Harvard Prof. Laurence Tribe Denounces Use of His Name by Trump Lawyer

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2023 //
40

Six unindicted co-conspirators were listed in Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Trump. One of them, according to the media, is Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Cheseboro. In one of his memos to the Trump team, Chesebro cited his former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. Tribe was outraged, and he wrote this article to show how Cheseboro had distorted his words.

Tribe wrote in Just Security:

Special Counsel Jack Smith has concludedthat he can prove that several private lawyers acted as co-conspirators in former President Donald Trump’s criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. That conclusion, which is backed up by an enormous body of evidence, has significant implications for American democracy as well as for what it says about members of the legal profession. In the wake of this historic indictment, it is important for those of us with more information to come forward.

I am personally familiar with an aspect of the indictment’s documentary evidence that may shed light on the actions of one of the attorneys – Kenneth Chesebro — who is identified as Co-Conspirator 5 by the special counsel.

In a civil suit, Judge David Carter called the 2020 election interference scheme “a coup in search of a legal theory.” What I have to offer here can shed light on the anatomy of that fraud. It shows how the attorneys concocted arguments that gave the scheme an air of legitimacy but one that could not withstand public scrutiny. I know this well because a key memorandum drafted by Chesebro — which might otherwise appear relatively innocuous even in how it is discussed in the indictment — laid the foundation for the scheme grounded, in part, on misrepresenting my work. I know this especially well because of my prior communications with Chesebro.

I. Background

According to the indictment, the Trump attorneys participated in a “corrupt plan to subvert the federal government function by stopping Biden electors’ votes from being counted and certified” (para 54). They allegedly helped devise and implement central parts of the conspiracy. Those schemes include an effort to use false slates of electors to obstruct the congressional certification of the election and an effort to get Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role to interfere with the certification.

The special counsel alleges that Chesebro “assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding” (para 8). It is important to note that the indictment alleges that he and other attorneys’ criminal conduct involved knowingly misrepresenting facts (not just misrepresenting the law). For instance, the indictment states that Rudy Giuliani and Chesebro made factual claims they knew to be false to GOP electors in Pennsylvania to induce those electors to swear to certifications that the two attorneys knew to be fraudulent (paras 61-62).

Please open the link to read the rest of this fascinating article.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Lies, Trump

Read Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Indictment of Donald J. Trump

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2023 //
61

Inform yourself about the latest federal indictments of former President Donald J. Trump. Do not listen solely to what talking heads on the TV news say about the indictment.

Read it yourself.

When I read it, several points seemed especially noteworthy.

First, all of the incriminating evidence came from Republicans, most of whom were appointed by Trump to advise him as Justice Department officials and White House advisors.

Second, Trump was repeatedly told that he had lost the election. He was told this by a long list of high-level officials appointed by him.

Third, Trump was told repeatedly by state Republican leaders that his claims of voter fraud in specific states such as Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan were wrong.

Fourth, no matter how many times Trump was told that there was no election fraud that would change the outcome, he continued to repeat the lies about dead voters, illegal voters, and biased voting machines in speeches and on Twitter. There was never any evidence of voter fraud, but Trump would not stop lying about it.

Fifth, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman repeatedly told state officials about the scale of voter fraud in their states despite the lack of evidence for their claims.

Sixth, Trump and his co-conspirators devised a scheme to present alternate slates of electors in seven contested states. At first, they told the alternate electors that they would serve only if the courts determined that the results of the elections were illegal.

Seventh, since there were no successful court cases, the Trump strategy changed. He would pressure Mike Pence to recognize the alternate electors or to declare that he was returning the electoral votes to the states to investigate. Trump’s goal was to delay certification of Biden’s victory and to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the election.

Eighth, in the end, Trump’s conspiracy to block the peaceful transition of power was foiled because Pence would not go along with it. I read elsewhere that Pence consulted retired Federal Judge Mike Luttig, a conservative Republican. Luttig told Pence that his role on January 6 was purely ceremonial; he did not have the authority to change the outcome. Despite four years of obsequious loyalty to Trump, Pence stood up to Trump’s relentless pressure.

Lessons:

1. Our country avoided a major Constitutional crisis. If Pence had bowed to Trump, if Biden’s election had been canceled, the nation would have suffered grievously. The consequences would have been dire.

2. Trump knew that he lost the election. Almost all of his closest advisors told him so. But Trump is a sore loser. He refused to accept his loss. He simply ignored the facts and found a pod of true believers who conspired with him to overturn the election without regard to the vote, the Constitution or the good of democracy.

3. Trump and his co-conspirators are evil people who were ready to destroy our democracy rather than ceding power to the Biden administration.

4. I hope Trump is found guilty but I don’t believe he will ever serve a day in prison. He will be pardoned to avoid the spectacle of a former president in prison. However, in my view, the other conspirators are lawyers. They should lose their law licenses and serve time in prison.

Categories Accountability, Character, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Hoax, Injustice, Lies, Trump

Gary Rubinstein: When Is “Useless” Math Useful? Part 4

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2023 //
8

Gary Rubinstein, a teacher of mathematics at Stuyvesant High School, wrote a five-part series about whether the math taught in school is useful. This is the fourth installment, in which he delves into the history of math.

He begins:

Some of the most ancient math texts found on clay tablets from 1800 BCE in Mesopotamia are filled not with ledgers and bookkeeping but utterly ‘useless’ questions like “If you subtract the side length of a square from its area you get 870. What is the side length?” (BM 13901.2) along with lengthy algorithms for calculating the solution. Fast forward to 300 BCE in ancient Greece where they studied Euclid’s Elements, a Geometry book based mainly on using a compass and a straight edge to produce various Geometric shapes and then proving that the shapes created are what they were supposed to be like “Construct an isosceles triangle having each of the angles at the base double the remaining one. (In modern terminology to make a triangle whose three angles are 36, 72, and 72 degrees)” (Euclid IV. 10) Why the Babylonians cared to answer a question like this is not known though for the Greeks we do know that for them, at that time, Mathematics was a search for ideal truths.

In the 1700s and 1800s in this country, the only math topics taught were things that were ‘useful’ in life, like converting units of measurement and other things related to commerce. But over the past 300 years the math curriculum has grown so it has some topics that are useful (or potentially useful) and some that are more abstract and theoretical and certainly less useful than the others if not totally useless. In earlier posts I estimated that about 1/3 of the topics are useful while the rest are not.

In this post I want to examine the ‘useless’ topics and show why at least some of them have a value that transcends whether or not students will ever have an opportunity to use them in their adult lives.

In part 2 of this series I listed six topics that I felt were so useful that every student should master them before graduating high school. And if learning math that is useful is the only thing that matters, we could strip the curriculum down to just these things and the World would likely not end. As the parent of two kids who are now 15 and 12, I would be unhappy, though, if the only math my kids learned were these useful topics.

There are plenty of useless things that I want my kids to learn. When I was in school my favorite part of the day was actually not my math class but my band class. I loved playing the trumpet and took pride that I was first chair and I enjoyed practicing at home (though my family didn’t as much). I looked forward to the band concerts and band competitions we went on. But as much as I loved band and how it made me feel and challenged my determination and endurance sometime, is there anything more ‘useless’ than playing a trumpet? I suppose that some people go on to become professional trumpet players but not many. And I stopped playing the trumpet when I moved into a New York City apartment and now I dabble with another ‘useless’ instrument, the piano. The same could be said about Art. Aside from someone who becomes a professional housepainter, very few people will ever ‘use’ what they learn in Art class. What about poetry? If poetry just ceased to exist, would it really matter?

But of course the ‘use’ of poetry, art, and music isn’t that we are going to use them as adults but because they engage our minds. These creative fields offer us a type of challenge. Some people find these challenges fun. It causes our brains to release dopamine which is like a free drug.

For me, Math is a lot like playing a musical instrument. I like using my mind to discover some kind of pattern and then to see if I can prove that the pattern wasn’t just a coincidence. When I figure something out I get such a feeling of satisfaction. Often when something is too difficult for me to figure out myself I have to cheat and see how someone else figured something out and when I’m reading it it is, for me, like a page turner mystery novel. I’m getting near the end but not quite there yet and suddenly I can see where its going and even if I don’t, when I get to the end I think “Wow, how did I not figure that out myself, it seems so easy now.” And often the math topics that provide the most enjoyable adventure in trying to figure them out or just to understand why they work are the topics that are about as ‘useful’ as playing the trumpet.

In this post I’m going to briefly describe nine topics that are not particularly ‘useful’ but that I think all students should have the opportunity to experience. These topics, by the way, are already in the K-12 curriculum but they are mixed in with so many other less fruitful topics that they might get lost in the crowd. I’ll list these in order from earliest learned to latest learned

Please open the link and keep reading.

Categories Curriculum, History, Teachers and Teaching

Nancy Bailey: The Takeover of Houston Schools Is a Dire Warning for Other Districts

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2023 //
14

Nancy Bailey fears that the takeover of the Houston Independent School District should set off alarm bells in other districts. The new superintendent Mike Miles is taking steps to de-professionalize teaching and to impose untested programs on the schools. He is the tip of the spear of destructive education “reform.” Please recall that the Texas Education agency took control of the entire district because one high school—with disproportionate numbers of students who are in need of special education and in high poverty—was not getting the test scores the state expected (even though its scores increased in the year before the state takeover and the school rose to a C grade). Is Mike Miles a harbinger of the future or an echo of failed policies forged by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top?

She writes:

I think there is a likelihood that we will be seeing more state takeover of districts. 

~Kenneth Wong, education policy researcher and former advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, March 28, 2023

Houston faces harsh public school reforms, a sad example of the continuing efforts in America to destroy all public education and end professional teaching.

State takeovers aren’t new. Nor are they known for innovation, but for creating school voids, cutting services, and firing key staff, promising to close learning gaps. Takeovers usually only weaken schools, breaking them up and leaving communities with fewer and poorer schools.

The Superintendent

Superintendent Mike Miles has never been a classroom teacher. Miles replaces Superintendent Millard House II, hired in 2021, only there two years before being hired elsewhere.

As CEO of Third Future Schools, Miles ran a network of public charter schools in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana. The Texas Tribune describes his leadership in the Dallas Independent School District as tumultuous after six years as superintendent of the smaller Harrison School District in Colorado Springs.

The Dallas Morning News claims the district has few academic gains to show for all the disruption.

Miles participated in the Eli Broad program at Yale. On his LinkedIn page, another school reformer writes they matriculated through the Broad Academy now within the Yale School of Management.

The late Eli Broad pushed school privatization with a 44-page document to show how to break up public schools, originally reported by Howard Blume in the LA Times $490 Million Plan would Put Half of LAUSD Students in Charter Schools.

Those who subscribe to Broad’s philosophy disrupt public education to privatize it. Realizing Miles is a Broadie (name reflecting Broad’s agenda), makes what’s happening in Houston clearer.

Miles has degrees from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served in the army, and attended the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University. His degrees are in engineering, Slavic languages and literature, and international affairs and public policy. He has no known formal education about running a school considering student developmental needs.

The New Education System (NES)

Miles’s program is called the New Education System (NES) and HERE. Principals, teachers, and staff join.

Under the NES, according to the Houston Chronicle, administrators will handle discipline, stand in hallways patrolling, and make children walk in single file, quietly, and schools look sterile, cold, and cookie-cutter. If they use the bathroom, they must carry an orange parking cone. Teachers might get to keep their desks.

Compensation under the NES will be differentiated. Teachers will likely be evaluated with test scores, and their autonomy is stifled. Curriculum developers will provide lesson plans and materials for grades 2-10, removing the teacher’s instructional expertise. Student work will be graded by support personnel, even though teachers glean information about students by grading their work.

The district will hire apprentice teachers. They will expand the reach of the best and brightest teachers. How will they make this determination? Shouldn’t all teachers be hired with the credentials they need to do the job?

The plan calls for four periods of the staff performing duties each month (75 minutes each time), and this is unclear.

Replacing School Libraries and Librarians with Disciplinary Centers

Most controversial is that when principals join the NES they can lose their school libraries and librarians. From Click2Houston: 85 schools that have joined Miles’ program, and of those, 28 campuses will lose their librarians. The district said they will have the opportunity to transition to other roles within the district.

Instead of school libraries, children with behavioral difficulties will face screens in “Teams Centers” or “Zoom rooms.” There’s concern they’ll associate libraries as punishing. Students who misbehave need human interaction and support, not to be left to face screens.

Librarians with advanced degrees in library science will be removed, despite being knowledgeable and critical to a child’s learning. They could be transplanted to non-NES schools, which will get school libraries and librarians.

Miles states:

We’re not doing things that are just popular. We’re not doing things that we’ve always done, we’re not doing things that are just fun, we’re not doing things that are just nice to have or good unless we can measure its success.

He’s not doing what works! It’s common knowledge among those who understand children that when children have access to great school libraries learning results improve.

Losing Teachers: Moving to Online Amplify to Teach Reading

HISD is losing qualified teachers, school libraries, and librarians, and advertising for 350 long-term substitutes who don’t require a college degree. The online program, Amplify, will be used.

In State Legislative news in May, Education Bill “Amplifies” StatePower, Threatens Teacher Autonomy, Jovanica Palacios states:

Despite promises to the contrary, this bill [House Bill 1605] would cut a slice out of Texas’ education funding, taking money out of school districts and giving it to a vendor. The proposed legislation is actually dubbed “the Amplify bill” due to its association with curriculum development company Amplify, which received a $19 million emergency state contract during COVID.

At least 85 NES schools under Miles will use Amplify, which advertises the Science of Reading, an online program once owned by the education division of Rupert Murdock’s News Corp. and purchased by Laurene Powell Jobs. Where’s independent research providing proof that this program is effective?

Please open the link to finish reading her important post.

Categories Broad Foundation, Curriculum, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Texas

Jersey City: The Secret to Retaining Teachers!

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2023 //
16

Something exciting is happening in Jersey City, New Jersey. As schools adopt the community schools model, teachers are teaching, enjoying it, and not jumping ship. Pay attention!

Joshua Rosario wrote in the Jersey Journal:

We swear on Dumbledore’s Elder wand, no spells were cast to keep teachers from walking out the door of this Jersey City school.

At a time when schools nationwide are struggling to keep and recruit educators, the preK-through-8 Mahatma Gandhi School has retained its staff by using a community-based model that allows them to focus solely on teaching; as well as a Harry Potter-type friendly competition in which students and teachers are split into four teams to accumulate points throughout the year.

Teachers Michelle Duarte and Lindsay Boland said before the school, located at 143 Romaine Ave., transitioned to the community-based model, teachers had to be attendance officers, guidance counselors, therapists, nurses and even act as another parent for students.

“It just comes down to you can teach, you can interact with students and not worry about all the extra stuff that used to get thrown at you in the past,” Duarte, a teacher for 23 years at the school said.

At least 55% of teachers, many of whom take on multiple roles beyond educating their students, are considering leaving the profession earlier than they planned, according to a survey by the National Education Association, one of the largest teacher unions in the country.

“I am not saying that I don’t think about work when I get home … but when I get home I can shut my computer down and not have to type up lesson plans,” said Boland, who has taught at three schools. “I had one of my students tell me he missed school for a week because he had no shoes.”

Superintendent Norma Fernandez and Mahatma Gandhi Principal Peter Mattaliano credit the community-based school model for a 95% retention rate. The community-based model allows the school to give its 1,000 students, of which 62% are considered economically disadvantaged, and their families access to more services than traditional schools can provide.

Out of the 85 teachers at the school, also known as School 23, only five teachers had filed for retirement this past year, Mattaliano said.

While many teachers would pay out of their own pocket to provide a student with shoes, teachers at Mahatma Gandhi can reach out to the school’s community coordinator. The children and their families are not only connected to needed financial help, but the school provides a food pantry, clothing shop and even a full medical clinic that includes visits from a pediatrician and dentist.

“They didn’t even know what a dentist was or owned a toothbrush, which was really alarming and depressing,” said Boland, who teaches first grade. “A lot of times kids tell you there is no food at home, so a few times a week we take some of our students down there and go food shopping.”

School 23 is one of five community-based schools in the district, along with schools 15, 34, 22, 29 (which opens in September) and Snyder High School.

Open the link and read on.

Categories Community Schools, Education Reform, Funding, New Jersey, Teachers and Teaching

Ohio: Voters Reject Issue 1!

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2023 //
48

The AP reported that Issue 1 was defeated today in Ohio. with 65%+ of the vote counted, 57% of voters opposed Issue 1.

Issue 1 would have changed the vote required to change the state constitution from a simple majority of 50% + 1 to 60% + 1. The goal of the Republicans was to block a referendum in November on abortion rights.

In November, voters will decide whether to add protection of reproductive rights to the Ohio Constitution. It appears that they will, now that Issue 1 was defeated. Red state Kansas voters did the same, and voters in Kentucky and Montana rejected laws banning abortion.

Wherever the issue goes to a vote, a majority will support women’s reproductive rights. To restore the rights canceled by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, take it to the voters.

Democracy rules.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ohio, Republicans

Gary Rubinstein: What Are the Useless Topics Taught in Math Classes? Part 3

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2023 //
41

Gary Rubenstein has been writing a series of posts on the question of whether the math curriculum is useful. Some parts of it are indeed useful, others not so much. In this post, he describes the “useless” topics.

He writes:

I’d estimate that about 15% to 20% of school time in K-12 is spent on math. Elementary and middle schools often have their students do 90 minutes of math a day. And it is common for students to take a math class every year throughout high school.

In my last post I listed a meager six math topics that I consider ‘useful’ and by that I mean that those math skills are really needed by adult consumers and also, to some degree, in a lot of professions. And if you believe me about this and you think that any math that is not useful should not be taught in school you might wonder how much time should be dedicated to those topics throughout a students schooling. Now I’m not saying that I think that we should cut all topics besides these few but if I had to answer how long it could take to teach those, I’d say that we could do it in about 1/3 the amount of time. Math would be a thing like music, art, or physical education.

It’s still an interesting thing to think about, though, because it gets to the fundamental question of ‘what is the purpose of learning math?’ or ‘what is the purpose of learning anything for that matter?’ or ‘what makes this thing better to learn than that thing?.’ I will eventually provide my opinions on these questions.

But before we cut 2/3 of the time that we dedicate to math, we should take a look at what sorts of things would we be depriving the students of and whether there would be negative side effects of these discarded topics.

In Part 2, I mentioned a topic that I said was not ‘useful’ of finding the prime factorization of composite numbers. While it is true that hardly anyone in their adult lives are ever asked to break 555 into 5*3*37, maybe the ‘use’ of this skill is not so direct. The ‘use’ of some ‘useless’ topics is that they are prerequisite skills to more complicated topics in future years and those more complicated topics might be ‘useful’ in some science applications. So some ‘useless’ topics might have some utility as scaffolding to other topics.

Another reason that something like factoring has more ‘use’ than it at first seemed is that prime numbers are really important in more advanced math. They are the building blocks of all other numbers. Maybe someone who loves factoring eventually becomes a math major and they use advanced factoring to create a new cryptography method based on it.

Open the link and keep reading.

Categories Curriculum, Teachers and Teaching

Houston: Miles Wants Power to Spend Up to $2 Million Without Board Approval

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2023 //
23

Mike Miles is a source of unending chutzpah. Not only did he win approval to hire uncertified teachers and principals, not only is he turning libraries into detention centers, but now he wants the HISD board to allow him to spend up to $2 million without prior approval by the board. This is outrageous. The current limit is $100,000.

Megan Menchacha of The Houston Chronicle reports:

The Houston ISD administration is seeking to increase the minimum purchasing threshold that requires board approval by twentyfold.

Under current policy, any district purchase of at least $100,000 requires approval from the school board. Superintendent Mike Miles asked during the board’s work session meeting Thursday to increase the limit to $2 million so the district can be faster and more efficient with its purchases.

The board will vote on whether to adopt the changes to the policy during its regular meeting Thursday….

Mindy Wilson, a parent of two HISD students, urged the board not to adopt the item, calling the request “unheard of and obscene.” She cited larger school districts with lower limits that require board approval, including the Los Angeles Unified School District and Chicago Public Schools.

“Do you see how egregious this is for HISD stakeholders and taxpayers?” Wilson said. “How is this even allowed to happen? This is even shameful on a national level. Just think about how it’s gonna hurt HISD as years go on and other superintendents and people have this kind of power over our tax dollars. … We demand transparency for every policy and dollar spent in HISD.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District has about 420,000 students, and the board must approve purchases over $250,000. In Chicago, the school district has around 322,100 students, and the board must approve purchases above $500,000.

Miles said those two districts were too slow, bureaucratic and failing to achieve student achievement results. He said he proposed a $2 million threshold for HISD after a meeting with his finance team

“They’re less effective and less efficient. Chicago and L.A., they’re not getting it done,” Miles said. “They have a very bureaucratic, cumbersome process to do anything because it’s very political there, and politics run all these vendor contracts.”

We will soon learn whether the HISD board is a puppet board.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Houston

Darcie Cimarusti: Beware of the So-Called Parental Rights Groups

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2023 //
1

Darcie Cimarusti died a few days ago after a valiant fight against ovarian cancer. She was the communications director for the Network for Public Education and a treasured friend to all who worked with her. Having served many years on her local school board in Highland Park, New Jersey, she was passionately committed to supporting public schools against baseless attacks on the schools and their teachers.

Last December, despite her illness, Darcie wrote an article about hyper partisan groups like Moms for Liberty that were besieging local school boards with baseless complaints and driving wedges among parents.

Her article was printed in newspapers across the nation. This one appeared in the Bedford Gazette. She never stopped speaking up for what she believed in. Hers was the voice of reason, calm, common sense, and responsibility.

She wrote:

I have been a local school board member since my daughters, now 11th-graders, were in second grade. In that time, I have been involved in education policy discussions at the local, state and national levels on issues such as the rights of LGBTQ students, standardized testing and the privatization of public education.

The rise of the so-called “parental rights” movement in public education has been one of the thorniest, most perplexing issues I have encountered.

Parents certainly play a crucial role in the education of their children. Who would dare argue that they don’t? But heavily funded, right-leaning parents groups such as Moms for Liberty have unleashed a juggernaut of opposition to “critical race theory,” LGBTQ rights, social emotional learning, diversity equity and inclusion. So it has become imperative that we have an honest discussion about how much say parents should have in what is (or is not) taught in our public schools.

My district, unlike many, is racially, ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, with 31 languages spoken in the homes of our students. Educating such a diverse student body presents many challenges and requires a nuanced approach to policy and practice to ensure all students have equal opportunities to learn, thrive and grow. While it is easy for school leaders to say they embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s far too challenging to implement policies promoting those principles.

I have spent my time on the school board helping to develop systems that ensure decisions are made collaboratively and with as many voices involved as possible. This means making space not only for administrators, teachers, parents and students but also ensuring that historically marginalized groups are represented.

Decisions that affect students should never be based on the whims of the most privileged or powerful, and not on whose voice is loudest.

But the latter has become the hallmark of parental rights activists. They attend meeting after meeting, berating, shouting down and even making death threats against school board members. During the pandemic, battles over masks erupted at podiums at far too many school board meetings across the country and quickly morphed into demands to ban books, censor curriculum and muzzle “woke” teachers that parents accused of “grooming” their children.

In the 2022 midterm elections, parental rights activists were on the ballot in many states. With the support and endorsement of Moms for Liberty, they ran campaigns to become school board members in districts in red, blue and purple states. Moms for Liberty operates county chapters that aim to serve as watchdogs “over all 13,000 school districts.” Chapters empower parents to “defend their parental rights” and “identify, recruit and train liberty-minded parents to run for school boards.”

The “anti-woke” agenda espoused by Moms for Liberty and endorsed by school board candidates had the greatest successes in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis proudly declared the state was “where woke goes to die.” But in many other parts of the country, parental rights candidates lost their elections, with even conservative political operatives acknowledging that many of their campaigns were “too hyperbolic.”

Chaos has already erupted in several districts where they succeeded and won board majorities, with newly formed, inexperienced boards firing superintendents or forcing them to resign. One board voted to ban the teaching of critical race theory just hours after being sworn in.

After a decade of experience as a school board member, one thing I can say for sure is that the majority of parents, teachers and community members do not respond well to instability and disruption in their local public schools. When school boards run amok and rash decisions make headlines, communities work quickly to restore calm. If parental-rights school boards continue to govern recklessly, they will undoubtedly face a backlash from voters.

Creating and implementing sound school policies and practices that respect and affirm all students requires collaboration. It does not allow for the divisive, polarizing rhetoric and impetuous, rash decision-making that have become the calling cards of the so-called parental rights movement.

+1 

Categories Bigotry, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Gender, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism

OHIO: Vote NO on Issue #1! Today!

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2023 //
2

The Ohio legislature passed a strict ban on abortion, prohibiting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That is so early that women don’t know they are pregnant. So the law amounts to a total ban.

Supporters of abortion rights gathered enough signatures to put a referendum on the November ballot that would write protection for abortion rights into the state constitution.

The legislature doesn’t want that referendum to pass, so they called a special election for August 8—TODAY—asking if voters would change the law so that it takes a 60% + 1 majority to pass a change in the state constitution. Currently, a referendum wil pass with 50% plus 1. (Several months ago, the legislature banned special elections in August because of low turnout; but they ignored the law they assed, hoping for low turnout.)

The legislature assumes that the abortion rights supporters cannot teach 60%.

This referendum attacks not just abortion rights; it attacks democracy. Should it pass, any change in the state constitution would be very difficult to achieve.

If you support democracy, if you believe that 50% + 1 should win elections, vote NO today against Issue #1.

No matter how you feel about abortion, defend democracy. Vote NO on Issue #1.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Gender, Ohio
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