Nancy Bailey: What Secretary Cardona Should Do Now

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2024 //
26

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has been nearly invisible these past three years, other than lamenting test scores. Veteran educator Nancy Bailey has some suggestions about how he could help kids, schools, and teachers right now. This post was reposted by the Network for Public Education.

The secretary keeps talking about raising the bar. Nancy Bailey has some thoughts about some bars he could work on. Reposted with permission.

She writes:

Education Secretary Cardona focuses on reducing absenteeism, tutoring, and after-school programs. And he refers to raising the bar, which sounds like A Nation at Risk talk.

Yet there are so many K12 issues that Cardona and the Biden administration could address, lead, and support the states and local school districts.

Here are some educational issues Cardona should drive this new year. If you have more, please share.

1. The Arts

Poor public schools have gone without the arts for years. Cardona should push for qualified art and music teachers for every school.

The arts help students struggling with mental health difficulties, and jobs exist in the arts.

Every child in K12 should have access to a vital arts program.

2. Career Education

Career-technical education is essential, but companies pushing their agendas into high schools to get workers raises concerns.

Tax dollars should help students decide what careers they want, giving them the chance to experience high school, not creating schools for corporate preparation.

3. Class Size

Reducing class sizes would help students with disabilities in inclusion classes and is essential for student safety. Cardona must endorse lowering class sizes and showcase schools that do.

If schools can’t lower every class (classes like P.E. wouldn’t be necessary), give students access to at least one small class where they are known.

Lowering class sizes in K-3rd grade would also help children get a good start. See the STAR Study.

4. Corporal Punishment

In 2023, The Washington Post reported that 15 states still permitted corporal punishment in schools (St. George, 2023). Like Florida, which vaguely gives a nod to it. Teens who wear the wrong kind of prom dress or misunderstandings resulting in paddling are examples.

Cardona deserves praise for standing against corporal punishment last year in schools, claiming educators should favor evidence-based approaches and that there should be no spanking, hitting, or paddling.

5. Data

Cardona must study and draw attention to child privacy laws which are currently inadequate.

In 2018, the NEPC published Educating All Our Children: Your Kids, Their Data, No Privacy by Linda McSpadden McNeil.

She stated:

When children’s privacy is violated in ways that are overt, visible, and knowable, the violation is unquestioned. It is unacceptable. In most cases, it is illegal.

So why is it different when the violation is hidden, opaque, electronic, commercial, and complicated?

6. High-Stakes Standardized Testing

President Biden promised teachers and parents he’d end harmful high-stakes standardized tests. Instead, he pushed assessments even during the pandemic.

Can Cardona show the American people who want these tests reduced or eliminated what, if anything, the Biden administration will finally do to end high-stakes standardized tests?

7. Lead in School Pipes

The Biden-Harris team promised to repair the lead pipes in homes and schools. They’re to be commended for this. It would be nice, however, if Cardona presented a report.

No amount of lead is O.K. for developing children, and it can lead to learning disabilities.

8. Reading

Reading has become a volatile issue, and Cardona has been mostly silent. Many commercial programs with little independent study, but nonetheless called the Science of Reading, are being pushed into classrooms.

The subject of reading deserves a better forum than short, often hostile debates on X.

Cardona should call for a new National Reading Panel to study programs and address reading instruction. The panel should include teachers who teach reading since they were left off the last panel. This panel should consider the concerns of the last NRP member, the only educator on the panel, Joanne Yatvin (Yatvin, 2002). Parents should also be given a voice on this panel. A new NRP would allow for a better collection of the research, old and the latest findings, and a review of the work of the last NRP.

9. Recess

Every public school in the nation should give children several unstructured breaks throughout the school day, supervised, on safe, well-designed playgrounds.

Driving students to work nonstop with mindfulness training or a dozen other excuses to bypass recess should not be permitted.

10. School Buildings

Americans need to know the status of their public school buildings. How are the HVAC systems and air quality? How many school facilities are still falling apart? Are public school buildings safe?

Are new schools being built to support teachers?

11. School Choice

The Biden administration discussed regulating charter schools (Lieberman, 2022). But concerns about vouchers, educational savings account, nonprofit and for-profit charters, and religion in schools needs to be better addressed.

In addition, the Biden administration should describe what they mean by community schools (often called charter schools), partnerships, and social impact bonds and how these schools are still public.

12. School Libraries and Librarians

It’s an abomination to drill children to learn to read in poor schools, and then not provide them a school library with a qualified school librarian.

Closing school libraries has been a disaster in many school districts, see Philadelphia as an example.

13. School Safety

The gun lobby is unfortunately influential, so despite shootings in this country, don’t hold your breath for meaningful gun laws. It was thoughtful of Cardona to visit Parkland.

In the meantime, school administrators must devise creative ways to make schools safe and identify students in their schools who need mental health help. See class size above.

14. Social-Emotional Learning

Concerns about the data collected on students includes social-emotional learning. Teachers always want their students to be socially and emotionally healthy, but social-emotional learning seems more about collecting unnecessary sensitive data about students.

Who is using this information and why?

15. Special Education

Parents are in danger of losing special education services. The All Handicapped Children’s Act reauthorized to IDEA should have evolved into a more inclusive and better programs for students with exceptional needs, but instead it has been hijacked by those who don’t want to pay for it.

Cardona should look into special education and create a task force to study it and determine exactly how much special education funding schools receive and the kind of services students receive. He might start with Tammy Kolbe’s work and the National Education Policy Center report Funding Special Education: Charting a Path that Confronts Complexity and Crafts Coherence.

16. Teacher Preparation

School reform has changed teacher preparation dramatically. There needs to be more effort to oversee these mostly fast-track nonprofit or for-profit programs often connected to charter schools.

Cardona should step up here to promote fully university-prepared teachers, and he should work with university education programs to improve their coursework and degree offerings. The United States Department of Education might provide scholarships to attract young people who want to pursue a teaching career in university education programs, not unknown nonprofits or charter school preparation.

Fast-track groups like Teach for America are a concern because they turn those without real qualifications into the system with little understanding of child development or what’s needed to teach well, and Grow Your Own programs are ill-defined.

17. Technology

While technology is useful to learning, a recent Columbia University study indicates that children read better with paper print not online.

The Guardian cites MIT neuroscientist John Gabrieli, skeptical about the promises of big tech and its salesmen.

Gabrieli states:

I am impressed how educational technology has had no effect on scale, on reading outcomes, on reading difficulties, on equity issues.

Is Cardona behind teachers or for replacing them with technology? Actions matter.

18. Third-Grade Retention

Third-grade retention is unnecessary. No child should be made to feel like a failure. Children can still learn to read in third grade, can still grow and become great learners. Speaking out on this issue would help end it.

References

St. George, D. (2023, August 10). In over 15 states, schools can still paddle students as punishment. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/08/10/school-paddling-corporal-punishment/.

Yatvin, J. (2002). Babes in the Woods: The Wanderings of the National Reading Panel. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(5), 364–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170208300509

Lieberman, M (2022). Lawmakers, Education Secretary Clash Over Charter School Rules. Education Week, https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/lawmakers-education-secretary-clash-over-charter-school-rules/2022/04

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Categories Art, Arts Education, Biden, Cardona, Miguel, Class size, Corporate Reform, Creativity, Data, Education Reform, Funding, Literacy, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Leaders Engage in Strange, Irresponsible Behavior

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2024 //
16

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, keeps a close watch on state government and the state legislature. He has friends in both parties, so he is diplomatic. But since I don’t live in Oklahoma, I read what he reports in this post with a mixture of amazement and amusement. I can’t believe these people think they will improve education by their shenanigans. There are serious and reasonable people in Oklahoma. Unfortunately, they do not run the state.

John also forwarded to me a critique of pending legislation in the State Senate that would require every science teacher to give equal time to evolution and “intelligent design,” i.e. creationism. The critique came from the National Center for Science Education. I repeat: Where are the sane people? The grown-ups?

He writes:

Our Internet and phone went out for five days as the legislature’s bill filing period closed, so I was limited to learning the latest craziness of the national MAGA campaign, and national coverage of Oklahoma news. For example, State Superintendent Ryan Walters selected “Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the ‘Libs of TikTok’ social media account,” as member of the Oklahoma library media advisory committee. She has no background in education and does not live in Oklahoma. And the governor has already “banned the use of TikTok by any executive branch agency or employee and blacklisted the software from all state networks and state managed devices.”

But, the Oklahoman reported, “Walters said he put Raichik on the advisory committee because she was on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools and pushing ‘woke indoctrination’ on kids.”

The Oklahoman also explained, “Last year, a ‘Libs of TikTok’ post drew attention to a video posted by an elementary school librarian in Tulsa.” The Libs of TikTok version “had been edited from her original TikTok” and identified the teacher and the school. The Oklahoman explained:

After the post was made, the Ellen Ochoa Elementary School in Tulsa received a bomb threat on Aug. 22. That day Ryan Walters had also retweeted the “Libs of TikTok” post.

The threat appeared to have been made in retaliation for a librarian’s public post on TikTok.

Also leading the recent news, Republican Senator Nathan Dahm’s Senate Bill 1837 sought to:

Create the “Common Sense Freedom of Press Control Act.” The measure requires criminal background checks of every member of the news media, licensing of journalists through the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the completion of a “propaganda free” training course through the Oklahoma State Department of Education, a $1 million liability insurance policy and quarterly drug tests.

KOSU reported that they would also have to “attend an eight-hour ‘propaganda-free’ safety training developed by PragerU.”

Not to be outdone, Republican Rep. Juston Humphrey’s House Bill 3084, sought to ban:

“Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school” from participating in class and school activities.

Humphrey would “require parents or guardians to pick the student up from school. … But, if parents are unable to pick the student up, the bill says ‘animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.’”

Humphrey also filed:

House Bill 3133, as it is currently worded, states that any person who is of Hispanic descent living within the state of Oklahoma; is a member of a criminal street gang as such term is defined in state statutes; and has been convicted of a gang-related offense enumerated in state statute shall be deemed to have committed an act of terrorism and will be subject to property forfeiture.

Humphrey had previously said “he intends to file legislation that will require any Oklahoma elected official known to be in support of a terrorist organization to be removed from their seat.” He did so to stop “Hollywood’s fake agenda.”

Other Republicans contributed bills such as Sen. Dusty Deevers’ Senate Bill 1958 “that would no longer allow Oklahomans to file for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, also known as no-fault divorce.”

And Rep. Jim Olsen:

Filed legislation to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms.” It “would require each classroom to clearly display a poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments, measuring at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall, beginning in the 2024-2025 school year. The bill also outlines the specific text to be used for the display.

He did so because “The Ten Commandments is one of the foundations of our nation,” and “Publicly and proudly displaying them in public school classrooms will serve as a reminder of the ethics of our state and country as students and teachers go about their day.”

Olsen also “pointed to numerous passages in the Bible he said clearly endorsed corporal punishment as a part of proper child training, including Hebrews 12:11, which states, ‘Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterword it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.’”

Others continued the filing of bills to support Ryan Walters’ agenda. For instance, Rep. Tom Gann:

Said he is taking a proactive step toward safeguarding Oklahoma’s public school students with the introduction of House Bill 3112. The bill would prohibit schools and school districts from accepting financial donations or gifts from countries (meaning China) designated as “hostile” or “Countries of Particular Concern (CPC)” by the United States Secretary of State.

And Chris Banning “released a statement applauding State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters for working to eliminate all references to American Library Association guidelines in Oklahoma’s Information Literacy Standards and proposing new standards that are aligned with Oklahoma values.”

I kept scrolling back from December and January filings until I got to two other types of statements For example Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall’s, praised:

The conservative rating for the Oklahoma Legislature after the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Foundation’s Center for Legislative Accountability (CLA) released its 2023 ratings of the voting records of state legislators in all fifty states. Oklahoma was ranked as the second.  

But also I read a number of Republican statements condemning the bomb threats directed at the Tulsa Union Public Schools after the Libs of TikTok’s false post which likely prompted the threats. For example. “Rep. Ross Ford, R-Broken Arrow, vowed to help track down those who have made recent bomb threats made against several schools in the Union Public Schools district.”

So, what has the rightwing done in terms of policy when they could have been protecting children and educators? Gov. Stitt appointed Nellie Tayloe Sanders, “who last year helped advance a controversial Catholic charter school proposal (the St. Isidore religious school)” as his new secretary of education.

Worse, on Newsmax, Stitt seemed to warn of a civil war prompted by a confrontation between the Texas National Guard and President Biden. He certainly seemed to say that Oklahoma and our National Guard would side with Texas against the U.S..

And Ryan Walter’s confusing and flawed $16 million teacher bonus program is now clawing back $50,000 incentives they gave to teachers who were doing their best to follow the confusing application rules that Walters’ staff mismanaged.

That’s just the latest batch of the rightwing’s frightening behavior. Some serious reporters dismiss “headline-grabbing proposals such as prohibiting so-called furry costumes in public schools and the licensing and drug testing of journalists [that] have little chance of passage,” arguing that “scores of other bills, if passed, could mean big changes for Oklahomans in everything from land sales and medical marijuana to prescription drugs and state pension system investments.”

But, reading the proposed legislation, it seems overwhelmingly impossible that more good than harm could come out of the 2024 session. And, the historian in me worries that these irrational, but not passable, bills could do even more harm than the legislation that could come out of the Republican-controlled legislature. After all, they are parts of a continuing barrage against trust in government and democratic principles.

So, what can be done to curb the stress the MAGAs are imposing?

We can hope that more adult Republicans will push back against their extremist colleagues. Or, I guess we could wish for more ice storms that will shut down the Internet so we don’t need to dwell on their threats to democracy.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Ignorance, Oklahoma

Jeff Bryant: Two Federal Education Programs with Opposite Purposes

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2024 //
15

Jeff Bryant, independent education journalist, writes here about two federal education programs with disparate goals. One is the relatively small Community Schols Program, which aims to build and strengthen communities, and the other is the Charter Schools Program, which is wildly overfunded and which divides communities. His article appears on the website of the Independent Media Institute; it was originally published by The Progressive.

Bryant writes:

The Department of Education has separate grant programs for funding either charter or community schools; the latter provides money for what schools and families really need, the former, not so much.

[This article was produced by the Progressive. Read the full article here.]

Two education-related grant programs operated by the U.S. Department of Education—both of which dole out millions in federal tax dollars for educating K-12 children every year—present two opposing truths about government spending on public education: that it can be wasteful and misguided, or innovative and informed.

The first program enjoys the significant backing of industry lobbyists and wealthy foundations, and allows private education operators—some that operate for-profit—to skim public money off the top. It also adds to racial segregation in public schools, and squanders millions of dollars on education providers that come and quickly go, or simply fail to provide any education services at all.

The second program helps schools expand learning time and opportunities for students, especially in high-poverty and rural communities; promote parent engagement; encourage collaboration with local businesses and nonprofits; and become hubs for child- and family-related services that contribute to students’ health and well-being.

These strikingly different outcomes result from two different intentions: the first program’s goal to promote a type of school that is vaguely defined versus the second’s goal to expand a way of doing school that is supported by research and anecdotal evidence.

The first grant program is the Charter Schools Program (CSP), which funds privately operated charter schools and their developers and advocacy organizations. The program, started during the Clinton Administration and greatly expanded during the Obama years, gives money directly to charter schools and to state education agencies and charter school-related organizations to distribute to new, existing, or proposed charters.

In October, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the nation’s top lobbyist for the charter school industry, hailed the federal government’s release of $572 million in taxpayer dollars from the CSP, calling the money “the most essential funding to enable the existence of public charter schools.”

In New Mexico, local press outlets reported that a $52 million CSP grant went to a charter industry advocacy group called the Public Charter Schools of New Mexico, which in turn would award subgrants to individual charter schools. One reporter quoted the group’s leader who said, “There was a large application with several requirements in there. And we were scored based on, you know, how well we met the requirements and a peer review process.”

In Idaho, Idaho Ed News reported about the $24.8 million CSP grant going to Bluum, which the reporter called “a nonprofit charter support organization.” The grant is to be used “to grow and strengthen Idaho’s charter school network,” the article said.

Maryland’s top charter school industry booster, the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools, celebrated its $28.7 million CSP saying it would provide “subgrants to open new charter schools and/or replicate and expand charter schools.”

Not all CSP grants went to advocacy groups. The largest—totaling $109,740,731—went to the Indiana Department of Education. According to Chalkbeat, one out of three charter schools in Indiana have closed since 2001.

A 2019 analysis conducted by the Network for Public Education, a pro-public schools advocacy group, found that over its lifespan CSP has wasted as much as $1 billion on charter schools that never opened or opened and quickly closed.

Another CSP grant of $37,579,122 went to the Minnesota Department of Education. In Minnesota, courts have grappled for years with the question of whether racial imbalances in public schools, caused to a great extent by the expansion of racially segregated charter schools, violate the constitutional right of students of color to receive an adequate education.

Other CSP grants went to credit enhancement for charter school facilities, essentially giving public money to real estate development firms and investment companies that finance and build new charter schools.

[…]

Read the rest of this article on the Progressive.

Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Community Schools, Competition, Disruption, Education Reform, Funding, U.S. Department of Education

Uvalde Report: A Failure of Leadership

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2024 //
24

The Justice Department recently released a lengthy report on the massacre of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022.

The report concluded that teachers and students have more training about how to react to an active shooter than the nearly 400 law enforcement officers who converged on the school. No one was sure who was in charge. The children had been trained to be silent, and they were. The officers assumed that the silence meant that the shooter was barricaded in an empty classroom, despite numerous 911 calls by terrified students. For over an hour, no one confronted the killer. The mistakes cost lives. When the killer was dead, the medical response to the situation was bizarre. Dead children were placed in ambulances, while children with gunshot wounds were loaded onto school buses.

ProPublica and the Texas Tribune published and summarized the findings:

UVALDE, Texas — Law enforcement agencies across the country should immediately prioritize active shooter training, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday as he released a scathing report about the handling of the 2022 massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which lives could have been saved if training protocols had been followed.

The Justice Department’s long-anticipated report about the shooting found that “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training” led to the bungled response, which Garland said should never have happened. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed on May 24, 2022.

“Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” Garland said during a news conference on Thursday.

The report’s findings about the failure to follow protocol and the lack of sufficient training to prepare officers for a mass shooting largely mirrored the flaws revealed in a Texas Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE investigation published last month that found that states require students and teachers to receive far more training to prepare them for a mass shooting than they require for the police. At least 37 states require schools to conduct active-shooter-related drills, nearly all on an annual basis. But Texas is the only state that mandates that all of its police officers complete repeated training, at least 16 hours every two years. That requirement was implemented after the Uvalde shooting.

Garland said the report was produced in an effort to offer lessons that would hopefully better prepare law enforcement across the country to respond to future mass shootings. It offered recommendations that included requiring all agencies in a region to train together and providing officers across the country with at least eight hours of active shooter training annually.

The vast majority of at least 380 officers from about two dozen local, state and federal agencies who responded to the school had never trained together, “contributing to difficulties in coordination and communication,” the report stated.

“Our children deserve better than to grow up in a country where an 18-year-old has easy access to a weapon that belongs on the battlefield, not in a classroom,” Garland said. “And communities across the country, and the law enforcement officers who protect them, deserve better than to be forced to respond to one horrific mass shooting after another. But that is the terrible reality that we face. And so it is the reality that every law enforcement agency in every community across the country must be prepared for.”

Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said in an interview that he appreciates the emphasis the Department of Justice placed on widespread active-shooter training. Still, Canady said he is frustrated that leaders have not already learned that “25-year-old lesson” after the shootings at Columbine High, Sandy Hook Elementary and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Since the 1999 Columbine shooting, law enforcement officers have been trained to prioritize stopping the shooter. The report stated that everything else, including officer safety, should be secondary, adding that efforts to engage the shooter “must be undertaken regardless of the equipment and personnel available.”

“We’ve got to understand what the priorities are and, quite frankly, I see there are not a lot of priorities greater than keeping students safe at school,” Canady said.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting, said she hopes the report’s findings lead to action, that “the failures end today and that local officials do what wasn’t done that day, do right by the victims and survivors of Robb Elementary: terminations, criminal prosecutions and that our state and federal government enacts sensible gun laws…”

The district attorney and the Texas Department of Public Safety have fought the release of records related to the shooting, prompting news organizations, including ProPublica and the Tribune, to sue. A Travis County district judge ruled in the newsrooms’ favor last month, but DPS appealed. The agency did not respond to requests for comment about the Justice Department’s report.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who initially praised the response and later said he was misled, released a statement thanking the Justice Department. He said the state has already adopted some of the recommended measures and would review others.

The report, which offers the most comprehensive account to date from authorities about the shooting, echoes many findings from a probe released by a state House committee two months after the shooting…

The report noted that the “misguided and misleading narratives, leaks, and lack of communication about what happened on May 24 is unprecedented and has had an extensive, negative impact on the mental health and recovery of the family members and other victims, as well as the entire community of Uvalde.”

The previous mayor of Uvalde requested the federal review days after the shooting when it became clear that the response was flawed. The review was led in part by Sheriff John Mina of Orange County, Florida, who was the incident commander during the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando.

An outside review of that incident found that Florida officers, who waited three hours to take down the shooter, mostly followed best practices, although it stated that the law enforcement agencies in Orlando should update their training and policies.

In multiple after-action reviews, including the Pulse report, authors opted not to criticize significant law enforcement delays during mass shootings, according to an analysis of more than three dozen of these reports by ProPublica, the Tribune and FRONTLINE.

The Uvalde report was far more critical, finding failures in leadership, command and coordination.

It stated that officers wrongly treated the situation as a barricaded suspect incident instead of one in which a shooter was an active threat to children and teachers. Officers should “never” treat an active shooter with access to victims as a barricaded suspect — especially in a school, where there is a “high probability” of potential victims and innocent civilians being present, the report stated.

Officers had multiple indicators that should have made it clear they were facing an active shooter, including 911 calls from children and teachers pleading for help, a dispatcher’s announcement minutes after officers arrived that students were likely in the classroom with the shooter, and an Uvalde school police officer announcing that his wife had called to tell him she had been shot, according to the report.

Gupta condemned the medical response, saying that after police breached the classroom and killed the gunman, dead victims were placed in ambulances while children with bullet wounds were put on school buses. Many of those findings were revealed in a 2022 investigation by the Tribune, ProPublica and The Washington Post that determined medical responders did not know who was in charge and that two students and a teacher who later died still had a pulse when they were rescued from the school.

In its blistering criticism of responding officers, the report said that supervisors from various law enforcement agencies “demonstrated no urgency” in taking control of the incident, which exacerbated communication problems and added to overall confusion.

Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was listed as the incident commander in the district’s active-shooter plan, had the “necessary authority, training and tools” to lead the response but did not provide “appropriate leadership, command and control,” the report found. Arredondo could not be reached for comment Thursday through his attorney. He has previously defended his actions and those of others involved in the response.

Beyond that, no leader from any of the other responding agencies “effectively questioned the decisions and lack of urgency” demonstrated by Arredondo and Uvalde Police Department Acting Chief Mariano Pargas, who both arrived at the school within minutes of the first round of gunfire. The report listed Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco, Uvalde County Constables Emmanuel Zamora and Johnny Field, and an unidentified Texas Ranger as examples of such leaders.

“Responding officers here in Uvalde, who also lost loved ones and who still bear the emotional scars of that day, deserved the kind of leadership and training that would have prepared them to do the work that was required,” Garland said.

The report also found that key officers, including Pargas, had no active shooter or incident command training despite, in some instances, having decades of law enforcement experience. Nolasco, the sheriff, also had no active shooter training and “minimal” incident command training.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Failure, Guns, Texas

Oklahoma: Should the Public Fund a Religious Charter School?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2024 //
39

The big issue currently raising hackles in Oklahoma is whether a Catholic Church should be allowed to operate a publicly-funded virtual charter school.

Leave aside, for the moment, whether the state should be funding a religious school at all.

Leave aside, for now, the fact that multiple evaluations have reported that virtual schools get worse results than brick-and-mortar schools.

Leave aside, for now, the fact that Ohlahoma already has seven virtual schools already.

The state attorney general is opposed to it.

But Governor Kevin Stitt and the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual School Board approved the idea (3-2), so the issue will be resolved in court.

Governor Stitt just selected one of the Board’s members to be his top education advisor:

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma official who voted in favor of founding the nation’s first religious charter school will serve as Gov. Kevin Stitt’s next education secretary.

Nellie Tayloe Sanders, of Kingfisher, is the third member of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to join the Stitt administration. She is the second to do so after approving a Catholic charter school in a landmark 3-2 vote last year. Stitt was a staunch advocate of the school.

As education secretary, Sanders will serve as the governor’s top adviser on school policy. She will be paid $25,000 a year for the position, according to the Governor’s Office.

 Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board member Nellie Tayloe Sanders, left, pictured at an Oct. 9 meeting in Oklahoma City, is Gov. Kevin Stitt’s choice to be his education secretary. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

“My goal is to empower parents with choices and support teachers in unleashing their full potential – moving beyond the constraints of politics and bureaucracy,” Sanders said in a statement Wednesday. “Governor Stitt’s commitment to educational freedom resonates deeply with me.”

Sanders resigned from her seat on the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board on Sunday in an email to Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, his office confirmed. The Senate leader had appointed Sanders to the board in February to oversee the seven Oklahoma charter schools that primarily teach online.

However, she won’t leave the board entirely. The education secretary holds a non-voting seat.

The board’s president, Robert Franklin, said the news of her appointment to the governor’s Cabinet caught him off guard.

“If you were asking me (about) a laundry list of colleagues that I thought had a seasoned background and a footprint in Oklahoma’s educational landscape, I wouldn’t have picked Mrs. Sanders,” Franklin said. “But I know she’s thoughtful. I know she’s kind. I know she’s an engaging person. So, I certainly wish her well.”

In other developments, the judge in the Catholic virtual charter school case stepped aside, because he had relationships with people on both sides of the issue.

Lawyers involved said the case was starting all over because the state board had entered into a contract with St. Isidore, and the board itself had new members.

One new board member said that the Catholic Church sponsoring the school would not provide a Catholic education, but the church disagreed.

Appointed Oct. 27, one of the new SVCSB members is Brian Shellem, a former Edmond mayoral candidate and the president of Advanced Automotive Equipment.

Shellem has also been appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt to serve on the new Statewide Charter School Board, which the Oklahoma Legislature created last session to replace the SVCSB on July 1. It will become the new board overseeing virtual charter schools and other charter schools.

Shellem said that although he was not a board member when the SVCSB decided to authorize St. Isidore, he supports more educational choices for students, as long as those choices meet the right educational standards and requirements.

“The (St. Isidore) contract is not to provide religious education, it’s to provide education and a curriculum that the state requires, and I don’t think they should be disqualified because they are a Catholic school,” Shellem said. “I equate it to if you go to a car wash and you pay $20 for a car wash and then they go, ‘Hey, we’re gonna give you for free the wheel package and the air freshener,’ and they don’t charge you, [now you’ve got] a $5 value, but we’re not charging you for it. The state’s not contracting them to teach religious education, but it happens to be in that environment. They’re getting contracted to teach the curriculum that’s required by the state.”

Throughout their application process, St. Isidore leaders have indicated that the school intends to provide students with a Catholic education.

Shellem said he believes charter schools are public schools, so he could understand how including the proverbial extra car wash package that is Catholic education could create some legal questions to be dealt with in court.

[Note: You may have seen this article Friday. I moved it because it was supposed to appear today.]

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Private Equity is Buying Up Hospitals, Squeezing Out Big Profits, Letting Them Die

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2024 //
21

I am more than a little touchy on the subject of for-profit takeovers of hospitals that serve the community. That happened in my neighborhood a few years back. The city sold a major hospital to a for-profit firm. The hospital eventually went bankrupt and was sold off and converted to other uses. This hospital saved my life in 1998, when I walked in to the emergency room, short of breath and limping. As it happened, I had an advanced pulmonary embolism. Had I not gone to the hospital, I would not have survived the night, said the pulmonary specialist the next morning.

Larry Edelman of The Boston Globe in his column called Trendlines tells the story of what happened to a small chain of hospitals that served high-needs communities:

The hound from hell

It was a match born of voracity and desperation, as many private equity buyouts are. Cerberus Capital Management hit a home run with Steward Health Care. But Steward may be about to go down swinging.

Rewind: In 2010, Cerberus agreed to bail out Caritas Christi Health Care, a struggling network of six Catholic hospitals serving mainly poorer communities in cities including Boston, Brockton, Fall River, and Methuen.

The New York firm paid $246 million in cash, assumed more than $200 million in pension liabilities, and promised to invest $400 million in the company, rechristened Steward Health Care.

When the deal was announced, a Cerberus executive told the Globe it was “a big win for the hard-working communities of Greater Boston.’’

Fast-forward: After a national expansion, Steward is on the ropes. Last week, the Globe’s Jessica Bartlett broke the news that the company — now owned by a group of physician-managers — is having trouble paying rent and may have to sell or close hospitals.

But the deal was a big win for Cerberus. It cashed out of Steward in early 2021, quadrupling its money with an $800 million gain, according to Bloomberg.

The backstory: Cerberus bought Caritas Christi four years after a blockbuster hospital deal: the 2006 leveraged buyout of HCA for $21 billion by Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts and Bain Capital of Boston.

The sheer size of the acquisition — and the involvement of two respected firms — supercharged a health care buyout binge that extended beyond hospitals to nursing homes, physician practices, and home health providers.

Cerberus jumps in: After taking a high-profile beating on its 2007 bet on Chrysler, Cerberus saw an opportunity to profit on a turnaround of the “St. Elsewhere”-esque Steward. The plan: buy up other hospitals around the country, deploy new technology, improve efficiency, control costs, and bill Medicare and Medicaid as aggressively as possible.

It was a vision adeptly articulated by Dr. Ralph de la Torre, Caritas’ chief executive officer who remained in charge under Cerberus.

But it was a tough slog for the cardiac surgeon. His expansion plans were thwarted, and Steward didn’t make any money until 2015, when a reduction in pension payments put it in the black.

The big breakthrough: The following year Steward sold its hospital properties for $1.2 billion to Medical Properties Trust, a real estate investment trust that also paid $50 million for a 5 percent stake in the company.

Steward, which leased the properties back from Alabama-based MPT, earmarked the proceeds to buy more hospitals and pay down debt. It also returned Cerberus’ initial investment, though the firm held on to a controlling stake in the company.

In effect, de la Torre had landed a new financial backer, letting Cerberus off the hook.

“We look forward to expanding our relationship with Steward in the years ahead,” MPT chief executive Edward K. Aldag Jr. said at the time.

And MPT did just that in 2017, writing a $1.4 billion check and buying an additional $100 million of Steward equity. De la Torre used the money to buy IASIS Healthcare, a $2 billion purchase that gave Steward 18 hospitals in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah, making it the largest for-profit chain in the country.

The next year de la Torre moved the company’s headquarters to Dallas, where taxes are lower and regulations lighter.

Minimal disclosure: As a private company, Steward isn’t required to make its financial statements public. Moreover, it has largely ignored Massachusetts requirements that it file detailed financial information on an annual basis.

But publicly traded MPT discloses some Steward financials because the chain is its largest tenant, accounting for about 20 percent of revenue. That’s how we know that Steward booked operating losses of $322 million in 2017 and $270 million in 2018.

Steward’s leaseback deal with MPT significantly boosted its expenses, but as Jessica reported, the health system blames its dire financial straits on rising interest rates and labor costs, an increasing Medicaid population, and difficulty collecting bills.

MPT has been hit hard by Steward’s woes. Its stock tumbled nearly 40 percent after it announced earlier this month that Steward was having trouble paying rent.

Moreover, COVID clobbered all hospitals. Despite receiving government pandemic aid and hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from MPT, Steward is strapped.

Good timing: Cerberus was out before the bedpan hit the fan.

In May 2020, it swapped its stake with Steward doctors in exchange for a note paying interest. Then, in January 2021, Steward borrowed $335 million from MPT to pay off the debt.

Cerberus was free and clear.

Parting thought: It’s not the only time the firm — named after the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades in Greek mythology — scored big on a company that went bust.

It did well on its buyout of Mervyn’s by selling off the department store chain’s real estate before it went bankrupt. And it recouped its investment and then some at arms maker Remington by paying itself a dividend before the company went broke. Such strategies are common in private equity.

You see, when firms like Cerberus do business, it’s often “heads I win, tails you lose.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Economics, For-Profit, Funding, Health, Massachusetts

Texas: Gov. Abbott Says He Will Defy Supreme Court Decision on Border Control

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2024 //
41

As you know, Governor Abbott of Texas placed the Texas National Guard in control of the international border which is the Rio Grande River, where immigrants have been wading or swimming across. The Texas Guard refused to allow the U.S. Border Patrol to enter the section they control near Eagle Pass, Texas. Recently a woman and her two small children drowned in the section patrolled by the state.

The Biden administration sued the state to recognize the supremacy of federal law. The federal district court agreed with the feds. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the state. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for the federal government.

Now Governor Abbott says he will ignore the Supreme Court because the state is facing an “invasion.”

The PBS Newshour invited a notable constitutional lawyer, Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas, to discuss the issues.

I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me that the issue of states’ rights was settled in 1865.

Meanwhile, Governor Abbott is scoring lots of points for defying the federal government and the Supreme Court. Texas has a small but loud minority that wants to secede from the U.S.

Abbott wants a confrontation with the federal government. Biden will have to stand up to Abbott’s grandstanding while taking a strong position on securing the border.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, History, Texas

Thom Hartmann: Trump’s Terrifying New Reich, The Early Months

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2024 //
20

Thom Hartmann writes a description of the first few months of the second Trump administration, based on statements by Trump or his pals. It’s frightening.

He writes:

[Every incident mentioned in this article is based on an actual statement or action by Donald Trump, the people closely surrounding him, or something Trump has praised about his role model Victor Orbàn.]


It was a hell of a year, 2025: the first year of the First Reich (as those formerly called Democrats referred to it) or The New America as the GOP now refers to our nation. One people, one nation, one leader: America, President-for-life Trump tells us, is now “truly great.”


It started with the election of November 2024, when the No Labels candidacy of Larry Hogan and Joe Manchin pulled enough electoral votes away from Biden — who was more than 10 million popular votes ahead of Trump — that none of the three tickets hit the necessary 270 Electoral College votes to win the White House.


It was a scenario similar to 1824 when John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson but, because William Crawford and Henry Clay were also running for president, neither Adams or Jackson hit the threshold with the Electoral College and the vote went to the House of Representatives, which made Adams president in a series of backroom deals known to historians as the “Corrupt Bargain.”


In a similar way, the election of 2024 was thrown into the House of Representatives, per the 12th Amendment, with each state having one single vote. Since 26 states had Republican-controlled congressional delegations and only 23 had Democratic-controlled delegations (Pennsylvania is evenly split), the House voted 26-24 for Donald Trump to become the next president. He didn’t even need to threaten his vice president or invoke a mob.


At his swearing-in, Trump announced that he was going to fulfill his “dictator for a day” promise and pardoned himself, all Republicans who were in Congress in January 2021 and helped organize or support the attack on the Capitol, and all the January 6th seditionists.


He then announced that the 24 Democrats leading their congressional delegations who’d voted against him in the House were “guilty of sedition against the United States.” As he spoke, each was arrested and taken into custody.


The arrests, particularly of Democratic members of the House and a handful of Democratic Senators from Red states, gave the GOP a majority in both houses, even though Democrats had won both in the 2024 election. Jim Jordan was named the new Speaker of the House, and Rick Scott took Mitch McConnell’s job in the Senate.


The next day, January 21st, Trump signed a new version of his Schedule F change to the Civil Service law, firing en masse roughly 50,000 federal employees in the top and upper management positions across the federal government, including the Department of Defense.


A group of billionaire-friendly candidates had been preselected by a billionaire-funded think tank and all were installed within hours. Those that required the “advice and consent of the Senate” were placed in “acting” positions, as Trump had done in 2020.
Within a week, another series of political arrests took place, as Joe and Hunter Biden, Liz Cheney, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Brad Raffensperger, Letitia James, and multiple other federal and state judges and prosecutors were arrested for conspiracy and alleged RICO violations.


“America will never again tolerate lawlessness by its elected and appointed officials,” Trump announced in a prime-time message to the country. Republican politicians and the media rushed to his defense, pointing out previous presidents (Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln) who, they said, did “even worse.”


The Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 ruling declaring hate crimes unconstitutional, calling them “thought crimes,” with Justice Sam Alito asserting:

“We will never allow America to become the dystopian nanny state characterized in the writings of Orwell or Lewis and craved by Democrats. Americans are free to have any thoughts or intentions they want: we only punish actual behavior, and that punishment is the same for all.”

Within hours of their announcement, over 200 people — most queer or Black — lay dead across the United States. Trump went on TV to calm the nation, again asserting “There are very fine people on both sides.”

That weekend, hundreds of thousands of Americans poured into the streets to protest. Trump called another press conference and declared a state of emergency, provoked by what he calls “a nationwide insurrection against law and order and our great nation.”

Tens of thousands of Army troops met the crowds in the streets, and in 11 cities and a half-dozen rural areas used live ammunition to kill several dozen protestors.

Joy Reid began her Monday MSNBC show with the song Four Dead In Ohio and was arrested on-air for “inciting further insurrection.” Trump then referred the network, its executives, and several of its hosts to his FCC for investigation, as he promised in 2023.

CNN threw in with Trump, joining Fox and the Big Three national networks in helping explain to America how Trump’s “changes” are actually far less draconian than things previous presidents (particularly Lincoln, “who even suspended habeas corpus!”) have done.

Trump again invoked the PATRIOT Act to continue to hold the hundreds of elected and appointed Democratic officials, “thugs,” and “sedition ringleaders” in secret detention centers without access to lawyers or other due process.

The media pointed out that this is nothing unusual: Bush and Cheney did the same thing hundreds of times, and some of their victims are even still in Gitmo without ever having had a legitimate day in court. Nobody, they said, of any “real stature” objected.

Given the large number of people coming under detention as protests spread across the country, Trump signed an executive order transferring billions out of the military budget for Halliburton and two private prison contractors to build “detention centers” where “bad people” can be “concentrated in one place.” The media refuses to call them concentration camps because of the “prejudicial” connotations associated with the phrase.

Trump then ordered the Pentagon to withdraw all forms of assistance from Ukraine, including military and diplomatic support. “Putin is merely liberating Ukraine from the Nazis that took it over when they stole the election from Yanukovych,” Trump said, echoing Putin. “They never should have turned their back on their Slavic partner, the nation that birthed them.” He ended the speech with his famous 2024 election slogan, “Blood and soil!”

In an executive order titled “No More Shithole Countries,” he outlawed all immigration, and banned all tourist visas, from Muslim and majority-Black countries except for those from a handful of oil-rich Middle Eastern nations that started building a $5 billion Trump Tower in Oman in July, 2023.

Republicans in the House and Senate passed emergency legislation ending all US gun restrictions with a single exception: anybody who’s been arrested or “credibly accused of sedition” and not pardoned can no longer own a weapon of any sort.

Attorney General Jeffrey Clark then declared that anybody who’s ever joined the Democratic Party or voted for a Democrat in any election in the previous decade is now considered “credibly accused of sedition.”

Congress followed that up with billions to hire at least a million new local and state police, as Trump announced he’s integrating the Proud Boys into the federal military, calling them the “Stormfront,” a shoutout to Qanon.

February 2025

In the first week of the month, the Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 decision in Loper Bright, gutting every federal protective regulatory agency. Trump immediately fired most of the employees of the EPA and Department of the Interior, promising to sell of all federally owned public lands.

“Our public lands are rich in minerals and fossil fuel, and our parks should be run by smart entrepreneurs,” Trump declared, echoing sentiments attributed to Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt.

Disney and Comcast then both submitted bids to buy and manage Yellowstone.

Congress then declared “the Medicare experiment is over” because “more than half of seniors have voted with their feet” and ended the program, mandating all people over 65 must buy an “Advantage” plan from one of a handful of approved insurance giants. Following on that, Congress rolled out “Social Security Advantage,” a program that will, over the next decade, privatize all Social Security accounts via JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.

Proclaiming “America will no longer use her tax dollars to support Blue state communists,” and keeping a 2023 campaign promise, Trump ordered all military bases closed in any state with a seditionist (Democratic) governor or seditionist-controlled legislature. He gave states 60 days to change the composition of their governments to qualify to keep their military bases; all who didn’t comply are now seeing their facilities (and jobs) moved to Red states.

Congress then passed legislation closely resembling Putin’s laws in Russia and Orbán’s in Hungary declaring homosexuality and transsexuality “deviant behaviors” subject to federal penalties, fulfilling his 2022 promise to pass “Two Genders legislation.”

The “fake news media” is a major crisis, Trump told the nation from a press scrum near his helicopter: the solution, he said, would be straightforward. Congress voted later that day to rewrite the nation’s libel laws, as Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, so any journalist or commentator who “sullies the reputation” if any elected official can be subject to both civil and criminal penalties.

Within three weeks of the legislation being signed into law at the end of February, hundreds of writers and TV commentators had been either arrested or bankrupted (depending on the severity of their criticism of Trump) as newsrooms across the nation purged themselves of “anti-American” (anti-Trump) voices.

Now licensed by six Republicans on the Supreme Court and their integration into the military, Proud Boy groups began organized attacks on Black neighborhoods, gay bars, and libraries. Dozens of people died, touching off riots in several cities — particularly Portland and Seattle — that were covered breathlessly by Fox “News.”

Trump pointed to the unrest and announced a second round of billion-dollar contracts for Halliburton to build camps where “bad people,” including those guilty of libel, violating gender conformity laws, or “poisoning the blood of America” through biracial marriages or giving shelter to illegal immigrants, could be “concentrated.”

In a major law and order speech, Trump declared homelessness a federal crime and work camps were set up inside the new concentration camps for homeless people to learn skills so “work can make them free.” Volunteer Proud Boys units were dispatched to help police departments round up those who insisted on living on the streets.

Based on the Comstock Act — which is still law but hasn’t been enforced since the 1950s — the Republicans on the Supreme Court outlawed mifepristone and all hormonal birth control, along with IUDs and condoms. Republicans passed legislation declaring that “life begins at conception,” and US attorneys have started charging women who got abortions in Blue states over the past year with murder. The Attorney General announced that all miscarriages must be reported to local police for investigation.

In the last week of February, Russia launched a “final assault” on Ukraine, with the aid of their new “Freedom Block” allies: China, Iran, and North Korea. Ukraine fell, and Trump hailed “a new era of world peace.”

March 2025

Keeping his campaign promise, Trump dissolved the Department of Education and killed all federal aid to education, higher and primary. The next day, the Supreme Court struck down FDR’s child labor laws; within a week every Red state in the country followed suit with their own state laws allowing anybody older than 12 to work (including in the brothels Trump decriminalized).

Republicans passed the “Free the Job Creators Act,” which ended all taxation of capital gains. Billionaires will never again pay any income taxes at all.

Internationally, the world order was changing rapidly. In a coordinated move, Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons; China encircled and cut off all shipping and fuel to Taiwan; Russia, Belarus, and Hungary collectively invaded Poland; and NATO dithered as Trump threatened to intervene on Russia’s side.

Trump refused to help Israel, and the Iranians who now control the country brought Netanyahu, who had helped fund Hamas for so many years, out of prison and back into office as a puppet Prime Minister. Trump called a press conference and said this is what is prophesied in the Bible and Jews better begin converting to Christianity if they want to survive.

Hours later, Trump issued an executive order declaring America a Christian country; states began to shut down synagogues, mosques, and Buddhist and Hindu temples within the week.

April 2025

Like in Russia and Hungary, Republicans passed laws asserting that voting is a privilege, not a right, and, backstopped by SCOTUS, Red States purged over 30 million people from the voter rolls in the first week. Speaker Jordan proclaimed, “There will never again be a ‘so-called purple’ state.”

The new law requires that a person must be employed to vote; being married to an employed person is not enough. Women, unemployed men, and students protested and hundreds were shot in the streets or sent to the work camps.

With a dramatic flourish and to redirect attention away from domestic protests, Trump declared war on Mexico for “refusing to do anything about their drugs and gangs, which have already declared war on the United States.”

He seized several northern Mexican states after a few short battles and strategic bombing of the presidential palace and Capitol building in Mexico City. Control of those formerly northern Mexican states was given to Greg Abbott, who Trump named “Administrator” of “American Mexico” just like L. Paul Bremmer was in Iraq.

May 2025

An insurgency against American occupation arose in Mexico, drawing us into a hot war with that country. Trump ordered all Americans of more than 3/5ths Mexican ancestry arrested and moved into detention camps or deported. Protests broke out across the country, but were quickly put down by the military.

The wars in Europe and Asia are winding down now, as Trump declared a “New Alliance” between the US, China, Russia, North Korea, Hungary, and Iran. Argentina applied for membership, as did dozens of other rightwing governments from Central and South America to Africa and Asia. Australia has made peace with China, naming a Murdoch heir as the new leader of that English-speaking country.

The Democratic Party is now officially banned as “insurrectionist” and the Supreme Court extended Article 3 of the 14th Amendment (which prevents insurrectionists from holding public office) to include all governmental positions in the country: only Republicans, Libertarians, and No Labels politicians need apply.

People have started to fight back in random places, so Congress codified the earlier ruling by Attorney General Clark that any former member of, or voter for, Democrats may not own a gun or other “weapon of war”: regional “insurrections” continue to break out but the military and their Proud Boy units quickly put them down.

The largest uprising was in Los Angeles: Trump had about 40 square blocks seized, locked down, and surrounded with razor wire. He then put that state, Oregon, and Washington under federal control, citing laws and acts taken by President Lincoln.

And that’s just the first five months. From there, things began to get really bad for Americans…

Categories Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Trump

Ethics Lawyers: Why Fani Willis is not Disqualified Under Georgia Law

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2024 //
24

Three prominent ethics lawyers—Norman L. Eisen. Joyce Vance, and Richard Painter— express their shared view of the legal challenge to Fani Willis and her Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade. I have excerpted only the opening paragraphs from the website “Just security.” Please open the link to finish the article. The authors’ bios appear at the end of the excerpt.

They begin:

No one is praising Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s apparent romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, an attorney in private practice who she brought on board as a Special Prosecutor in the criminal investigation and now prosecution of Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants. We have not yet heard that much of Willis’s side of the story. However, based on what is known so far, it represents poor judgment—especially in a case of this magnitude, even if a prosecutor’s private life is generally none of the public’s business. Willis has already said publicly that she is “flawed” and “imperfect” in her public remarks at Bethel AME Church following the allegations. But whether there were personal failings is not the operative legal test for whether Willis or Wade should be disqualified from the case, and accordingly that question is not the focus of this essay. Prosecutors are human, and they can and do make mistakes. The question here is whether Willis’s and Wade’s apparent mistakes have any bearing on the election conspiracy prosecution in a way the law would require their removal from the case.

The motion filed by defendant Michael Roman seeks primarily to do just that – to disqualify Willis and Wade from further participation in this case. Under Georgia law, however, even if all the factual allegations regarding Willis and Wade were true, there would be no basis for disqualifying them from prosecuting Roman or any of the other defendants in the election conspiracy case.

The key point is that regardless of whether the factual circumstances involving Willis and Wade give rise to separate ethical concerns with respect to his hiring, such questions do not affect the propriety of the prosecution against Roman and his co-defendants. Questions about gifts and related matters go to Willis’s and Wade’s obligations to the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, and have no connection to assuring the defendants a fair trial. These allegations are as irrelevant to the trial as allegations in other situations that prosecutors took office supplies for personal use, drove county vehicles for personal errands, or plagiarized portions of their student law review notes. All of those are legitimate issues—for prosecutors’ offices and those with oversight responsibilities to address—but such allegations do not bring criminal prosecutions to a stop or require that cases be transferred to a different office. Defense attorneys cannot use allegations of prosecutorial ethics violations, real or imaginary, that have nothing to do with a trial to delay or force prosecutors off of a case….

The authors:

Norman L. Eisen:

Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.) (@NormEisen) served in the White House as special counsel and special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform and as ambassador to the Czech Republic under President Barack Obama, as well as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019–20, including for the first impeachment and trial of President Donald Trump.

Joyce Vance

Joyce White Vance (@JoyceWhiteVance) is Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law and former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. Member of the Editorial Board of Just Security.

Richard Painter

Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA). is the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and was the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Georgia

Indiana: Operators of Virtual Charter Schools Indicted on Multiple Counts of Fraud

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2024 //
19

Guess what? Another massive scandal involving virtual charter schools. Not ho-hum because the money skimmed off is a lot: $44 million. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana said it was the biggest fraud case he had handled.

If you recall, the biggest virtual charter school fraud case ever happened in California, where the A3 charter chain skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars. In Pennsylvania, Nick Trombetta, founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, was sent to prison in 2018 for 20 months for fraud. Steven Ingersoll, the optometrist who founded four virtual charter schools in Bay City, Michigan, received a prison sentence of 40 months. And who can forget Ohio’s ECOT Man (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), who collected $1 billion from the state over 20 years, gave lots of campaign donations, but declared bankruptcy when the state auditor asked him to refund millions for phantom students?

We know all this. We know that students in virtual charter schools get low scores, have low graduation rates, collect generous public funding, but the money keeps flowing. Why?

New story: Indiana.

A federal grand jury returned indictments against the operators of two online charter schools in Indiana, the Indiana Virtual School (IVS) and the Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy (IVPA). The operators inflated their enrollments to collect state monies. Each defendant faces 10-20 years in federal prison for each count if convicted. The charges are conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The group received over $44 million from the state. Most of the students either never attended the schools or left but remained on the rolls.

FOX 59 in Indianapolis reported:

INDIANAPOLIS — Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana released more information about a recent indictment brought forward in a multi-million dollar education-related fraud scheme.

According to the office, three men were officially indicted in relation to the scheme, including:

  • Tom Stoughton, 74, a Carmel resident who was indicted on 16 counts of wire fraud, 57 counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud
  • Phillip Holden, 62, a Middletown resident who was indicted on 16 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud
  • Percy Clark, 81, a Carmel resident and the former superintendent of Lawrence Township schools, who was indicted on 16 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

In addition, officials said that 61-year-old Christopher King, a Green Fork resident, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to previous reports, officials allege that the individuals named in the indictment received more than $44 million in funding from the Indiana Department of Education to operate two online charter schools: the Indiana Virtual School and the Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy.

Officials said that IVPA was an offshoot of IVS that was created in 2017 so IVS could avoid losing its charter with Daleville Community Schools. This comes after IVS reportedly received an F grade from the Indiana Department of Education.

The individuals listed in the indictment reportedly used fraudulent enrollment reporting methods to receive funding from the state that they were not owed nor supposed to be eligible for.

Between 2016 through 2019, the defendants submitted false numbers for more than 4,500 students they knew were not attending either school in order to receive state tuition reimbursement.

”The members of the conspiracy falsely claimed thousands of students were enrolled even though those students were not attending classes or receiving services,” Zachary Myers, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said.

The court documents state that the school did not unenroll students even if they were inactive, and reportedly pushed incomplete student applications through the enrollment process, both of which increased the enrollment numbers. This included students who had dropped out or those who never completed their application process, as well as students who never logged in for classes. It also included students who never knew they were reenrolled….

The two schools reportedly paid the state funds to fraudulent for-profit companies, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana claims. The companies were reportedly controlled and/or operated by Stoughton and the money was funneled through the companies to pay millions of dollars to Stoughton, Clark, King and others.

Myers said the defendants used the funds to purchase vehicles and boats, as well as pay for private school tuition. 

Herbert Stapleton, a special agent in charge with the FBI in Indianapolis, said that the cooperation with other agencies, including the State Board of Accounts in Indiana, was integral in starting this investigation and uncovering the potential fraud. 

Stapleton said that this case was “extremely complex,” including hundreds of thousands of records potentially relevant to the case that were analyzed and categorized. This included hundreds of interviews with fraudulently enrolled students and their parents, including an interview with parents whose student died but was still fraudulently enrolled at the school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Fraud, Indiana, Virtual Charter Schools
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