Peter Greene: Gates Foundation Gives Reason Foundation Nearly $1 Million for Education

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2022 //
46

Peter Greene wrote in Forbes about the bizarre decision by the Gates Foundation to give nearly $1 million to the Reason Foundation, a libertarian foundation that doesn’t believe in public schools and seldom believes in anything the government does on behalf of its citizens. They believe, I suppose, in a feral society where there is minimal government, minimal taxes, and everyone fends for him or herself. I remembered that the Gates Foundation once gave a grant of nearly $400,000 to the far-right American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC), which opposes public schools, unions, environmental regulations, gun control, and most every other government activity.

Greene writes:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a grant of $900,117 to the Reason Foundation. The award’s stated purpose is “to ensure that State funding adequately and equitably supports the pursuit of improved educational outcomes for low income, Black and Latinx Students.”

The Reason Foundation is a think tank whose stated purpose is to advance “a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law.” They use “journalism and public policy research to influence the framework and actions of policymakers, journalists and opinion leaders.” They favor limited government and market-friendly policies.

The Gates Foundation has long pushed policies in education, including the financing of the ultimately-unsuccessful small schools initiative and widespread influence in the creation and implementation of the controversial Common Core State Standards.

According to the Gates database, they have never before given a grant to the Reason Foundation. The two are not an obvious match; in fact, Reason was highly critical of the Common Core initiative that Gates spent millions to promote.

Reason’s approach to education has emphasized choice, particularly school vouchers. Over the years they have cranked out papers to support these market-based policies, though these papers have not met with enthusiasm from education policy analysts, who have used phrases like “carefully selected examples intended to support a particular perspective,” “off the rails,” “not a credible policy document,” “little more than a polemic,” and “reckless and irresponsible.”

It is not clear what the actual project behind this grant might be. Search the Reason website for “low-income students” and it turns up many articles about how school choice and voucher programs would improve school for these students. The same for a search for “Black students.” (”Latinx students” does not appear on the website at all.)

The grant language is also interesting in that it suggests that Reason’s program is not about establishing a program, but about finding ways to influence the path of state funding. The end result of this may not simply be about spending Gates money, but about spending taxpayer dollars as well.

This is a strange grant because Reason has never showed any interest in education other than to promote vouchers.

Categories Education Industry, Extremism, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Josh Cowen: A Citizen’s Guide to the Researchers and Funders Behind Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2022 //
22

Josh Cowen is a veteran voucher researcher, having worked in the field for more than 20 years. He is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. After two decades as a researcher, he concluded that vouchers are a disaster for the children who use them.

Today, he writes an inside guide to voucher research. All pro-voucher research is actually disguised advocacy for vouchers, especially if it funded or produced by the organizations listed here.

I hope you will share this post with your friends on social media, post blogs about it, and get it into the hands of journalists. The public deserves transparency.

Josh Cowen writes:


The entire base of evidence to support school vouchers comes from a small, interconnected and insular group of research-activists with direct ties to Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Waltons and other privatization financers.

If you stopped reading this post right now, that’s the take-home message right there: the case for vouchers relies entirely on data and evidence contributed by what amounts to industry-funded research and advocacy on behalf of the cause.

But if you’re a journalist, an educator, or just a committed public school supporter (thank you!) and you want the links and the details, read on.

WHO’S WHO IN THE VOUCHER RESEARCH/ADVOCACY WORLD?

If you’re a professional journalist either in the education space or a broader policy/politics issue, you’ve probably heard of some of these people and certainly their institutions before. But you’re busy, you’ve got deadlines to meet and editors to approve your copy, and it’s not always easy to connect some of the important dots in this area.

But they need to be connected. The single most difficult task I’ve found in my writing on school vouchers has been to explain to journalists how the question of whether vouchers “work” for kids is not some obscure academic ivory-tower debate in which both sides have a nuanced, complicated and reasonably well-founded point.

There is credible research on one side—that vouchers are largely a negative force for student outcomes—and politically oriented reports on the other. That’s it.

So the next time you see a press release, or are given a quote, or talk off record to a voucher supporter saying that vouchers work, try this little exercise and see what you find for yourself:

STEP 1: DOES THE RESEARCH COME FROM ONE OF THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS?

• American Federation for Children: the 501(c)(4) advocacy organization co-founded by Betsy DeVos to lobby for vouchers. DeVos was so close to this group she had to recuse herself as Secretary of Education from contact with the group in her first year in government.

• Cato Institute: A Right-wing advocacy think tank co-founded by Charles Koch (although Koch later sued for lack of direct control of the group).

• EdChoice: Formerly the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, named for conservative economist who first proposed vouchers. Enough said.

• ExcelInEd: The advocacy group founded by Jeb Bush to expand vouchers and other conservative education priorities from the model Bush developed while he was governor of Florida.

• Goldwater Institute: A self-described libertarian think tank in Arizona that is chiefly oriented toward litigation on behalf of a number of different conservative policy priorities—most recently school vouchers.

• Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG): A research center at Harvard run by Professor Paul Peterson, also of the Hoover Institution, and the father of modern-day pro-voucher research.

• Heritage Foundation: the most influential Right-wingthink tank in the country, devoted in part to privatizing schools and exploiting culture wars. Also directly tied to voter suppression efforts, per deep reporting by The New Yorker.

• University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform: A university-based doctoral training department responsible for producing nearly all of the currently active voucher research-advocates working at the institutions above today. This department was founded by a $10 million gift from the Walton Family Foundation in the early 2000s.

STEP 2: IS THE AUTHOR, CO-AUTHOR OR SOURCE FOR BACKGROUND OR ATTRIBUTION ONE OF THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE?

The Original Voucher Research-Advocates

• Jay P. Greene Currently Senior Fellow at Heritage, former founding head of the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform, received his PhD under Paul E. Peterson.

• Paul E. Peterson Currently Professor at both Harvard and the conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and the primary intellectual force behind the original positive voucher studies of the late 1990s.

Their Students, Colleagues and Acolytes

• Lindsay Burke Currently at the Heritage Foundation and a member of GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transition team.

• Corey DeAngelis Currently Research Director for DeVos’s American Federation for Children group. But so much more: a regular Fox News contributor and active campaigner with far-Right governors like Kari Lake in Arizona and Kim Reynolds in Iowa.

• Greg Forster Currently at EdChoice and a co-blogger with Jay Greene.

• Matthew Ladner Currently at ALEC, EdChoice, Goldwater, and the Charles Koch Institute.

• Martin Lueken Currently a research director at EdChoiceand former PhD student of Jay Greene and Patrick Wolf at University of Arkansas.

• Mike McShane Currently a research director at EdChoiceand former PhD student of Jay Greene and Patrick Wolf at University of Arkansas.

• Neil McCluskey Currently “Director of Education Freedom” at the Cato Institute and a member of the editorial board for the Journal of School Choice—a publication edited by Robert Maranto of the University of Arkansas.

• Patrick Wolf Currently interim-head of the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform, former colleague of Jay Greene and a former PhD student of Paul Peterson.

Not all of these organizations or individuals occupy the same problematic position. For example, I happen to make a point of reading everything McShane publishes, for example, because I respect his writing and the way he talks about the world even though I fundamentally disagree with his conclusions.

And the University of Arkansas group also includes a robust and insightful group of researchers examining the needs of teachers in the Ozarks and other high-poverty areas. I’m a great admirer of Professor Gema Zamarro and her students, who are doing some very important work on the role that the COVID0-19 pandemic played in teacher workforce conditions.

For that matter, some of what we know about the devasting effects of vouchers in Louisiana actually comes from Patrick Wolf’s reports. I’ve written with him myself on studies like one showing how critical strong oversight is to voucher program performance. Wolf is in fact the only person on the list abovewith a long and commendable history of publishing negative voucher impacts in top academic journals. The point here is not to disparage the individuals but to judge the insular and self-citing base of research that supports vouchers.

The point here is to be critical consumers of this line of research. Think of it this way: no news editor would release a story on an explosive topic going on the say so of a single source. At minimum that editor would require two and usually more sources. The problem for voucher advocacy research is that it is usually the only source for positive voucher impacts available. And it’s been that way for a decade or more.

What’s the take home point? It’s this: not all voucher advocates publish exclusively pro-voucher studies, but all pro-voucher studies come almost exclusively from pro-voucher advocates.

STEP 3: WHO FUNDED THE WORK YOU’RE READING OR THE SOURCE YOU’RE CITING?

One or more of the following funders—the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Kern Family Foundation, the Koch Family Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation—funded the original studies supporting school vouchers.

The Bradley and Koch Foundations—along with Heritage—are directly involved in Big Lie, election denialism, and voter-suppression funding, as reported by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker in painstaking detail last summer.

The next time you read a report, or talk to a source for attribution, ask first about their funding sources. If they decline to provide those sources, consider declining to report their results or their viewpoint. It is common for philanthropists to request non-disclosure of their donations—that is their right. But it is your right as a reporter, and certainly the right of your readers, to decline to print their material.

Transparency is just the name of the game for credible research. You can see my own research funding right here. You can see that I once upon a time also received grant funding from the Walton Foundation. And from Bloomberg, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. My only current active funding comes from the U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences—awarded to my research team while Betsy DeVos was education secretary!

Do I believe those organizations swayed my earlier research? Of course not. And the advocates above would say the same thing. But I don’t get to decide what to think and neither do they. That’s for the reader to judge, and that can’t happen without full transparency.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

This all may seem like inside baseball. A bunch of current and former voucher researchers arguing about who’s who and what’s what. A bunch of annoying and self-centered PhDs.

But in some sense that’s the entire point.

Whether an educator, reporter, researcher, policymaker or just avid reader of Diane’s blog here, you would be hard-pressed—if not find it absolutely impossible—to find a single study of voucher participant effects (how vouchers impact outcomes) that did not come from one of the few organizations or few individuals listed above, or a handful of others with direct ties to Greene, Peterson, or Arkansas.

That’s a problem, because what that means is that hundreds of millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of school children are being affected every day by the advocacy of a small group of people. In many cases advocacy disguised as objective and credible research.

As a counter point, consider this humble list of studies showing far more nuance and at times outright negative results from voucher programs. To create that list, I made a simple rule: no studies from organizations listed in Step 1 above. Notice the variety of names and the diversity of venues and outlets. That’s what a credible research base looks like.

A LITMUS TEST: IS THE PRO-VOUCHER EVIDENCE I’M READING POLITICAL/IDEOLOGICAL?

If at this point you’re still not convinced that the entire structure of pro-voucher research amounts to industry-funded research—think the Sacklers funding research on oxycontin’s addictive properties, or ExxonMobil funding research on fossil fuel environmental effects—there is also this:

Many of the organizations and individuals noted above also contribute to other areas of politically engaged conservative education reform.

Consider that Greene alone has published in the last 12 months studies arguing against the provision of gender-affirming care, against “wokeness”, and against Diversity, Equity and Inclusionoffices in both K12 and higher education.

Greene even put right in print for you to see that these culture war issues are useful to Right wing activists pushing the privatization of schooling.

In other words, pro-voucher research exists right alongside—and is often published by—the same people and organizations pushing other far-Right education outcomes. You need to know that to have a full picture of what voucher research truly says.

Pro-voucher research is pro-voucher advocacy, and pro-voucher advocacy is part of the larger effort to undermine public education, undermine a more humane approach to tolerating difference and diversity in our schools, and in many cases undermine free embrace of democracy itself.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bias, Bush, Jeb, Dark Money, Data, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Research, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Colorado Killer’s Dad: “I’m Relieved He’s Not Gay”

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2022 //
52

Aaron Brink is the father of Anderson Andrews, who (allegedly) shot and killed five people and wounded nearly two dozen others at the gay bar Club Q in Colorado Springs recently.

Brink is a Mormon, a porn star and a former meth addict. When he heard that his son had been arrested for multiple murders, he was stunned to hear that his son was in a gay bar but relieved to think that he was not gay. He abandoned his son and his wife years ago. In his mind, being gay was far, far worse than being a mass murderer.

Look for this guy on video, probably YouTube. Abandoned his family. Hates gays. calls himself a “conservative Republican.”

Brink reflects the free-floating hatred that is regularly spouted by conservative Republicans.

Categories Bias, Colorado

New York: Federal Judge Enjoins Part of State Gun Control Law

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2022 //
13

Opponents of gun control won an important decision in New York State a few days ago, when a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the part of a state law that restricts carrying guns onto someone else’s private property without their consent, as well as restrictions of carrying a gun in parks or on a public bus. Once again, the gun lobby protects the right to kill.

The Buffalo News reported:

A federal judge in Western New York has granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the “private property exclusion” in the state’s new gun control law that includes an attempt to ban carrying firearms on all private property unless the property owners consent, as well as in places like parks and public transit.

The lawsuit was brought by two local gun owners and two national Second Amendment rights organizations in September in response to legislation passed during an emergency session this summer after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s existing concealed carry law, which required applicants to prove why they needed to carry a firearm.

In a 27-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. with the U.S. District Court in Buffalo wrote that the state may not interfere with the Second Amendment rights of “law-abiding citizens who seek to carry for self-defense outside of their own homes….”

The two gun owners, John Boron of Depew and Brett Christian of Cheektowaga, and the Las Vegas-based Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation of Bellevue, Wash., have said the state law prevents lawful gun owners from carrying firearms in most public places.

Categories Education Reform

The U.S. Has the Most Guns and the Most Gun Deaths of Any Advanced Democratic Nation

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2022 //
21

Just this past week, there were two mass murders by gun: one at Club Q in Colorado Springs, another at a Walmart in Virginia. There have been more than 600 this year. When will enough be enough? When will our leaders—especially in Congress—stop the carnage? When they are personally affected? Maybe not even then. After all, a mob ransacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and most Republican members of Congress thought it was a group of excited tourists.

But “only” five people died. So the GOP did not mind.

Would they draw the line at carnage? Now, I think that Trump’s grim Inaugural Address, where he spoke of “American carnage,” was a prediction, not a reflection.

When, if ever, will enough be enough?

The Council on Foreign Relations published an important international study of gun ownership and gun deaths. The U.S. is far ahead of its peers in both categories. Thanks to Lloyd Lofthouse for sharing this study.

The study begins:

The debate over gun control in the United States has waxed and waned over the years, stirred by frequent mass shootings in civilian settings. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and young adults in the United States. In particular, the ready availability of assault weapons and ammunition has provoked national discussion after multiple mass shootings of school children, most recently in Uvalde, Texas. However, Congress has repeatedly been unable to pass meaningful gun legislation in the wake of these tragedies despite broad public support for new restrictions.

Recent years have seen some of the worst gun violence in U.S. history. In 2021, guns killed more than forty-five thousand Americans, the highest toll in decades; and the upward trend is on track to continue.

Many gun control advocates say the United States should look to the experiences of wealthy democratic peers that have instituted tighter restrictions to curb gun violence.

What’s the chance of Congress enacting gun control?

Republicans are adamantly opposed to any limits on access to guns.

Republican governors enact laws to allow anyone to carry a weapon, whether concealed or in open view. Texas passed a law eliminating the need to have a permit to buy a gun.

Two relatives of mine in Texas used a gun to commit suicide. Neither should have had access to a gun.

Categories Extremism, Guns, International

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Dinner with Extremists Ye and Fuentes

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2022 //
47

Trump (The Former Guy) sent a message to his cult by inviting the rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) and white nationalist Nick Fuentes to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago. Fuentes is a Holocaust denier, a racist, and an anti-Semite, also a homophobe, of course. Ye is a loud anti-Semite. Are Ye and Fuentes friends, even though Ye is Black? Trump claims he didn’t know Fuentes but it’s hard to believe anything he says, or that a total stranger would be admitted to dine with him.

This is what Heather Cox Richardson said about the dinner:

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, November 22, former president Trump hosted the antisemitic artist Ye, also known as Kanye West, for dinner at a public table at Mar-a-Lago along with political operative Karen Giorno, who was the Trump campaign’s 2016 state director in Florida. Ye brought with him 24-year-old far-right white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Fuentes attended the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in its wake, he committed to moving the Republican Party farther to the right.

Fuentes has openly admired Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is currently making war on Russia’s neighbor Ukraine. A Holocaust denier, Fuentes is associated with America’s neo-Nazis.

In February 2020, Fuentes launched the America First Political Action Conference to compete from the right with the Conservative Political Action Conference. In May 2021, on a livestream, Fuentes said: “My job…is to keep pushing things further. We, because nobody else will, have to push the envelope. And we’re gonna get called names. We’re gonna get called racist, sexist, antisemitic, bigoted, whatever.… When the party is where we are two years later, we’re not gonna get the credit for the ideas that become popular. But that’s okay. That’s our job. We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party. And if we didn’t exist, the Republican Party would be falling backwards all the time.”

Fuentes and his “America First” followers, called “Groypers” after a cartoon amphibian (I’m not kidding), backed Trump’s lies that he had actually won the 2020 election. At a rally shortly after the election, Fuentes told his followers to “storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years.” Fuentes and Groypers were at the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, and at least seven of them have been charged with federal crimes for their association with that attack. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed Fuentes himself.

Accounts of the dinner suggest that Trump and Fuentes hit it off, with Trump allegedly saying, “I like this guy, he gets me,” after Fuentes urged Trump to speak freely off the cuff rather than reading teleprompters and trying to appear presidential as his handlers advise.

But Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024 just days ago, and being seen publicly with far-right white supremacist Fuentes—in addition to Ye—indicates his embrace of the far right. His team told NBC’sMarc Caputo that the dinner was a “f**king nightmare.” Trump tried to distance himself from the meeting by saying he didn’t know who Fuentes was, and that he was just trying to help Ye out by giving the “seriously troubled” man advice, but observers noted that he did not distance himself from Fuentes’s positions.

Republican lawmakers have been silent about Trump’s apparent open embrace of the far right, illustrating the growing power of that far right in the Republican Party. Representatives Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have affiliated themselves with Fuentes, and while their appearances with him at the America First Political Action Conference last February drew condemnation from Republican leader Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), now McCarthy desperately needs the votes of far-right Republicans to make him speaker of the House. To get that support, he has been promising to deliver their wish list—including an investigation into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter—and appears willing to accept Fuentes and his followers into the party, exactly as Fuentes hoped.

Today, after the news of Trump’s dinner and the thundering silence that followed it, conservative anti-Trumper Bill Kristol tweeted: “Aren’t there five decent Republicans in the House who will announce they won’t vote for anyone for Speaker who doesn’t denounce their party’s current leader, Donald Trump, for consorting with the repulsive neo-Nazi Fuentes?”

So far, at least, the answer is no.

To read footnotes, open the link.

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Racism, Trump

Happy Thanksgiving from Me to You

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2022 //
29

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is a time to reflect what we are grateful for.

What are you grateful for?

I am grateful for life. Last year, I had open heart surgery, and for the first five days after surgery, my life hung in the balance. Yet here I am, reading, writing, thinking, alive.

I am grateful for my dear family: My wife, Mary. My children, my grandchildren. I am blessed to be with and near people I love who love me.

I am grateful to live in America. Despite all the challenges our country faces, it’s still a wonderful place to live, where communities come together in bad times, and strangers act to help others.

I am grateful to live in a country where I can speak and write what I wish without fear of punishment.

I am grateful for the rise of a young generation whose idealism and vision will change our country for the better.

I am grateful for the dear friends at the Network for Public Education, whose advocacy and passion on behalf of democracy, public schools, their teachers and their teachers inspires me every day.

I am grateful for the educators who put students first, who work tirelessly for one of the nation’s most important and vital institutions.

I am grateful for the readers of this blog, many of whom have become good friends, without our having met in person. I am grateful too for what I learn every day from you.

If you have read this far, I want you to know that I don’t intend to post much this weekend. Maybe nothing at all.

Categories Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Goodness, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Parents, Students, Teachers

Dan Rather: Thank You, Teachers

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2022 //
24

I have been saving this lovely tribute for the right moment. It’s now, as red state legislatures rev up their attacks on teachers and on the profession. North Carolina leads the pack in its current effort to lower entry standards for teachers (only an associate degree needed to enter the field—two years of college), and pay tied to student test scores, a practice that has failed everywhere tried. In the background is the Gates Foundation, repeating its well-established practice of funding failure. Florida, too, is lowering its standards for teachers and welcoming non-professionals into the classroom. Think of it: Do you want your next air flight to be piloted by someone with six weeks training? Do you want a surgery performed by a medical student?

Dan Rather, a graduate of the Houston public schools (like me), remembers his teachers with gratitude:

One of the great sadnesses of our current age is how politics has polluted so much of our public discourse and spread into realms that once seemed free of partisanship. That this occurs at a time when much of the Republican Party has adopted the posture of a bully and is gripped by extremist ideology and attacks on truth and justice makes it all the more dangerous and dispiriting.

Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the battlegrounds that our schools have become. We are living in an age when the number of books being banned is on the rise and the willingness to confront America’s complicated history is on the decline. We see intolerance worn as a badge of toughness, while inclusion, the great promise of what public education can be, is treated as weakness. We see a concerted effort to take over school boards, especially in deeply conservative areas, with true believers in the culture wars eager to inflict their small-mindedness, bias, and mean-spirited ideology on shaping how young minds are taught.

Teaching, already an underappreciated profession in this country, is becoming an even less appealing line of work. We have educators who have spent decades in the classroom now forced to look over their shoulders, wondering whether the books on their shelves or their carefully honed lesson plans will run afoul of the new draconian mandates. And we have young idealists with freshly minted teaching certificates wondering whether they can impart their excitement and new ideas into the students before them.

Some of these concerns are not new. When I was a student, for example, racial injustice in the form of legally segregated schools was a hallmark of public education. Schools have always been shaped by the larger societal forces that whip around them. Public education is, after all, about molding the minds and the mores of future citizens. Few institutions have more power in determining what this country will become than our schools.

But there have been decades of progress on what and how our children are taught, and today that wave of advancement is retreating in many parts of America. Sadly, there are so many examples of far-right ideology shaping curricula, on issues ranging from race to LGBTQ rights to science, that to call them all out individually is an impossible task. This is a broad movement not confined by school or district; much of the effort is being directed at the state level.

Republican politicians have learned that they can rally their base through bad-faith misrepresentations of school culture, which they depict as out of control with so-called “woke” ideology (which we wrote about in Steady here) and the bogeyman of “critical race theory,” which they totally mischaracterize — and which is taught in almost none of the schools where they have made it an issue. Nearly every parent wants good schools for their children, and Republicans are playing to fears they have carefully fanned to lure in voters even beyond their base. This was notably true in the last gubernatorial election in Virginia. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has cultivated his political reputation (and a likely presidential run) by attacking professional educators — and indeed the very idea that schools should be welcoming, tolerant learning environments.

The elections that lie ahead — not only the big, marquee ones, but more importantly, those for school boards and other local offices — will do a lot to shape what will happen in our schools in the years to come. But there is another force that is even more powerful, and as we mark the beginning of a new school year, let us recognize it: teachers.

While we should grapple with the political context laid out above, let us shift the tone of this piece now to one of celebration. Writing about teachers, singing their praises, honoring them as American heroes has long been one of my favorite activities. It never gets old, and it never gets less important.

I would like to use whatever platform I have to shine a spotlight of deep respect on these invaluable public servants. And I am pleased that if you search for quotes from me online, one of the most popular is this:

“The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth.’”

I believe every word of it. These aren’t empty sentiments. They come from my lived history. A while back here on Steady, I shared my own experiences as a student of public schools, including an emotional return to my elementary school in Houston.

For all the challenges our schools face, right now millions of children are learning about the world and themselves thanks to dedicated teachers. Teachers are going the extra mile, reaching out to kids in need, tweaking lesson plans to include new insights, passing their own inspirations to the young people before them.

The work is not easy — far from it. And it can be an incredible grind, especially when it seems that society doesn’t value it or is even outright hostile to teachers. With this as a backdrop, it is understandable that many are choosing to leave the profession. This is not a reflection on them, but rather on the nation that is allowing it to happen.

Teachers, you are our inspiration and our hope. You nurture the flames of our democracy. You literally save lives. You work miracles every day. Your resourcefulness, resilience, and creativity are boundless. We saw it during the heart of the pandemic. And we see it now. It is all the more reason you should not be taken for granted.

Dear readers, how many of you can close your eyes and be transported to a classroom from your past? Do you see a favorite teacher? Hear that word of encouragement or hard truth that shaped the course of your life? Teachers are the winds that propel our children’s sails forward. They are the North Stars that help guide us all.

I apologize if this reads as a bit trite. I can imagine red ink on the page from some of my previous English teachers marking my excesses. Sadly, those teachers are all now long gone. But in me, as in my classmates, as in all of you, the work of our teachers lives on.

We cannot thank our teachers enough. Each day the gifts they have given us are renewed. We should do everything we can to protect them and value them. A lot of this work must be done at the ballot box, but it can also be accomplished through words of encouragement and support.

To all the teachers out there: thank you.

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Robert Hubbell: Gratitude

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2022 //
2

Robert Hubbell is a favorite blogger of mine because he makes so much sense of events. His views are informative and often reflect what I think but have not yet written. He posted this right before Thanksgiving.

He writes:

          Although there were many significant political developments on Tuesday, I want to start by focusing on gratitude for what we achieved during the midterms. Because we were able to defy “conventional wisdom” about midterm losses by the party in power, we have fundamentally altered the political dynamic for the better going into 2024.

The threat to democracy remains, but Republicans are chastened rather than emboldened, and Democrats are emboldened rather than discouraged. It could have been otherwise—and would have been but for the incredible devotion of tens of millions of Americans who made incredible sacrifices to defend democracy.

          Everyone who contributed to the victory should be proud in equal measure, no matter how large or small your contribution. Indeed, the simple act of voting in a system designed to suppress some voters can be a noteworthy accomplishment. So, I hope you will take a moment over the next few days to recognize the accomplishment achieved by Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post published a superb essay on gratitude. I recommend that you read the entire essay in WaPo. See Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, Opinion | Democracy defenders have many reasons to be grateful this Thanksgiving.

          I recommend that you read Rubin’s essay in full, but in case you don’t, here is a fair sampling:

I’m grateful not to wake up every morning with a sense of impending doom that a cast of election deniers will control key roles in administrating elections in 2024.

I’m grateful many in the media helped identify election deniers for Americans and educated them about the danger of granting them power to discard the will of voters.

I’m grateful to voters, who for the third consecutive election, showed there is a majority — even if a frightfully narrow one — that rejects authoritarianism, crude appeals to racism and xenophobia, and downright nutty and mean candidates.

I’m grateful younger voters are developing a habit of voting in midterms.

I’m grateful to the thousands of election officials, workers and volunteers who pulled off another exceptionally efficient and peaceful exercise in democracy.

I’m grateful to the lawyers who litigated in defense of voting access and impartial election administration.

I’m grateful voters did not ignore their concerns for democracy and women’s rights just because inflation is high.

I’m grateful that nearly all broadcast networks refused to break from regular programming to cover Donald Trump’s presidential campaign announcement.

I’m grateful voters are becoming accustomed to early voting and voting by mail.

I’m grateful President Biden disregarded cynical pundits and reporters to focus on the threat from MAGA extremism.

Jennifer Rubin’s list continues, but you get the point. I hope that you can see your contribution in the list above. We have much to be thankful for. Let’s find the time in the next few days to discern the reasons for gratitude in our lives. Those reasons are abundant—but we need to look for them amid the din and distractions of modern life.

More on GOP’s LGBTQ attacks.

          Three days after the mass killing at Club Q, GOP candidate Herschel Walker released an ad that criticizes Raphael Warnock for supporting the rights of an LGBTQ athlete. See CNN, ‘This ad is hate’: CNN guest shreds Herschel Walker for anti-transgender ad hours after Club Q shooting. Of all of the issues that confront the American people, Herschel Walker chose to continue the culture war on LGBTQ. The insensitivity and cruelty of the timing speaks volumes about who Walker is . . . or at least, who the people are who are telling Walker what to say.

          The ad features a female swimmer who complains about having to compete against a “biological male,” but she fails to mention that both she and the “biological male” were beaten by four female swimmers. That is what counts as a tragedy in the GOP culture war. But the point is not whether it is “fair” for transgender athletes to compete in college sports; it is that the GOP has chosen this moment and this issue for political advantage—before the victims of the Club Q mass murder have been buried.

Legal developments in the effort to hold Trump accountable.

In rapid succession, Trump suffered a series of setbacks in his efforts to evade accountability for his crimes. And in most instances, Trump didn’t merely lose—he lost “bigly.”

          The Supreme Court rejected (9-0) Trump’s last-ditch efforts to prevent the House Ways & Means Committee from obtaining the last five years of his tax returns. See CNN, Trump tax returns: Supreme Court clears way for House to get former president’s taxes. As a result, the Treasury Department must turn over the returns. The question is, “When?” Republicans will take over control of the Committee on January 3, 2023—and will likely rescind the request for the returns. Let’s hope that the Treasury Department moves with dispatch. But even so, the returns must remain confidential within the Committee; the public will not likely see the returns anytime soon. Still, the disclosure to a congressional committee is progress.

          A panel of the 11th Circuit eviscerated Trump’s arguments in defense of the special master appointment in the Mar-a-Lago search. Every observer agrees that the 11th Circuit will overrule Judge Cannon’s order appointing the special master—and may dismiss the case entirely. Trump’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, could not answer basic questions about why Judge Cannon should have exercised jurisdiction over Trump’s lawsuit. As a result, the DOJ (through special counsel Jack Smith) will be able to continue the Mar-a-Lago investigation without interference by Judge Cannon or oversight by special master Judge Dearie.

          Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully (for the third time) to dismiss the New York Attorney General’s civil suit against the Trump organization. New York state judge Arthur Engoron shut down Trump’s attorney time and again. Rather than accept defeat, Trump’s attorney blamed the judge. Alina Habba said,

          This is why we shouldn’t be before you. You have a clear bias against our client. You have for a year and a half. Every time we come to court, you’re prepared to rule against us.

          Of course, one explanation not considered by Ms. Habba is that Trump’s arguments are losers.

          In the above lawsuit against the Trump Organization, Judge Engoron rejected a request by Ivanka Trump that her finances be excluded from oversight by a court-appointed monitor. The monitor, retired federal judge Barbara S. Jones has been charged with compiling a “full and accurate description of the corporate structure” of the Trump Organization. The Trumps, including Ivanka, must also inform the monitor 30 days in advance of shifting any assets. See The Daily Beast, Ivanka Trump Tried to Dodge Her Court-Appointed Financial Monitor.

          There’s more, but you get the point. Trump is fighting multiple losing battles. One of them is bound to stick.

Kevin McCarthy’s performative drama.

         Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene must have Kevin McCarthy in a “double chickenwing camel clutch” wrestling hold. To satisfy the two of them (and other extremists in the party), McCarthy is twisting himself into ridiculous positions to win their votes. On Tuesday, he demanded that DHS Secretary Mayorkas “resign or be prepared to be impeached.” See The Hill, McCarthy calls on DHS Secretary Mayorkas to resign, threatens impeachment inquiry.

          McCarthy’s demand is simultaneously pathetic and outrageous. It is doubtful that the House would impeach Mayorkas, but the Senate would never convict. So, what’s the point? McCarthy would be pursuing the same grievance-fueled messaging that resulted in a disastrous midterm for Republicans. McCarthy must be desperate. Indeed, it appears that McCarthy has dwindling prospects for being elected speaker. See Charlie Sykes, The Bulwark / Morning Shots, Kevin McCarthy’s “Crossover” Problem.

          I know many readers are worried about the supposed onslaught of investigations in the GOP House during the next session of Congress. But there is reason to believe that those investigations will be a flop. See David Frum in The Atlantic, Another Flop From GOP Productions. The GOP broke its pick on ten Benghazi investigations for years and came up with nothing. As Frum notes, the most likely result of an investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop will be the revelation that Joe Biden is a loving father who was desperately trying to help a son in trouble.

          How do Republicans expect Americans to react to that disclosure? If congressional Republicans had empathy and decency, they would understand that Americans would find those disclosures endearing. So, let’s relax and see whether Republicans can do anything in their investigations and impeachments besides embarrassing themselves.

Helping the Georgia Alliance for Progress “get out the vote” for Senator Warnock.

          For those of you looking to donate in the final push in Georgia, please consider joining Jessica Craven of Chop Wood Carry Water, along with Senate Circle, Markers For Democracy, Team Min, Downtown Nasty Women’s Social Group, and The Wednesday Group who are hosting Christine White of the Georgia Alliance for Progress. The group is working to fund the best grassroots organizations in Georgia—specifically their canvassing programs— who are still underfunded with only weeks to go. You can give here, and please feel free to share the link with friends and family who want to give. The Zoom is on Monday, November 28 at 8:00 PM Eastern/7:00 PM Central, /6:00 PM Mountain/5:00 PM Pacific/4:00 PM Alaska.

Concluding Thoughts.

What Jennifer Rubin said.

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Elections, Trump

The 50 Most Banned Books in America This Year

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2022 //
42

This has been a banner year for book banning.

CBS News published a brief description of the 50 most banned books this years. Most, as you will see, are about sexuality, gender and race. Parents and activists fear that children will become what they read about. They worry that reading about gay students will turn their children gay. Why would they worry that their children become racist.

This surge in censorship is a testament of sorts to the power of the written word. The peculiar thing about this crusade to ban books is that far more explicit material about sexuality and race is readily available on the internet.

Censorship of books, textbooks, even standardized tests is not new. I wrote a book called The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. The pressure groups come from the right and the left and from groups claiming to represent the elderly, women, religious folk, and all sorts of others. Every publisher of textbooks and tests has “bias and sensitivity” guidelines, long lists of words, phrases, topics, and images that will never appear in a textbook or on a test. I have a list at the end of the book that includes more than 800 banned items.

Categories Censorship, Freedom
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