New York: Parents and Teachers Thank Gov. Hochul for Signing Class Size Reduction Law

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2022 //
19

Leonie Haimson has been leading the campaign for class size reduction (CSR) for more than 20 years. When I first met her in 2010, she convinced me that the research on class size reduction was overwhelming. It also happens to be the most important priority for parents. She is relentless. I am proud to be a board member of Class Size Matters, the small but mighty organization that Leonie founded and leads, on a budget that is a shoestring. For her dedication, hard work, and persistence, I add Leonie Haimson to the blog’s honor roll.

The campaign for CSR achieved its greatest success when the state legislature passed legislation to reduce class size, and after weeks of wondering, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the law.

Class Size Matters issued the following press release.

For immediate release: September 9, 2022

Contacts: Leonie Haimson: 917-435-9329; leoniehaimson@gmail.com
Julia Watson: 978.518.0729; julia@aqeny.org
Randi Garay and Shirley Aubin: infocpacnyc@gmail.com

Yesterday, Governor Hochul signed the class size bill passed overwhelmingly last June by the Legislature that would require NYC to phase in smaller classes over five years. The only change from the original bill is that the implementation will now begin in the fall of 2023, rather than this September.

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, said, “Thank you, Governor Hochul, for listening to the research showing that class size matters, especially for kids who need help the most, and for heeding the pleas of parents and teachers that it’s time to provide true equity to our students, who have long suffered from the largest class sizes in the state. We are eager to help the Chancellor, the UFT and the CSA put together an action plan to make sure that the implementation of this necessary improvement in our schools goes forward in an effective and workable manner.”

“For years, New York city parents, teachers and advocates have demanded smaller class sizes to benefit all public school students,” said Wendy Lecker, Education Law Center Senior Attorney. “Now that Governor Hochul has signed the class size reduction bill championed by Senators Robert Jackson and John Liu, City schools finally have another important tool to ensure their students receive a constitutional sound basic education.”

Parent leaders Randi Garay and Shirley Aubin said, “As the co-chairs of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, which represents all the Parent Associations and Parent Teacher Associations in the city’s public schools, we know that smaller classes have been a top priority of NYC parents for decades and how desperately they are needed. In the wake of the pandemic and with the infusion of new state and federal funds, we believe that smaller classes are not only more critical than ever, but more achievable as well. Thank you to the Governor for seeing the importance of smaller class sizes and signing the bill into law.”

“Students in New York’s public schools will be better off thanks to the class size reduction bill that Gov. Hochul signed yesterday. By signing this bill into law, she is sending a clear and important signal that she is on students’ side. We applaud the Governor for her commitment to New York’s students, especially as we are moving toward the third and final year of the State’s Foundation Aid commitment,” said Marina Marcou-O’Malley, Operations and Policy Director, Alliance for Quality Education.

###

Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, New York

Miami-Dade School Board Cancels LBTQ Month, in Response to DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” Law

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2022 //
129

Governor Ron DeSantis wants to make sure that students are never exposed to anything in school that acknowledges the existence of people who are gay. Maybe he thinks that if their existence is never mentioned, they will disappear or go back into the closet.

The Miami-Dade School Board got his message. Last year the board approved a measure to recognize LGBTQ History Month. It was not controversial. Recently the board voted overwhelmingly to cancel that decision, in deference to state law proclaiming that gay people should not be acknowledged.

Last year, when the Miami-Dade School Board overwhelmingly supported a measure to recognize October as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) History Month, some board members said their decision was rooted in another step toward civil rights for all people.

At the time, Vice Chair Steve Gallon III said he was “obligated to support the item because my DNA compels me to support inclusion. It compels me to support equity, it compels me to support equality.” 

The nine-member board passed the proposal in a 7-1 vote, with Board Member Christa Fraga dissenting and Board Member Lubby Navarro absent.

This year, though, during a marathon and contentious meeting Wednesday, the board voted 8-1 to reject recognizing October as LGBTQ month. Only Board Member Lucia Baez-Geller supported the observance; she put forth the proposal, both last year and this year.

This time, Gallon said, his personal beliefs must be divorced from his obligation to follow the law, despite his “love for all humanity, my commitment to inclusivity and access to representation.”

He expressed concern Baez-Geller’s measure “did not fully comport with the law,” referencing Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed by critics as Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill. In March, Gov. DeSantis signed the bill into law, prohibiting instruction related to gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade and could potentially restrict such instruction for older kids.

Gallon and seven other board members voted no on the October observance and no on allowing the district to explore teaching two landmark Supreme Court decisions impacting the LGBTQ community to 12th-grade students. To some, the board’s vote on Wednesday underscores the chilling effect the law is having on school boards in Florida.

“Nearly every board member opposing the resolution voiced their belief that the proclamation violated the Don’t Say LGBTQ Law, further evidence of the sweeping censorship of this law,” said a news release sent by Equality Florida, a civil rights organization that works with Florida’s LGBTQ community.

School board attorney Walter Harvey told the board Wednesday that he believed the measure was in compliance with the state law because it did not have changes to curriculum or instruction.

Board members, however, believed otherwise. 

Law’s potential chilling effect

Throughout the hours-long meeting Wednesday, Baez-Geller tried to debunk what she called “disinformation” being promulgated by people at the podium.

For one, she said, the item included an opt-out for students on the Supreme Court lessons in addition to language that required any recognition be pursuant to state law.

Nevertheless, speaker after speaker opposed to the measure said the recognition would indoctrinate students; in some cases, speakers likened the resolution to child abuse. 

“What I think is happening, (following) the removal of members of Broward County and the language and rhetoric from the right, it’s a scary time for allies … and people who would have voted in favor of this in the past may now be thinking twice,” she told the Herald Thursday. “The law is vague on purpose and as we saw, the law is meant to have a chilling effect, and I believe the law has been successful in scaring people away from topics that are potentially controversial or that could bring a lawsuit.”

Last month, DeSantis removed four elected Broward County School Board members following a grand jury report that cited the members for “incompetent management” and “neglect of duty.” He replaced the four members with four men — the four he suspended were all women — who had ties to him or to the Republican Party.…

At the end of July, opponents to the law sued DeSantis, the Florida Board of Education and Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. in federal court in Tallahassee, challenging the law’s constitutionality. The case is pending.

A packed house, polarized crowd

Most of the speakers Wednesday spoke against the measure. 

Patricia Moore was greeted with cheers from the packed auditorium after she said schools “are not here to indoctrinate with the LGBTQ agenda. We should not expose our children to this in school.”

Michael Rajner, however, was among those who spoke in favor of the measure, telling the board he knows what it’s like to have parents who told him not to tell others he was gay, including his siblings. 

“Our struggle is real. Our struggle is history,” Rajner told the board members.

Now, if DeSantis should be elected President in 2024, he could tell cable and network stations not to broadcast any programs with gay characters, and he could censor the Internet.

He is a bigot and a bully.

Categories Bigotry, DeSantis, Florida

Leonie Haimson: NAEP Score Declines Unleash Wave of False Prescriptions

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2022 //
15

Leonie Haimson looked closely at the score declines on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and was disappointed to see the outpouring of false prescriptions. She was critical of claims that students needed to make up for lost time by being subjected to longer school days and weeks.

The best response, she argues, based on years of research, is to reduce class size and give students the attention and care they need to make up for lost time.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Education Reform, NAEP

EPI: Unions Are Popular Again

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2022 //
12

Big business has been trying to get rid of unions since the first union was created. Corporations don’t want workers to have collective power. They prefer a workplace where they make all the decisions and don’t have to listen to workers’ voices. The share of unionized workers in the private sector is near an all-time low, but that may change. Recently there have been inklings of a rebirth of unionism. We see it in the growing number of Starbucks and Amazon workers who have voted to unionize. But their numbers remain small. Happily, public opinion is trending in favor of unions.

Someone recently asked me why there was so much hostility to teachers’ unions, and I answered, “Because they are the largest unions.” Teachers’ unions are blamed for whatever critics don’t like in schools, even though they fight for adequate school funding and decent working conditions. Those who have wanted to crush all unions focus their wrath on the NEA and the AFT, while overlooking the police union and the firefighters unions.

My view: if you want to reduce poverty and build a robust middle-class, support unions.

The Economic Policy Institute reports:

It’s been nearly 60 years since approval for unions in the U.S. has been this high.

More than 70% of Americans now approve of labor unions. Those are the findings of a Gallup poll released this morning, and they shouldn’t be surprising.

Why? U.S. workers see unions as critical to fixing our nation’s broken workplace—where most workers have little power or agency at work.

The pandemic revealed much about work in this country. We saw countless examples of workers performing essential jobs—such as health care and food service. They were forced to work without appropriate health and safety gear and certainly without pay commensurate with the critical nature of the work they were doing.

Those conditions, however, pre-dated the pandemic. The pandemic merely exposed these decades old anti-worker dynamics. Clearly, as the new poll and recent data on strikes and union organizing shows, workers today are rejecting these dynamics and awakening to the benefits of unions.

Nonunion workers are forced to take their jobs—accept their employer’s terms as is—or leave them. Unions enable workers to have a voice in those terms and set them through collective bargaining.

We know the powerful impact unions have on workers’ lives, and broader effects on communities and on our democracy.

Here’s a run-down based on the Economic Policy Institute’s extensive research on unions:

Pay and benefits 

  • Unionized workers (workers covered by a union contract) earn on average 10.2% more in wages than nonunionized peers (workers in the same industry and occupation with similar education and experience).
  • Unions don’t just help union workers—they help all of us. When union density is high, nonunion workers benefit, because unions effectively set broader standards—including higher wages.
  • Union workers are more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance. More than 9 in 10 workers covered by a union contract (95%) have access to employer-sponsored health benefits, compared with just 69% of nonunion workers.
  • Union workers have greater access to paid vacation days. 90% of workers covered by a union contract received paid holidays off compared to 78% of nonunion workers.
  • Union workers also have greater access to paid sick days. 9 in 10 workers covered by a union contract (92%) have access to paid sick days, compared with 77% of nonunion workers.

The 17 U.S. states with the highest union densities:

  • Have state minimum wages that are on average 19% higher than the national average and 40% higher than those in low-union-density states.
  • Have median annual incomes $6,000 higher than the national average.
  • Have higher-than-average unemployment insurance recipiency rates (that is, a higher share of those who are unemployed actually receive unemployment insurance).

Equity and Equality

  • Black and Hispanic workers get a larger boost from unionization. Black workers represented by a union are paid 13.1% more than their nonunionized peers. Hispanic workers represented by unions are paid 18.8% more than their nonunionized peers.
  • Unions help raise women’s pay. Hourly wages for women represented by a union are 4.7% higher on average than for nonunionized women with comparable characteristics.
  • Research shows that deunionization accounts for a sizable share of the growth in inequality between typical (median) workers and workers at the high end of the wage distribution in recent decades—on the order of 13–20% for women and 33–37% for men.

Democracy 

  • Significantly fewer restrictive voting laws have been passed in the 17 highest-union-density states than in the middle 17 states (including D.C.) and the 17 lowest-union-density states.
  • Over 70% of low-union-density states passed at least one voter suppression law between 2011 and 2019.

The growing approval of unions is playing out on the ground with more workers seeking to exercise their collective bargaining rights.

Data from the National Labor Relations Board recently analyzed by Bloomberg Law show the exponential increase in election petitions being filed. While the Gallup poll states that most nonunion workers do not respond that they want to join a union, clearly workers are petitioning for union election at elevated rates.

And workers have increasingly felt empowered to fight for what they want.

We were already seeing signs of workers being willing to strike to demand better wages and working conditions. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed an upsurge in major strike activity in 2018 and 2019, marking a 35-year high.

We are experiencing a labor enlightenment of sorts in this country, one in which workers are fed up with an economy and workplace that does not work for them. With approval for unions at the highest since 1965, there is a growing realization that unions can potentially make both work better for all.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Economy, Education Reform, Equity, Poverty, Unions

American Prospect: Why Obama-Era Economists Hate Biden’s Student Debt Relief

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2022 //
88

Lindsay Owens and David Dayen note that some of the most outspoken critics of Biden’s decision to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt are Obama-era economists. Republicans have called it “socialism” and worse, but some Democratic economists are also upset. Owens and Dayen attribute their anger to the failure of Obama’s policy to solve the home foreclosure crisis.

They write:

President Biden’s long-awaited decision to wipe out up to $20,000 in student debt was met with joy and relief by millions of borrowers, and a temper tantrum from centrist economists.null

Moments after the announcement, former Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jason Furman took to Twitter with a dozen tweets skewering the proposal as “reckless,” “pouring … gasoline on the inflationary fire,” and an example of executive branch overreach (“Even if technically legal I don’t like this amount of unilateral Presidential power.”). Brookings economist Melissa Kearny called the proposal “astonishingly bad policy” and puzzled over whether economists inside the administration were “all hanging their heads in defeat.” Ben Ritz, the head of a centrist think tank, went so far as to call for the staff who worked on the proposal to be fired after the midterms.

Histrionics are nothing new on Twitter, but it’s worth examining why this proposal has evoked such strong reactions. Elizabeth Popp Berman has argued in the Prospect that student loan forgiveness is a threat to the economic style of reasoning that dominates Washington policy circles. That’s correct. But President Biden’s elegant and forceful approach to tackling the student loan crisis also may feel like a personal rebuke to those who once worked alongside President Obama as he utterly failed to solve the debt crisis he inherited.

Let’s be very clear: The Obama administration’s bungled policy to help underwater borrowers and to stem the tide of devastating foreclosures, carried out by many of the same people carping about Biden’s student loan cancellation, led directly to nearly ten million families losing their homes. This failure of debt relief was immoral and catastrophic, both for the lives of those involved and for the principle of taking bold government action to protect the public. It set the Democratic Party back years. And those throwing a fit about Biden’s debt relief plan now are doing so because it exposes the disaster they precipitated on the American people.

One reason the Obama administration failed to swiftly help homeowners was their obsession with ensuring their policies didn’t help the “wrong” type of debtor.

President Obama campaigned on an aggressive platform to prevent foreclosures. Larry Summers, one of the critics of Biden’s student debt relief, promised during the Obama transition in a letter to Congress that the administration “will commit substantial resources of $50-100B to a sweeping effort to address the foreclosure crisis.” The plan had two parts: “helping to reduce mortgage payments for economically stressed but responsible homeowners,” and “reforming our bankruptcy laws” by allowing judges in bankruptcy proceedings to write down mortgage principal and interest, a policy known as “cramdown.”

The administration accomplished neither. On cramdown, the administration didn’t fight to get the House-passed proposal over the finish line in the Senate. Credible accounts point to the Treasury Department and even Summers himself (who just last week said his preferred method of dealing with student debt was to allow it to be discharged in bankruptcy) lobbying to undermine its passage. Summers “was really dismissive as to the utility of it,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said at the time. “He was not supportive of this.”

Summers and Treasury economists expressed more concern for financially fragile banks than homeowners facing foreclosure, while also openly worrying that some borrowers would “take advantage” of cramdown to get undeserved relief. This is also a preoccupation of economist anger at student debt relief: that it’s inefficient and untargeted and will go to the “wrong” people who don’t need it. (It won’t.)

For mortgage modification, President Obama’s Federal Housing Finance Agency repeatedly refused to use its administrative authority to write down the principal of loans in its portfolio at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the simplest and fastest tool at its disposal. Despite a 2013 Congressional Budget Office study that showed how modest principal reduction could help 1.2 million homeowners, prevent tens of thousands of defaults, and save Fannie and Freddie billions, FHFA repeatedly refused to move forward with principal reduction, citing their own efforts to study whether the policy would incentivize strategic default (the idea that financially solvent homeowners would default on their loans to try and access cheaper ones).

Virtually everyone involved with the housing system was stunned that the options of cramdown and principal reduction weren’t taken. Banks literally held meetings in expectation of Obama’s team requiring writedowns, until they didn’t.

Instead, the Obama administration rolled out the industry-backed Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), relying on the voluntary cooperation of servicers to modify mortgages. The program was, even by the administration’s own modest objectives, a failure, ultimately reaching less than a quarter of the three to four million homeowners it hoped to target. In the critical first two years, the administration did not even spend 3 percent of what they were allotted to save homeowners.

Just as with cramdown, one reason the Obama administration failed to swiftly help homeowners was their obsession with ensuring their policies didn’t help the “wrong” type of debtor. When Obama first announced HAMP in 2009, he said the program would “not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never afford.” The resulting “Goldilocks” proposal, with its focus on weeding out undeserving borrowers, would not be available to homeowners with incomes too high or too low and would be backstopped with voluminous income and financial verifications (in many cases, more than what was required to take out the loan in the first place). Treasury also tweaked the program numerous times as they went along, confusing servicers and borrowers. The barrage of paperwork ground the program to a halt at many servicers, and ultimately nearly a quarter of modifications were rejected on the grounds that incomplete paperwork was provided.

But it was much worse than that. The mortgage servicers used HAMP like a predatory lending program, squeezing homeowners for as many payments as possible before canceling their modifications and kicking them out of their homes. These companies had financial incentives to foreclose rather than modify loans. In one particularly excruciating example, the servicer arm of Bank of America offered its employees Target gift cards as a bonus for placing borrowers into foreclosure.

This was also by design, or at least benign neglect. Then–Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner candidly told officials that the program was intended to help banks, not borrowers. The purpose was to “foam the runway” for the banks, Geithner said, with homeowners and their families being the foam crushed by a jumbo jet in that scenario. If the goal was just to let the banks use HAMP for their own benefit, it’s not surprising that would come at homeowners’ expense.

And those banks executed their plan fraudulently, using millions of forged and fabricated documents to illegally foreclose on people. Even with this new leverage against the banks, the administration failed to provide equitable relief. A new program, the National Mortgage Settlement, promised one million principal reductions but delivered only 83,000. Meanwhile, millions more unlawful foreclosures ensued, and no high-level executive was convicted in association with any of these crimes.

In short, the policy apparatus ultimately failed to assist the majority of people who sought help, a suboptimal policy outcome by any metric. Student debt relief skeptics like Furman spent the Obama years advocating for privatizing Fannie and Freddie, rather than apologizing for falling so short on dealing with the massive debt overhang, which stunted the economic recovery.

President Biden’s approach has been markedly different and, if well implemented, is poised to be extremely effective. The simplicity of the program design, with its straightforward cancellation thresholds ($10,000/$20,000) and eligibility criteria (Pell status and household income), means the policy should deliver nearly 90 percent of its relief dollars to those making less than $75,000 a year. Will some small amount of relief dollars land in the bank accounts of borrowers who will make higher incomes in the future? Absolutely. Is preventing that outcome more important than delivering relief to 43 million borrowers? Of course not.

It’s not just the policy design that is a rebuke to the old guard’s theory of debt relief; it’s also the rhetoric. Notably, in his 20-minute speech announcing the rollout of the student loan relief program, President Biden didn’t mention “bad debtors” once. He didn’t spend a single breath on the individual failings of borrowers, make any reference to their poor decision-making, or nod to a handful of unscrupulous debtors trying to game the system.

Instead, he talked about the failings of our higher-education system, in which “an entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt.” Instead of blaming borrowers, he showed them empathy. Instead of talking about borrowers taking advantage of the system, he vowed to hold “colleges accountable for jacking up costs without delivering value to students” and crack down on “schools luring students with the promise of big paychecks when they graduate only to watch these students be ripped off and left with mountains of debt.” And he headed concerns about moral hazard off at the pass, vowing to “never apologize for helping the working and middle class.”

Moreover, Biden wasn’t afraid to use all of the tools available to him to get results for indebted borrowers. The Obama administration was given funding from Congress, an explicit mandate for foreclosure prevention, and at the end, a settlement with the banks that authorized even more money. They still failed, because they were more interested in deluded notions of “personal responsibility” than acting to avert disaster.

Biden has flipped the Beltway consensus on policy design around debt forgiveness and modeled a path for viewing student debt as a national crisis, rather than an individual failing. It’s a stunning reversal of the Obama-era consensus and one that casts that failed legacy of mortgage debt relief in an even darker light. Biden has shown us there was an easier, softer way all along.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Economics, Education Industry, Equity, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Fun Reading: Federal Judge Throws Out Trump’s Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2022 //
9

Donald Trump may be the most litigious person in the United States. On March 24, 2022, Trump filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and various Democratic Party leaders for engaging in a conspiracy against him in 2016. The federal judge tossed the case out yesterday.

Believe me, this is a fun read. The judge is frankly mystified by the legal reasoning and the lack of evidence.

Here is the beginning:

I. BACKGROUND
Plaintiff initiated this lawsuit on March 24, 2022, alleging that “the Defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.” (DE 177, Am. Compl. ¶ 9). On this general premise, Plaintiff brings a claim for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), predicated on the theft of trade secrets,

Case 2:22-cv-14102-DMM Document 267 Entered on FLSD Docket 09/08/2022 Page 2 of 65
obstruction of justice, and wire fraud (Count I). He additionally brings claims for: injurious falsehood (Count III); malicious prosecution (Count V); violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) (Count VII); theft of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”) (Count VIII); and violations of the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) (Count IX). The Amended Complaint also contains counts for various conspiracy charges and theories of agency and vicarious liability. (Counts II, IV, VI, and X–XVI).
Plaintiff’s theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner. It was certainly not presented that way. Nevertheless, I will attempt to distill it here.
The short version: Plaintiff alleges that the Defendants “[a]cting in concert . . . maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.” (Am. Compl. ¶ 1). The Defendants effectuated this alleged conspiracy through two core efforts. “[O]n one front, Perkins Coie partner Mark Elias led an effort to produce spurious ‘opposition research’ claiming to reveal illicit ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.” (Id. ¶ 3). To that end, Defendant Hillary Clinton and her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and lawyers for the Campaign and the Committee allegedly hired Defendant Fusion GPS to fabricate the Steele Dossier. (Id. ¶ 4). “[O]n a separate front, Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussman headed a campaign to develop misleading evidence of a bogus ‘back channel’ connection between e-mail servers at Trump Tower and a Russian- owned bank.” (Id.). Clinton and her operatives allegedly hired Defendant Rodney Joffe to exploit his access to Domain Name Systems (“DNS”) data, via Defendant Neustar, to investigate and ultimately manufacture a suspicious pattern of activity between Trump-related servers and a Russian bank with ties to Vladimir Putin, Alfa Bank. (Id. ¶ 3). As a result of this “fraudulent
2

Case 2:22-cv-14102-DMM Document 267 Entered on FLSD Docket 09/08/2022 Page 3 of 65
evidence,” the Federal Bureau of Investigations (“FBI”) commenced “several large-scale investigations,” which were “prolonged and exacerbated by the presence of a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice”—Defendants James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and Bruce Ohr. (Id. ¶ 7). And while this was ongoing, the Defendants allegedly “seized on the opportunity to publicly malign Donald J. Trump by instigating a full-blown media frenzy.” (Id. ¶ 6). As a result of this “multi-pronged attack,” Plaintiff claims to have amassed $24 million in damages.1 (Id. ¶ 527).
Defendants now move to dismiss the Amended Complaint as “a series of disconnected political disputes that Plaintiff has alchemized into a sweeping conspiracy among the many individuals Plaintiff believes to have aggrieved him.” (DE 226 at 1). They argue that dismissal is warranted because Plaintiff’s claims are both “hopelessly stale”—that is, foreclosed by the applicable statutes of limitations—and because they fail on the merits “in multiple independent respects.” (Id. at 2). As they view it, “[w]hatever the utilities of [the Amended Complaint] as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit.” (Id.). I agree. In the discussion that follows, I first address the Amended Complaint’s structural deficiencies. I then turn to subject matter jurisdiction and the personal jurisdiction arguments raised by certain Defendants. Finally, I assess the sufficiency of the allegations as to each of the substantive counts.

Categories Elections, Fake News, Hillary Clinton, Trump

Tom Ultican: Destroying Public Schools in Stockton, California

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2022 //
9

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the meticulous research of Tom Ultican. Tom was a teacher of advanced math and science in the schools of San Diego. He is now a chronicler of the Destroy Public Education movement. This is a sad chapter in that story. It is the story of Stockton, California, which was burdened with heavy administrative expenses during the superintendency of John Deasy.

He begins:

The infamous John Deasy resigned his post as Superintendent of Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) on June 15th, 2020. That made his tenure two weeks more than two years which further exacerbated the longtime administrative instability at SUSD. He apparently steered the district budgets toward deficit spending and left a decimated finance department in his wake while other administrative positions multiplied. Concurrent with his two years in Stockton, money and leaders from organizations bent on privatizing public education were bolstered and became more active.

Stockton is an interesting place with vibrant political activity. The 209Times a Facebook based news outlet claims over 200,000 readers. It is not a slick publication but it does seem effective. 209 is the Stockton telephone prefix. Another internet based news outlet Recordnet.com is often an adversary of the 209Times...

Stockton is a city of 315,000 people and one of America’s most diverse communities. The demographic makeup is 42.1% Hispanic, 21.6% Asian, 20.8% White and 11.8 % Black. It has a 20% poverty rate and a stunning 82% of its K-12 students come from families in poverty. SUSD enrolls around 34,000 students into its 54 schools. Charter schools enroll close to 6,000 students.

With high poverty rates, Stockton has naturally underperformed on standardized testing which is significantly more correlated with family wealth than anything else. Linda Darling-Hammond pegs that correlation at 0.9 which is an almost certainty. The education writer Alfie Kohn suggested we could replace standardized testing by asking students just one question, “How much money does your mom make?” (Kohn page 77)…

Between the times John Deasy was hired until he resigned the full time staff at SUSD increased by more than 500 people. In terms of money, that represented a $9 million increase in yearly spending on salaries. During this same period, attendance declined by more than 1,300 students. That represented about a $9 million dollar loss in revenue from the state. SUSD had an $18 million dollar negative structural budget change.

SUSD board of trustees contracted with the Fiscal Crisis Management Assist Team (FCMAT) to review their financial situation and processes. The executive summary of the January 2022 report noted,

“At the time of FCMAT’s fieldwork, there had been significant employee turnover and the elimination of some management positions in the Business Services Department. Key budget management personnel had been in their positions for only a brief time; therefore, there was a lack of historical institutional knowledge about the district’s 2021-22 budget development and 2020-21 financial closing processes.”

In other words, despite all of the hiring Deasy left the financial department in chaos. The FCMAT study claimed that SUSD was headed for serious financial difficulties when the one time spending from the federal government is gone in fiscal year 2024-25. Currently they say the district is spending one time funding on $26.3 million in salaries, benefits and services that appear essential.

In come the privatizers, ready to take advantage of a messy situation.

Categories Education Reform

Charter Schools Collected $1 Billion in PPP Loans That Were Forgiven

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2022 //
14

Since President Biden announced a program to forgive $10,000-20,000 in student loan debt, new attention has been paid to the Trump administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. PPP doled out billions of dollars to businesses of all kinds, many of which didn’t need the money but took it anyway. Free money.

Among those that collected significant sums were religious schools, private schools (some of which had multi-million dollar endowments), and charter schools.

Regular public schools had a separate stream of money to help them survive COVID-19, but they were not allowed to apply for PPP money, which was only for private businesses and nonprofit.

Charter schools were allowed to double dip. Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education, after all. So charter schools qualified for public school funding and for PPP.

Carol Burris wrote a brief summary:

More than 1,100 charter schools (about 1 in 7) received PPP loans and had those loans forgiven, according to an investigation by Craig Harris of U.S.A. today. Whether they ever needed the money is questionable since 93% of them were located in states that funded them at the same or higher levels than before Covid 19.

Charter schools, in total, received more than 1 billion dollars in PPP funding. Kipp alone got $28 million even though, according to Harris, they had $78 million in assets.

For-profit charter chains also collected PPP funds and public school funds, although they lost no funding.

ProPublica published a database of every organization that received a PPP loan. Go to the website and type in “charter school,” “Catholic school” or “private school,” “religious organization” and you will see the Trump administration’s extraordinary generosity. Check your own zip code. You will be stunned by the big giveaway to private and religious schools, even televangelists.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding

Texas: Voucher Advocates Form Their Own Pastors’ Group to Undermine Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2022 //
12

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, once known as the Rush Limbaugh of Texas, has organized a group of pastors to push for school vouchers, in opposition to the dynamic Pastors for Texas Children, which has staunchly supported public schools.

Our friends, PTC, have helped to build a bipartisan coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans who don’t want their community schools defunded.

The Dallas Morning News reported:

Conservative Texas pastors and lawmakers have their eyes set on school vouchers to fight the “miseducation” of students ahead of the November elections and the upcoming legislative session.

“After COVID and after [critical race theory] and after pornographic books in libraries, parents deserve choices,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said during a call with about 50 Texas pastors Tuesday.

Patrick was joined by Rev. Dave Welch, founder and executive director of the Texas Pastor Council; Allan Parker, president of The Justice Foundation and former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige on the call that lamented the “crisis” facing K-12 education.

“We are educationally in a crisis of change,” Paige said. “The pandemic has changed the area of education in the United States of America. My suggestion would be that [Gov. Greg Abbott] assemble a good group of good thinkers and think about where we go from here.”

Amid the ongoing education culture wars over what’s taught in schools and students falling behind academically after pandemic disruptions, many families want more options and some believe the landscape is ripe for a renewed fight for vouchers or similar efforts that funnel taxpayer money for use on private school education.

You may recall Rod Paige as President George W. Bush’s first Secretary of Education. He called the NEA “terrorists.”

I am grateful for PTC, who have fought for adequate funding for the five million students in Texas public schools and stood strong against vouchers.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Oklahoma Ousts Teacher Who Provided Online Access to Banned Books

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2022 //
36

The Brooklyn Public Library provided a great public service when it offered free access to books that have been banned by states and school districts, either online or in audio form.

Unfortunately, an Oklahoma high school teacher who shared the code to the Brooklyn Public Library’s open access program was promptly punished.

Vice reported:

Summer Boismier was removed from the classroom after the first day of school last month, when she covered her bookshelves with butcher paper and posted the QR code on the covering. Oklahoma, like many Republican-controlled states, passed a law last year banning the teaching of “critical race theory” in public school classrooms. 

Boismier, who is currently a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma, was offered her job back but ultimately chose to resign. Boismier told VICE News that there were “some fundamental ideological differences” between herself and the district, and that the new Oklahoma law “created an impossible working environment for teachers and a devastating learning environment for students.” 

Boismier did tell VICE News, however, that she planned to keep teaching. But on Wednesday, Oklahoma Education Secretary Ryan Walters—an official in Gov. Kevin Stitt’s cabinet, who’s likely to become the state’s next superintendent of schools after the November midterms—called for the Oklahoma State Board of Education to revoke Boismier’s teaching license. 

“There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom,” Walters said in a letter directed to the state Board of Education. “Ms. Boismier’s providing access to banned and pornographic material to students is unacceptable and we must ensure she doesn’t go to another district and do the same thing.” 

“Teachers are one of our state’s greatest assets and it is unfortunate that one of them has caused such harm and shame for the entire profession,” Walters said. 

Republicans have frequently claimed the books they’re banning are “pornographic” in nature, though the nonprofit Oklahoma news outlet The Frontier reported earlier this year that the dozens of books being investigated by the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office include “Of Mice and Men” and “Lord of the Flies,” as well as books that explore topics of sexual and gender identity and racism.…

But in an interview last week, Boismier said that “parents are being manipulated” by Oklahoma Republicans. “I’ve been called an indoctrinator, a woke leftist, a groomer, a pedophile, all within the last several months,” she told VICE News. 

“They don’t want these conversations happening,” Boismier said of Republicans seeking to ban books. “They don’t want critical thinkers, they want American exceptionalism and this whitewashed version of history that does not require them to interrogate their own privilege.”

“That’s dangerous when you’re the one in charge.”

Understand that what legislators call Critical Race Theory has nothing to do with the graduate courses taught in law school. They have no idea what CRT really is. What they mean by CRT is any teaching about racism, past or present. Presumably, everyone will be happier and more unified if we pretend that things like slavery, lynching, segregation, and other racist practices happened in the past and that there are structural aspects to racism today (read Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of Law” to learn more). Similarly issues about gender identity will simply fade away if we pretend they don’t exist.

This is what happens when ignorant and bigoted people are elected to positions of authority.

Categories Bigotry, Ignorance
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