West Virginia: State’s Voucher Program is a Scam that Helps the Rich, Say Critics

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2022 //
6

GOP-controlled West Virginia enacted a voucher program that allots $4,300 to attend private schools. A Circuit judge enjoined the program, and it is now being argued before the State Supreme Court.

Critics point out that $4,300 is insufficient to pay for any private school, and the money will be used to underwrite the tuition of affluent students. The poor and students with disabilities will be left behind in underfunded public schools.

The vouchers, cynically called HOPE scholarships, violate the state constitution’s promise of a free public education for every child.

Note: if you open the link, which I hope you will, read the article in one sitting. After one look, it goes behind a pay wall.

Categories Education Industry, Fake, Funding, Hoax, Inequity, Privatization, Vouchers, West Virginia

New York: State Officials Say That Hasidic School Violates State Law by Failing to Provide a Basic Secular Education

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2022 //
15

For years, critics have claimed that the state’s Hasidic schools fail to comply with the state law that requires them to offer a basic secular education in addition to an Orthodox Jewish religious education. Investigations have gone nowhere because of the political power of the Hasidic community, which tends to vote as a bloc. Politicians seek their endorsement, as NYC Eric Adams did. (On election night, the new Mayor had representatives of the Hasidic community by his side.) in the Legislature, a representative of the Hasidic community had a decisive vote when the State Senate was equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

Dr. Betty Rosa, State Commissioner of Education, broke the stalemate. Hasidic groups undoubtedly will sue to block her order. They will say that the law interferes with their freedom of religion. They will say that they should not be required to teach their children in English or science or mathematics or social studies.

Bravo for Commissioner Rosa!

Question: Will the Supreme Court rule with the Hasids? Does the state have the right to tell religious schools what to do? Should these schools collect hundreds of millions a year a year from the state while defying state law?

The New York Times reported:

In a profound challenge to New York’s private Hasidic Jewish schools, state education authorities have determined that a large boys’ school in Brooklyn is violating state law by failing to provide a basic education.

The ruling marks the first time that the state has taken action against a Hasidic boys’ school, one of scores of private academies that provide robust religious instruction in Yiddish but little instruction in English and math, and virtually none in science, history or social studies. It also served as a stern rebuke of the administration of Mayor Eric Adams, whose education department had recommended that the school be found in compliance with a law requiring private schools to offer an education comparable with what is offered in public schools.

The decision, which was issued last week by commissioner Betty Rosa and has not been previously reported, stemmed from a lawsuit brought by a parent against the school alleging a lack of secular education. The ruling requires city education officials to work with the school, Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to come up with an improvement plan, something that many Hasidic schools have long fought to avoid. State officials will have final say over that improvement plan, putting additional pressure on city officials who have previously avoided intervening in the schools….

“The state did right,” said Beatrice Weber, a mother of 10 who brought the suit against her youngest child’s school and has since left the Hasidic community. “Hopefully now things will actually change.” Ms. Weber was recently named as the leader of Young Advocates for Fair Education, a group that has pushed for more secular education in Hasidic schools.

The decision will also provide the first test of a new set of state rules aimed at regulating private schools, including Jewish schools, known as yeshivas, which, like other religious schools, have largely been allowed to operate without government oversight for decades. Those regulations, which went into effect just two weeks ago, hold that schools that do not follow state law could lose their public funding.

Hasidic leaders waged fierce opposition to the new rules before they were approved by the State Board of Regents last month, casting them as an existential threat to the community. Earlier this week, a group of yeshivas and their supporters sued the state over the rules. Many of the plaintiffs were non-Hasidic schools that provide secular education and would likely not be affected by the regulations. The lawsuit has not been previously reported….

“Yeshivas are the central and irreplaceable pillar of the Orthodox Jewish life in New York,” reads the lawsuit, which seeks to have the regulations overturned.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, the Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools, defended Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem.

“Educators from the city’s Department of Education visited the school several times and determined that it met the substantial equivalence standard,” said the spokesman, Richard Bamberger, referring to the state law. “It is disappointing that political appointees at the state education department won’t accept the city’s findings.”

Last month, The New York Times reported that more than 100 Hasidic boys’ schools in Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley have collected at least $1 billion in taxpayer dollars in the past four years, but many have denied their students a basic secular education.

Categories Accountability, New York, New York City, Religion, Separation of church and state

Connecticut Jury Orders Alex Jones to Pay Nearly $1 Billion to People He Slandered

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2022 //
30

Alex Jones and his companies Infowars and Free Speech Systems were ordered by a jury in Connecticut to pay nearly $1 billion to some of the parents of victims murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as an FBI agent.

Jones falsely claimed that the massacre of children, teachers, and the principal at the school was faked and that the victims were “crisis actors.” He said repeatedly that the purpose of the hoax was to create political pressure for gun control.

Parents and relatives of those who were murdered were harassed and received death threats.

The money will not replace those they lost. The,parents will never hold their babies again. But Jones’ cruel campaign to deny that the massacre ever happened deserved punishment.

This is the second of three trials. Jones has no defense. He maligned the families to make money. Hopefully he will be bankrupted for his sins.

Categories Connecticut, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Hoax, Lies

William S. Becker: Are We Losing Our Country?

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2022 //
37

William S. Becker is an expert in energy and climate science issues. He has been struck recently by the loose talk about a “civil war,” inspired by Trump’s cult followers.

There was a time when Americans had values. It seems those values have disappeared, and many things that used to be unacceptable, even unthinkable, became common.

When did it become acceptable to lie? Or to spread fake conspiracies? Or to govern with fear rather than ideas? When did it become okay to deny and reject what the majority of Americans decide? Is it now socially acceptable to send death threats to people with whom we disagree? Is it responsible for a sitting United States congresswoman to make outrageously false statements like “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they have already started the killings,” as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently did. However, all the automatic weapons and body armor that are now de rigueur under the GOP tent indicate the shoe is likely on the other foot.

When did we decide a president, current or former, is above the law — actually, above many laws in the case of Donald Trump — and law enforcement agents should be targeted for investigating? Where does free speech stop, and domestic terrorism begin? Don’t vile threats against individual Americans and their families cross the line?

When did it become acceptable for militants to lock, load and try to incite civil war in America? The New York Times, quoting data from media-tracking services, reports that mentions of civil war are no longer confined to radical groups. The threats have become common on social media. They jumped 3,000 percent in the hours after the FBI confiscated documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Largo home.

With no apparent regret about the 2021 insurrection, Trump predicts that if he’s indicted, “you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was more explicit, predicting “riots in the street.” These high-level provocateurs hide behind the First Amendment, but social media traffic shows that militant groups and individuals have received the actual message. Others get the message, too. As the New York Times notes, a survey in August found that 54 percent of “strong Republicans” believe a civil war of some kind is at least somewhat likely in the next decade.

Categories Education Reform

PEN America: The Growing Movement to Ban Books

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2022 //
5

PEN America is an organization that represents authors and defends freedom of expression, here and elsewhere in the world. I am proud to be a member. I support their belief in the freedom to write and the freedom to read.

PEN has closely followed the recent upsurge in book banning and has kept a list of books that have been attacked and removed from school libraries and public libraries. The American Library Association also maintains a list of banned books and highlights the books most frequently banned. The ALA lists the 10 most challenged books and the 100 most challenged books.

The overwhelming number of banned books deal with race and gender. The censors apparently think that no one will learn about race or gender if no books are available.

They forget about the Internet and television, which they can’t censor.

The only book, to my knowledge, that has been specifically banned by state legislation, is The 1619 Project. That’s a shame because it is enormously informative about the history of racism.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Literacy, Racism

Alan Singer: Florida’s Assault on the Right to Teach

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2022 //
19

Our nation is experiencing a resurgence of censorship and gag laws that take us back to the 1950s, to the era of McCarthyism, and even to the 1930s and 1940s, when teachers were suspected of subversive activities if they offended rightwing sensibilities. Alan Singer writes here about the upsurge in restrictions on academic freedom in Florida. Undoubtedly, there are other states where Know-Nothings have taken control but Florida stands out because it’s governor is a leading contender for the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 2024.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to control what children learn, what teachers can speak about in and out of the classroom, and ultimately what people think. Lawyers for the State of Florida argued in a recent court filing that professors at the state’s public colleges and universities have no right to freedom of speech when they teach. Florida is defending the state’s Individual Freedom Act, more commonly known as the “Stop WOKE Act.” The law bars teachers at public institutions from introducing discussion of race, racism, and sex. The big danger is that the rightwing majority on the United States Supreme Court may give him his wish. With DeSantis a leading candidate for the 2024 Republican Party Presidential nomination, this would be another step towards suppressing democracy in the United States.

The out-of-control rightwing majority on the Supreme Court is likely to approve the DeSantis ban on free speech and academic freedom. In 2006, in the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos, a 5-4 rightwing majority of the Supreme Court already ruled that first amendment protection does not apply to employee speech and protect them “from discipline based on speech made pursuant to the employee’s official duties.” At the time the Court did not rule on whether the ban included teachers. But today, an even more rightwing Court majority could rule that teachers, K-12 and college, as government employees in Florida, are subject to discipline including being fired if they exercise speech in their official capacities that violates Florida laws including its notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill and banning any language that might make a student feel uncomfortable such as recognition that Florida was a slave state and attempted to cede from the United States during the Civil War. Since many teacher contracts have a public behavior clause, saying gay or discussing racism outside the classroom but in in public setting could be construed as a violation of professional responsibility and the Florida law.

Florida is not the only state trying to silence teacher and students. According to a June 2021 article in Education Week, in the previous six months bills were introduced in 42 states to restrict teaching about racism and sexism. Anti-CRT laws went into effect in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. The Alabama law forbids teachers from teaching “concepts that impute fault, blame, a tendency to oppress others, or the need to feel guilt or anguish to persons solely because of their race or sex.” A problem that the Alabama and Florida legislators may not have understood is that slavery in the Americas was race-based. Florida’s law adds that teaching that “people are privileged or oppressed due to their race or sex” effectively wipes out any discussion of Jim Crow segregation, limits on the rights of women, and Florida’s long history of voter suppression.

This is not the first time the fundamental rights of teachers have been under attack in the United States because of their beliefs or speech. In the 1930s and 1940s teachers were made to sign loyalty oaths and fired if they held unpopular political beliefs. In the 1940s, New York State prevented the City College of New York from hiring the noted philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell condemning Russell’s views on premarital sex as “immoral and salacious.” In 1941, the New York State Legislature established the Rapp-Coudert Committee to investigate teachers in the state’s educational system. Sixty faculty and staff members at City College were dismissed because they were unwilling to testify before the committee.

In New York City, 1,150 teachers were investigated and 378 teachers were either fired of forced to take early retirement in the 1950s because they were suspected of being current or past members of the Communist Party or had invoked the Fifth Amendment when subpoenaed to testify about their activities. During the Cold War Red Scare teachers were also investigated in other major U.S. cities. At a Congressional sub-committee hearing accusations were made that 1,500 of the country’s one million teachers were “card-carrying Communists.”

In 1954, the school committee in Wayland, Massachusetts removed a second-grade teacher accused of being “[unfit] to teach” because she had been a member of the Communist Party. It accused the teacher of lacking “perception, understanding, and judgment necessary in one who is to be entrusted with the responsibility for teaching the children of the Town.”

The witch-hunts not only impacted the teachers who were fired. Other teachers were frightened into silence and students were denied exposure to ideas that needed to consider, and could potentially reject, about the nature of American society. An earlier version of the Supreme Court recognized this and in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957), Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967) and Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, recognized the importance of freedom of speech for teachers. In his majority opinion for the Court in Sweezy, Warren argued, “The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities . . . Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.”

Unfortunately Florida Republicans and current Supreme Court seem committed to overturning these rulings and the right of teachers to teach.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Teachers and Teaching

Ruth Marcus: Get Ready for Reactionary Decisions by an Arrogant Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2022 //
23

Ruth Marcus, deputy editor of the Washington Post editorial page, writes a warning: if you thought the Supreme Court’s decisions were bad last year, this year will be even worse. Their solid five votes of hard-right conservatives, occasionally teen forced by a sixth vote from Chief Justice John Roberts, has removed all constraint, any need to negotiate with their liberal colleagues. Mitch McConnell created the most conservative court in almost a century, with help from Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. They seem determined to roll the clock back a century.

She writes:

Last term, in addition to overruling Roe v. Wade, the conservative majority expandedgun rights, imposed severe new constraints on the power of regulatory agencies and further dismantled the wall of separation between church and state….

If there was a question, at the start of that term, about how far and how fast a court with six conservatives would move, it was answered resoundingly by the time it recessed for the summer: “Very far, very fast,” said Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who served as solicitor general under President Barack Obama. “I hope the majority takes a step back and considers the risk that half the country may completely lose faith in the court as an institution.”

Maybe it will, but for now, the court is marching on toward fresh territory, taking on race, gay rights and the fundamental structures of democracy — this even as the shock waves of the abortion ruling reverberate through our politics and lower courts grapple with a transformed legal regime. And there’s every indication that the court intends to adopt changes nearly as substantial — and as long sought by conservatives — as those of last term…

In assembling its cases for the term, the conservative wing has at times displayed an unseemly haste — prodded by conservative activists who have seized on the opportunities presented by a court open to their efforts to reshape the law. The court reached out to decide a dispute about when the Clean Water Act applies to wetlands, even as the Environmental Protection Agency rewrites its rules on that very issue. It agreed to hear a wedding website designer’s complaint that Colorado’s law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates her free speech rights to oppose same-sex marriage, even though Colorado authorities have not filed any complaint against her. It took the marquee case of the term — the constitutionality of affirmative action programs at colleges and universities — although the law in this area has been settled and there is no division among the lower courts.

“They’re impatient,” Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus said of the conservative justices, especially the longest-serving, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. “They’ve spent a lot of time waiting for this majority to happen, and they don’t plan to waste it.”

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Environment, Republicans

Timothy Snyder: The Coming Power Struggle in Russia

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2022 //
4

Timothy Snyder is a political scientist at Yale who has written incisive books about fascism. In this essay, he describes a scenario that will bring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to an end.

He does not believe that Putin will deploy nuclear weapons. He believes that the humiliating retreat of Russian soldiers on the battlefield will produce power struggles in Russia. The mercenaries that Putin has relied on from Chechnya and the Wagner Group (a neo-fascist militia) are unlikely to put their best troops at risk when the Russian military is retreating. The consequences will not be favorable for Putin.

Categories Accountability, Fascism, International

North Carolina: A Teacher Explains Why the State is Pushing a Disastrous Plan

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2022 //
11

A few days ago, I posted a column by Peter Greene about a dreadful plan in North Carolina to align teacher pay and evaluation with test scores, an approach that has always failed and that always demoralizes teachers.

Peter was relying on the thorough research of Justin Parmenter, a North Carolina teacher who is a National Board Certified Teacher.

Another North Carolina teacher wrote the following comment:

As a North Carolina teacher, I can personally attest to everything that Justin Parmenter has written about this god-awful plan. It has absolutely no support either from teachers or from school districts, where the administrators know full well that it will only increase their already desperate staffing problems. Yet there seems to be almost nothing that we can do to stop it short of the NC State Board of Education. At least there, a majority of the members were appointed by our Democratic Governor Cooper and may balk at a plan so universally opposed by those it will directly affect. We have no real union (NCAE is an “advocacy organization”) since we’re prevented by law from forming unions or collective bargaining. We’re also barred from striking. We have no recourse except to appeal to those few sympathetic political figures (like the Governor) who might be able to stand in the way of this. The DPI and the Legislature, who created PEPSC, are just looking for another way to undercut public education (without just coming out and doing it openly) so that they can move on to the privatizing that they really want to do but that the public at large still opposes. Driving away experienced teachers by undercutting their pay and heaping new burdens on us is just their latest scheme.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, North Carolina, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, VAM (value-added modeling)

Alabama: $311,000 Missing from Charter School But No One Is Accountable

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2022 //
31

For the first time, the state of Alabama audited a charter school. The audit discovered that $311,000 was missing. But no one will be held accountable because the bbookkeeping was so sloppy.

Birmingham’s Legacy Prep Charter School misspent or did not accurately track $311,517 in spending, over the course of two years, a state audit recently found. Some of that money was from public funds.

The audit, performed at special request of the Alabama State Department of Education, marked the first time the Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts was asked to conduct an audit of a charter school.

“Compliance monitoring led us to know there were issues,” State Superintendent Eric Mackey said, referring to the regular monitoring cycle of schools and districts. “It was serious enough that it got elevated,” he added, and resulted in the department asking for the special audit.

Many of the audit’s findings were related to the school’s lack of proper record-keeping; others were related to the school’s governance and compliance with the school’s charter contract, according to documents reviewed by AL.com.

The school’s CEO and founder, Jonta Morris, who resigned in 2021, was initially asked to repay $311,000, some of which was initially spent on TopGolf, airfare, gift cards and Life Touch Massage.

Chief Examiner Rachel Riddle said Morris eventually provided documentation and did not have to repay any amount. Ultimately, no one will repay any amount, she said.

“Our audit could not find one person that was culpable or should owe back the $311,000,” Riddle said, because of “the lack of organization and adequate documentation.”

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud
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