and I Will Kill Environmental Regulations

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2024 //
27

The Washington Post reported on a meeting at Mar-a-Lago where Trump made an extraordinary offer to leaders of the oil and gas industry: you put up $1 billion for my campaign and I will roll back all Biden’s regulations that restrict drilling.

He promised to reverse all Biden’s efforts to promote clean energy and fight climate change. He said he would open the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic to drilling. Whatever Biden has done to preserve the environment, Trump promised to void.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.


Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.


Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles…

Categories Biden, Corruption, Environment, Ethics, Trump
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