David Sirota’s blog “The Lever” reports that New York may tax two unusually rich private universities—New York University and Columbia University—for the benefit of the city’s underfunded public universities. This would be a bonanza for the City University of New York. There’s a long road ahead, and you can be sure that NYU, Columbia, and their powerful trustees will fight against taxation. As in the prior post, this piece was written by Katya Schwenk.

No More Private U Tax Breaks

Columbia and New York University (NYU) may lose hundreds of millions in property tax breaks under a new plan put forward by New York lawmakers, and the resulting new tax revenue would instead go towards New York City’s public university system.

The uber-rich private universities — both of which have endowments in the billions — pay virtually no property taxes despite being some of New York City’s largest landowners, thanks to tax breaks from the state. Columbia and NYU combined own more than 400 properties, worth over $7 billion in total. An investigation by the New York Times and the Hechinger Report in September found that the two schools together save $327 million a year thanks to the state’s tax breaks, and noted that the millions the universities spend on lobbying help them maintain such a favorable system.

On Tuesday, state lawmakers unveiled a package of legislation that aims to change this. The two bills would end property tax breaks for any private universities in New York that would owe more than $100 million in property taxes. The new tax money would be given to the City University of New York, which is facing a budget squeeze, and narrowly avoided devastating cuts to its colleges and programs this year.

Enacting the proposal will likely be a long road: The proposal will require a change to New York’s constitution, which means the issue will ultimately come before voters in a referendum. Yet its advocates say such a plan to change the tax breaks, which have stood for more than a century, is far overdue. The universities, said New York assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the bills’ sponsor, have “gone beyond primarily operating as institutions of higher education and are instead acting as landlords and developers.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding, Higher Education, New York City

Biden Wants to Lower Prices on Drugs Developed with Public Funding

By dianeravitch

December 20, 2023 //

David Sirota’s blog “The Lever” is a source of excellent investigative reporting. It recently revealed that President Biden is taking on Big Pharma. Some advocates said he needed to go further, but this is a huge opening move to establish the principle that the federal government may cap the prices of drugs developed with public money. The following was written by Katy’s Schwenk.

White House Takes On Pharma Patents

The White House plans to exercise its authority to lower the price of costly medications that were developed with public funding — a potentially powerful new tool in the battle against sky-high medication prices.

The Biden administration announced last week that it had concluded, after a months long review, that it had the authority to break the patents of drugs developed with public funding if their cost was too high. This authority — dubbed “march-in rights” — has never been used, and is likely to encounter major pushback from Big Pharma.

Take, for instance, the case of the drug Xtandi, which is used to treat prostate cancer. The drug was developed at the public University of California, Los Angeles, using federal funding from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Army. The university then licensed the drug to a pharmaceutical company called Medivation, which is now owned by Pfizer, and the Japanese pharmaceutical behemoth Astellas. Pfizer and Astellas have made billions selling the drug worldwide. In the U.S., Xtandi costs on average $190,000 a year, more than five times higher than in Canada and Japan.

The Bayh-Dole Act, which was passed more than 30 years ago, allows the federal government to use march-in rights to intervene if drugs developed with public money are not being made accessible to the public. Despite Xtandi being more or less a perfect case for the use of this authority — a cancer drug developed with public money being sold at an egregious premium — the Biden administration declined to use march-in rights in March to seize the patent and allow a generic competitor to enter the market, forcing down the drug’s cost.

Since then, though, federal officials have been reviewing march-in authority. And now, the White House’s announcement signals that they may begin using it to fight drug profiteering.

While the announcement is a critical step forward, the White House’s framework has still drawn some blowback from some advocacy groups for being less aggressive than it could be. In this week’s announcement, the Biden administration implied it would exercise march-in rights only in the most extreme cases of price gouging by Big Pharma. “Where most drug prices already are egregious and force rationing, few drugs will seem ‘extremely’ priced by comparison,” argued the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

But even the prospect of limited use of march-in rights has stoked fear in the pharmaceutical industry, which is spending more than ever to oppose drug pricing reforms. Industry groups have already declared their opposition to the measure. It’s a sign of how much is at stake for Big Pharma — and for those paying a premium for life-saving medication.

Categories Biden, For-Profit, Health, Science

Thom Hartmann: Why Democrats Should Make a Border Deal: Call the GOP Bluff

By dianeravitch

December 19, 2023 //

Thom Hartmann writes here that Democrats should make a deal with Republicans on immigration. Call their bluff. They have been using the issue for years while refusing to negotiate. The GOP has refused to make a deal until now so they can demagogue it. Make the deal. Pay the ransom.

He explains:

It may be time for Democrats to engage in some good-old-fashioned backroom dealmaking. If they do it right, they can strip Republicans of one of their most potent electoral issues while setting the stage for true reform of what has become a true American crisis.

Russian President Putin has ordered Donald Trump to sabotage US aid to Ukraine, and Trump has passed the word along to Republicans that anybody who doesn’t go along with the two of them will face a primary challenger.

Trump just doubled down on it this weekend in New Hampshire, praising Putin up one side and down the other while quoting Orbán and Hitler that immigration by nonwhite people “poisons the blood” of a nation.

In an attempt to appease Trump and Putin, Republicans in the Senate claim they’re putting together a “security” deal to send foreign and military aid to Ukraine and Israel while also “securing” our southern border from immigrants and asylum seekers.

Democrats first dismissed the proposed “deal” as bad-faith bargaining, pointing out that Republicans were demanding “poison pill” radical changes to our asylum and immigration policies and border security without being willing to engage in any sort of discussion about actual reform of our broken systems.

And broken they are. The last successful attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCAor Simpson–Mazzoli), happened in 1986. Ever since then, Republicans have opposed or obstructed every good-faith effort by Democrats to come up with a bipartisan solution to the crisis on our southern border. And, yes, it is a crisis.

Republicans don’t want a solution because having a border crisis involving brown-skinned people works out really well for them, as it has for rightwing governments all across the world.

Viktor Orbán rose to power as Hungary’s “soft fascism” dictator by pointing to the brown-skinned Syrian refugees who were fleeing Putin’s bombing of that country and promising to “build a wall” along Hungary’s southern border to keep them out; it’s a promise he has kept.

Across the rest of Europe, rightwing parties are doing as Trump and Orbán did and pointing to brown-skinned immigrants as the largest and most immediate threat to the “blood and soil” of their nations. They include the neofascist Brothers of Italy (which now runs that country) and the Lega party, the Swiss People’s Party(Switzerland’s largest), the Finns Party in Finland, the National Rally (formerly the National Front) in the Netherlands, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, the United Kingdom Independence Party in the UK, and the Freedom Party in Austria.

In an apparent homage to Ron DeSantis’ shipping asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard and New York, Russian President Putin has been sending brown-skinned immigrants to the Finnish border in such numbers that the Finns have been forced to close all the border crossings they share with Russia (an 832-mile-long stretch).

Russia is apparently now playing the role of human traffickers, helping these refugees from Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen find unmonitored places along the border where they can sneak across, correctly believing that a flood of refugees will politically upset Finland and help out the pro-Putin rightwing parties there.

On this side of the Atlantic, the issue of the browning of America has been panicking white supremacists since the Reagan administration, when the change to our immigration laws in 1965 with the Hart-Cellar Act — which ended racial immigration quotas going back to 1921 that were designed to keep America white — was becoming obvious.

In 1960, 84 percent of all immigrants to the US were white, as the 1921 law required. By 2017, only 13.2 percent of immigrants were white.

Should it then surprise anybody that the white supremacists who make up the base of the GOP flipped out about immigration? Or that Republican politicians would know this and hammer it at every opportunity, while refusing to participate in any real solutions because the “border crisis” works to their political advantage?

This is, after all, foundational to the “great replacement theory” that Trump, Alex Jones, David Duke, and multiple Republican politicians have been endorsing ever since “very fine people” were chanting “Jews will not replace us [with Black or Hispanic people]” in Charlottesville.

Republican rhetoric on the issue has become so predictable that Richard Haas, normally a reasonable voice on foreign policy issues, had to be corrected on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show yesterday when he said that Democrats favor an “open border policy.”

In fact, it’s Libertarians who believe all countries should have open borders, or that more immigrants coming to America is a good thing because it increases the supply of low-wage labor that businesses so love. Rand Paul, for example, has sponsored legislation that would increase immigration to the US.

But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from inviting as many people as possible to come to America, by proclaiming that our border is “wide open” because, they say, of Democratic Party policies.

While no elected Democrat I can find has ever called for “open borders,” Republicans keep saying that Democrats are for open borders and that they’ve gotten their way and the southern border is now wide open.

Thus, while it’s true that two factors have driven a lot of migration over the past few decades (climate change wiping out farmland, and political dysfunction and gangs caused by the Reagan administration illegally devastating the governments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala), the main driver of would-be immigrants and refugees today is the Republican Party itself.

Lacking any actual, substantive economic issues to run on, the GOP has decided to fall back on a familiar ploy: scare white people that brown people are coming for them and/or their jobs. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember well how the GOP’s pitch to white people was that Black people wanted “our” jobs; now it’s brown people from south of the border.

Trump did this in the most crude, vulgar, and racist way possible from his first entrance into the Republican primary through the end of his presidency and to this day. It frightened enough white voters that it got him into office once, and the GOP is hoping they can repeat that trick in 2024.

In doing so, they’re playing with fire. Their lies about American policies are causing refugees to put their lives and their families in danger.

The truth is that Joe Biden never “opened” our southern border. “Open borders” have never been his policy or the Democratic Party’s policy or, indeed, the policy of any elected Democrat or Democratic strategist in post-1921 American history.

Everybody understands and agrees that for a country to function it must regulate immigration, and its borders must have a reasonable level of integrity. Everybody. But you’d never know that from watching Fox “News” or listening to rightwing podcasts or hate radio whenever there is a Democrat in the White House.

Republicans are playing a very dangerous game here. By loudly proclaiming their lie that Biden has “opened” the southern border and is “welcoming” immigrants and refugees “with open arms,” they are creating the very problem they’re pointing to.

Just google “open border” and “congressman,” “congresswoman,” or “senator” and you’ll get a list of Republican politicians too long to print. These are the quotes that coyotes — human smugglers — print out and distribute to desperate people in Central and South America as advertisements to get people to trade their lives’ savings for transportation to the Rio Grande.

At the top of that list, of course, you’ll find the most contemptible Republican demagogues:

— Ted Cruz wants everybody south of our border to know that the “Biden Open Border Policy [is] A Very Craven Political Decision”;
— Rick Scott wants everybody to know that “Americans Don’t Want [Biden’s] Open Borders”;
— Marco Rubio says there’s “Nothing Compassionate About Biden’s Open Border Policies”;
— Rand Paul is so extreme he tells us Senator Rubio “is the one for an open border”;
— Josh Hawley says “Biden’s Open Border Policy Has Created a Moral Crisis”;
— Tom Cotton “Insists the Border is Wide Open”;
— Ron Johnson wants the world to know that “Our National Security is at Risk Because Democrats have Turned Border Security into a Partisan Issue”;
— Marjorie Taylor Greene “BLASTS Open Border Hypocrites”;
— Mo Brooks opposes “Socialist Democrats’ Open Border Policies for Helping Kill Americans”;
— Lauren Boebert says the “Root Cause” of the open border crisis “is in the White House”;
— Matt Gaetz “revealed a complex and deceitful agenda by Joe Biden’s Democrat administration to evade our Southern Border law enforcement”;
— Gym Jordan says “Biden’s Deliberate Support of Illegal Immigration Could Lead to Impeachment”;
— Kevin McCarthy says the Biden Administration has “Utterly Failed” to secure the “open border”;
— Elise Stefanik proclaims “Biden’s Open Border Policies have been a Complete Disaster.”
— Tom Cole’s website features “Biden’s Open Border America”;
— Bob Goode brags about introducing legislation named the “Close Biden’s Open Border Act”;
— John Rose “Calls Out Biden’s Open Border Policies”;
— Paul Gosar claims Biden is “Destroying America with His Open Border Policies”;
— Roger Williams complains about the “Democrats’ Open Border Problem”;
— Tom Cole wants the world to know that Biden’s “open border policies have given the green light to migrants and bad actors from around the world…”;
— Gus Bilirakis “Denounces Dangerous Open Border Policies on the House Floor”;

The list goes on and on, and these messages have spread all across Central and South America, just as Republicans hoped they would, driven by human smugglers following the profit motive.

Based on an intentional GOP lie.

And the small percentage of migrants who actually get through our border and survive the trek across deadly deserts provide more cheap labor for Republicans’ big donors’ factories and construction sites, along with more brown-skinned people they can demonize as “replacing” white Americans on Fox “News.” Win-win for the GOP.

The hypocrisy is obvious: if Republicans were really worried that immigrants were diluting the labor pool and driving down wages (their main non-racist argument), they’d be pushing for an E-Verify kind of mandatory citizenship-confirmation system like most other countries have.

Instead, they refuse to even consider such legislation that would help us regulate our labor markets and discourage purely economically-motivated immigrants in favor of true refugees.

In the 1920s, the US began regulating immigration and similarly put into place laws regulating who could hire people to legally work in this country and who couldn’t.

I lived and worked in Germany for a year, and it took me months to get a work-permit from that government to do so. I worked in Australia, too, and the process of getting that work-permit took a couple of months.

In both cases, it was my employers who were most worried about my successfully getting the work permits and did most of the work to make it happen. There’s an important reason for that.

The way that most countries prevent undocumented immigrants from disrupting their economies and causing cheap labor competition with their citizens is by putting employers in jail when they hire people who don’t have the right to work in that country.

We used to do this in the United States.

Because there was so much demand for low-wage immigrant labor in the food belt of California during harvest season, President Dwight Eisenhower experimented with a program in the 1950s that granted season-long passes to workers from Mexico.

Millions took him up on it, but his Bracero program failed because employers controlled the permits, and far too many used that control to threaten people who objected to having their wages stolen or refused to tolerate physical or sexual abuse.

A similar dynamic is at work today.

Employers and even neighbors extract free labor or other favors of all sorts from undocumented immigrants in the United States, using the threat of deportation and the violence of ICE as a cudgel. Undocumented immigrants working here end up afraid to call the police when they’re the victims of, or witnesses to crimes.

Everybody loses except the GOP and the employers they’re in bed with, who get a cheap, pliable, easily-threatened source of labor that is afraid to talk back or report abuses.

The tragedy is in the lives of the desperate people who listened to these Republican lies and got robbed, raped, or even killed trying to make it here.

They pack all their belongings into a single backpack, bid tearful goodbyes to friends and family, and begin a grueling journey facing dangers of death, kidnapping, rape, and violence. They are fathers, mothers, and children.

Quite literally taking their lives in their hands because they believed cynical, unfeeling, uncaring, sociopathic Republican politicians who are lying for political gain.

That said (and speaking as the grandson of immigrants), there is a limit to how much immigration a nation, region, state, or city can withstand before things start to break down.

Southern Republican governors are shipping their newly-arrived immigrants into New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other Blue cities to force Democrats to confront the proportions of the problem we have today because of all these GOP proclamations that the border is “wide open.”

And it’s working. New York’s Mayor Adams has said that the influx of immigrants is “destroying” his city; dozens of other Blue cities across America are straining under the load, particularly as winter is here and our broken immigration system denies these new asylum seekers work permits.

So perhaps it’s time for Democrats to turn the tables on the GOP and take this topic off the table until after November’s election. Go along with their demands to “close” the border, stop admitting refugees and immigrants, and fund a deportation system for those people who’ve not yet been processed.

Point out how years of Republicans and rightwing media “inviting” people here with “open border rhetoric” has crashed the system. Declare a state of emergency and allocate funds to help Mexico and “sending” nations deal with people who’ve been turned away from our border. And demand comprehensive immigration reform.

The simple reality is that no nation can absorb immigrants beyond a certain threshold without producing a backlash.

Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians aren’t the only ones this argument has been used against: “racial” discrimination based on these superior/inferior theories was widespread in America against Irish, Italians, and Poles from the mid-19th through the early 20th century.

“Racially-motivated” anti-Irish violence was particularly vicious in Boston and New York after the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s drove immigration to America; in 2002 Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese made a movie about it, Gangs of New York, set in 1865.

At the moment, this issue is relatively quiet; Republicans haven’t yet gone into campaign mode. But, just as predictably as “caravans!!!” from the South appear on Fox “News” a month or two before every federal election when there’s a Democrat in the White House, the GOP will start screaming about all those brown-skinned people coming here next summer and it’ll be a deafening roar by the November election.

If the GOP’s price for aid for Ukraine is to stop the flow of immigrants into this country for year or so, I say pay the ransom.

It’ll politically neuter Republicans, get aid to our democratic allies who are under attack (although the Israel aid should be conditional on ending the bombing and embracing a two-state solution), and give a much-needed break to the Blue cities Abbott and DeSantis are trying to break.

Hold your nose and go for it, Democrats, if you can get even an objectionable deal; one that’s not completely insane. In the final analysis it’ll be best for America and for future refugees and immigrants who deserve a system that actually works and can deal with their asylum or citizenship applications in a reasonable and timely manner.

I realize that some of my progressive colleagues, both in broadcasting and in print, will immediately object. However, if you present to the American people the case that this is necessary to help save democracy around the world and ultimately here in America, and that it is a small but temporary compromise, it’s a risk worth taking.

Americans really do care about freedom and the future of this nation, of the democracy and constitution for which so many Americans have given their lives, in battle and in a thousand other ways.

Make the deal.

Categories Biden, Citizenship, Democrats, Elections, Republicans

An Israeli Professor at Yale Denounces Efforts to Squelch Palestinian Protests and Harass University Leaders

By dianeravitch

December 19, 2023 //

Naftali Kaminski is a professor of medicine at Yale University and an Israeli. He speaks out here in the Israeli publication Haaretz against efforts to shut down Palestinian protests, as well as the vilification of university presidents who insist on free speech.

Dr. Kaminski writes:

In the flurry of denouncements, op-eds, and social media posts that followed the testimony in Congress by three elite university presidents’, the subsequent resignation of Elizabeth MaGill president of the University of Pennsylvania, and the unprecedented congressional resolution calling on Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth to also resign, a picture began to emerge, one that eerily reminded me of a poem we read when I was a boy in Israel.

The poem, written in 1943 by Nathan Alterman, one of Israel’s most beloved poets, uses the Greek philosopher Archimedes’ statement about the law of the lever “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth” as a metaphor for the role of antisemitism in politics. He suggests demagogues and tyrants use antisemitism as the ultimate “Archimedean Point”, a leverage point allowing them to achieve their most outrageous goals.

This, I think, is what we are experiencing, but now the Archimedean Point is the claim that university presidents are “not doing enough about antisemitism”. It is used with the immediate aim of suppressing pro-Palestinian voices as well as the strategic and, as now is being more explicitly stated, long- term ominous aim of reversing progress towards diversity, equity and inclusion at American universities.

I am aware this is a far-reaching statement. As an Israeli, a son to Holocaust survivors, my family history is one of oppression, discrimination, and genocide. Before joining Yale, my family lived in Pittsburgh and were members of the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, site of the deadliest attack ever on Jews on American soil.

The Hamas atrocities of October 7 triggered fears and thoughts I never thought I had. I find displays of support or efforts to minimize them despicable. I fear the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. and believe it should be fought. I also feel that the current rage against university presidents of elite institutions is not indeed targeting antisemitism. And this feeling is colored by my own experiences in the last few months.

Waking up on that cursed morning in October and hearing about the Hamas attacks, I was immediately caught up in a flood of communication as I frantically sought to confirm that friends and family in Israel were safe, offer help, sympathy, horror and support.

But then I received a different kind of message myself. It was from an American Jewish faculty member at Yale. There was no expression of concern or empathy, no check-in about my well-being or the safety of my friends and family. Instead, it spoke about “Yale antisemites” and requested we “act preemptively” to “alert” Yale leaders. The message suggested a campaign of letter writing. It was obvious to me its intention to help foster an atmosphere that would label any pro-Palestinian expressions as antisemitic.

That message and those that followed were deeply distressing to me. They sounded as if they assumed that the president of Yale, himself Jewish with strong ties to Israel, would not do anything unless cajoled and pressed. There was never an expression of concern about me, or other Israelis on campus, except in one context – fighting the perceived threat of antisemitism by using the horrors to score ideological points.

In the following days, as the unfathomable extent of Hamas atrocities was coming to light, my attention was all on the suffering and killing in the region. I helped the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Office at Yale School of Medicine organize a solidarity event in which Israeli members of the Yale community who had family or friends who were victims of October 7 attack spoke, and shared their experiences. The event was well publicized and attended and supported by leadership.

On subsequent days, I was on a previously scheduled lecture tour — five talks in ten days at different institutions and venues. I felt I could not simply speak about science and medicine, and decided to start each talk by introducing myself as a Jewish Israeli, and saying “I am shocked and infuriated by the atrocities launched last week in southern Israel, I am also deeply concerned and horrified by the ongoing violence and exponentially escalating threat to civilians in the region. I hope and pray that violence ends, those abducted are released and threats to civilians are stopped and that all people in the region, regardless of ethnic or religious identity, will finally be allowed to live in peace, freedom, and dignity.” The statement was accepted nearly universally with applause.

In the meantime, at Yale, there were pro-Palestinian demonstrations, pro-Israeli vigils, as well as educational events; I did not attend most, and if I did, I might have probably not agreed with everything said, but I doubt I would feel unsafe. Indeed, despite the attempts by some provocateurs, the events were decidedly non-violent. On one Friday, at the Beinecke Plaza at Yale, there were three contrasting events, including an Israeli Palestinian Humanity vigil, attended by Israelis and Palestinians on campus, but there were no conflicts or arguments. There were no calls for genocide or threats of violence.

At the Yale-Harvard football game, I was walking to my seat, when a pro-Palestinian protest erupted; the students waved flags, chanted their slogans, but there was no sense of threat. There was definitely no call for genocide for Jews. Some in the crowd cursed the protesters and one even spit at them, but they did not respond, and the protest ended with the opposing students staging a walk out.

On that day I also saw the infamous doxing van, showing photos of young students, naming them as Harvard or Yale’s top antisemites. I felt it was a blatant and despicable “attempt to intimidate and harass” students as Yale’s president said.

At a panel discussion on the Public Health Implications of the Israeli-Gaza war, at Yale’s School of Public Health, discussions were concrete, professional and somber. One heckler was quickly silenced, and the rest of the event was very civil. This past Saturday, a pro-Palestinian protester hung briefly a Palestinian flag on a public Hanukkah Menorah in New Haven. The protester quickly removed it at the urging of other participants in the protest. This event met with wide condemnation by the organizers of the protest, Yale president and local officials, and local vigils were held in response

On social media, I have received multiple solidarity notices from colleagues and friends, Jewish and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian. I have gotten some antisemitic responses, but mostly from bots. Notably, most of the personal attacks I experienced were from self-proclaimed friends of Israel, even colleagues of mine, especially when I expressed support for the first ceasefire and hostages release, when I expressed concerns about the toll on Gazan civilians from Israel’s response or when I mentioned that Palestinians in the West Bank were targets of an unprecedented wave of violent attacks by Jewish settlers.

When one such acquaintance attacked me, I did not hold back, and reminded them that unlike them, I had served in the Israel Defense Forces, and had saved Israeli lives as a physician. The argument ended there, but I couldn’t help but reflect, if this was how I was treated as an Israeli, a tenured professor, how are Palestinians being treated? Are they silenced by the fear of being tagged as antisemitic, for expressing their anguish?

I am not making this digression to dismiss or minimize the rise of antisemitism or threat and isolation of Jewish faculty, staff and students feel, but to highlight how my own experience allowed me to realize that the anguish experienced by Jewish students and communities has been weaponized to suppress and delegitimize pro-Palestinian voices.

Moreover, and worse, for some groups this looked like the perfect opportunity to reverse the progress American Academia has made towards more diversity, inclusion and equity. And now this coalition of populists, rich donors, politicians known to be enemies of science and democracy and other bigots, is feverishly hoping that their Archimedean point will bring them a first achievement: the reversal of one of most impressive achievements for equity for women in recent American academic life – by forcing the presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT to resign.

Watching that congressional hearing felt like revisiting the public hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy Years. The presidents made powerful statements, expressed shock at Hamas atrocities, denounced antisemitism and described actions they took on campus. But what followed was a highly orchestrated circus, with targeted questions, aimed to trap them into indefensible answers. In the public eye, the five-hour hearing, crystalized into 30-second viral clips, based on misrepresentations and lack of nuance made the university presidents look indecisive and equivocal, while their previous statements and actions were not.

And when I watched the public shaming of these amazingly accomplished women, one voice kept ringing in my head, that of Counsel Joseph Welch words to Joseph McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency?”.

I hope the decision by Harvard to retain President Claudine Gay, despite the powerful campaign and false allegations against her, will once be remembered the same way Joseph Welch’s statement is now remembered, a turning point. A moment in which voices of reason, rejected the use of the justified fear of antisemitism as an Archimedean Point, and allowed all of us to focus on continuing making our universities and colleges more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and safe for all.

Naftali Kaminski MD is an Israeli Physician-Scientist and Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. On Twitter/X @KaminskiMed

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Education Reform, Higher Education, International

Paul Bonner: Our Useless Focus on Test Scores

By dianeravitch

December 19, 2023 //

For the past quarter-century, American policymakers have been laser-focused on raising test scores. They assumed that higher test scores equals better education equals better economy. The cost of all this testing was billions of dollars, which would have been better spent on reducing class sizes, raising teachers’ salaries, and updating schools.

From No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top to the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, federal policy has made standardized test scores the most consequential measure of all schooling. Every release of scores by the National Assessment of Educational Progress produces a flurry of articles with dire predictions about the future (“a Sputnik Moment!) or the discovery of a miracle (e.g. the Texas/Florida/Mississippi 4th grade reading miracle, which strangely disappears by the 8th grade).

But an occasional outbreak of wisdom cautions us that we are looking for “success” in the wrong place.

Paul Bonner is a retired educator. He posted the following comment on the blog.

My first personal encounter with NAEP was around 2005. I was an eighth grade assistant principal facilitating the process between my staff and the NAEP testing officials who were to give the test. As I monitored the hall during the testing of selected random students, it struck me how disinterested our students were in performing on the assessment. My school at the time was a high performing magnet program with a highly motivated student body. I assumed, incorrectly, that due to the competitive attitudes of our students that they would want to perform well, as I had with standardized assessments in the 1970s no matter what it meant concerning my academic standing. What I learned in this first encounter was that students were already fed up with standardized tests particularly if it had no bearing on their academic standing. These students made a habit of blowing away all of the state tests and for them NAEP was a waste of time. The idea of NAEP as a report card might be significant if students were not already wasting three weeks of their year with state and district tests. In other words, no student benefit so why bother. How does this give us an accurate read on student capacity? Second, none of the standardized assessments, international, national, state, or local have shown meaningful movement in student performance over the decades. A few points either way does not reveal any real change in instructional efficacy or evidence of greater learning opportunities for students no matter their circumstances. The realities remain the same. Students prepared for schooling or provided significant instructional and experiential resources perform well. Those who do not have such privilege do not. Policy makers and educational leaders are simply fooling themselves when denying that fact. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is telling in this regard. Piddling about a few point improvement in a NAEP test for fourth graders isn’t going to change the fact that Mississippi and other poor states provide far less opportunity for their students and poorer outcomes than wealthier states wiling to put more resources in the classroom. Testing has become a waste of time and money that could be better used elsewhere.

Categories Accountability, Competition, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Hoax, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

Robert Hubbell: Two Heroes of Democracy: “They Stood Their Ground”

By dianeravitch

December 18, 2023 //

Robert Hubbell wrote about two women who refused to be intimidated by the MAGA cult: Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Despite death threats and harassments, they stood their ground. Guiliani will appeal the verdict.

He writes:

Jury Awards Ruby Freemen and Shaye Moss $148 million in damages against Rudy Giuliani for defamation.

The damages award of $148 million against Rudy Giuliani encapsulates the madness, frustration, and perseverance that define the lives of millions of activists during the American era of The Big Lie. It is tempting to characterize Giuliani’s defamation of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and their hard-won victory as a metaphor for Trump’s political arc over the last seven years.

But what happened to Freeman and Moss is not a metaphor. It is the cold, hard reality that slaps each of us in the face every day as we are assaulted by lies heaped upon lies. Not everyone is a direct victim of the lies like Freeman and Moss, but we are all victims, nonetheless.

The point of the lies is not (only) to injure Trump’s enemies, it is to erode trust in the system until there are no guardrails left—hoping to create chaos in which the most depraved believe they have an advantage over those still ruled by conscience, decency, and fealty to the rule of law.

Trump and his enablers tell outlandish lies because they know that media outlets will dutifully repeat the lies in headlines and news alerts, reserving tepid skepticism for paragraphs buried deep in their coverage.

Direct victims like Freeman and Moss are viewed as expendable collateral damage. Their names and addresses are shared in dark corners of the web so Trump’s followers can make threats even he dares not voice (in public).

The full weight of Trump’s malevolent organization was directed at Freeman and Moss. But they did not buckle. Two women who were motivated to help fellow Georgians vote in a free and fair election stood their ground.

Their reputations were smeared by the sitting President of the United States, the Georgia legislature, Fox News, One America Network, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and millions of users on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

A preacher and a rap star’s publicist teamed up to urge them to falsely confess to non-existent crimes—saying it was the only way to stop the ugly death threats. The FBI’s unhelpful response was to advise them to “Move out of your homes.”Despite tens of thousands of vile threats, no one was arrested, investigated, charged with crimes, or sued for defamation.

At least not at first.

But the guardrails held. Because Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss stood their ground.

Because they stood their ground, Democrats on the January 6 Committee allowed them to tell their story to the nation.

Because they stood their ground, the rap star’s publicist and the preacher were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia for “solicitation of false statements and influencing witnesses.”

Because they stood their ground, the former president was indicted for lying about the 2020 election. The indictment specifically alleged that the former president was responsible for the campaign to smear Freeman and Moss—lies that were part of his conspiracy to defraud the United States. (See indictment, ¶ 26.)

Then, Freeman and Moss sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation. He did his best to derail and delegitimize the civil claim for damages. But he failed. The guardrails held. All because Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss stood their ground.

Two women who wanted to help people vote in Georgia stood their ground against fancy lawyers and paid liars, a depraved president and corrupt legislators, and a news ecosystem determined to sell as much soap for as long as possible by repeating the baseless claims about Freeman and Moss.

Two women who stood their ground. That is all it took for the guardrails to hold.

It was not easy. Their stance took courage and faith. They suffered mightily. But they persevered. They are heroes of American democracy.

There can be nothing more hopeful than their example—and their victory—to remind us of the power within each of us to maintain the guardrails of democracy. Those who sow chaos in the hope that the most depraved among us will win by brute force are wrong.

People are drawn to those who promote conscience, decency, and fealty to the rule of law—especially during times of turbulence and distress.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss prevailed over Giuliani (and Trump) the moment they reported for work on November 3, 2020—because they joined tens of thousands of other Americans in becoming the guardrails of democracy that ensured a free and fair election.

Concluding Thoughts.

Every American who is taking action to defend democracy is like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The work may not seem glamorous. But counting ballots in Georgia on November 3, 2020, was tedious work—until it became a nation-defining moment that tipped the balance of a contested election.

We will never know which letter, text, door knock, or donation will become a tipping point. But some of them surely will. Indeed, because a tipping point always sits atop every action that preceded it, every letter, text, door knock, or donation contributes to the tipping point. Like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, you are part of the guardrails of democracy.

S

Categories Accountability, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fascism, Fraud, Lies, Trump

Nancy Bailey: Children Need Recess Every Day!

By dianeravitch

December 18, 2023 //

Retired teacher Nancy Bailey has a way of putting school issues into perspective. In this post, she explains what recess is, why it’s important, what it is not, and why parents should beware of the programmed substitutes that are offered up instead of real recess. The war against play began with the Reagan-era report “A Nation at Risk,” then went into high gear with the passage of George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law and was reinforced by NCLB’s wicked stepchildren: Race to the Top and the Every Student Succeeds Act. What everything since 2001 stressed was the importance of test scores, not children’s health and well-being. Play in the era from 2001-2023 was a waste of time that would be better spent practicing for the next test.

Bailey wrote:

The lack of breaks for children and the misrepresentation of what constitutes recess continues to flourish.

School reformers try unsuccessfully to replace recess. But recess is not Playworks, Phys.Ed., meditation, or Brain Breaks controlled by adults who tell children what to do, denying them the ability to learn academic and social skills that recess provides when children are free to learn.

Recess is unstructured play. It’s supervised (supervision is critical) but not controlled by adults. It’s one of the easiest and inexpensive ways to help children flourish in school, and studies have highlighted its importance.

Removing recess from the school day involved one of the terrible school reforms in the ’90s connected to high-stakes standardized tests, with the bizarre belief (see A Nation at Risk) that children need more classwork without breaks.

After a while, adults realized the severe health problems that could arise if children don’t have breaks. Still, now they focus on physical activity and need to understand the significance of the critical social interactions children learn during recess.

In some places like Florida, parents have had to fight for a recess mandate, where they are always at risk of losing even 20 minutes of recess. Fortunately, the legislature allowed 20 minutes for now!

Recess involves unstructured play. As Mr. Rogers said, Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is the work of childhood.

Conflict resolution and working out difficulties are critical parts of recess and another critical variable involving what children learn with unstructured play.

Playworks

The Pulse’s reporter Grant Hill, a Philadelphia NPR/PBS station, recently reviewed recess and its role in conflict resolution, especially after COVID-19. In Getting Better at Resolving Conflict, the recess discussions are at the end, and Hill covers recess’s importance. I get a short spot criticizing Playworks. The CEO misinterprets what recess involves and seems not to understand the impact of controlling what children do. This is not actual recess.

Playworks is a nonprofit run by volunteers from Americorps. It cashes in with donations from various outside corporations, people who likely confuse actual recess with an organized version of what is like Phys. Ed.

If charitable organizations were looking to assist with play and actual recess, they’d seek out poor schools with lousy playgrounds and fund those or find a way to offer children actual recess.

It’s also insulting to hear volunteers in a nonprofit getting donations and tax dollars say one of their purposes is to show teachers the importance of play. If Americorps volunteers want to work with children, they might consider becoming teachers.

Playworks is not alone in skewing the meaning of recess. Recess has been replaced with other inadequate substitutes like Phys. Ed., meditation, and Brain Breaks. Some classes have children sitting on bouncy balls, thinking that nonstop balancing keeps them on their toes!

Please open the link to learn about other efforts to supplant recess.

Categories Childhood, Creativity, Education Reform, Play

Josh Cowen: 2023 Was a Banner Year for Vouchers, Censorship, and Attacks on LGBT Kids

By dianeravitch

December 18, 2023 //

Writing in the Washington Spectator, veteran voucher researcher Josh Cowen reports that 2023 was a good year for some very bad ideas, many supported by prominent rightwingers and Dark Money, whose sources are hidden.

He finds it unsurprising that the voucher movement works closely with book banners and efforts to humiliate LGBT youth.

Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has studied vouchers since 2005.

He writes:

Over the past 12 months, the decades-long push to divert tax dollars toward religious education has reached new heights. As proclaimed by EdChoice—the advocacy group devoted to school vouchers—2023 has been the year these schemes reached “escape velocity.” In strictly legislative terms, seven states passed new voucher systems, and ten more expanded existing versions. Eleven states now run universal vouchers, which have no meaningful income or other restrictions.

But these numbers change quickly. As late as the last week of November, the Republican governor of Tennessee announced plans to create just such a universal voucher system.

To wit: successful new voucher and related legislation has come almost exclusively in states won by Donald Trump in 2020. And even that Right-ward bent required substantial investment—notably by heiress and former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Koch network—in state legislative campaigns to oust voucher opponents. Instructively, many of those opponents were often GOP legislators representing rural districts with few private schools to benefit.

As a scholar who has studied voucher systems—including through research funded by conservative organizations—I have been watching these developments with growing concern. It can all be difficult to make sense of, so let’s walk through it.

Vouchers Hurt Kids, Defund Public Schools and Prop-Up Church Budgets

First, why are these new voucher schemes such bad public policy? To understand the answer, it’s important to know that the typical voucher-accepting school is a far cry from the kind of elite private academy you might find in a coastal city or wealthy suburban outpost. Instead, they’re usually sub-prime providers, akin to predatory lenders in the mortgage sector. These schools are either pop-ups opening to cash in on the new taxpayer subsidy, or financially distressed existing schools desperate for a bailout to stay open. Both types of financially insecure schools often close anyway, creating turnover for children who were once enrolled.

And the voucher results reflect that educational vulnerability: in terms of academic impacts, vouchers have some of the worst results in the history of education research—on par or worse than what COVID-19 did to test scores.

Those results are bad enough, but the real issue today is that they come at a cost of funding traditional public schools. As voucher systems expand, they cannibalize states’ ability to pay for their public education commitments. Arizona, which passed universal vouchers in 2022, is nearing a genuine budget crisis as a result of voucher over-spending. Six of the last seven states to pass vouchers have had to slow spending on public schools relative to investments made by non-voucher states.

That’s because most new voucher users were never in the public schools—they are new financial obligations for states. The vast majority of new voucher beneficiaries have been students who were already in private school beforehand. And for many rural students who live far from the nearest private school, vouchers are unrealistic in the first place, meaning that when states cut spending on public education, they weaken the only educational lifeline available to poorer and more remote communities in some places. That’s why even many GOP legislators representing rural districts—conservative in every other way—continue to fight against vouchers.

Vouchers do, however, benefit churches and church schools. Right-wing advocacy groups have been busy mobilizing Catholic school and other religious school parents to save their schools with new voucher funding. In new voucher states, conservatives are openly advocating for churches to startup taxpayer-funded schools. That’s why vouchers eventually become a key source of revenue for those churches, often replacing the need to rely on private donations. It’s also why many existing religious schools raise tuition almost immediately after vouchers pass.

The Right-Wing War on Public Schools

Victories for these voucher bills is nothing short of an ascendent Right-wing war on public education. And the link to religious nationalism energizes much of that attack.

Voucher bills have dovetailed almost perfectly with new victories for other priorities of the Religious Right. Alongside vouchers, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has also increased: 508 new bills in 2023 alone, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. As has a jump in legislation restricting book access in schools and libraries, with more than half of those bans targeting books on topics related to race and racism, or containing at least one LGBTQ+ character.

It is also important to note the longstanding antipathy that Betsy DeVos, the Koch Network, and other long-term voucher backers have toward organized labor—including and especially in this case, teachers’ unions. And that in two states that passed vouchers this year—Iowa and Arkansas—the governors also signed new rollbacks to child labor protections at almost the exact same time as well.

To close the 2022 judicial session, the Supreme Court issued its latest expansion of voucher jurisprudence in Carson v. Makin, holding that states with private school voucher programs may not exclude religious providers from applying tax dollars specifically to religious education. That ruling came just 72 hours before the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson removed reproductive rights from federal constitutional protections.

To hear backers of vouchers, book bans, and policies targeting transgender students in school bathrooms tell it, such efforts represent a new movement toward so-called “parents’ rights” or “education freedom,” as Betsy DeVos describes in her 2022 memoir. But in truth this latest push was a long time coming. DeVos is only one part of the vast network of Right-wing donors, activists, and organizations devoted to conservative political activism.

That network, called the Council for National Policy, includes representatives from the Heritage Foundation, the influential Right-wing policy outfit; multiple organizations funded by Charles Koch; the Leadership Institute, which trains young conservative activists; and a number of state policy advocacy groups funded by a conservative philanthropy called the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

It was the Bradley Foundation that seeded much of the legal work in the 1990s defending early voucher programs in state and federal courts. Bradley helped to fund the Institute for Justice, a legal group co-founded by a former Clarence Thomas staffer named Clint Bolick after a personal donation from Charles Koch. The lead trial attorney for that work was none other than Kenneth Starr, who was at the time also in the middle of his infamous pursuit of President Bill Clinton.

In late 2023, the Institute for Justice and the voucher-group EdChoice announced a new formal venture, but that partnership is just a spin on an older collaboration, with the Bradley Foundation as the tie that binds. EdChoice itself, when it was called the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, helped fund the data analysis cited by Institute lawyers at no less than the Supreme Court ahead of its first decision approving vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002).

From these vantage points, 2023 was a long time coming indeed.

And heading into 2024, the voucher push and its companion “parents’ rights” bills on schoolbooks and school bathrooms show no sign of weakening.

Prior to his political career, the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, was an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom. That group, which itself has deep ties to Betsy DeVos’s family, has led the legal charge to rollback LBGTQ+ equality initiatives. It was also involved “from the beginning,” as its website crows, in the anti-abortion effort that culminated with Dobbs.

The Heritage Foundation has created a platform called Project 2025, which serves as something of a clearinghouse for what would be the legal framework and policy agenda for a second Trump Administration. Among the advisors and funders of Project 2025 are several organizations linked to Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, and others with ties to the Council for National Policy. The Project’s education agenda includes dismantling the U.S. Department of Education—especially its oversight authority on anti-discrimination issues—and jumpstarting federal support for voucher programs.

A dark money group called The Concord Fund has launched an entity called Free to Learn, ostensibly organized around opposition to the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. In reality, these are active players in Republican campaign attacks around a variety of education-related culture war issues. The Concord Fund is closely tied to Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society chief, Council of National Policy member, and architect of the Roe takedown. Through the Leo connection, the Concord Fund was also instrumental in confirming Donald Trump’s judicial nominations from Brett Kavanaugh on downward.

And so while the 2023 “parents’ rights” success has been largely a feature of red state legislatures, the 2022 Carson ruling and the nexus between Leonard Leo, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Institute for Justice itself underscore the importance of the federal judiciary to Right-wing education activism.

Long-term, the goal insofar as school privatization is concerned appears to be nothing short of a Supreme Court ruling that tax-subsidized school vouchers and homeschool options are mandatory in every state that uses public funding (as all do) to support education. The logic would be, as Betsy DeVos herself previewed before leaving office, that public spending on public schools without a religious option is a violation of Free Exercise protections.

Such a ruling, in other words, would complete the destruction of a wall between church and state when it comes to voucher jurisprudence. Earlier Court decisions have found that states may spend tax dollars on school vouchers but, as the Right’s ultimate goal, the Supreme Court would determine that states must.

Closer on the horizon, we can expect to see each of these Right-wing groups acting with new energy as the 2024 campaign season heats up. The president of the Heritage Foundation—himself yet another member of the Council for National Policy—has recently taken over the think tank’s political arm, called Heritage Action. At the start of the year, investigative reporting linked Heritage Action to earlier voter suppression initiatives, signaling potential tactics ahead.

And the money is going to flow—they have all said as much. After Heritage’s merger of its policy and political arms, Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children followed suit by creating the AFC Victory Fund—a new group to spearhead its own campaign activity.

Their plan includes a $10 million base commitment to ramp up heading into 2024. “Coming off our best election cycle ever,” AFC’s announcement declared, “the tectonic plates have shifted decisively in favor of educational freedom, and we’re just getting started.” And, they warned:

“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school choice and freedom in education – you’re a target.”

In that threat lies the reality of the latest voucher push, and of this moment of so-called parents’ rights. None of this is a grassroots uprising. “Education freedom” is a top-down, big-money operation, tied to every other political priority of religious nationalism today.

But coming at the end of this past year’s legislative successes, AFC’s warnings are also a very clear statement of what is yet to come. The push to privatize American education is only just getting started.

Vouchers have turned into a campaign to subsidize the tuition of affluent parents while cutting the funding of public schools. This does not augur well for the health and future of our nation.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Catholic Schools, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Home Schooling, Ignorance, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Literature, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Florida: One Transgender Girl

By dianeravitch

December 17, 2023 //

An anonymous tipster called the superintendent of Broward County schools in Florida and told him that a trans girl (born male) was playing on the Monarch High School girls’ volleyball team. The superintendent suspended the principal and assistant principal of the high school, as well as the student’s mother (who worked in information technology), and members of the athletic staff—five in all.

The student has identified as female since second grade. As punishment for allowing her to play on the girls’ volleyball team, in defiance of state law, the Florida High School Athletic Association fined the school $16,500, ordered the principal and athletic director to attend rules seminars and placed the high school on probation for 11 months; further violations could lead to increased punishments. In addition, the association barred the girl from participating in boys sports for 11 months. It’s easy to predict that she will not play on the boys’ team.

The students at Monarch High School have walked out twice to protest the loss of their principal, who was well-liked and accessible.

What a frenzy because one student played on the girls’ volleyball team and was not an unusually strong player. Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Diaz succeeded in humiliating this one child. What brave men they are!

The following story by Brittany Walkman appeared in The Miami Herald.

When Daisy was 10, she stood in front of a microphone in a green dress, her long hair pulled back in a purple headband.

“Living in Broward County has given me the sense of safety,” she said to the Broward County School Board members, who were honoring LGBTQ History Month, “knowing that the school board has my back.”

Daisy, a transgender girl, seemed to be growing up in an era of unprecedented acceptance.

That was 2017, two years before Gov. Ron DeSantis would take office. In a short time, she crossed a cultural chasm.

Schools in Florida — and even Broward, the most Democrat-leaning county in the state — have been remodeled under DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature.

In the years Daisy aged into her teens, taking estrogen to affirm her identity as a girl, Florida’s schools became a cultural battleground, with legislative spears lobbed at the books students read, the classes they take, the history they learn, the topics they discuss in classrooms, the bathrooms students like Daisy use, the gender-affirming healthcare they receive, and the team sports they compete in.

Though transgender people are a small fraction of the population – an estimated 0.8 percent, according to the U.S. Census, and 2.3 percent of Broward’s student body — they’re an outsized target, much to the disappointment of LGBTQ advocates.

“These attacks have not come from real issues,” said Nic Zantop, deputy director of Transinclusive Group, a South Florida service and advocacy organization. “These are manufactured issues.”

Daisy’s presence the past two years on a girls’ volleyball team at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek now threatens the jobs of her mother, information management systems employee Jessica Norton; and four others at her school, including Principal James Cecil.

They’re under investigation by the school district for potentially violating a state law prohibiting a person born with male anatomy from playing on female sports teams.

When Daisy’s family sued Florida over the law two years ago, it drew little attention — in stark contrast to last week’s events, when her plight exploded across national headlines.

Even the Democrats on the Broward school board — known for embracing LGBTQ causes — remained silent about her last week. Only her classmates offered support, staging two days of walkouts.

“It was very heartwarming to see that the generation that follows us understands acceptance, inclusiveness and diversity,” said Michael Rajner, a longtime LGBTQ activist who serves as chair of the Broward County Human Rights Board. “I can’t tell you how proud these students make me.”

Daisy’s family declined to be interviewed for this story.

Jessica Norton identified herself publicly on Monday as the athlete’s mother. The Miami Herald is using a pseudonym for the student to protect her identity.

‘I’M A GIRL’

When she learned to talk, Daisy gave voice to it. “Mommy, I’m a girl.”

The Nortons weren’t sure what to think, Jennifer Norton recounted in a social media post in 2017, when she was honored with a diversity award.

“What started out as us thinking we had a gay son turned into something much more,” Norton wrote.

When it came time to find a pre-school, Norton said “we chose the school that made the least comments about the pink sparkly flip flops that I let her wear.”

Daisy adopted a feminine name, and started using it in second grade. That year, she played soccer on the girls’ team.

A doctor diagnosed her with gender dysphoria, an internal dissonance between one’s biological sex and gender identity.

Daisy played girls’ sports for years, the lawsuit says, and her social life revolved around it: basketball, softball, soccer and — fatefully — high school volleyball.

Her family — parents Jessica and Gary, a brother and a sister — embraced her as a girl.

In one family photo posted on social media, her older sister wears a shirt that proclaims, “My sister has a penis. Get over it.”

Another shows family members celebrating Pride Month at Walt Disney World, wearing clothing with rainbows. Norton added the hashtags #ProudMom #ProudDad #TransIsBeautiful.

Norton joined the PTA to make sure her daughter wasn’t bullied. She was looking forward to Monarch High.

“I recently was hired at the high school she will eventually attend and will be working with the teachers and staff to bring awareness to the school about transgender students and their rights,” she wrote when she was honored as a transgender advocate.

Daisy registered at school as a girl, with a birth certificate to prove it. (Florida allows birth certificates to be amended.) She used the girls’ restrooms, girls’ locker and changing rooms, all without incident, court filings say.

She’d avoided male puberty by taking testosterone blockers starting at age 11 — a gender affirming care that included later putting her on estrogen, the female hormone, for life, her parents’ lawsuit said in court pleadings.

She delighted in dressing up each Halloween in elaborate Katy Perry outfits, and finally came face to face with the pop star at a concert one year.

“She is not a boy,” her lawyers wrote.

IN BLACK AND WHITE

Daisy might have avoided the turmoil that upended her life if Broward school leaders had paid attention to what she was telling them in court.

Her family sued the school district, governor and state Board of Education, among others, in the summer of 2021, when she was still in middle school.

They knew the law was about to take effect, and said Daisy planned to play soccer on the girls’ team in middle school. She also dreamed of playing high school volleyball, her lawyers wrote in lawsuit pleadings.

They thought the new law violated her civil rights. In March of this year, when Daisy was a freshman, her lawyers put it clearly: “Throughout this litigation, Plaintiff has played on a girls’ team with the threat of enforcement hanging over her head, day in and day out.”

Nevertheless, Daisy’s participation in several years of girls’ sports passed without consequence.

Until last week.

Just after a federal judge dismissed the Norton lawsuit — leaving open the possibility for it to be amended — someone tipped off Broward schools Superintendent Peter Licata on Nov. 20 that Daisy had broken the state law. Licata has not identified the tipster.

The state Department of Education said it ordered the district to “take immediate action.”

Florida Sen. Rosalind Osgood, a Democrat who sat on the Broward school board, blamed the vagueness of the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act for what happened at Monarch.

“Many education laws are made that are not executable and create implementation disasters,” she said.

Zantop said because the laws are nuanced, “in many places, we’ve seen maybe even over-compliance, going beyond what laws require. … I would like to see all our school officials pushing back, sticking up for their students.”

Broward schools spokesman John Sullivan said Licata, selected for the job in July, was unaware of the lawsuit, and it had no bearing on his actions. He hadn’t known Daisy had played girls’ volleyball there until he was notified in November, Sullivan said.

Others at the school district — Norton, for example — did know. The school district’s investigation, Sullivan said, will uncover “who knew what, when.”

COMPLICATED ISSUE

In the court of public opinion, the quandary of transgender athletes transcends political leanings.

A majority of Americans believe athletes should be required to play on the team that corresponds to their birth gender, according to recent polls by the Pew Research Center and Gallup,

The federal government’s approach, under Democratic President Joe Biden, would disallow one-size-fits-all bans in public schools like Florida’s.

But it would allow male-to-female transgender youth like Daisy to be prohibited from playing on girls’ teams in some circumstances, particularly competitive high school or college teams.

Schools would be required to minimize harm to the student. The proposal is still being studied. Florida opposes it.

Nearly half the states in America filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Norton lawsuit, on the Florida Board of Education’s side.

So did a Christian group and a sports advocate who opposes transgender female participation. The Christian Family Coalition, a non profit that said it lobbied heavily for passage of Florida’s law, argued that “persons born biologically as males have intrinsic and irreversible biological and physical advantages over persons born biologically as females in terms of skeletal mass, muscle mass, and lung capacity.”

Florida education officials argued that even if the transgender athlete in question isn’t a very good player, the fact that a biological female is potentially displaced from a team is enough to warrant the law.

While some sports bodies have adopted compromises like allowing an athlete to play if testosterone levels are sufficiently reduced, Florida enacted a broad ban that doesn’t take into consideration whether the person experienced male puberty.

Legislators rejected a bill that would have adopted testosterone-based criteria like that of the International Olympic Committee.

Florida’s law applies to public middle and high schools, colleges and universities.

Though he ruled against the Norton family, U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman acknowledged that Florida’s broad ban might be unfair to Daisy.

Altman, an appointee of former President Trump, said he tried his best to “honor” her pronouns in his rulings, and “acknowledge[d] that the statute creates a difficult (and perhaps unfair) situation for D.N., who identifies as a girl in all respects and who may be prohibited from playing on the teams of her choice.”

He said she could try out for a boy’s team, or play co-ed sports. He went on, in his Nov. 6 decision dismissing the case: “Our job isn’t to decide whether a law is good or bad, smart or silly, fair or unfair. We don’t even get to say whether we like the law—whether, in short, we would’ve voted for it if we had been in the legislature. Our job is to apply the law as it’s been expressed through the will of a democratically-elected legislature and the signature of a democratically-elected governor— unless (of course) the law violates some more fundamental (call it constitutional) law.”

And on that note, Judge Altman said, it doesn’t. The family has until Jan. 11 to amend its lawsuit.

NOT A ‘MISTAKE’

A fifth grade transgender girl followed Daisy to the microphone that day in 2017. She got the giggles and had to compose herself before praising her school and the district for making sure she wasn’t seen as “a mistake.”

She said her school read “I Am Jazz,” by transgender girl Jazz Jennings, a former student in Broward schools, a book that was pulled from the shelves in seven Florida counties in the last two years.

It is one of the most commonly banned transgender-themed books in America’s schools, according to PEN, a non profit authors’ advocacy group.

Florida now leads the nation in banning books at school, according to PEN. Nearly a third of the books banned nationwide last school year had characters with LGBTQ identities, according to PEN, and 6 percent had a transgender character.

Daisy said she’d had the support of her teachers when she’d transitioned. “It was the best time of my life,” she said in the televised meeting, flanked by her parents. “I got to be who I was born to be. … I know I’m one of the lucky ones.”

Though she was open about her trans status back then, her lawyers argued in recent court filings that she feared being outed in high school, where it wasn’t commonly known.

Her coach, Alex Burgess, said she didn’t stand out physically. He had no idea she was ever considered a boy.

“It’s not like she was some superstar athlete, to that extent. She was just one of my players,” he said Monday. “She was just sweet and innocent. It was just, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, but I just can only imagine what she’s feeling.”

She’d feared being outed by a person suing under the new state law, her lawyers wrote in filings. Instead, it appeared to be the school district’s launching of an investigation — and transferring her mother and four others to off-campus jobs — that inadvertently exposed her gender history.

On Nov. 28, the day the news broke, Daisy’s mom changed her Facebook profile photo to a meme: “Life. What a f***ing nightmare.”

Daisy hasn’t returned to school since.

Staff writer Jimena Tavel contributed to this report.

Categories DeSantis, Florida, Freedom, Gender

Censoring Books is a Betrayal of the Right to Read, Learn, and Teach

By dianeravitch

December 17, 2023 //

Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution posted an article on her blog “Get Schooled” about the dangers of book banning and censorship and the advantages of learning about the real world. It was written by Becky Pringle, president of the NEA, and authors Caroline Tung Richmond and Ellen Oh.

They wrote:

Books that once lined the shelves of the library in a Jacksonville, Florida, elementary school are now stored in boxes. The school librarian spends her days vetting titles to comply with new censorship laws passed by the state.

In Spotsylvania County, Virginia, educators spent up to 40 hours a week reviewing titles after a mother of two students single-handedly challenged over 70 books in her school district. In one Utah district, 199 of 205 challenges were tracked to one married couple. Areview of those titles took 10,000 hours of staff time at a cost that exceeded $100,000. None of the educators will receive compensation for the extra work.

In Niles, Michigan, the school board recently blocked the circulation of nearly 200 diverse children’s titles that the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books donated. The donation included an illustrated version of the beloved Langston Hughes poem “I, Too, Am America,” with art by Bryan Collier, and the picture book “Grandma’s Purse” by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, about a young Black girl who playfully looks through her grandmother’s handbag. Although district teachers selected the texts, the school board — most of whom received backing from the conservative We the Parents political organization — refuses to release the books to school libraries.

These stories are not unique. Nationwide, educators continue to face an unprecedented number of book challenges — a figure that was 33% higher last school year than the year before.

While there is no doubt that Florida and Texas lead the country when it comes to banning books, the epidemic isn’t isolated to traditionally red states. In the midst of a climate that is hostile to books that contain diverse characters and storylines that don’t match some people’s view of the world, educators nationwide are overwhelmed and afraid. They are self-censoring their classroom bookshelves, and forgoing lessons focused on Pride Month or Black History Month. Some educators fear for their safety and livelihoods. In fact, 1 out of 4 school librarians have reported being harassed about books or displays in their library.

Extremist politicians and pundits stoke this fear mongering under the guise of “parental rights” while cultivating ties with far-right organizations, like those who attacked our democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. Despite clear proof from some polling that 75% of Americans oppose book bans, which voters heartily indicated by standing with pro-public education candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, the use of book bans to whitewash our nation’s history —– to mount.

Precious district resources continue to go to waste, along with taxpayer money. And our students are robbed of material that encourages them to develop critical thinking skills by learning to understand the world that surrounds them.

We know the intended target of these bans. According to PEN America, 30% of banned titles feature LGBTQ+ characters or themes, while 30% feature BIPOC characters or contain themes related to race. Further, the top four most-challenged books in 2022 were all written by diverse authors and featureddiverse protagonists. Make no mistake, this is a concerted effort to erase diverse books from public schools and suppress marginalized voices.

At NEA and We Need Diverse Books, we recognize the power of a diverse bookshelf. The simple act of reading allows students to gaze into mirrors and see themselves, and through windows that allow them to see others.

A Washington and Lee University study offers proof. After participants read a 3,000-word excerpt of the novel “Saffron Dreams” by Pakistani American author Shaila Abdullah, their bias toward the Muslim community decreased. The study offers what educators already know to be true: When students have access to diverse books, they collectively read at least four more hours a week.

When access to these titles is lost, our students also lose the opportunity to build empathy toward others who might not look, or live, like them. Every student deserves to see themselves in the books they read. It is how they learn that their stories and their lives matter.

This nation’s founding documents contain one powerful phrase: “We the people.” That means all of us, across race, place, gender and religion. All educators deserve the freedom to teach. All students deserve the freedom to learn this nation’s history in its entirety so they can fully participate in creating its bright future.

We must defend these rights for every student. We must make our voices heard at school board meetings, and support educators who demand honesty in education. And we must run for school board positions ourselves. In 2022, extreme right organizations endorsed and funded over 500 candidates for local school boards. While that number is small compared to the 71% of pro-public education candidates who won over culture war candidates, unless we rise up to challenge them, these new members will continue the practice of whitewashing our history by taking books from our students, as they march toward their ultimate goal: the destruction of our democracy.

To fight these book bans, we must continue to, in a multiracial coalition, promote, protect, and strengthen public education. No matter how long it takes, we must continue to fight to put books where they belong: in the hands of our students.

Middle school teacher Becky Pringle is president of the National Education Association. Caroline Tung Richmond is executive director of We Need Diverse Books and an award-winning author of young adult historical fiction including “The Only Thing to Fear,” “Live In Infamy” and “The Great Destroyers.” Ellen Oh is a founding member, president and CEO of We Need Diverse Books. She is the author of several middle school and young adult books, including the “Prophecy” trilogy, as well as “A Thousand Beginnings and Endings” and “You Are Here: Connecting Flights.”

Categories Censorship, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read

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