New Hampshire: Lawsuit Claims That Voucher Funding Violates State Constitution

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2022 //
3

The State Commissioner of Education, in New Hampshire, Frank Edelblut, home-schooled his 7 children. He doesn’t like public schools. He’s a big supporter of “backpack funding,” where students can use public funds for anything of an educational sort. At his urging, the legislature adopted a voucher plan.

But a lawsuit was recently filed claiming that the funding of the voucher plan violates the state constitution by drawing down money intended for public schools.

Garry Rayno of inDepthNH reports:

CONCORD — The new Education Freedom Account program violates state statutes by using funds earmarked for public education for private programs, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday against Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut.

The suit challenging the funding for what has been described as the most expansive voucher program in the country, claims money raised by the Lottery Commission, and money from the Education Trust Fund may only be used for adequate education grants to school districts, citing the law creating the fund in 1999.

The suit seeks an injunction blocking the state from using any more of the Trust Fund Money to fund the EFA program.

“If the state desires to operate an Education Freedom Account or similar program, whereby it grants public money for parents to utilize for private use, it must separately fund it through additional taxation or another source of funds,” the suit claims, noting there currently is no mechanism for doing so.

The New Hampshire Constitution states “all moneys received from a state-run lottery and all interest received on such moneys shall, after deducting the necessary costs of administration, be appropriated and used exclusively for the school districts of the state,” according to the suit, which also notes the money “shall not be transferred or diverted to any other purpose.”

The law only allows the money to be used to distribute adequate education grants to school districts and approved charter schools, the suit claims.

The complaint, brought by Deb Howes as a citizen taxpayer, who is also president of AFT (American Federation of Teachers)-New Hampshire, was filed in Merrimack County Superior Court.

The complaint also claims the state is delegating its duty to to provide an adequate education to a private entity, The Children’s Scholarship Fund, which runs the EFA program without any “meaningful oversight” by the state.

“The state specifically earmarked this money for public education. Instead, the state is stealing from public school students in plain sight to pay for its private voucher program,” Howes said. “Public school students are losing out on millions of dollars that are needed to fix leaky old buildings, purchase and maintain modern computer equipment, buy books and materials published at least in the last decade to support student learning, and provide more social and emotional assistance and other needs that will help students excel.”

“If Commissioner Edelblut wants to continue with his cherished voucher program, he needs to figure out a legal way to fund it,” she said, “but definitely not on the backs of public school students.”

The controversial EFA program was approved as part of the two-year budget package in 2021 after it stalled in the House, but the Senate resurrected it and put it in the budget.

Since it began, it has cost much more than Edelblut told lawmakers to expect, which was essentially $3.4 million over the biennium, but has cost $23 million over that period.

Sold as a program to help students find different educational environments in order to thrive, instead about 75 percent of the participants attended private and religious schools prior to the program’s launch last year, meaning less than 25 percent of the participants were in public schools the year before the program began.

Parents can use EFA grants for tuition and fees for private schools and private online learning programs, private tutoring services, textbooks, computer hardware and software, school uniforms, fees for testing, summer programs, therapies, higher education tuition and fees and transportation.

So the program is more expensive than expected, and 75% of the students it serves were already enrolled in nonpublic schools.

The single biggest beneficiary of the program thus far has been Amazon, presumably for books and hardware.

Categories Education Industry, New Hampshire, Privatization, Vouchers

Drag Queens vs. Fascist Boys & Girls

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2022 //
19

Recently, the power lines in Moore County, North Carolina, went down, damaged by gunfire, and officials suspect they were intentionally sabotaged, leaving 40,000 or so people without power. Some suspect that the power was shut down to prevent a drag show from happening.

Crooks&Liars points to domestic terrorism and mentions an activist who had loudly denounced the drag show. The activist, a former Army officer, had previously been questioned about her participation in the January 6 insurrection. She posted on Facebook that she knew why the power went out.

The Washington Post reported that the FBI is investigating.

At Sunrise Theater on Saturday night, drag queen Naomi Dix was about to introduce an act when the lights went out. Dix said that participants immediately suspected that the power outage might be connected to those opposed to the performance (Dix spoke to The Post on the condition that she be identified only by her stage name out of fear for her safety).


Dix, 31, said she tried to keep the audience of about 300 people calm and upbeat. She asked them to turn on the flashlights on their cellphones, then led the crowd in singing “Halo” by Beyoncé.

I am not sure when drag shows became popular (probably in Ivy League men’s colleges, where men played women’s roles, or in Shakespeare’s time, when women were not permitted to act on stage). But they seem to be popping up in small towns, suburbs, and big cities, not just gay bars. Recently the Washington Post reported on a city-sponsored Christmas parade in Taylor, Texas, that included floats with drag queens—and caused conservative ministers to launch their own parade, limited to floats with “family and Biblical values.”

I had intended to write a post about Billy Townsend’s latest post, where he declared his solidarity with the drag queens, but I could not help noticing stories about drag queens in other places. Recall that Club Q in Colorado Springs was holding a drag show when the killer burst in and murdered five people. The guy who jumped on the killer and stopped him was there with his wife and family to see the drag show. Evidently, drag queens are funny and make people laugh, and many straight people enjoy their performances.

For many years, audiences in New York City were entertained by the shows written and performed by Charles Busch. They were hilarious send-ups of traditional fare, and they attracted large audiences.

Millions of people love the Billy Wilder’s comedy “Some Like It Hot,” where Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dress up as women to escape angry mobsters. To put it plainly, they pretended to be drag queens.

I remember attending Dame Edna’s Broadway performances, which were drag shows, and Dame Edna is not gay. The Australian performer has been married four times (to women) and has four children. His fourth wife is Lizzie Spender.

Yet despite the long tradition of drag shows, some states are now passing legislation to ban them or to ban children from attending them (whatever happened to parental rights?)

Billy Townsend wrote:

Drag performers are infinitely better, braver, and more productive human beings and citizens than the cosplaying Nazis stirred up by Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and Kanye and Elon et. al to torment and/or kill them.

This is both obvious and surprisingly difficult for even decent people to say bluntly. I’m not sure that I’ve ever said it. Perhaps that’s because I’ve never perceived a real need to plainly state the obvious until now.

Our community needs to protect the people harassed and death-threatened while minding their own business and making their own joy on Saturday. And it should celebrate their creativity and courage.

I’ve only seen a handful of drag shows in my life. Those I’ve seen were less “sexual” than a Muppet Show number. So I won’t dignify any bullshit excuses anyone may offer for saying, “Yes, but …” when considering how to address out of town Nazis attempting to terrorize Lakeland citizens just days after a MAGA boy shot up a drag show in Colorado.

I don’t have much else to say.

The Ledger and Lakeland Now both have good accounts if you want to read them.

But I would avoid sharing the pictures. That’s what the Nazi boys want. Even if you share the pictures in anger and revulsion, you’re sharing their propaganda/transgressive recruitment value. Think about how you amplify them.

Also, I think it’s important to note that the drag event organizers praised the response of the Lakeland Police Department as fast and protective. It’s very important for institutions of power to do their jobs for all citizens. And we should definitely acknowledge/praise when they do.

This is a time that demands choices, both in rhetoric and deed. I thank Lakeland’s brave drag performers for reminding me of that.

The Nazis can fuck off.

That pretty much sums up my view.

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption

Florida: Judge Tosses Out Another “Voter Fraud” Case

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2022 //
18

Earlier this year, Florida Governor announced the creation of an “election police” unit, to arrest former felons who voted illegally. The unit arrested 20 people. A Miami judge just dismissed the case against one of them, the third consecutive loss on this count.

A Miami judge has tossed out another voter fraud case brought by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ elections police, the third case to fall apart since the governor announced the arrests.

On Wednesday, Circuit Judge Laura Anne Stuzin reached the same conclusion as another Miami judge did in a different voter’s case, saying that statewide prosecutors didn’t have the ability to bring charges against Ronald Lee Miller.

Because he was convicted of second-degree murder in 1990, Miller, 58, was ineligible to vote. But after his voter registration application was cleared by the Florida Department of State, Miami-Dade’s supervisor of elections issued him a voter ID card, and he voted in November 2020.

Florida’s voting laws are ‘broken,’ felon advocates say following fraud arrests DeSantis held a high-profile news conference in August to tout the arrests of Miller and 19 others who were all ineligible to vote because of past murder or felony sex offense convictions but who had all voted after applying for and receiving voter ID cards. DeSantis oversees the Department of State.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article269738906.html#storylink=cpy

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article269738906.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Elections, Failure, Florida

Republicans Demand Repeal of Vaccine Mandate for Military

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2022 //
29

Congress is poised to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, which funds the military. Republicans refused to support the bill unless the Biden administration dropped the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the bill. According to the New York Times, the Republicans have the votes to eliminate the mandate.

Lawmakers unveiled an $858 billion military policy bill on Tuesday night that would terminate the Pentagon’s mandate that troops receive the coronavirus vaccine, a move that the Biden administration has resisted but that came after Republicans threatened to block the bill without it.

The decision to scrap the mandate, the product of negotiations between Senate and House leaders in both parties, was a victory for Republicans in a dispute that had added a politically charged and highly emotional issue to the annual military policy debate.

Top Republicans, especially Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader who is campaigning for speaker, have made getting rid of the mandate a top priority in the bill, arguing that the requirement amounted to federal overreach and eroded military readiness.

President Biden and the Defense Secretary pushed hard to retain the vaccine mandate, but Republicans adamantly opposed it.

A group of G.O.P. senators who pushed for the move, including Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, issued a triumphant statement praising the decision to include the provision “to protect service members” from the coronavirus vaccine. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida had also pushed hard for the repeal.

The military requires military personnel to receive a long list of vaccines, which Republicans do not oppose. But opposition to COVID-19 vaccines has become a culture war issue, and enough Republicans oppose it to block passage of the bill.

Biden administration officials have said they opposed a repeal.

“Vaccines are saving lives, including our men and women in uniform. So this remains very, very much a health and readiness issue for the force,” John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said on Monday.

Service members are required to be vaccinated against a whole host of viruses. Starting in basic training, recruits receive shots protecting them from hepatitis A and B; the flu; measles, mumps and rubella; meningococcal disease; polio; tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis; and chickenpox in addition to Covid-19, according to the Defense Health Agency, which oversees health care for the armed forces.

Those sent overseas are required to receive additional vaccinations based on where they are sent and any special duties they may perform, such as shots to protect against anthrax, rabies, typhoid and yellow fever.

Across the armed services, a vast majority of service members are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, and nearly all are at least partially vaccinated, according to data released by the various branches.

The U.S. military has a history of vaccinating troops. It stretches back to Gen. George Washington requiring variolation, a type of inoculation, for his soldiers at Valley Forge in an effort to protect them against smallpox, according to Dr. John W. Sanders, a professor of medicine at Wake Forest University and an infectious disease specialist who served 23 years on active duty as a Navy doctor.

Calling the Covid vaccines “remarkably safe and effective,” Dr. Sanders said active-duty personnel take vaccines that pose greater risks — such as for yellow fever, smallpox and measles, mumps and rubella — “and do not bat an eye.”

“Being appropriately trained, equipped and vaccinated is part of having a strong military, and if people are in uniform, they need to take these vaccines,” he said.

So score a “victory” for the nutty right. They have succeeded, it appears, in “protecting” our military from a safe and effective vaccine against a deadly virus.

Categories Biden, Health, Science, Stupid

Rachel M. Cohen: The Last-Ditch Effort to Renew the Child Tax Credit

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2022 //
5

Rachel M. Cohen has a very informative article at VOX about the last-ditch effort during the lame-duck session of Congress to bring back the Child Tax Credit, which was amazingly effective at reducing child poverty during its brief existence. I have to admit that I didn’t really understand the program until I read her article. I suggest that you read it also. I didn’t realize that the controversial expansion included non-working families, where poverty is most dire. Currently, only working families can claim the credit. She argues that Democrats are eager to reach a deal because they will lose their slender majority at the beginning of the year, and some Republicans might be open to a compromise because they are chastened by their poor performance in the last election.

She begins:

In 2021, an expansion of the child tax credit delivered hundreds of dollars monthly to some 35 million parents across the United States, helping them afford gas, food, and school expenses, and lifting almost 3 million children out of poverty. But last December, Democrats narrowly failed to approve an extension of the expanded credit, and it expired. 

Now, with only a few weeks remaining before a new Congress takes office, advocates for the child tax credit are trying again to get an expansion included in any end-of-year tax package.

It’s a tall order, especially because Democrats would need at least 10 Senate Republicans to agree to pass any broad deal; last year, even a simple Democratic majority proved out of reach. But Democrats believe the political dynamics have since changed in their favor, and so have their policy demands, making a compromise potentially easier for Republican moderates to stomach. 

The sticking point since the expanded credit expired has been Republicans and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s resistance to the idea that a more generous child tax credit should go to families where no parents are working. 2021 marked the only time in its quarter-century history that the CTC had no parental work requirement, and it was that feature, experts agree, that drove the policy’s substantial reduction in child poverty: a stunning 46 percent drop in one year, according to US Census data. Until the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August, Democrats and their allies were unwilling to entertain any child tax credit expansion that maintained a connection to work. 

Now, though, Democrats are signaling they’d embrace a more modest expansion — ideally one that keeps the credit fully available for all families, but at least makes it easier for parents with little to no earnings to access, even if at a reduced rate. Whether lawmakers can increase the amount of funding available for parents of infants and toddlers, as opposed to all kids under 18, is another option on the table.

The biggest negotiating card Democrats have right now is certain expiring business tax breaks. Since 1974, companies have been allowed to deduct research and development (R&D) spending the same year they make the investments, but as a budget gimmick included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, businesses, as of 2022, now must expense those costs over five or 15 years instead. Restoring the right to annually deduct R&D spending is a top legislative priority of the business community.

Advocates are hoping to pair any restoration of R&D tax breaks with an extension of the child tax credit. In November, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate finance committee, declared his intent to push for both together while Democrats still control both chambers of Congress. 

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, chair of the Senate banking committee, has stated that expanding the CTC is his top priority. “I’ll put it this way, no more tax breaks for big corporations and the wealthy unless the child tax credit’s with it. I’ll lay down in front of a bulldozer on that one,” he said in September.

Additional aid for Ukraine, public health, and disaster relief are the Biden administration’s top priorities for any end-of-year deal, but in late November, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said that if corporate tax breaks are included in a final deal, tax cuts “for working families” should be as well. 

The negotiations ultimately may turn on just how much corporate lobbying pressure Republican lawmakers face. Prior to the midterms, Republicans anticipated much bigger electoral gains, making compromise with Democrats ahead of the new Congress seem less urgent. But now, with Democrats set to retain Senate control and Republican House margins tighter than expected, the expectation that Republicans would even be able to reach a deal on the business tax breaks next year if they wanted to looks dicey.

This reality, in fact, partly explains why Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced last week that he’d like to negotiate an omnibus tax package in December, rather than a temporary spending deal that prevents a government shutdown but kicks the can on serious legislative decisions. Pushing the tax negotiations to 2023 would mean incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, rather than current Speaker Nancy Pelosi, would be tasked with getting an acceptable deal through his chamber. “Nobody trusts McCarthy to pass anything (not even McCarthy),” quipped Politico in late November.

Though some advocates are still publicly calling for the expanded CTC of 2021, most acknowledge they’d accept more modest improvements

The 2021 expansion of the child tax credit, passed as part of President Joe Biden’s pandemic relief program, sent thousands of dollars to parents across the US. It made non-working and poor families fully eligible for the credit’s full value and increased the value of the subsidy itself — up to $3,600 per child.

Democrats had been optimistic that if they could just seed the generous program through the American Rescue Plan, then they would amass the kind of political support that makes a popular subsidy hard to repeal. But they failed, and the CTC is resultantly back to its pre-Covid form, with a maximum of $2,000 per child for working families only — and will remain there unless lawmakers change it.

Please open the link and read the rest of the article.

Categories Childhood, Elections, Poverty

Why Reading Fiction Matters

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2022 //
49

As educators know, the Common Core standards emphasize the reading of informational text and downgrade the reading of fiction and poetry. The CC standards actually set percentages for how much time should be devoted to informational text vs. literature. In the elementary grades, the CC advises, instruction should be divided 50%-50% between literary sources and informational text. In grade 8, the CCSS recommended division is 45%/55%, diminishing literature. In grade 12, it should be 30%-70%, a huge reduction in reading literature. These percentages are based on the federal NAEP test guidelines for test developers; they were not intended to be guidance for teachers. In fact, as Tom Loveless showed, the Common Core affected teaching and curriculum by downgrading literature. In 2021, Loveless published a book about the failure of the CC.

In the past few weeks, I have seen some strong refutations of this downgrading of literature. Literature sharpens the mind and memory, teaching readers to be attentive to experiences, feelings, insights.

In July, the New York Times published an article about how to prevent cognitive decline. It was a summary of a book by a noted neurologist. It offered several key findings based on brain research. One was: read more novels.

Hope Reese wrote:

As we age, our memory declines. This is an ingrained assumption for many of us; however, according to neuroscientist Dr. Richard Restak, a neurologist and clinical professor at George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health, decline is not inevitable.

The author of more than 20 books on the mind, Dr. Restak has decades’ worth of experience in guiding patients with memory problems. “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind,” Dr. Restak’s latest book, includes tools such as mental exercises, sleep habits and diet that can help boost memory…

One early indicator of memory issues, according to Dr. Restak, is giving up on fiction. “People, when they begin to have memory difficulties, tend to switch to reading nonfiction,” he said.

Over his decades of treating patients, Dr. Restak has noticed that fiction requires active engagement with the text, starting at the beginning and working through to the end. “You have to remember what the character did on Page 3 by the time you get to Page 11,” he said.

A few days ago, an article by Washington Post technology columnist Molly Roberts opined that the failure to read novels was a serious error by Sam Bankman-Fried, whose crypto-currency businesses collapsed in November, evaporating billions of dollars in real currency.

The problem with SBF, she wrote, was that he doesn’t read books. He only reads quick, informational summaries.

She wrote:

Amid all the bombshell revelations about fallen crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried, a seemingly trivial bit of information might tell us everything we need to know: He doesn’t read books.

If you’re anticipating a caveat or qualifier, you’re as out of luck as the FTX investors whose money SBF allegedly lost. “I’m addicted to reading,” a journalist said to the erstwhile multibillionaire in a recently resurfaced interview. “Oh, yeah?” SBF replied. “I would never read a book.”

Now, there are plenty of people who don’t read. This does not indicate that they are likely to end up accused of having robbed thousands of others of their fortunes in a speculative adventure that is part financial experiment, part Ponzi scheme. Some prefer to listen; some prefer to do something else altogether. The thing is, the reason counts.

Behold, then, SBF’s reason: “I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. … If you wrote a book, you f—ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”

Now, this is paragraph five of this column, so we’re running short on worthwhile words. But this means-to-an-end worldview might be the key to understanding SBF’s character, and his career. The point for SBF, it seems, isn’t the book itself but what he takes away from it — the instrumental knowledge that, presumably, he can gather more efficiently from a SparkNotes version of any opus than from the work itself.

Part of the problem might be an unspoken focus on nonfiction versus fiction, and maybe highly technical nonfiction in particular. After all, it’s easier to argue that you can learn everything you really need to know about the history of securities regulation from a cleverly constructed issue brief than it is to insist that if someone tells you Elizabeth Bennet ends up marrying Mr. Darcy, you’ve absorbed the sum total of “Pride and Prejudice.”

But no matter the type of book he’s talking about, what SBF is missing is the experience. You’re supposed to read not in spite of the digressions and diversions that stand between you and the denouement, but because of them; the little things aren’t extraneous but essential. And what you come out of a book with isn’t always supposed to be instrumental at all, at least not in any practical sense. You read to read; you don’t read to have read.

Editor’s note: the words in the Times article in bold print were emphasized by me. In the Washington Post article, the bold words appear in the original.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Literacy, Literature

Heather Cox Richardson: Biden’s Economic Plans Attract Massive Investment and Jobs

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2022 //
29

Heather Cox Richardson writes a blog about national affairs, often drawing upon her background as a historian. In this post, she writes that Biden is not getting credit for his successful legislation. In the excitement about the Georgia race, I didn’t see any mention of what happened in Arizona, which she describes here.

Today, President Joe Biden traveled to Arizona to highlight how the CHIPS & Science Act is bringing innovation and jobs to the country. He visited a facility that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is building north of Phoenix, where he met with chief executive officers from several companies and with lawmakers. TSMC has recently committed to investing $40 billion in Arizona to produce advanced semiconductors, the very sort of investment the CHIPS & Science Act was designed to attract.

Biden noted that this investment will bring more than 10,000 construction jobs and 10,000 jobs in high tech, and he emphasized that the Democrats’ investment in the nation’s economy is paying off. The country has added jobs in every month of Biden’s administration—10.5 million of them—and exports are up, helping the economy to grow at 2.9% last quarter. And Walmart’s chief executive officer yesterday said that prices are coming down for toys, clothing, and sports equipment, while the chief executive officer of Kroger says prices for fresh food products are also easing.

But, Biden said, he is “most excited” about the fact that “people are starting to feel a sense of optimism as they see the impact of the achievements in their own lives. It’s going to accelerate in months ahead, and it’s part of the broad story about the economy we’re building that works for everyone: one… that positions Americans to win the economic competition of the 21st century.”

“Where is it written that America can’t lead the world once again in manufacturing?” Biden said. “We’re proving it can.”

Biden has apparently tried to undercut the radical right by ignoring its demands and demonstrating an America in which everyone works together to solve our biggest problems. His trip to Arizona was in keeping with that program, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre telling reporters that his trip was about “the American manufacturing boom we’re seeing all across the country thanks to, again, his economic policies… [and] in large part thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act the President signed into law—and a historic—let’s not forget—a bipartisan piece of legislation.”

But reporters immediately asked if President Biden would visit the border in Arizona, bowing to a right-wing talking point. Jean-Pierre responded that Biden would not engage in a political “stunt,” as the Republicans have been doing, and was instead going to Arizona “to talk about an important initiative that’s going to change Americans’ lives, specifically in Arizona.”

The follow-up? “If the President is not going to make time to visit the border during [this] trip…, will he do it… in the new year?”

The news from the right-wing faction in the nation often seems to steal the oxygen from the sober, stable politicians trying to address real issues and doing so with more than a little success.

Categories Biden, Economy, Elections

Josh Cowen Offers Advice to Gov-Elect in Pennsylvania: Don’t Do Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2022 //
12

Josh Cowen has demonstrated repeatedly that vouchers are a very bad public investment. The students who use vouchers fall behind their peers in public schools. He has cited the research behind his conclusions. He maintains that facts and evidence matter. But many state officials don’t know the facts or just want to assuage the people who want the state to subsidize their private school tuition.

One elected official who should look at the facts and the evidence is Josh Shapiro, who was recently elected to be governor of Pennsylvania. During his campaign, he expressed support for a voucher program because it would provide “opportunity” for some students.

Josh wrote this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer to help Governor-Elect Shapiro understand the facts and the evidence.

Josh Cowen says the evidence is clear: Vouchers do not help students. They hurt.

He wrote:

Josh Shapiro — like Katie Hobbs in Arizona and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan — is part of a class of Democratic candidates who this month won the key to the governor’s office for the next four years.

As a professor of education policy, I was struck by how public schools became a prominent issue in each of their campaigns, especially the debate over school vouchers — the use of tax dollars to fund tuition for private schools.

Unlike Hobbs and Whitmer, however, Shapiro has expressed some cautious support for vouchers — including (at least in principle) the “Lifeline Scholarship” bills that have already been introduced by the current legislature.

And since it appears that a Democratic majority in the Pennsylvania House is razor-thin, and Republicans will keep the Senate, Shapiro may be pressured or even encouraged by some to move forward with that support.

The governor-elect has defended his position by saying, “It’s what I believe,” and that vouchers provide students with additional avenues to “help them achieve success.”

Unfortunately, the data show exactly the opposite.

I used to be a cautious supporter, too. But I’ve been studying school vouchers for 17 years now, and I can say, without reservation, that study after study show that vouchers hurt academic achievement for children. That is especially true of the low-income students who would be eligible under the currently proposed plans in Pennsylvania to which Shapiro gave qualified support.

How bad are vouchers? Think about what the COVID-19 pandemic did to standardized test scores.

How bad are vouchers for students? Think about what the COVID-19 pandemic did to standardized test scores. Independent studies of voucher programs in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio have all shown catastrophic impacts on student achievement, with few-to-no offsetting gains on other measures such as educational attainment.

Some of the worst results have been found in Ohio, where voucher impacts on student learning were roughly twice the impact of the pandemic on academic outcomes.

Here’s another problem: Vouchers mostly just provide tax breaks to families whose kids are already in private school. In places such as Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, we know that more than 75% of voucher applicants were in private schools anyway by the time they applied for state funding. Even those in low-income families.

As a practical matter, that could be fixed in Pennsylvania by tying voucher eligibility to time in public school first, as well as capping the fiscal loss public districts faced when students transferred to private schools — as one current proposal has done. But that’s a short-term strategy.

Over the long term, vouchers simply represent new budgetary obligations for Pennsylvania taxpayers. The governor-elect has said he doesn’t view vouchers and support for public schools as a choice — that these positions are not a mutually exclusive “either/or.”

That’s a false hope. As the experience in other states shows, there is no way that long-term commitments to funding public schools can be reconciled with commitments to underwriting vouchers.

And unlike the devastating impacts that vouchers have on kids, we know that major investments in public schools have sustained and positive effects on learning and nonacademic outcomes, such as reductions in crime.

Side by side, the evidence says investments in public schools pay off, while investments in vouchers push kids further behind.

Perhaps the only remaining argument for vouchers is simply faith-based: that tax dollars should support religious education, even if the evidence says those programs harm academics. The U.S. Supreme Court essentially did just that this summer with its ruling in Carson v. Makin, which found that voucher programs could not exclude religious schools. That ruling was in line with the court’s long-held position that vouchers can exist constitutionally.

But just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

Looking from outside the state at the Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign, it was refreshing to hear someone like Josh Shapiro stand up for something he says he believes in — even if it rankles some supporters.

But at some point belief has to give way to facts. And the facts from across the country say vouchers are more of an anchor than a lifeline for kids.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Vouchers

Is Elon Musk Destroying Twitter?

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2022 //
70

Jelani Cobb, a staff writer for The New Yorker, wrote that he abandoned Twitter after Elon Musk took over. I have been on Twitter for at least ten years, and I am as upset as Cobb. Unfortunately there is no social media platform comparable to Twitter. Its competitors—Mastodon and the Post—each have less than a million followers. Twitter has 250 million. I rely on Twitter to spread my blog posts to about 150,000 followers, who retweet them to their followers. I registered at Post, which says it will be a site for civility. I tried to register for Mastodon, but it’s segmented in a way that made no sense to me.

I don’t know what I will do in the future. But if Twitter becomes a haven for racists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy mongers, I have to go. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Musk has restored the accounts of a flock of QAnon folk, theofascists, and white supremacists. Their comments appeared alongside the ads of major corporations, which may well abandon Twitter.

Musk likes to say that he is restoring free speech by restoring the accounts of Nazis and other haters. He sees Twitter as the nation’s or the world’s town square. But it’s ludicrous to imagine that the richest man in the world owns the town square and freely silences his own critics.

Apparently, he is purging left wing accounts from Twitter and inviting rightwingers to help identify Antifa and “pedo” accounts, according to The Intercept.

I read the other day that some rightwing group had compiled a list of 5,000 Antifa accounts and asked Musk to suspend them. I couldn’t read the whole list, but I saw Senator Bernie Sanders and Governor Gavin Newsom on it, as well as others who have nothing to do with Antifa. I was reminded of Senator Joe McCarthy’s list of Communists in the government, which he kept in his breast pocket. The number kept changing.

Among other Musk-directed changes, Twitter will no longer block publication of misinformation about COVID-19. Musk has invited the anti-maskers, the anti-vaxxers, and the peddlers of Ivermectin back to Twitter.

When I read Elon Musk’s personal Twitter feed, I get alarmed. He posted a meme of a cartoon frog (Pepe the Frog) that the alt right has used to make anti-Semitic and racist allusions, according to the Anti-Defamation League. He tweeted a picture of his night table, which held a gun and four empty cans of Coca-Cola. In the background was another gun, apparently an antique. He has a lot of children. What if one picked up his pistol and fired it, thinking it was a toy. His next Tweet was an apology for not putting the cokes on coasters. His Tweets skewer anything he perceives as liberal or left.

Cobb wrote that Twitter was important in spreading news, that it played a unique role in disseminating the George Floyd video, which set off widespread demonstrations. In the past, Twitter has been a valuable platform for information.

Cobb wrote:

The singular virtue of the fiasco over which Musk has presided is the possibility that the outcome will sever, at least temporarily, the American conflation of wealth with intellect. Market valuation is not proof of genius. Ahead of the forty-four-billion-dollar deal that gave Musk private control of Twitter, he proclaimed that he would “unlock” the site’s potential if given the chance. His admirers hailed his interest with glee. Musk has been marketed as a kind of can-do avatar, a magical mix of Marvel comics and Ayn Rand, despite serial evidence to the contrary, like the allegations of abusive treatment of Tesla workers.

Mike Tyson famously observed that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The facile idea was that, as Kara Swisher pointed out on her podcast, Musk was potentially the one person who could solve Twitter’s long-term profitability problem. Such praise paved the way for the current state of affairs, where many, including Musk himself, believe Twitter’s collapse might be imminent. (Swisher, to her credit, later pointed out where Musk went astray, taking particular note of his tweet, which she deemed homophobic, regarding the assault on Paul Pelosi.)…

My decision to leave yielded a tide of farewells but also two other types of responses. The first was low-grade trolling that had the effect of validating my decision to depart. But the second was more nuanced and complicated, an argument that leaving offered a concession to the abusive, reactionary elements whose presence has become increasingly prominent since Musk took over. One person paraphrased the writer Sarah Kendzior, urging users to “never cede ground in an information war.” Those arguments are increasingly frail, though. If there is, in fact, an information war raging on Twitter, Musk is a profiteer. Twitter is what it always was: a money-making venture—just more nakedly so. And it now subsidizes a billionaire who understands free speech to be synonymous with the right to abuse others. (While claiming to champion free speech, Musk has selectively granted it, suspending accounts that are critical of him and firing employees who dissented from his view of how the company should be run.) The tech industry’s gimmick to monetize our attention has been astoundingly successful even if Twitter has habitually struggled to be profitable. In the end, Musk’s leadership of the company appears to be a cynical form of trolling—creating a welcoming environment for some of the platform’s worst actors while simultaneously hailing his new order for its inclusivity.

To the extent that people remain active on Twitter, they preserve the fragile viability of Musk’s gambit. The illusory sense of community that still lingers on the platform is one of Musk’s most significant assets. No matter which side prevails, the true victor in any war is the person selling weapons to both sides. It seems likely that this experiment will conclude with bankruptcy and Twitter falling into the hands of creditors who will have their own ideas of what it should be and whom it should serve. But at least in the interim it’s worth keeping in mind that some battles are simply not worth fighting, some battles must be fought, but none are worth fighting on terms set by those who win by having the conflict drag on endlessly. ♦

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Media

Herschel Walker Lost, But Is He the ”New Normal” for the Republican Party?

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2022 //
28

Tom Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic, posed the question that is the title of this post. Nearly half the voters of Georgia cast a ballot for a man who was manifestly unqualified for the office, by any measure. Republicans thought it was cunning to pick a Black candidate, hoping to peel support away from Senator Warnock. It didn’t work. Walker got very few Black votes. Warnock won with unified Black support and a multiracial coalition.

Nichols fears that Trump has dumbed down expectations for Republican candidates to an alarming degree. Following his model, they can be stupid, they can be immoral, they can be liars, they can be adulterous and flaunt it, they can mock democracy. There is no low too low for them.

Nichols writes:

Walker’s candidacy is a reminder of just how much we’ve acclimated ourselves to the presence of awful people in our public life. Although we can be heartened by the defeat of Christian nationalists and election deniers and other assorted weirdos, we should remember how, in a better time in our politics, these candidates would not have survived even a moment of public scrutiny or weathered their first scandal or stumble.

And yet, here we are: An entire political party shrugs off revelations that a man running on an anti-abortion platform may have paid for an abortion (possibly two), has unacknowledged children, and may also be a violent creep. Not long ago, Walker would have been washed out of political contention as a matter of first principles.

Think of how much our civic health has declined in general. Only 35 years ago, during the long-ago Camelot of the late 1980s, Gary Hart had to pull out of the Democratic primaries for getting caught with a pretty lady on a boat named “Monkey Business,” and the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart stood with tears streaming down his face because he’d been caught with a prostitute in a Louisiana motel. In 1995, Senator Bob Packwood (again, more tears) resigned in the aftermath of revelations of sexual misconduct just before being expelled from the Senate.

The Republicans were once an uptight and censorious party—something I rather liked about them, to be honest—and they are now a party where literally nothing is a disqualification for office. There is only one cardinal rule: Do not lose. The will to power, the urge to defeat the enemy, the insistence that the libs must be owned—this resentment and spite fuels everything. And worst of all, we’ve gotten used to it. I’m not sure who said it first, but the Doobie Brothers said it again in the title of their 1974 album: What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits.

There’s a lot of blame to go around, but no one did more to pioneer the politics of disgust than Donald Trump, who took the outrageous moments of his two presidential campaigns and turned them into virtues. Trump ran, and still runs, as something of a dare, a challenge to see if we’re just a bunch of delicate scolds who get the vapors over things like veterans or foreign influence or nepotism. Are you really going to let the commies and immigrants from the “shithole countries” take over? he seems to ask at every turn, just because of little nothing-burgers like whether I’m keeping highly classified documents in the magazine rack next to my gold toilet?

As usual, however, the real problem lies with the voters. The Republicans are getting the candidates they want. This is not about partisanship—it’s about an unhinged faux-egalitarianism that demands that candidates for office be no better than the rest of us, and perhaps even demonstrably worse. How dare anyone run on virtue or character; who do they think they are?

It’s terrifying to realize that totally unhinged candidates, not only in Georgia but in other states, like Arizona, received almost half the vote.

My hope lies with changing demographics and our youth. Young people who have grown up in the 21st century are likely to replace the shrinking generations of old white bigots, who are now the GOP base. America will be a better nation in the years ahead, as these voters make better choices and choose a better future where all of us make progress. Together.

Categories Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Georgia, Ignorance, Insane, Republicans, Trump
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