Tom Ultican: The Profit Behind the “Science of Reading” Movement

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2024 //
20

Tom Ultican, retired teacher in California, smells a scam in the making. The science behind “the Science of Reading” movement is not very scientific, he writes. Publishers and vendors are preparing to cash in on legislative mandates that force reading teachers to use only one method to teach reading despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy. Ultican zeroes in on the role of billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs as one of the key players in promoting SofR.

He writes:

Laurene Powell Jobs controls Amplify, a kids-at-screens education enterprise. In 2011, she became one of the wealthiest women in the world when her husband, Steve, died. This former Silicon Valley housewife displays the arrogance of wealth, infecting all billionaires. She is now a “philanthropist”, in pursuit of both her concerns and biases. Her care for the environment and climate change are admiral but her anti-public school thinking is a threat to America. Her company, Amplify, sells the antithesis of good education.

I am on Amplify’s mailing list. April third’s new message said,

“What if I told you there’s a way for 95% of your students to read at or near grade level? Maybe you’ve heard the term Science of Reading before, and have wondered what it is and why it matters.”

Spokesperson, Susan Lambert, goes on to disingenuously explain how the Science of Reading (SoR) “refers to the abundance of research illustrating the best way students learn to read.”

This whopper is followed by a bigger one, stating:

“A shift to a Science of Reading-based curriculum can help give every teacher and student what they need and guarantee literacy success in your school. Tennessee school districts did just that and they are seeing an abundant amount of success from their efforts.”

A shift to SoR-based curriculum is as likely to cause harm as it is to bring literacy success. This was just a used-car salesman style claim. On the other hand, the “abundance of success” in Tennessee is an unadulterated lie. National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tracks testing over time and is respected for education testing integrity. Tennessee’s NAEP data shows no success “from their efforts.” Their reading scores since 2013 have been down, not a lot but do not demonstrate an “abundance of success”.

NAEP Data Plot 2005 to 2022

Amplify’s Genesis

Larry Berger and Greg Dunn founded Wireless Generation in 2000 to create the software for lessons presented on screens. Ten years later, they sold it to Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation for $360 million. Berger pocketed $40 million and agreed to stay on as head of curriculum. Wireless Generation was rebranded Amplify and Joel Klein was hired to run it.

Murdoch proposed buying a million I-pads to deliver classroom instruction. However, the Apple operating system was not flexible enough to run the software. The android system developed at Google met their needs. They purchased the Taiwanese-made Asus Tablets, well regarded in the market place but not designed for the rigors of school use. Another issue was that Wireless Generation had not developed curriculum but Murdoch wanted to beat Pearson and Houghton Mifflin to the digital education market place … so they forged ahead.

In 2012, the corporate plan was rolling along until the wheels came off. In Guilford County, North Carolina, the school district won a Race to the Top grant of $30 million dollars which it used to experiment with digital learning. The district’s plancalled for nearly 17,000 students in 20 middle schools to receive Amplify tablets. When a charger for one of the tablets overheated, the plan was halted. Only two months into the experiment, they found not only had a charger malfunctioned but another 175 chargers had issues and 1500 screens were kid-damaged.

This was the beginning of the end.

By August of 2015, News Corporation announced it was exiting the education business. The corporation took a $371 million dollar write-off. The next month, they announced selling Amplify to members of its staff. In the deal orchestrated by Joel Klein, who remained a board member, Larry Berger assumed leadership of the company.

Three months later, Reuters reported that the real buyer was Laurene Powell Jobs. She purchased Amplify through her LLC, the Emerson Collective. In typical Powell Jobs style, no information was available for how much of the company she would personally control.

Because Emerson Collective is an LLC, it can purchase private companies and is not required to make money details public. However, the Waverley Street Foundation, also known as the Emerson Collective Foundation, is a 501 C3 (EIN: 81-3242506) that must make money transactions public. Waverly Street received their tax exempt status November 9, 2016.

SoR A Sales Scam

The Amplify email gave me a link to two documents that were supposed to explain SoR: (Navigating the shift to evidence-based literacy instruction 6 takeaways from Amplify’s Science of Reading: The Symposium) and (Change Management Playbook Navigating and sustaining change when implementing a Science of Reading curriculum). Let’s call them Symposium and Navigating.

Navigating tells readers that it helps teachers move away from ineffective legacy practices and start making shifts to evidence-based practices. The claim that “legacy practices” are “ineffective” is not evidence-based. The other assertion that SoR is evidence-based has no peer-reviewed research backing it.

Sally Riordan is a Senior Research Fellow at the University College London. In Britain, they have many of the same issues with reading instruction. In her recent research, she noted:

“In 2023, however, researchers at the University of Warwick pointed out something that should have been obvious for some time but has been very much overlooked – that following the evidence is not resulting in the progress we might expect.

“A series of randomised controlled trials, including one looking at how to improve literacy through evidence, have suggested that schools that use methods based on research are not performing better than schools that do not.”

In Symposium, we see quotes from Kareem Weaver who co-founded Fulcrum in Oakland, California and is its executive director. Weaver also was managing director of the New School Venture Fund, where Powell Jobs served on the board. He works for mostly white billionaires to the detriment of his community. (Page 15)

Both Symposium and Navigating have the same quote, “Our friends at the Reading League say that instruction based on the Science of Reading ‘will elevate and transform every community, every nation, through the power of literacy.”’

Who is the Reading League and where did they come from?

Dr. Maria Murray is the founder and CEO of The Reading League. It seems to have been hatched at the University of Syracuse and State University of New York at Oswego by Murray and Professor Jorene Finn in 2017. That year, they took in $11,044 in contributions (EIN: 81-0820021) and in 2018, another $109,652. Then in 2019, their revenues jumped 20 times to $2,240,707!

Jorene Finn worked for Cambria Learning Group and was a LETRS facilitator at Lexia. That means the group had serious connections to the corporate SoR initiative before they began.

With Amplify’s multiple citations of The Reading League, I speculated that the source of that big money in 2019 might have been Powell Jobs. Her Waverly Street Foundation (AKA Emerson Collective Foundation) only shows one large donation of $95,000,000 in 2019. It went to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (EIN: 20-5205488), a donor-directed dark money fund.

There is no way of following that $95 million.

The Reading League Brain Scan Proving What?

Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University noted the League’s over-reliance on brain scans and shared:

“Many researchers in neurobiology (e.g., Elliott et al., 2020; Hickok, 2014; Lyon, 2017) have voiced alarming concerns about the validity and preciseness of brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect reliable biomarkers in processes such as reading and in the diagnosis of other mental activity….

“And Mark Seidenberg, a key neuroscientist cited by the “science of reading” movement, offers a serious wcaution about the value of brain research: “Our concern is that although reading science is highly relevant to learning in the classroom setting, it does not yet speak to what to teach, when, how, and for whom at a level that is useful for teachers.”

“Beware The Reading League because it is an advocacy movement that is too often little more than cherry-picking, oversimplification, and a thin veneer for commercial interests in the teaching of reading.”

The push to implement SoR is a new way to sell what Amplify originally called “personalized learning.”This corporate movement conned legislators, many are co-conspirators, into passing laws forcing schools and teachers to use the SoR-related programs, equipment and testing.

SoR is about economic gain for its purveyors and not science based.

When politicians and corporations control education, children and America lose.

To read an earlier post by Tom Ultican on this topic, see this.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Klein, Joel, Literacy, Online Learning, Research, Technology

Steve Ruis: Why I’m Starting to Hate All Religions

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2024 //
137

Steve Ruis writes a blog called “Uncommon Sense.” In one of his recent posts, he explains why he is starting to hate religion, all religions. I think he is on to something. I was born Jewish. My children are Jewish, as are my grandchildren. But I am non-practicing. I am secular. I am sick of religious hatred, as Steve is. Yet I know that there seems to be something in human nature that causes people to hate others. I remember many years ago reading a book called “Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change” by political scientist Harold R. Isaac. Isaac wrote about “the psychology of minor differences.” He gave example after example of groups that fought each other to the death, because “the other” was different. It might be religious or racial or ethnic or something else. One young person must kill another, drop bombs, for reasons long forgotten. Because.

Ruis writes:

I don’t want to hate anything . . . but . . .  I was recently watching a rather nice three-part BBC documentary on Persia and Iran. In college I took a course in ancient near eastern history but I only learned a smidgeon about Persia, so this was an opportunity to fill in the gaps in my understanding of history. Persia, one the first major empires, became over time a doormat for invaders, many, many invaders.

About 500 years ago an Islamic general decided to conquer Persia and made war and accomplished that goal. He was not conquering Persia to convert that country to Islam. Persia had been conquered by Arab invaders centuries before who had converted the entire country to Islam, essentially relegating Persia’s native religion, Zoroastrianism, to the dustbins of history. (As religions go, Zoroastrianism, to my tastes, was a superior religion, but . . . it still conferred the “divine rights of kings” onto their rulers, etc. There are an estimated 110,000–120,000 Zoroastrians left in the world from the millions previously.)

Back to the invasion of 500 years ago. The general, who made himself King of Persia, wasn’t converting the country to Islam, he was converting it from Sunni Islam to Shia Islam. For this many, many people died, economies were disrupted, buildings destroyed, etc. Then the people were forcefully converted from Sunni Islam to Shia Islam. Yes, that Islam, the religion of peace, whose holy book clearly states that no one is to come to Islam by force.

Never judge a religion based upon what they say, always look to what they do. Religions represent a terrible cost to human beings. Instead of focusing on things that make people’s lives better, wars are fought over imaginary differences. Religions make people stupid.

Obviously this is not the only case I base my conclusion upon. Currently Palestinians and Israelis are fighting a religious war. And the “Troubles” in Ireland are not that far in the past, the Nazi efforts to exterminate Jews and Gypsies, and then, the Croats and Serbs went at it . . . and then . . . there are myriad examples of religion being at the heart of wars and human misery.

The current actions of Christian nationalists here in the USA are part of the same picture.

Yes, I am an a-theist, and now I am an anti-religionist. If you are requesting special privileges because of your religion, I am against it. If you do not want your churches to pay taxes, I am against you.

A pox on all religions and their imaginary solaces and real damage they offer. If you are one who wants to convert the USA into a “Christian Nation,” fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You are just paving the way for turning us into an Islamic nation.

Categories Bigotry, Evil, Extremism, Religion

Florida: DeSantis Signs Bill to Limit Book Bans and Adds a Sugarplum for Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2024 //
5

Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill limiting the ability of non-parents to initiate book bans. That’s a step forward since any crank was free to challenge any book under previous law. But, the same law made it easier to close public schools and hand them over to the charter industry.

TALLAHASSEE — After more than 1,200 objections were filed to library books and other materials last school year, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a bill to limit challenges by nonparents or guardians.

The wide-ranging bill (HB 1285) also includes changes designed to ease the process of charter schools taking over operations at traditional public schools that are failing.

The part of the measure dealing with book challenges came after the Republican-controlled Legislature and DeSantis approved measures that ramped up scrutiny of library books and classroom materials, leading to highly publicized disputes.

More than half of the 1,218 book objections during the 2022-2023 school year occurred in two counties, Clay and Escambia, according to a Senate staff analysis. The objections resulted in the removal of 186 books in the two counties.

The bill will require that any “resident of the county who is not the parent or guardian of a student with access to school district materials may not object to more than one material per month.”

During an event Monday, DeSantis said that some people who filed mass objections to books made a “mockery” of the process.

“The idea that someone can use the parents’ rights and the curriculum transparency to start objecting to every single book, to try to make a mockery of this, is wrong. And you had examples where books were put under review that are just normal books that have been in education for many, many years,” DeSantis said.

Meanwhile, parts of the bill related to underperforming public schools would “add some oomph” to the state’s process of allowing charter schools to take over operations, DeSantis said.

Under state law, if a school receives consecutive D or F grades based on various performance criteria, the school is given two years to improve to a C under what’s known as a “turnaround plan.” If the school’s grade doesn’t make such an improvement, one option is for the school to close and reopen as a charter school.

The bill signed Tuesday will speed up converting traditional public schools to charter schools under such circumstances, by giving districts a deadline to execute charter contracts. For schools reopening as charters, districts would have to execute contracts by Oct. 1 of the following school year, and charter organizations would assume “full operational control” by July.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, DeSantis, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Freedom to Read

Thom Hartmann: Will Democracy Survive?

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2024 //
34

Thom Hartmann reports on the growing numbers of nations that have rejected democracy and accepted authoritarian rule. The Republican Party, he notes, has pledged its loyalty to an authoritarian leader, accepted his lies about the 2020 elections, and is abandoning Ukraine to please him. Shockingly, very few elected Republicans have stood up to Trump; the few that did are no longer in office.

He writes:

Democracy is in trouble, and the Russian/Ukrainian conflict highlights how imperiled it is becoming in the 21st century. The real issue in Ukraine isn’t just land, any more than the real issue in the US is abortion: that’s all the activity on the surface. 

What’s grinding away below the surface, however, is the erosion or outright destruction of democracy itself, whether by invasion from without or corruption from within.

Ukraine and Taiwan represent possible tipping points for democracy internationally, while Republicans passing laws that allow politicians to ignore the results of elections — and Republicans in the US House have refused to stand up for a fellow democracy for 16 months now — could be a tipping point here.

Around the world, and in America today, there are nations and politicians who do believe that democracy — governance via the will of the majority, carried out by elected representatives — is the best form of government for a republic. 

At the same time, however, there are many who give lip service to democracy to accomplish their political ends but, in reality, believe that authoritarianism and oligarchy are better ways to rule a nation and keep peace around the world.

And that movement toward authoritarianism and away from democracy is growing.

Freedom House reported in 2021 that:

“[T]he share of countries designated Not Free has reached its highest level since the deterioration of democracy began in 2006, and countries with declines in political rights and civil liberties outnumbered those with gains by the largest margin recorded during the 15-year period. The report downgraded the freedom scores of 73 countries, representing 75 percent of the global population.”

One of those countries they identified as a place where democracy itself is under assault is the USA, where virtually the entire Republican Party has rejected supporting democracy at home and supporting democratic governments abroad. 

While this may seem like it’s just a conflict between Russia and the US/Europe, what’s really at stake here is a much, much larger issue.  

The real question at the core of the Ukraine conflict, as well as the geopolitical and domestic political positions taken by Fox “News” and many in the GOP, is simple and straightforward: 

“What’s the best way for humans to govern themselves?”

The real issue in the Russia-Ukraine and the China-Taiwan (among others) conflicts is that core question of what form of government is best.  

Both Ukraine and Taiwan are asserting that democracy is the best way for humans to govern themselves; Russia and China (and about half the other countries of the world) believe they know better — and that history is on their side.

Who’s right?

Is democracy viable and natural, the “best” form of human governance, or is it a weak attempt to accomplish do-gooder goals that simply aren’t realistic or, even worse, are violations of natural law and/or human nature? 

Strongman authoritarian regimes, theocracies, and dynastic empires run by ruling families or landowning cliques have been the “norm” for most of the last 7000 years of “modern” human history. 

Is that proof, as many on the hard right argue, that the “experiment” of democracy is unnatural and therefore doomed to failure?  Should we let Trump overthrow democracy and establish authoritarian rule here in the US? Has the “American experiment” run its course?…

Virtually the entire Republican Party is now committed to authoritarianism instead of democracy.  Not even one single Republican senator was willing to vote to guarantee free and fair elections when the We, the People legislation was before Congress, and the party is using Trump’s “stolen election” lie to undermine and ultimately end democracy at the state level. 

Right now they are embracing Vladimir Putin instead of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of our Democratic ally. The Putin Caucus in the House is willing to overturn Mike Johnson‘s speakership in service of Putin.

The few former Republican holdouts, like Kinzinger and Cheney, are the exceptions that prove this rule: the GOP is no longer a political party that holds what most of the world has always thought to be “American values.”  

They’ve joined the side of Russia and China in this debate, openly asserting that political power should flow from the top down; in our country’s case, they’ve embraced a ruling class of morbidly rich American oligarchs.

A “hot” war across greater Europe may be on the way if Ukraine falls, perhaps followed by China seizing Taiwan once the precedent of “reclaiming former territories” has been set.  

This debate about how humans should govern themselves is the real battle of our time, both metaphorically and literally, both internationally and right here at home. 

It’s being fought across social media, battled in the billions spent on elections, and even in state and local governments across the US as authoritarian politicians work to keep minorities, young people, women, and LGBTQ+ people “in their place” and away from the voting booth.

No matter how the crisis in Ukraine works out, the underlying dispute will remain: should humans govern themselves democratically from the ground up, or with oligarchy from the top down? 

The future of democracy is hanging in the balance, not just in Ukraine and Taiwan but here in the US, as well.

Please open the link to read this article in full.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Trump

Georgia: 50CAN Targets Atlanta’s Public Schools for Privatization

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2024 //
16

Ed Johnson is a systems thinker and consultant in Atlanta. He cares passionately about the public schools of his city and keeps watch over the actions of the Atlanta Public School Board. Johnson is an adherent of the work of W. Edwards Deming; he believes in thinking of about how to change systems, not in quick fixes or the panacea of the day. In this letter to the Atlanta Public School Board, he takes them to task for their commitment to 50CAN, a school privatization group that was started in Connecticut as ConnCAN and funded largely by the Sackler family.

Ed Johnson writes:

“Join GeorgiaCAN for an informative session on the vision of Atlanta Public Schools!  Gain insights from APS Board member [Dr.] Ken Zeff as he shares his perspective and engages in a parent discussion regarding APS’s vision.  Let’s unite as a community to ensure that our children and the APS community have the resources and support necessary to pave the way for a brighter future.”

—GeorgiaCAN

 We now know GeorgiaCAN is a state-level affiliate of 50CAN, do we not?

 We now know 50CAN stands for 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now, do we not?

 We now know GeorgiaCAN, as a 50CAN affiliate, pushes destroying public education and public schools with school choice, charter schools, and vouchers, do we not?

 We now know, in December 2019, we had AJC parroting and giving prominent voice to GeorgiaCAN spouting free market school choice ideology, do we not?

 We now know, in August 2023, we had Atlanta school board members Katie Howard, District 1, and Erika Mitchell, District 5 and current school board chair, involved with GeorgiaCAN, do we not?

 And we now know, in September 2023, we had The King Center giving the 50CAN CEO a platform for some inscrutable reason, do we not?

 So, let’s consider Ken Zeff in the way The King Center was considered last September:

 50CAN evolved from ConnCAN (Connecticut CAN).  ConnCAN was funded pretty much wholly by Sackler Family fortunes earned as ill-gotten profits from over-prescribed sales of Oxycontin by the family’s Purdue Pharma.  Because of such greed for profits, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and worldwide have died, and continue to die, from opioid addiction.

 As with similar other organizations and their local operatives—for example, The City Fund and its local operatives, Ed Chang leading reformED Atlanta—it is fairly well-known that 50CAN and its state-level operatives aim to dismantle hence destroy public education as the common good that is foundational to sustaining democracy, so as to transform destroyed public schools into privatized and commodified schools composing competitive education marketplaces.  Think Milton Friedman and the “invisible hand of the market.”

 It is also fairly well-known that 50CAN, like similar other organizations, has advanced its aim to destroy public education by expressly targeting and catalyzing Black communities to demand school choice and charter schools that will magically deliver “achievement now.”

 In effect, 50CAN and such others “politrick” Black communities into facilitating their own destruction and that of their own children.  Again, while “It takes a village to raise a child,” it also takes a village to destroy a child.

 The usual assumption is that charter schools transformed from destroyed public schools are inherently better than “failing public schools.”  This is a lie, plain and simple.  It is impossible for charter schools to be inherently better or worse than “failing public schools.”  Because entropy is a fact of life, our public schools need improvement, have always needed improvement, and always will need improvement.  Reality offers charter schools no grace from the entropy fact of life.

 To assert that charter schools are inherently better than “failing public schools” is like asserting members of a certain group of human beings are inherently superior to members of other groups of human beings, based solely on expressions of variation in some few arbitrarily-chosen human physical features said to signify “race,” which is another lie.

 Charter schools do, however, appeal to certain retributive justice, behaviorally emulative, and selfish consumerist mindsets for which improvement-thinking has always been meaningless, at worst, and theoretical, at best.  50CAN knows this, and so uses it to catalyze Black communities to demand “achievement now.”  “Instant pudding,” the late, great systems thinker W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) might say.

 Consequently, “Our children can’t wait!” has been a decades-long handy refrain that has always begged easy, quick, learningless change but never improvement with knowledge, which requires learning and unlearning.

 Unfortunately, systems thinking teaches through a nonviolence lens that the more often easy, quick, learningless change happens, the less improvement becomes possible; then, the less improvement becomes possible, the less sustainable democracy becomes; then, the less sustainable democracy becomes, the more societal dysfunctions develop and emerge, after a time, in Black communities and elsewhere; then, the more societal dysfunctions show up, the more the refrain, “Our children can’t wait!”

 It is all a destructively vicious, self-reinforcing feedback loop that 50CAN and similar other destroyers of public education are happy to catalyze in Black communities, in particular, and to support its playing out, if only continually, but continuously, ideally.

 With systems thinking, it really is not hard to understand why some out-of-control-for-the-worse aspects of violent crime in City of Atlanta involving ever more “Black” teenaged children and younger other persons in Black communities has become such a challenge.

 Currently, Atlanta’s culture predictably produces a homicide every 2.3 +/- 4.0 days, while predictably producing an aggravated assault every 3.7 +/- 10.7 hours.

 These are realities Atlanta Police Department data reveal when viewed through a Deming kind of systems thinking lens instead of through a financial accounting-style lens that invariably creates an incomplete or false narrative that the media and others then report as fact.

 Although some are quite capable to look below the performative surface, or show stage, of the proverbial iceberg and down into its greater depths to see and know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a profound systems thinker, systems thinking seems generally absent in Black culture; certainly, children labeled “Black” seem never to learn about this deeper and critically important aspect of Dr. King.

 All too often the children learn to conserve racism and so-called white supremacy rather than learn to help humanity relieve itself of these scourges.  The children learn and internalize racial categorization, the false narrative at the heart of racial violence.  It seems the children never learn to internalize an understanding of human variation, the truth at the heart of nonracial nonviolence.

 It is quite puzzling that some fight and rail against racism, all the while conserving it and the “race” lie racism needs in order to exist, in truth.

 Therefore, a question for The King Center must be, why is The King Center giving a platform to 50CAN?

 50CAN and GeorgiaCAN, private organizations known to be about making “Beloved Community” a virtual impossibility, in all respects.

 Given this, we now know Dr. Ken Zeff lied when he swore, in taking the Oath of Office the Charter of the Atlanta Independent School System requires, “I will be governed by the public good and the interests of said school system,” do we not?

 Being involved with GeorgiaCAN necessarily and unavoidably means Dr. Ken Zeff exercises, well, the “choice” to be governed by a private goodand the interests of GeorgiaCAN, hence 50CAN.

 In a discussion during this month’s regularly scheduled school board meeting, Dr. Ken Zeff voluntarily professed quite enthusiastically to being a school choice proponent.

 Well, he was at least honest about it—something we might appreciate, when some other Atlanta Board of Education members have shown they are not so honest about their being in the school choice camp.

 

Ed Johnson

Advocate for Quality in Public Education

Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

Categories Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Georgia, Privatization

Jon Stewart: A Very Funny Episode!

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2024 //
45

Please watch this episode of “The Daily Show,” which aired on April 15.

Jon Stewart is in rare form!

Trump’s description of the Battle of Gettysburg is a classic. Don’t miss it.

Categories Elections, History, Pennsylvania, Trump

North Carolina Pays for Vouchers for the Rich

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2024 //
2

Public Schools First in North Carolina finds it strange that the legislature can’t find the money to raise teachers’ salaries but easily finds money to fund vouchers for the rich.

Its latest notice says:

This week House majority leader Tim Moore announced that a legislative short session priority would be to increase funding for vouchers for the coming year by around $300 million to ensure that the state could fund vouchers for all families who applied. More than half of the applications came from families with incomes too high to have been eligible last year. Our March 9 newsletterdescribed the applicant pool breakdown and pointed out that increased demand this year was likely due to the state spending $1,000,000 to market the program and droves of existing high-income private school families seeking a taxpayer-funded discount coupon for their tuition bill.

From 2018-19 through 2022-23, the percentage of new applicants who actually accepted vouchers ranged from 44% to 51%. If historical patterns hold, the current voucher budget would more than pay for Tier 1 and Tier 2 families, cover the cost for returning voucher recipients (typically 80%) and be left with $50 million extra. In other words, more voucher funding is only needed to pay for vouchers for the upper-income families.

To put Moore’s priorities in sharp relief, his announcement came one week after the State Board of Education heard from DPI staff that last year’s teacher attrition rate was higher than it had been in decades. It hit 11.5%, which represents a whopping increase of 42% over last year’s attrition numbers.

The attrition rates were driven by especially high attrition for teachers with fewer than five or more than 26 years of experience. The highest rate, 26%, was the same for first-year teachers and veteran teachers with 35+ years of experience.

When asked about teacher salaries, Moore did say he thinks there may be room in the budget for teacher raises, and that the short session would address the looming crisis in early childhood care funding.

But North Carolina has some serious catching up to do when it comes to bringing teacher salaries to a level where they will attract and retain teachers. North Carolina lags behind all surrounding states in state-funded salaries. Our beginning teachers start out lower and our veteran teachers remain at the bottom. (See our fact sheetfor links to salary schedules.)

In 2023-24, North Carolina’s state minimum beginning teacher salary was $39,000. While it is scheduled to increase to $41,000 in 2024-25, it will still lag behind the beginning salary in neighboring states. And young people looking at teaching as a possible profession will be put off by the relatively poor earnings trajectory.

Strong support for bolstering salaries also came from North Carolina’s Fiscal Research Division’s recent analysis of state-funded salaries that found only deputy clerks of court had lower starting salaries than teachers. After the 7th year, deputy clerks made more. Only state highway patrol officers had lower maximum salaries than teachers. 

Many local communities are working to make up for state neglect by offering teacher salary supplements, but this remedy simply exacerbates existing inequities. In 2023-24 teacher salary supplements ranged from $10,650 in Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District to $0 in Caswell County, Graham County, and Weldon City Schools.

Teacher salary increases barely scratch the surface of what the NCGA could do to improve conditions for public school educators, students, families, and communities. Funding for instructional assistants, school psychologists, counselors, nurses, and social workers is desperately needed. The looming child care crisiswill require fast action to prevent child care centers across the state from closing.

According to Moore, North Carolina has ample funds in reserve to pay the private school tuition vouchers for wealthy families. Perhaps those tax dollars should be redirected toward programs that serve the taxpaying public at large. 

Categories Cruelty, Education Industry, North Carolina, Teacher Pay, Vouchers

Jonathan V. Last: Why Is a Good Economy Bad for Biden? Media Muddle.

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2024 //
16

Jonathan V. Last writes for The Bulwark, an excellent Never Trumper site. He noticed a curious phenomenon. Whenever there’s good economic news, the mainstream media worries that good economics news is bad news for Biden? What?

He writes:

We’ve reached the ne plus ultra of Here Is Some Good News and Also Why It’s Bad for Biden headline writing. I present to you an April 13 story in the Washington Post by Abha Bhattarai and Tyler Pager. (Don’t click the link yet.)

The piece is about the current economic indicators we’re seeing in the March reports: Job growth, wage growth, consumer spending—all headed in the right direction. The economy is, the piece declares, “booming.”

Now, are you ready for the two headlines the Post gave the piece?

Before I make your head explode, this is the part where I say that you should join Bulwark+ because we don’t do happy talk, but we also don’t pull the type of nonsense where we say “Puppies were spotted at the White House, here’s why that’s bad for Biden.” 

If we want a better media, we have to build it. That’s what we’re doing here and we’d love it if you joined us.

Okay, so back to the Post.

Here’s Headline #1:

And here’s Headline #2:

Here is a real sentence written by a real person at the Washington Post: “The economy’s unfettered strength is becoming more of a political liability for the White House.”

Are you forking kidding me?

We are deep into heads-I-win, tails-you-lose territory. Would it also be a political liability for the White House if, I dunno, we were experiencing deflation and the economy was shrinking? If unemployment was rising? If wage growth was stagnant?

Pray tell, describe the economic conditions which augur political benefits for the Joseph Robinette Biden?

My two complaints:

(1) The piece is wrong on the merits: We have seen a small—but measurable—increase in Biden’s poll numbers over the last month. He is not being harmed by the economy. Or at least, his political prospects are improving, so if the economy is causing him harm, that debit is being overbalanced by something else that’s working in his favor.

(2) The Post isn’t providing analysis, it’s manufacturing a rationalization. As I’ve written before, if you came down from Mars and looked at all of the economic data and had to guess who was winning the election right now, you’d think Biden was on track for a landslide. The fact that he isn’t indicates that something interesting is going on. Instead of investigating that interesting thing, the Post is trying to pretend that everything is normal. Which is what causes them to say, Uhhh, Biden’s not doing so hot. And the economy is great. So . . . here’s why having a great economy is bad for Biden!

1. Oh, who am I kidding: The videotape wouldn’t hurt Trump at all. Sigh.

Categories Biden, Economy, Elections, Media

Arizona: Republican Legislators Refuse to Consider Repealing 1864 Abortion Ban

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2024 //
2

Republican leaders, including Trump and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, were appalled when Arizona’s Supreme Court overturned the state’s 15-week abortion and upheld an 1864 abortion ban.

Democrats wanted to introduce a bill to repeal the 1864 law. But today Republicans refused to consider their motion.

CNN reported:

The Republican-controlled Arizona House of Representatives once again failed to advance a repeal of the state’s 160-year-old abortion banWednesday, days after the state Supreme Court roiled state politics by reviving the law.

The vote is a blow to reproductive rights as well as GOP candidates in competitive races, who have been scrambling to distance themselves from the court’s decision. Republicans facing competitive races in the state, including former President Donald Trump and US Senate candidate Kari Lake, called on the GOP-controlled legislature to work with Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs to take a more moderate path.

On Wednesday, following two attempts to discuss a bill that would repeal Arizona’s 1864 ban on abortions, lawmakers voted not to discuss the measure on the House floor.

The representatives’ votes were evenly split, with the chair making the tie-breaking decision. The bill itself was not brought up for a vote.

“The last thing we should be doing today is rushing a bill through the legislative process to repeal a law that has been enacted and affirmed by the legislature several times,” House Speaker Ben Toma said during debate.

If the 1864 law were repealed, Arizona would revert back to a 15-week abortion restriction signed into law in 2022 by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican. The state court delayed enforcement of the ban for at least 14 days to allow plaintiffs to challenge it, meaning abortions are still allowed in the state.

The ban prohibits the procedure except to save the life of the pregnant person and threatens providers with prison sentences between two and five years.

If the 1864 law goes into effect, Arizona would join 14 states that have passed near total abortion bans, some with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest…

A March Wall Street Journal poll, conducted before the state Supreme Court ruling, found that 59% of registered voters in Arizona believe abortion should be legal in all cases or most cases with some restrictions. Another 27% said they believe abortion should be illegal with exceptions for rape, incest or when the pregnant person’s life is endangered. Nine percent said the procedure should be illegal in all cases.

Categories Arizona, Democrats, Elections, Gender, Health, Republicans

DeSantis Signs Law to Start Teaching About Communism in Kindergarten

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2024 //
60

In Florida, it is never too soon to learn about the dangers of Communism! Governor DeSantis just signed a bill to teach about Communism in schools from K-12.

Some questions:

1) Will students learn about the dangers of Communism or the dangers of dictatorship?

2)Will students learn only about Communism only in Cuba or will they also learn about it in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and elsewhere?

3) Will they learn about the dangers of fascism and study the Nazis and their ideology?

4) Will students learn about dictatorship, whether Communist or fascist, and the ideology and practices they have in common, e.g. censorship of books and public media, suppression of dissent, jailing of dissidents, subservience of the judicial and legal authorities to the dictator, control of what is taught in schools and universities, persecution of ideological enemies, etc.? Assignment of books such as Brave New World, 1984, and Animal Farm. Will students be allowed to study examples of censorship and suppression in our society?

Ryan Dailey writes in The Orlando Sentinel:

Flanked by veterans who served in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a measure that will lead to the history of communism being taught from kindergarten to the 12th grade in public schools.


“We’re going to tell the truth about the evils of communism,” DeSantis said at the bill signing in Hialeah Gardens.


State lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the measure (SB 1264) during the 2024 legislative session that ended last month. Under the bill, lessons on the history of communism will be added to required instruction in public schools starting in the 2026-27 school year.


The lessons would have to be “age appropriate and developmentally appropriate” and incorporate various topics related to communism, its history in the United States, including tactics used by communists.

“Atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism,” also would be required as part of the lessons.


“All of this will be spread across the curriculum K through 12,” said Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. The Department of Education will draw up academic standards for the lessons.


DeSantis signed the bill on the 63rd anniversary of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and was joined at the bill-signing event by people who fought in the invasion in an attempt to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime…

Florida students are already taught about communism in high-school social studies classes and in a seventh-grade civics and government course. A high-school U.S. government class required for graduation also includes 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day.”

Categories Curriculum, DeSantis, Florida
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