NBC Cuts Ties with Ronna McDaniel After Revolt by On-Air Stars

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
23

NBC decided not to hire Ronna McDaniel, former chair, of the Republican National Committee, after an on-air revolt by its biggest stars.

Her loud defense of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were unacceptable to the NBC and MSNBC commentators.

Amid a chorus of on-air protest from some of the network’s biggest stars, NBC announced on Tuesday night that former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel will no longer be joining the network as a paid contributor.


The announcement came in a memo from NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde, who said he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”


Conde also apologized to employees “who felt we let them down” and took “full responsibility” for the hiring…

But the company’s on-air personalities — especially those on NBC’s liberal-leaning cable affiliate MSNBC — disagreed vehemently, saying that McDaniel’s promotion of Donald Trump’s media-bashing and false election-fraud claims disqualified her for a role in their news divisions.

And one by one, they took to the airwaves to deliver that message to their bosses in front of their live audiences Monday.


“Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call,” MSNBC’s top-rated star Rachel Maddow said on her show that night. “It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong.”

Categories Accountability, Elections, Media, Trump

Dan Rather: What Was NBC Thinking When It Hired Trump Apologist Ronna McDaniel?

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
21

The commentators at NBC and MSNBC are furious that NBC top brass hired Ronna Romney McDaniel as a paid commentator for the network. Presumably, the executives thought it would broaden their audience to bring on someone who had led the Republican National Committee for the past eight years.

They now face an internal rebellion. As Dan Rather explains on his blog Steady, prominent newscasters at NBC were apoplectic. The commentators at MSNBC—where Trump is despised—were assured that they did not have to invite her onto their programs.

Last night, I watched MSNBC, and every commentator lashed out against the hire. Joy Reid, Jen Psaki, Rachel Maddow, and Laurence O’Donnell expressed their outrage. They did not care that she was a Republican. They did not care that she was a conservative. They cared that she was an election denier and a liar. She did whatever Trump wanted, and he booted her anyway. She was actively involved in the fake electors scheme in Michigan. She even dropped her middle name (Romney) to please Trump. She lacks integrity. She insulted the media, as Trump did. As Jen Psaki said, she is not honest.

Dan Rather shared their views:

Journalism Lesson #1 for 2024:

The mainstream media should not normalize Donald Trump’s behavior, nor should they give a platform to his lies or those of his sycophants, who for years have spread disastrous untruths that may have irreparably damaged our nation.

But in one fell swoop, NBC News has managed to do both. By hiring former Republican National Committee chief Ronna McDaniel, NBC has given credence and legitimacy to a Republican who has been in lockstep with the lies, helping spread plenty of the former president’s falsehoods. Allowing McDaniel to be in the same area code as NBC News is a huge mistake and will only further shred the small amount of trust Americans still have in the mainstream media. I don’t blame journalists at NBC. They have long been some of the finest in the business. But one wonders what the hell executives at the network were thinking.

Before she sold her soul, Ronna McDaniel was considered Republican royalty. She’s the granddaughter of George Romney, former GOP governor of Michigan, and niece of Senator Mitt Romney, former Republican presidential nominee and former governor of Massachusetts. She has been the chair of the RNC since the day Donald Trump took office in 2017. And she has been loyal to him at all costs, especially the truth.

During her tenure, she was a prolific fundraiser yet oversaw the net losses of Republican governorships and congressional seats. But her biggest claim to fame during her seven years on the job is that she was a Trump supporter, loyalist, and apologist above all else.

One could argue that this is the role of the head of a political party: to support the highest-ranking member of said party. Yes, that is typically true. But McDaniel spent years repeating Trump’s disinformation, making cases for his lies and paying his legal bills. Here are just a few of her misdeeds:

  • Told CNN’s Chris Wallace of Joe Biden’s election win, “I don’t think he won it fair.”
  • Characterized the January 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.”
  • Orchestrated the censure of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican January 6 Committee members.
  • Encouraged Michigan canvassers not to certify the 2020 election results, promising them lawyers.
  • Took part in Trump’s scheme to assemble fake electors.
  • Refused to condemn QAnon to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.
  • Mocked Senator John Fetterman and President Biden for speech impediments.
  • Warned that those Republicans who didn’t embrace Trump’s policies “will be making a mistake.”

McDaniel made her NBC News debut on this Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” At the top of the broadcast, host Kristen Welker disclosed McDaniel’s new role. She said, “This interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor. This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.”

During the interview, McDaniel defended her time as chair with what may be the quote of the year. “When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team. Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right?”

No, Ms. McDaniel, you don’t get to have it both ways. The truth does not change depending on who signs your paycheck. Whom are we supposed to believe, your RNC or NBC self?

McDaniel walked back some of her more outrageous statements, sort of. As of yesterday, she now admits that Joe Biden won the election “fair and square.” However, she continued to insist there were issues with the election. When pushed, she mentioned the huge increase in mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and suggested voter fraud. Reminder: No significant fraud of any kind was found in any state in the 2020 election.

In defending their hire, NBC News’s Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of politics, said, “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.”

Many on the NBC team vehemently disagreed. “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but, if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons,” Joe Scarborough, the “Morning Joe” co-host, said at the top of the broadcast Monday. Mika Brzezinski added, “We hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor.”

Chuck Todd, NBC’s chief political analyst, could barely contain his anger and disbelief on “Meet the Press.”. “She [McDaniel] wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for it. So she has — she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?”

He continued, “There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News who are uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination.”

Now we come to the why. Why would NBC News hire someone as controversial as Ronna McDaniel? 

News gathering is a business, as unfortunate as that is. As a business, it needs to make money. In television news, more viewers equals more money. So news organizations feel they need to appeal to the broadest spectrum of viewers possible. We will exempt Fox, which calls itself a news organization but is more of a propaganda outfit for the GOP.  

The mainstream middle is a much more crowded field that is bombarded by accusations of bias and liberalism. So they feel the need to show their Republican bona fides by hiring conservative voices.

But that is the crux of the problem. Which Republicans? Trump loyalists who are election deniers and January 6 apologists? Never-Trumpers who are as likely to appeal to many Republican viewers as progressives? How do they represent the political right without alienating their loyal viewers and their correspondents? These are the new political realities ushered in by Donald Trump. And another reason independent journalism is essential right now, essential to provide unvarnished coverage in one of the most important elections in American history and to hold the mainstream media accountable.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Character, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Lies, Media, Republicans, Trump

Houston: Mike Miles Takes a Break from Firing Principals

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
12

Since the state put Mike Mikes (ex-military, Broadie, briefly Superintendent of Dallas ISD) in charge of the Houston Independent School District, Miles has cemented his reputation as a leader who issues orders and doesn’t listen to critics. It’s his way or Mr get out. Many teachers and principals have left rather than comply with his scripted curriculum and mandates.

But, says the Houston Chronicle editorial board, he actually listened and put on hold his intention to fire dozens of principals, including some from Houston’s best schools. It’s worth pausing to remember that the state took control of the entire district because one high school (disproportionately enrolling students with disabilities, ELLs, and high needs) posted low test scores for several consecutive years. Rather than focus on helping that school, the state placed the entire district under the thumb of an autocrat and know-it-all.

Miles is testing out the proposition that the way to “fix” education is by standardization, mandates, data, rigid worship of test scores, and one-man control.

The editorial says:

Late this week, the state-appointed superintendent of Houston ISD did something many thought impossible: he listened.

It took several protests, community outcry and some three hours of overwhelmingly negative public comment during Thursday’s school board meeting, but Mike Miles seems to have heard the message.

The uproar began with the leaked release of a list of 117 principals the district said weren’t performing well enough yet to secure their spot for next year. Several of the principals at top-rated schools were on the list. Parents and students from those campuses showed up in force. Early Friday morning, with the meeting still plodding along, Miles announced that he and the board of managers changed course and said they wouldn’t make any adverse employment decisions this year based off of these proficiency screenings, which broadly measure student achievement with a variety of test data, quality of instruction gathered during spot observations and professionalism judged by a rubric that includes how well principals reinforce “district culture and philosophy.” But, he made clear, he would still use the more comprehensive principal evaluation system approved last fall to make those decisions at the end of the school year.

Miles told us the next day he’d already gotten some emails from anxious community members “saying thank you” for the decision late last week.

“I’m proud of the board who worked so hard to listen,” Miles added.

We’re glad to see Miles pay attention to optics for once. No matter how good his intentions, his reforms won’t succeed long-term without community buy-in. That said, we’re struggling to see how Miles changed his overarching approach on principal evaluations.

Miles never planned to can those 117 principals — in fact, he expected the overwhelming majority of them would return — based on the proficiency screenings but the handful who were already deemed unsatisfactory don’t seem to suddenly be in a different position as best we can tell. Miles insisted those few failing principals not getting asked back didn’t just fail the proficiency screening and that the decision to let them go was based on other input.

“We were looking at all the data for them,” he told us.

And the principals who were told they need to improve, aren’t really in a different position either.

In practice, then, very little seems to have changed for the campus leaders who will still be judged on some of the same metrics, including spot reviews by the district’s so-called independent review teams. Instead, he said the decision was meant to allay some community confusion and ease some anxiety about principal turnover, something he’d been trying to combat since the leaked list was published by the Chronicle ahead of spring break on March 8.

“People have made it a bigger deal than it is,” Miles insisted when he met with the editorial board Wednesday ahead of the school board meeting. “You keep your job if you’re an effective principal,” he said, adding that he expects the majority, at least 80 percent, of the principals to return next year.

What Miles didn’t seem to grasp until he heard from a whole new set of angry parents — not the “usual suspects” who have protested the state takeover from the outset — was how nonsensical his list appeared.

Some of the schools aren’t just top-ranked in the district but in the country. Carnegie. HSPVA. T.H. Rogers. If people had doubts before about Miles’ priorities and evaluation criteria, the inclusion of these high-achieving campuses heightened them. It’s possible a high-performing school can still have a weak leader, just as it’s possible that a low-performing school can have a great one. But the list begged the question.

“You start to wonder what he is evaluating,” a parent with a student at Carnegie told us outside the State of the District event Thursday. She said the school’s principal, long-time veteran Ramon Moss, is an integral piece of the school’s success. 

“He’ll be the first to tell you that the success of the school is due to the teachers and students and community even though his leadership is a big reason why the community is there,” she said.  

Miles has declined to talk about specific campuses and what landed them on the list. So while this decision might relieve some momentary angst, it doesn’t address the lingering doubts about whether the district’s measures of quality instruction and effectiveness are so narrow they fail to recognize the best educators, a concern that extends well beyond the star campuses.

This principal evaluation chaos is just the latest example of a breakdown of communication and trust.

We don’t disagree with the idea of evaluations or consistent standards across the district. It’s entirely possible that an overall A rating at a campus masks concerning disparities. Or that high-achieving campuses don’t show a ton of growth on standardized tests over the course of a school year.

What concerns us about the entire saga of the principal list is how, whether it’s intentional or not, Miles contributes to fear and uncertainty. He hasn’t effectively communicated his vision to the public or to the people tasked with carrying it out, despite his copious slideshows and sincere efforts to clear up the confusion over principals with follow-up press conferences, statements and even interviews with this board.

Last week, Miles and team showed greater sensitivity to the environment. It’s a good start. But they should make more effort to respond to the substance of the criticisms and not just the volume of them.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Principals, Texas

Colorado: Dark Money Mobilizes to Defeat Charter School Accountability

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
8

It has always been a goal of the billionaires who fund privatization to block accountability and democracy. Eli Broad once memorably said that he prefers to invest in districts under mayoral control so he doesn’t have to deal with the public. The public asks questions and wants to know who is making decisions about their children’s education. So much simpler to have one person to handle problems.

The charter school lobby has persistently fought public oversight and accountability. They are more than willing, even eager, to take public money. But they don’t like public officials asking questions about how the money was spent.

The big battle over public oversight is happening right now in Colorado. All the major right wing groups—the Koch machine, ALEC, Philip Anschutz (producer of “Waiting for Superman”) are there, battling against public schools.

On March 7, three Colorado legislators introduced a charter school accountability bill to establish improved guidelines for authorizing and renewing charter schools by local school districts. The bill would strengthen the authority that elected school boards have regarding their governance of charter schools, and it also provides citizens with expanded information about the operations of charter schools in their districts. 

According to its backers and public education advocacy groups, this is the first major legislation to prescribe more charter school accountability since the first Charter Schools Act was passed in 1993. Current state legislation often limits local control over the charter school approval process, funding requirements, and waivers from state legislation. Given that nearly two-thirds of the state’s 64 counties experienced an “absolute decline in the under-18 population over the last decade,” the charter school accountability bill would empower local school boards to address the overall enrollment needs of the district. While charter schools primarily utilize taxpayer dollars for their funding, many charter schools allow private interests to invest in their growth and development, which can create potential conflicts of interest.

Pro-charter school organizations don’t agree with this legislative effort to increase accountability as they believe this bill would “kill” charter schools. Republicans have been especially vocal in their opposition to this bill, even though the bill promotes increased local control over charter schools. The pro-charter organizations hired over 30 lobbyists to oppose the bill. Lobbying can be expensive, but the organizations opposing the bill have connections to several billionaire-funded foundations. 

The largest lobbying team hired to oppose the bill works for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative organization funded by the Koch network, whose goal is  to “destabilize and abolish public education.”American for Prosperity has been active in Colorado for years promoting vouchers and education savings accounts for families to use for any school of their choice. Last January, AFP joined with the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heritage Foundation to form the Education Freedom Alliance, an organization that ALEC initiated to promote parents’ rights to use public money to attend a private, charter, home or public school of their choice. Funded with nearly $80 million primarily from the Koch Industries, the Americans for Prosperity political action group has also supported far-right candidates for decades.

American for Prosperity and Advance Colorado issued a press release on X stating the bill would “mark the beginning of the end of charter schools in Colorado,” and together, the two groups “would work overtime to make sure the bill was soundly defeated.” According to the Colorado Times Recorder, Advance Colorado is a conservative dark money group said to be funded by billionaire Phil Anschutz. Formerly known as Unite Colorado, Advance Colorado has “given over $17 million to support major Republican political groups and efforts in Colorado.” Colorado Dawn, another dark money group headed by State Board of Education member Steve Durham and Colorado state Sen. Paul Lundeen,  gave millions to Ready Colorado, which also has lobbyists opposing this bill.

Besides Americans for Prosperity and Ready Colorado,  these organizations have enlisted their lobbyists to defeat the bill: Colorado Succeeds, the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Transform Education Now, Colorado League of Charter Schools Action, Education Alliance of Colorado, and Education Reform Now Advocacy. Several of these organizations have access to deep pockets of money, and often the donors are not known. 

Colorado Succeeds, the Colorado League of Charter Schools, and Transform Education Now have received over $20 million from the Walton Family Foundation, which has given over $400 million to charter schools for decades. Education Reform Now Advocacy is closely connected to Democrats for Education Reform, “which was started by Wall Street hedge fund managers,” according to Ballotpedia. Colorado Politics stated that “various reports say Education Reform Now has taken in millions from Rupert Murdoch and the Walton Family Foundation.” The Education Reform Now money also benefited the campaign coffers of 14 Democratic legislators, which may create a hurdle for the charter bill’s passage unless these legislators decide the bill’s merits warrant their support. 

The upcoming lobbying effort in Colorado’s legislature is not unique, as similar high-paid lobbying efforts occur wherever there is significant charter school legislation. In Nashville, a local news reporter exposed who 67 pro-charter lobbyists worked for during legislative hearings on several charter bills in 2022. In the video that accompanied his report, Phil Williams highlighted the direct connections that the pro-charter lobbyists have with billionaires. His investigative report documented that “Americans for Prosperity is linked to billionaire Charles Koch,” and they also “received funding from billionaire Bill Gates and the Walton family of Walmart fame.”  

As in Tennessee, the Colorado lobbyists will meet frequently with legislators to convince them this bill is not necessary. The legislators will need to weigh the benefits of the bill with the concerns of those who participate in a massive letter-writing campaign initiated by the lobbying organizations to oppose the legislation. The bill’s backers hope this will be the legislators’ opportunity to update 30-year-old legislation and begin to ensure increased local control and accountability for the millions of taxpayer dollars that fund the charter schools educating 15% of the state’s K-12 student population.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: Do You Really Want AI to Write Your lesson Plans?

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2024 //
92

Peter Greene warns teachers not to fall for the cheap and lazy artificial intelligence (AI) that designs lesson plans. He explains why in this post:

Some Brooklyn schools are piloting an AI assistant that will create lesson plans for them. 

Superintendent Janice Ross explains it this way. “Teachers spend hours creating lesson plans. They should not be doing that anymore.”

The product is YourWai (get it?) courtesy of The Learning Innovation Catalyst (LINC), a company that specializes in “learning for educators that works/inspires/motivates/empowers.” They’re the kind of company that says things like “shift to impactful professional learning focused on targeted outcomes” unironically. Their LinkedIn profile says “Shaping the Future of Learning: LINC supports the development of equitable, student-centered learning by helping educators successfully shift to blended, project-based, and other innovative learning models.” You get the idea.

LINC was co-founded by Tiffany Wycoff, who logged a couple of decades in the private school world before writing a book, launching a speaking career, and co-founding LINC in 2017. Co-founder Jaime Pales used to work for Redbird Advanced Learning as executive director for Puerto Rico and Latin America and before that “developed next-generation learning programs” at some company. 

LINC has offices in Florida and Colombia. 

YourWai promises to do lots of things so that teachers can get “90% of your work done in 10% of the time.” Sure. Ross told her audience that teachers just enter students’ needs and the standards they want to hit and the app will spit out a lesson plan. It’s a “game changer” that will give teachers more time to “think creatively.” 

These stories are going to crop up over and over again, and every story ought to include this quote from Cory Doctorow:

We’re nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we’re well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.

Look, if you ask AI to write a lesson plan for instructing students about major themes in Hamlet, the AI is not going to read Hamlet, analyze the themes, consider how best to guide students through those themes, and design an assessment that will faithfully measure those outcomes. What it’s going to do is look at a bunch of Hamlet lesson plans that it found on line (some of which may have been written by humans, some of which may have been cranked out by some amateur writing for online corner-cutting site, and some of which will have been created by other AI) and mush them all together. Oh, and throw in shit that it just made up. 

There are undoubtedly lessons for which AI can be useful–cut and dried stuff like times tables and preposition use. But do not imagine that the AI has any idea at all of what it is doing, nor that it has any particular ability to discern junk from quality in the stuff it sweeps up on line. Certainly the AI has zero knowledge of pedagogy or instructional techniques.

But this “solution” will appeal because it’s way cheaper than, say, hiring enough teachers so that individual courseloads are not so heavy that paperwork and planning take a gazillion hours. 

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Fake, Real Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

D.C.: Anna J. Cooper, a Hero of American Education

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2024 //
3

Shirley Moody-Turner wrote in the Washington post about a forgotten hero of American education: Dr. Anna J. Cooper. Cooper was the principal of the M Street School in the District of Columbia, one of the most successful schools in the city. She insisted on a demanding academic curriculum for her Black students. Despite the school’s success, she was removed on trumped-up charges. The Black community fought back but lost. The M Street School eventually became the celebrated Dunbar High School.

Moody-Turner begins:

In January 1902, Anna Julia Cooper, one of the most highly educated Black women in the country, was appointed the seventh principal of Northwest D.C.’s famed M Street High School, the first and most prestigious public high school for Black education. Black people from around the country aspired to send their children to M Street, and its roster of teachers and graduates read like a Who’s Who of Washington’s Black educational and cultural elite. Under Cooper’s leadership, M Street students won scholarships and gained admissions to top colleges and universities — including Harvard, Brown, Yale and Dartmouth.

But just four years into her tenure, days before the start of a new school year, the White director of Washington high schools convinced the D.C. Board of Education not to reappoint M Street’s acclaimed principal. When Cooper arrived for the first day of school, the school janitor barred Cooper from entering the building. Police officers observed from across the street. They were ordered to arrest Cooper if they deemed she was creating a disturbance. With her students watching from the windows, Cooper — always a model of dignity and decorum — exited the school grounds.

Cooper’s story, now largely forgotten, was part of a wider movement to control the direction of Black public education in the early 20th century. Then, like now, battles over education — and especially the question of who was permitted to lead elite institutions, training the next generation to excel — were proxies in the larger culture wars. Today, with female and minority leaders of universities facing resistance from people who assume they have not earned the right to hold their positions, Cooper’s story is an illuminating one. What happened to her illustrates not only how the tactics around removing such leaders have persisted for more than a century, but also what was at stake — and still is — in the battles over educational access and leadership.

Born enslaved in Raleigh, N.C., in 1858, Cooper began her fight for an equal education early in life. As a student at St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute, she successfully petitioned for the right to take what were designated as “boys” classes, including courses in Greek, Latin, French, science and math. She went on to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she again protested for access to the full curriculum. She graduated Oberlin with a BA and MA in mathematics and began writing, teaching and lecturing around the country on Black civil rights and gender equality. In 1892, she published a book called “A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South,” arguing for Black women’s unique role in the struggles for racial and gender equality, which garnered international acclaim.


In 1887, Cooper was recruited to join the faculty at the famed M Street High School. She taught there for 14 years and served one year as vice principal before agreeing to serve as the school’s principal. She did so, however, at precisely the moment when the sovereignty of Black public schools — M Street, in particular — was under attack.

For decades, the public school system in D.C. was looked to as a shining example of what was possible for Black education. Since 1868, M Street had operated under a Black superintendent, and through a combination of Black political influence, community support, committed teachers and congressional appropriations, the Black community managed to secure the resources and maintain relative autonomy to create a model public school system for Black students in the District.

By the end of the 19th century, however, with the backlash over Reconstruction gains in Black civil and political rights and the national ascendancy of Jim Crow segregation, Black control over Black schools came under attack. In 1900, Congress restructured school oversight in the District so that the Black superintendent — now reassigned to be an assistant superintendent — no longer oversaw M Street High School directly, instead placing it under the supervision of the White director of public high schools, Percy M. Hughes. As Hughes took his post, Cooper took hers.

Hughes was determined to remove her, and he did. He wanted to impose a “colored curriculum” on the school but she insisted on a college prep curriculum. As the author put it, Cooper was “punished for leading.” After she left, she earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne. She later returned to the M Street School as a teacher for another 20 years.

Open the link and read the rest of the story.

Categories District of Columbia, Education Reform, History, Race, Racism, Resistance

North Carolina: GOP Candidate for State Superintendent of Schools Is a QAnon Homeschooler

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2024 //
9

The Republican nominee for State Superintendent of Public Instruction is a homeschooling parent who has espoused extremist views, calling for the deaths of Obama, Biden, and other prominent Democrats. She attended the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, though she says she did not enter the building. Her opponent in the race is Mo Green, who was educated at Duke University, practiced law, worked at a major foundation, served as school superintendent of Guilford County Schools, and supports public schools.

Ned Barnett, an opinion writer in the North Carolina News & Observer said that Morrow could be elected with Trump at the top of the ballot. Barnett wrote:

A low-turnout primary dominated by the party’s most conservative voters denied the Republican nomination to incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt. The party’s nominee is Michele Morrow, a relatively unknown conservative activist whose caustic social media posts put her not only on the far right, but around the bend.

CNN discovered her incendiary tweets and sent a crew to interview her.

The far-right Republican candidate running to oversee public schools in North Carolina decried “extreme agendas that threaten our children’s future”, after being confronted by reporters over tweets in which she called for the executions of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.“Don’t let extreme agendas threaten our children’s future,” Michele Morrow said on social media on Thursday, posting an address in which she said she was “facing the most radical extremist Democrats [that] have ever run for superintendent in the history of North Carolina”.

But Morrow, who is running for superintendent of public instruction, also had to respond to a CNN crew who confronted her about posts, unearthed by the same network, in which she advocated violence against leading Democrats.

Comments made by Morrow between 2019 and 2021 and reported by CNN included a May 2020 tweet in which Morrow said Obama should be the subject of “a Pay Per View of him in front of a firing squad”, adding: “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.”

In December 2020, when Biden, as president-elect, said he would ask Americans to wear masks against Covid-19 for 100 days, Morrow – a nurse – wrote: “Never. We need to follow the constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!!”

Other Democrats that Morrow said should be executed, CNN said, included the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar; the North Carolina governor, Roy Cooper; former New York governor Andrew Cuomo; the former first lady, senator, secretary of state and presidential nominee Hillary Clinton; and the New York senator Chuck Schumer.

Morrow also called for the executions of Anthony Fauci, a senior public health adviser to Donald Trump during the Covid pandemic, and Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and vaccination campaigner.

She also promoted slogans and claims associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory….

With a bigot running for Governor of North Carolina on the GOP slate along with an extremist running for state superintendent of schools, this once sane and progressive state is in a heap of trouble unless citizens rise up and demand responsible leadership.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, Extremism, North Carolina, Republicans

A Spectacular Achievement on the Ice! Ilia Malinin!

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2024 //
23

I am not a huge fan of professional ice skating but I am a huge fan of excellence. I just watched a 10–minute clip of Ilia Malinin’s World Championship performance yesterday in Montreal. It was mesmerizing!

Ilia was born in Virginia. His parents were professional skaters in Uzbekistan, as was his grandfather. His parents are his coaches.

Watching this brilliantly accomplished young man reminded me of the book written by Senator John F. Kennedy in 1958 titled A Nation of Immigrants.

The subject was on my mind because yesterday I saw a moving and beautiful film called Cabrini. That too made me reflect on today’s hateful rhetoric about immigrants.

Ilia’s magnificent performance in Montreal was hailed by the sportscasters as one of the most remarkable events in the history of ice skating. Watch it!

Categories Courage, Creativity, Discipline, Joy

Indiana: New Law Requires Professors to Teach “Diverse” Views or Face Firing

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2024 //
31

Republicans have grown frustrated by their inability to get their views represented on college campuses, so they have grown more assertive in passing laws to ban ideas they don’t like (such as “critical race theory” or gender studies or diversity/equity/inclusion or “divisive concepts).

Indiana is imposing a different approach. Instead of banning what it does not like, the Legislature is requiring professors to teach different points of view.

The New York Times reports:

A new law in Indiana requires professors in public universities to foster a culture of “intellectual diversity” or face disciplinary actions, including termination for even those with tenure, the latest in an effort by Republicans to assert more control over what is taught in classrooms.

The law connects the job status of faculty members, regardless of whether they are tenured, to whether, in the eyes of a university’s board of trustees, they promote “free inquiry” and “free expression.” State Senator Spencer Deery, who sponsored the bill, made clear in a statement that this would entail the inclusion of more conservative viewpoints on campus.

The backlash to the legislation, which Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, signed March 13, has been substantial. Hundreds wrote letters or testified at hearings, and faculty senates atmultiple institutions had urged the legislature to reject the bill, condemning it as government overreach and a blow to academic free speech.

“The whole point of tenure is to protect academic freedom,” said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, who described the law as “thought policing.”

Under the Indiana law, which goes into effect in July, university trustees may not grant tenure or a promotion to faculty members who are deemed “unlikely” to promote “intellectual diversity” or to expose students to works from a range of political views. Trustees also may withhold tenure or promotion from those who are found “likely” to bring unrelated political views into the courses they are teaching.

Faculty members who already have tenure would be subject to regular reviews to determine if they are meeting all of these criteria, and if the board concludes they are not, they could be demoted or fired. The law also requires colleges to set up a procedure for students or other employees to file complaints about faculty members considered to be falling short on these requirements.

Boards are not, under the law, allowed to penalize faculty for criticizing the institution or engaging in political activity outside of their teaching duties. The restrictions do not apply to private university faculty members.

Will professors of science be allowed to teach about climate change or evolution without giving equal time to “the other side?”

Will professors of American history be allowed to teach about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow and institutional racism without introducing the Confederate point of view?

This law is a serious attack on academic freedom.

Categories Academic Freedom, Curriculum, Ethics, Higher Education, Indiana

Thom Hartmann: Was the Terrorist Attack in Moscow Akin to the Reichstag Fire of 1933? Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2024 //
16

Thom Hartmann wrote an ominous column about the possible origins and consequences of the terrorist attack in Moscow that killed scores of people at a concert.

He fears that Putin may use this horrific event as a pretext to step up his attacks on Ukraine and do to Ukraine what he did to Chechnya, which was to reduce the would-be breakaway region to a wasteland.

In his article, he recalls the Reichstag fire, which Hitler used as a pretext to initiate his dictatorship, crush democratic institutions, and round up dissidents.

He draws other analogies of leaders who were warned of pending catastrophes, but chose to ignore the warnings in order to solidify their hold on the population and secure their power.

In that group, he includes President George W. Bush, who ignored warnings about 9/11, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who ignored warnings about a likely attack by Hamas from the Gaza Strip. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has written about the IDF “spotters,” the young women who watched activity at the Gaza border and warned their superiors about the military exercises they observed; they were ignored. Almost every one of these unarmed 18-and 19-year-old women were killed or taken hostage.

Hartmann wrote:

Like Hitler, Netanyahu, and Bush all did, Putin just claimed that up is down, that the terrorist attack he knew was coming was an unprovoked surprise, and that it came from Ukraine, not ISIS-K…

Friday, a group of ISIS extremists claimed credit for the attack on a Moscow theater that killed at least 133 people and left the building a smoldering ruin. But Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his public comments today, didn’t mention ISIS-K: instead, he placed the blame on Ukraine….

We’ve seen this movie before, both here, in Israel, and Germany, and it never ends well…

Ukraine, of course, has denied any involvement or knowledge of the attack. But don’t be surprised if Putin uses this as an excuse to massively bomb Kiev the way he utterly destroyed Grozny the capital of Chechnya, to subdue that nation. The attacks could begin as early as this coming week.

If that happens, it could provoke a stronger response from EU countries who see Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Moldova as being next on Putin’s menu: both he and his spokesmen have already said as much. 

And that could lead to a major escalation of the Ukraine war beyond the borders of Ukraine and into Poland or the Baltics, triggering Nato’s Article 5 mutual defense provision, which would instantaneously draw the US directly into the conflict.

All because Republicans have convinced Putin that they can prevent further US aid, so he believes now is a good time to use the time-tested “pretext of an unexpected attack” strategy to go from a “military operation” to an all-out war. 

In fact, just yesterday afternoon his official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that the country is now officially “at war.”

That Ukrainian conflict, particularly if Putin-aligned Republicans like Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Mark Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc. are able to continue to prevent the US from helping Ukraine push Russia into a stalemate, could make China’s dictator Xi Jinping think it’s a great time to attack Taiwan.

And that, particularly since we recently stationed troops on Taiwanese territory, throws us straight into WWIII, regardless of Republican obstructionism and isolationist rhetoric.

I hope I’m wrong. Praying, frankly, that I’m wrong.

Categories Corruption, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, History, International, Lies
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