NPE Letter about Regulating Federal Charter Funds Signed by 101 Organizations

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
6

Please read the letter from the Network for Public Education to the U.S. Department of Zeducation, supporting its proposed regulations for federal funding of charter schools.

The letter was signed by 96 organizations.

On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we submit the following response to the Department of Education’s request for comments related to the proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria of the Charter Schools Program (CSP). We commend the Department for proposing thoughtful and well-reasoned regulations that will end funding to start or expand charter schools managed in whole or substantially by for-profit organizations, provide greater supervision to the program, ensure that the charter school does not increase segregation and via impact analysis, demonstrate that the charter school is truly needed.

The Charter Schools Program (CSP) is a statutorily established grant program that began in 1994 with the purpose of expanding high-quality charter schools when charter schools were experimental and intended to supplement, not supplant, public schools. Since its modest beginnings, the program has expanded as has the charter school sector. The CSP has been responsible, in great part, for the expansion of the charter sector and therefore indirectly responsible for problems in the charter sector that include the frequent closures of charter schools, the drain on public school funding, and the fraud and mismanagement that is frequently reported in the press. We believe that your proposed regulations are a good first step in addressing those problems.

We the undersigned further believe that all charter schools, like public schools, must provide their students with a free education that guards students’ civil rights, provides a rich educational opportunity and protects their health and safety. Further, we believe that any school that is financed by the public must ensure that tax dollars are judiciously spent in compliance with the law. That means we support compliance with open meetings and public records laws; prohibitions against profiteering as enforced by conflict of interest, financial disclosure, and auditing requirements. We believe that all students deserve to be taught by teachers who have met state certification requirements in a classroom where they have an opportunity to engage with their teacher and their peers. We do not support virtual charter schools which are ineffective in meeting the academic and socio-emotional needs of students.

Eliminating CSP Funding to Charter Schools Managed by For-profit Corporations

We strongly support the proposed regulations to ensure that charter schools operated by for-profit corporations do not receive CSP grants.

The federal definition of a public school under IDEA and ESEA is “a nonprofit institutional day or residential school, including a public elementary charter school, that provides elementary education, as determined under State law.” 20 U. S.C. §§ 1401(6) (IDEA), 7801(18) (ESEA) Similarly, the statutes define a “secondary school” as “a nonprofit institutional day or residential school, including a public secondary charter school, that provides secondary education, as determined under State law․” 20 U.S.C. §§ 1401(27) (IDEA), 7801(38) (ESEA).

Former for-profit entities have created non-profit facades that allow the for-profit and its related organizations to run and profit from the charter school, following the judgment of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Arizona State Bd. For Charter Schools v. U.S. Dept. of Educ. in 2006 (464 F.3d 1003).[i]

Ineffective provisions undermine the present regulations against the disbursement of funds from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) to charter schools operated by for-profit entities. We identified over 440 charter schools operated for profit that received grants totaling approximately $158 million between 2006 and 2017, including CSP grants to schools managed with for-profit sweeps contracts.[ii]

The relationship between a for-profit charter school management organization, commonly referred to as an EMO, is quite different from the relationship between a vendor who provides a single service. A school can sever a bus contract and still have a building, desks, curriculum, and teachers. However, in cases where charter schools have attempted to fire the for-profit operator, they find it impossible to do without destroying the schools in the process.

Many for-profit organizations operate by steering business to their for-profit-related entities. They are often located at the same address, and the owner of the management company or a member of the immediate family is the owner of the related entity. Therefore, it is recommended that wherever references to for-profit organizations appear, the phrase “and its related entities” is added.

Recommendations:

(a)   Each charter school receiving CSP funding must provide an assurance that it has not and will not enter into a contract with a for-profit management organization, including a non-profit management organization operated by or on behalf of a for-profit entity, under which the management organization and its related entities exercise(s) full or substantial administrative control over the charter school and, thereby, the CSP project.

Quality Control of Awards and the Importance of Meeting Community Need via Impact Analysis

We strongly support the proposed regulations that seek to bring greater transparency and better judgment to the process of awarding CSP grants. We especially support the inclusion of a community impact analysis.

We are pleased that “the community impact analysis must describe how the plan for the proposed charter school take into account the student demographics of the schools from which students are, or would be, drawn to attend the charter school,” and provide “evidence that demonstrates that the number of charter schools proposed to be opened, replicated, or expanded under the grant does not exceed the number of public schools needed to accommodate the demand in the community.”

More than one in four charter schools close by the end of year five.[iii] A foremost reason for both public school and charter closure and the disruption such closures bring to the lives of children is low enrollment, as seen this past month in Oakland.[iv] In New Orleans, school closures have resulted in children being forced to attend multiple schools during their elementary school years, often traveling long distances. Between 1999 and 2017, nearly one million children were displaced due to the closure of their schools, yet only nine states have significant caps to regulate charter growth.[v]

We applaud language that states, “The community impact analysis must also describe the steps the charter school has taken or will take to ensure that the proposed charter school would not hamper, delay, or in any manner negatively affect any desegregation efforts in the public school districts from which students are, or would be, drawn or in which the charter school is or would be located, including efforts to comply with a court order, statutory obligation, or voluntary efforts to create and maintain desegregated public schools…”

In some states, charter schools have been magnets for white flight from integrated schools.[vi] Other charter schools have attracted high achieving students while discouraging students with special needs from attending.[vii] And, as you know from the letter you received in June of 2021 from 67 public education advocacy and civil rights groups, the North Carolina SE CSP sub-grants were awarded to charter schools that actively exacerbated segregation, serving in some cases, as white flight academies[viii] The information requested by the Department is reasonable and will help reviewers make sound decisions.

In addition to our support for the proposed regulations, we have two additional recommendations to strengthen the impact analysis proposal.

Recommendations: (1) That impact analysis requirements include a profile of the students with disabilities and English Language Learners in the community along with an assurance that the applicant will provide the full range of services that meet the needs of students with disabilities and English Language Learners. (2) That applicants include a signed affidavit provided by district or state education department officials attesting to the accuracy of the information provided.

Regarding proposed rules regarding transparency, we note that in the past, schools were awarded grants without providing even one letter of support[ix], or provided false information indicating support that did not exist.[x]

We also strongly support the requirement state entities provide additional supervision of grants. The Department should require a forensic audit for any charter school applying for CSP consideration. Furthermore, any charter school that does not operate as a classroom-based entity or is operated by a for-profit entity should be barred from being awarded grant money under the CSP. We also believe these requirements can be strengthened by requiring review teams to include at least one reviewer representative from the district public school community and that applications be posted and easily accessible for the public to review and comment upon for a period of no less than 60 days before awarding decisions.

L

Proposed Selection Criterion for CMO Grants

ESSA places the following restriction on grants awarded to State Entities: No State entity may receive a grant under this section for use in a State in which a State entity is currently using a grant received under this section. However, ESSA is silent regarding the awarding of grants to CMOs. This has resulted in CMOs having several active grants at the same time, with new grants being issued without proper inspection of the efficacy of former grants. For example, it has resulted in the IDEA charter CMO receiving six grants in a ten-year period totaling nearly $300 million.[xi] These grants occurred under a leadership structure that engaged in questionable practices, including the attempted yearly lease of a private jet,[xii] related-party transactions, and the rental of a luxury box at San Antonio Spurs games.[xiii]

IDEA received two awards, in 2019 and 2020, totaling more than $188 million even as the 2019 audit of the Inspector General found that IDEA submitted incomplete and inaccurate reports on three prior grants. The IG report also looked at a randomly selected sample of expenses and found that IDEA’s charges to the grants did not always include only allowable and adequately documented non-personnel expenses.

Recommendations:

That department regulations disallow the awarding of grants to any CMO currently using a grant received under the CMO program and that for any grant exceeding $25 million, the Department’s OIG conducts an audit before an additional grant is awarded.

We thank you for the time and thought that went into the proposed regulations.

[i] Arizona State Board for Charter Schools v. Department of Education. No. 05-17349 (9th Cir. 2006)

[ii] Burris, Carol and Darcie Cimarusti. (n.d.) Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain. Network for Public Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022 from   https://networkforpubliceducation.org/chartered-for-profit/

[iii] Burris, Carol and Pfleger, Ryan. (n.d.) Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures from 1999-2017. Network for Public Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Broken-Promises-PDF.pdf

[iv] McBride, Ashley. (2022, February 9). “Oakland school board votes to close seven schools over the next two years.” The Oaklandside. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/09/oakland-school-board-votes-to-close-seven-schools-over-the-next-two-years/

[v] Burris, Carol and Pfleger, Ryan. (n.d.) Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures from 1999-2017. Network for Public Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Broken-Promises-PDF.pdf

[vi] Wilson, Erika K. (2019). “The New White Flight.” HeinOnline. Retrieved on March 23, 2022 from https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/dukpup14&div=8&id=&page=

[vii] Mommandi, Wagma and Kevin Welner. (2021, September 10). School’s Choice: How Charter Schools Control Access and Shape Enrollment. Teachers College Press.

[viii] Letter to Secretary Cardona from 67 education and civil rights advocacy organizations. (2021, June 16). Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Letter-to-Secretary-Cardona-re_-North-Carolina-grant-6.16.pdf.

[ix] Strauss, Valerie. (2020, December 3), How a soccer club won a 126 million dollar grant from Betsy Devos’s education department to open a charter school.  The Washington Post. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/12/03/how-soccer-club-won-126-million-grant-devoss-education-department-open-charter-school/

[x] Winerip, Michael. (2012, January, 8). Rejected three times, school may still open soon, and with a grant, too. The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/education/hebrew-charter-school-in-new-jersey-has-grant-to-go-with-application.html.

[xi] Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (n.d.). “Charter Schools Program Grants to Charter Management Organizations for the Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools (CMO Grants).” U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://oese.ed.gov/offices/office-of-discretionary-grants-support-services/charter-school-programs/charter-schools-program-grants-for-replications-and-expansion-of-high-quality-charter-schools/

[xii] DeMatthews, David and David S. Knight. (2020, February 10). “Commentary: Private jets and Spurs tickets? Texas needs more charter school oversight.” My San Antonio. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Commentary-Charter-school-backlash-shows-why-15045357.php

[xiii] Carpenter, Jacob. (2020, January 30). “After jet backlash, IDEA charter schools curbing more ‘hard to defend” spending.” My San Antonio. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/article/After-jet-backlash-IDEA-charter-schools-curbing-15019295.php

Our Co-Signers

  • Network for Public Education
  • National Education Association
  • Southern Poverty Law Center
  • National Black Caucus of State Legislators
  • Journey for Justice
  • AFSCME        
  • NCBCP/Black Women’s Roundtable
  • National Indian Education Association (NIEA)
  • In the Public Interest
  • Superintendent’s Roundtable
  • Advancement Project National Office
  • Education Deans for Justice and Equity (EDJE)
  • Education Law Center
  • Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
  • Horace Mann League
  • Badass Teachers Association
  • The Democracy Collaborative
  • Advocates for Public Education Policy
  • Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools
  • Alliance for Quality Education
  • Arizona Educators United
  • Arizonans for Charter School Accountability
  • California Teachers Association
  • Citizens for Public Schools
  • Class Size Matters
  • Close the Gap
  • Coalition for Equity in Public Schools
  • Colorado PTA
  • Democratic Public Education Caucus of Florida
  • Economic Opportunity Network
  • Education Voters of PA
  • Educators for Democratic Schools
  • El Paso Alliance for Just Schools
  • Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC)
  • First Focus on Children
  • Florida BATs
  • Florida Council of Churches
  • ­­­­Frey Evaluation
  • Hillsborough Public School Advocates
  • Indiana Coalition for Public Education
  • Indiana Coalition for Public Education – Monroe County
  • Jobs to Move America
  • Kentucky NAACP
  • Knox DSA
  • Long Beach Alliance for Clean Energy
  • MI Ed Justice
  • Michigan Education Association
  • Missouri Jobs with Justice
  • Moms and Dads Now Enduring Surrealistic Stupidity (#MADNESS)
  • Mon Valley Unemployed Committee
  • New Rochelle Federation of United School Employees (FUSE)
  • newCAP (New Community Action Pac)
  • North Carolina Justice Center
  • Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education
  • Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education
  • Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee
  • Opt Out Georgia
  • Oregon BATs
  • Oregon Save Our Schools
  • Our Children/Our Schools
  • Parents Educating Parents Inc
  • Parents for Public Schools, Inc.
  • Parents for Public Schools, Milwaukee
  • Pastors for Florida Children
  • Pastors for Kentucky Children
  • Pastors for Tennessee Children
  • Pastors for Texas Children
  • Paterson Education Fund
  • PowerSwitch Action
  • Progressive Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party
  • Public Advocacy for Kids
  • Public Education Partners – Ohio
  • Public Schools First NC
  • Public Trust Alliance
  • Richmond for All
  • Rochester Coalition for Public Education
  • Saphron Initiative
  • Save Our Schools NJ (SOSNJ)
  • Schools and Communities United
  • Stand for Schools
  • Step Up Louisiana
  • STL Not for Sale
  • SUPPORT OUR SCHOOLS
  • Support Our Students
  • Tennessee BATs
  • Texas AFT
  • Texas Kids Can’t Wait!
  • United for Florida Children
  • United Methodist Advocates for Public Schools
  • Virginia BATs
  • Virginia Educators United
  • Virginia Public Education Partners
  • WA BATs
  • Wake NCAE
  • Washington Township Parent Council Network
  • Wear Red for Public Ed
  • Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
  • Wisconsin Alliance for Public Schools/Wisconsin Public Education Network

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, For-Profit

Ted Cruz: “School Choice is the Most Important Issue” of Our Time

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
35

The two most outspoken conservatives in Texas—Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott—are at odds in two races for the state legislature. Abbott is supporting the Republican incumbents. Cruz is supporting their challengers in the Republican primary.

The two grinches of the right are diverging because of one issue: school choice. Texas is already overrun with charter schools (mostly low-performing), but the legislature has opposed vouchers for private and religious schools for years.

“Sen. Cruz believes that school choice is the most important domestic issue in the country,” Cruz spokesperson Steve Guest said in a statement. “He doesn’t hesitate to endorse and support candidates in primaries that will fight for school choice across Texas.”

Some might think that climate change or the high cost of prescription drugs or high rates of child poverty was “the most important domestic issue in the country,” but not Senator Cruz.

His own children are enrolled at the elite St. John’s School in Houston, where tuition is about $30,000 annually. If Texas were to endorse vouchers, you can be sure that they wouldn’t be large enough for any student to attend St. John’s.

The broad concept of school choice is popular among Texas Republicans. In the March primary, 88% of voters approved of a ballot proposition that asked voters whether they agreed with the statement, “Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student.”

But the issue divides Republican lawmakers when it comes to school voucher programs, which would let parents use public money for private school education. Rural Republicans are often the most outspoken opponents, voicing concerns that such initiatives would hurt the public schools that are the lifeblood of their tightly knit communities.

The Texas House has long been a firewall against voucher proposals. During the last regular legislative session, the chamber voted 115-29 on a budget amendment to ban school vouchers, with a majority of Republicans siding with Democrats.

Our friends, Pastors for Texas Children, has led the fight against school choice, knowing that the vast majority of students in Texas are enrolled in underfunded public schools. PTC believes in separation of church and state, and they support public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Texas, Vouchers

Chris Rufo Wants You to “Lay Siege to the Institutions”

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
36

Conservatives used to be known as people resistant to radical change. In decades past, conservatives sought to conserve traditional institutions and make them better. That stance appealed to many Americans who were unsettled by radical ideas, opposed to big-box stores that would wipe out small-town America’s Main Street. Conservatives were also known for opposing government intrusion into personal decisions; what you did in your bedroom was your business, not the state’s. What you and your doctor decided was best for you was your decision, not the state’s.

Chris Rufo is the face of the New Conservatism, who wants to frighten the parents of America into tearing down traditional institutions, especially the public school that they and their family attended.

Rufo became well-known for creating a national panic about “critical race theory,” which he can’t define and doesn’t understand. But he seems to think that schools are controlled by racist pedagogues and sexual perverts. In his facile presentation at Hillsdale College, one of the most conservative institutions of higher education in the nation, he makes clear that America has fallen from its position as a great and holy nation to a slimepit of moral corruption.

He has two great Satans in his story: public schools and the Disney Corporation. The Disney Corporation, in his simple mind, is a haven for perverts and pedophiles, bent on corrupting the youth of the nation.

Rufo asserts, based on no discernible evidence, that the decline and fall of America can be traced to the failed revolution of 1968. The radicals lost, as Nixon was elected that year, but burrowed into the pedagogical and cultural institutions, quietly insinuating their sinister ideas about race and sex into the mainstream, as the nation slept. Rufo’s writings about “critical race theory,” which he claims is embedded in schools, diversity training in corporations, and everywhere else he looked, made him a star on Tucker Carlson’s show, an advisor to the Trump White House, and a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote a profile of Rufo in The New Yorker and identified him as the man who invented the conflict over critical race theory, which before Rufo was a topic for discussion in law schools.

Before Rufo’s demonization of CRT, it was known among legal scholars as a debate about whether racism was fading away or whether it was systemic because it was structured into law and public policy. I had the personal pleasure of discussing these ideas in the mid-1980s with Derrick Bell, who is generally recognized as the founder of CRT. Bell was then at the Harvard Law School, after working as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He reached the conclusion that the Brown Decision of 1954 was inadequate to root out systematic racism.

At the time, I was a centrist in my politics and believed that racism was on its way out. Derrick disagreed. We spoke for hours, he invited me to present a paper at a conference he was organizing, which I did. Contrary to Rufo, I can attest that Derrick Bell was not a Marxist. He was not a radical. He wanted an America where people of different races and backgrounds had decent lives, unmarred by racial barriers. He was thoughtful, gentle, one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. He wanted America to be the land it professed to be. He was a great American.

Was 1968 the turning point, after which the radicals took over our culture and destroyed our founding ideals, as Rufo claims? No, it was not. I was there. He was born in 1984. He’s blowing smoke, making up a fairy-tale that he has spun into a narrative.

In 1968, I turned 30. I had very young children. I was not sympathetic to the hippies or the Weather Underground or the SDS. I hated the Vietnam War, but I was not part of any organized anti-war group. I believed in America and its institutions, and I was firmly opposed to those who wanted to tear them down, as the Left did then and as the Right does now. I worked in the Humphrey campaign in 1968 and organized an event in Manhattan—featuring John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and a long lineup of “liberals for Humphrey”— that was disrupted and ruined by pro-Vietnam Cong activists. That event, on the eve of the 1968 election, convinced me that Nixon would win. (While my event was disrupted, Nixon held a campaign rally a block away, at Madison Square Garden, that was not disrupted.)

1968 was the year that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It was a horrible, depressing year. America seemed to be falling apart.

Did the Weathermen and other radicals begin a long march through the institutions and eventually capture them? That’s ridiculous. Some became professors, but none became college presidents, to my knowledge. Many were ostracized. Some went to prison for violent crimes. Those who played an active political role in 1968 are in their 80s now, if they are alive.

Rufo’s solution to what he sees as the capture of our institutions by racists and pedophiles is surpringly simple: school choice. He hopes everyone will get public money to send their children to private and religious schools, to charter schools, or to home school them. If only we can destroy public schools, he suggests, we can restore America to the values of 1776.

Good old 1776, when most black people were slaves, women had no rights, and the aristocracy made all the decisions. They even enjoyed conjugal rights to use their young female slaves. Those were the good old days, in the very simple mind of Christopher Rufo.

Turning the clock back almost 250 years! Now that’s a radical idea.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Fake, History, Home Schooling, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

If Every Philanthropist Were like Mackenzie Scott

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2022 //
15

As most everyone knows by now, Mackenzie Scott is the ex-wife of billionaire Jeff Bezos. Her divorce settlement made her one of the richest people in the world. Since acquiring sole control of this fortune, she has given away billions of dollars to various organizations. Most are committed to civil rights, women’s issues, LGBT issues, and other worthy causes.

Other billionaire philanthropists, like Bill Gates, the Walton Family Foundation, the DeVos family, and others, are known for their tight control over their grantees. When they get a proposal, they expect that it will conform to their ideological preferences, and they help the grantee revise it the proposal until the grantee does precisely what the donor wants. In some cases, the philanthropist finds or even creates a group to execute their commands.

Mackenzie Scott doesn’t work that way. Her secretive organization researches groups doing admirable things and advises her to give them money. She does not want or accept proposals. She doesn’t tell grantees how to use the money she gives them. She trusts them.

As the graph in this article by Axios shows, she far outshines other billionaires (such as her ex-husband) in her generosity.

As an extensive article about her in the New York Times details, Mackenzie grew up in an affluent family and attended the elite Hotchkiss School. In her junior year, her father went bankrupt and her circumstances changed dramatically. She aspired to be a novelist. She went to Princeton on scholarship, where her mentor was the famed novelist Toni Morrison. She moved to New York City to write, took a job at a hedge fund to support herself, where she met Jeff Bezos. They married, and she helped him achieve his dream of creating the online company Amazon. After many years of marriage and four children, they divorced.

Her first big statement as a newly single woman came less than five months later on the website of the Giving Pledge, started by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett as a place where billionaires promised to give away at least half their wealth. Ms. Scott went further, promising to “keep at it until the safe is empty.”

The Giving Pledge is a public promise and little more. It has no donation schedules, no reporting requirements and no enforcement mechanisms. Still, it was a significant statement.

Nonprofits soon began receiving calls and emails about enormous grants from an anonymous donor, often the biggest donation in the group’s history or the equivalent of a full year’s budget. Some of those approaches were from staff at the influential nonprofit consultancy Bridgespan, others from representatives at Lost Horse. The chosen charities were told they could not announce the gifts until the donor did.

On July 28, 2020, Ms. Scott tweeted a link to a post on the website Medium, where she unveiled the scale of her ambition as a philanthropist. In the tweet, she added in a parenthetical: “(Note my Medium account is under my new last name — changed back to middle name I grew up with, after my grandfather Scott.)”

On Medium, she was writing in the language of equity and social justice, guiding philosophies for her giving. “Personal wealth is the product of collective effort,” she wrote, “and of social structures which present opportunities to some people, and obstacles to countless others.”

She gave overwhelmingly to groups led by women, people of color, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community or all three. The total amount of grants she was announcing came to $1.7 billion.

And that was just the beginning of her donations.

She doesn’t yet understand education issues. She has given to the very important, valuable Schott Foundation and to the Southern Education Foundation, both of which support public schools. But she also gave millions to the odious TNTP, founded by Michelle Rhee to undermine well-qualified and experienced teachers. She needs help.

I wish someone would tell her or her advisors about the Network for Public Education. We are the only mass organization (350,000 followers) fighting to protect America’s most democratic institution: its public schools, and we could surely use her support.

As a personal matter, I don’t think there should be any billionaires. I think Mackenzie Scott agrees. To the extent we have people with that kind of wealth, our tax system is broken. I would love to live in a society where there was no poverty and no billionaires and where everyone had the necessities of a decent life, with ample opportunities for their children to fulfill their dreams.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Philanthropy

Tom Ultican: The City Fund Uses Oligarch Money to Privatize Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2022 //
15

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics, is an expert on the “Destroy Public Education” movement. In this post, he explores the oligarch money behind The City Fund and the cities it has targeted for privatization of their public schools.

He writes:

Born in 2018, The City Fund (TCF) is a concentration of oligarch wealth crushing democracy and privatizing the commons. John Arnold (infamous ENRON energy trader) and Reed Hastings (Netflix CEO and former California Charter Schools Association board member) claimed to be investing $100 million each to establish TCF. Their July 2018 announcement was delivered on Neerav Kingsland’s blog “Relinquishment” which recently started requiring approval to access.

The TCF goal is to implement the portfolio school management model into 40 cities by 2028. At present TCF says it is “serving” 14 cities: Oakland, Ca; Stockton, Ca; Denver, Co; Camden, NJ; Washington, DC: Memphis, Tenn; Nashville, Tenn; New Orleans, La; Indianapolis, Ind.; Atlanta, Ga; Fort Worth, Tx; San Antonio, Tx; Baton Rouge, La; and Newark, NJ.

The operating structure of the fund is modeled after a law firm. Six of the fourteen founding members are lawyers. They constitute the core of the team being paid to execute the oligarch financed attack on public education….

TCF has spent heavily to develop a local ground game in the communities of targeted cities. On their web site, they provide a list of major grants made by 12/31/2019; defining major grants as being more than $200,000. Many of these grants are to other privatization focused organizations like TFA and Chiefs for Change, but most of them are for developing local organizations like the $5,500,000 to Opportunity Trust in Saint Louis another TFA related business. The TFA developed asset, founder and CEO Eric Scroggins, worked in various leadership positions at TFA for 14 years. Table-1 below lists this nationwide spending.

In many ways, The Mind Trust in Indianapolis, Indiana was the model for this kind of development. A 2016 articlefrom the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) which is quite school privatization friendly covers its development from the 2006 founding by Democratic Mayor Bart Peterson and his right hand man David Harris until 2016. PPI noted,

“The Mind Trust convinced Teach For America (TFA), The New Teacher Project (now TNTP), and Stand for Children to come to Indianapolis, in part by raising money for them. Since then TFA has brought in more than 500 teachers and 39 school leaders (the latter through its Indianapolis Principal Fellowship); TNTP’s Indianapolis Teaching Fellows Program has trained 498 teachers; and Stand for Children has worked to engage the community, to educate parents about school reform, and to spearhead fundraising for school board candidates.”

The Mind Trust became a successful example of implementing all of the important strategies for privatizing public schools. As a result, the Indianapolis Public School system is the second most privatized system in America with over 60% of its students attending schools no longer controlled by the elected school board.

Stand for Children which the PPI referenced is almost entirely about funneling dark money into local school board races. These nationwide efforts are now being bolstered by the political action organization staffers at TCF created, Public School Allies. Public School Allies was founded as a 501 C4 organization meaning it can contribute to politicians; however contributions to it are not tax exempt.

Billionaire funded organizations like Public School Allies can overwhelm local elections. For example, in 2019 they provided $80,000 to the independent expenditure committeeCampaign for Great Camden Schools. In the first school board election since the 2013 state takeover of Camden’s public schools, the three oligarch supported candidates won with vote totals of 1208, 1283 and 1455 votes.

Gary Borden was the Executive Directorof the California Charter School Association 501 C4 organization before he became a Partner at TCF. Now he is the director of Public School Allies.

A TCF Partner sits on the board of many of the local political organizations they fund. Kevin Huffman is on the board of The Memphis Education Fundand Atlanta’s RedefinED. Partner Ken Bubp is on the board of New Schools for Baton Rouge. Gary Borden is on the board of The Mind Trust. He replaced David Harris who appears to have resigned from TCF. Harris was also on the board of San Antonio’s City Education Partners. Unfortunately, their new web page no longer lists the board members.

Ultican goes on to describe the philosophy of The City Fund and its spin-offs: “…democracy is bad and privatization is good.”

Modern “school choice” ideology promoted by many white billionaires is little different from the strategies of southern segregationist in the 1950s and 60s. It still increases segregation and creates an “inherently unequal”and racist education system…

Ultican concludes:

The giant quantities of money concentrated in such few hands are destroying democracy. How is a citizen of an impoverished neighborhood who is opposed to having her public schools privatized going to politically compete with oligarchs from San Francisco or Seattle or Bentonville? Organizations like Public School Allies regularly come in and monetarily swamp any political opposition. That is not democracy.

I am convinced that John Arnold who is opposed to people receiving pensions sincerely believes charter schools are better than public schools. Likewise his partner, Reed Hastings, truly believes that elected school boards are bad. And Alice Walton really does think that vouchers are a good idea. However, I believe they are wrong and that the idea of offloading some of their tax burden is much more important to their beliefs than they will admit.

Witnessing the oligarch fueled attacks on the commons; I am convinced that billionaires need to be taxed out of existence if we are to have a healthy democracy of the people, by the people and for the people.

It may seem easy to criticize billionaires because of the First Amendment. It’s not. Several years ago, I wrote a post about John Arnold, mentioning the fact that he had been a high-flying energy trader at Enron. A few days later, I got notice from an Arnold spokesperson that he would sue me if I didn’t delete the post. Not wanting to fight a billionaire in court, I backed down. Good luck to Tom Ultican.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, Is Funding Rightwing Republicans

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2022 //
18

Billionaire Reed Hastings claims to be a Democrat, but he loves charter schools and despises public schools. In his efforts to promote privatization, he has funded some extremist Republicans. In Missouri, he funded the Republicans intent on eliminating abortion services for women, while giving a pittance to Democrats in the Missouri legislature..

In Indiana, Reed Hastings is the sugar daddy of a very rightwing Republican Party that wants to expand charters and vouchers. Hastings is a man without principle. He doesn’t care about evidence. He doesn’t care about charter financial scandals. He wants to win, and he will fund anti-abortion zealots in Missouri and rightwing extremists in Indiana, so long as it undermines public schools.

Steve Hinnefeld writes in his Indiana blog:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has given another $700,000 to a pro-charter-school Indiana PAC, which has funneled a big chunk of the money to supporting Republican legislative candidates.

The PAC – called, without apparent irony, Hoosiers for Great Public Schools – reported only one contribution in its 2022 pre-primary campaign finance report, covering Jan. 1 to April 8: the one from Hastings, a California resident with a net worth estimated between $4 billion and $6 billion.

Hoosiers for Great Public Schools then gave $100,000 to another PAC, Hoosiers for Quality Education, which favors school choice in all its forms, including private school vouchers. Hoosiers for Quality Education has made over $600,000 in contributions this year, all to Republicans. Most has gone to GOP House candidates who are favored by caucus leaders and are in contested primaries.

Hoosiers for Quality Education, with ties to Betsy DeVos, the U.S. secretary of education in the Trump administration, didn’t just get money from Hoosiers for Great Public Schools. It got $425,000 this year from Walmart heir Jim Walton, along with several smaller donations.

Hastings also gave Hoosiers for Great Public Schools $700,000 in 2020. It also got $200,000 that year from John Arnold, a Texas billionaire. The group has never received a penny from an actual Hoosier.

But it does have a Hoosier connection. Bart Peterson, who heads the operation, was mayor of Indianapolis from 2000 to 2008. He was a Democrat then. I don’t know what he considers himself now, but he has become a primary source of out-of-state cash for Indiana Republicans.

Peterson told me in 2020 that he was “an unabashed supporter of charter schools” and was making the contributions to improve funding for the schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated. (His day job is president and CEO of Christel House International, which operates charter schools in Indianapolis and schools for underprivileged children around the world).

Whatever the motivation, the campaign contributions helped bolster the Republican supermajority in the Indiana General Assembly. In the 2022 legislative session, that supermajority: 1) repealed the law requiring Hoosiers to have a permit to carry a handgun; 2) made it much more difficult for poor people to be released from jail on bail; and 3) stoked phony outrage over schools teaching “critical race theory.”

Reed Hastings and Betsy DeVos. Hastings, funder of the anti-abortion crusade. Hastings, funder of the phony war against honest teaching about racism (aka “critical race theory.”)

Shameful.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Missouri, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers

Grumpy Old Teacher: Censoring Florida’s Math Textbooks

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2022 //
53

Grumpy Old Teacher explains in his blog the “thinking” behind Ron DeSantis’ decision to censor math textbooks and purge them of content that he and his Department of Education found objectionable.

He begins:

As the uproar over Department of Education (FLDOE) deemed inappropriate mathematics textbooks continued this week, the governor claiming that the curriculum materials were proprietary, the publishers could appeal the decision, and he would respect the process, the FLDOE decided to release four examples of objectionable content. In this post, GOT will examine the first example or as he will dub it, Exhibit A for the court of public opinion. Cue the theme song for the People’s Court.

The exhibit shows two bar graphs with the cited source being Project Implicit, which is a research endeavor by three scientists from the University of Washington, Harvard University, and the University of Virginia. From their page, they describe themselves as “The mission of Project Implicit is to educate the public about bias and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the internet…”

CRT is used like people use acronyms for texting, shorthand for talking about race and the disparate treatment of human beings based upon their perceived category. This is anathema to people like Ron DeSantis and Moms for Liberty, who disguise their preference for white supremacy by claiming to be color-blind and that is the highest ideal. They even quote the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. out of context as support.

In response to actions like banning math books over Exhibit A, public education advocates explain that this is not CRT and that CRT is not taught in public schools. They might as well try to explain that LOL means laughing out loud, not lots of love to the uninitiated. They’re not listening. The actual meaning or theory does not matter; what matters is the irrationality and great emotion that the acronym will arouse.

CRT, for them, means any discussion about race other than that America is a great, benevolent nation, Ronald Reagan’s shining white city on the hill, and that is all public schools should teach.

Fun fact: Florida avers that history such as the 1920 Ocoee massacre will be taught. That was when a white mob took revenge on the Black citizens who had had the audacity to vote in the 1920 presidential election. In one November night, a Black population of hundreds was reduced to nearly none.

We will teach the history of Ocoee, but that is not the question. The question is how it will be taught. Will schools present it as a shameful episode of lynching? Or will it be taught as something else? (If you’re following the policies of Ron DeSantis, you’ve already noted that the voting rights of Black citizens is something he does not respect.)

The excerpt does not do the post justice. Open the link and read the rest.

Categories Censorship, Florida, Racism

Dana Milbank: If the Jackboot Fits, Wear It

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2022 //
12

Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post. He is one of my favorites. (I also adore Valerie Strauss and Jennifer Rubin, and of course, Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker). I’m sorry that his many links did not transfer when I copied and pasted. Subscribe to the Post.

He writes:

There were even more vermin than usual in Washington this week. A rabid fox at the Capitol bit at least nine people, including Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.). And Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison attacked Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) with an insult most entomological.

After Cotton implied that Supreme Court Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson is a Nazi sympathizer, Harrison referred to Cotton as a “little maggot-infested man” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Fake news! Cotton may go low, but, at 6-foot-5, he is not little. Also, maggots typically feed on dead things, and Cotton, though stiff, is not currently deceased. The man likes to carry on, but he is not carrion.

Harrison went on to censure the Republican Party as a whole: “It is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism.” Interestingly, a statement from the Republican National Committee taking offense at the “maggot-infested” charge did not dispute the “fraud, fear and fascism” formulation. As your self-appointed fact-checker, I have therefore examined the merits of the accusation.

Fraud


Sixteen months after President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud failed in some 60 court cases, we have finally found evidence of potential voter fraud. Trump’s White House staff chief, Mark Meadows, reportedly registered to vote in 2020 using the address of a mobile home he never lived in. And former Trump State Department official Matt Mowers, a current congressional candidate, voted twice during the 2016 primaries, in New Hampshire and New Jersey.

The “big lie” about a rigged election, accepted by two-thirds of Republican voters, has spawned new frauds about the dangers of coronavirus vaccines (leading to sharply higher death rates in heavily Republican counties) and the promise, touted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) of the deworming drug ivermectin to treat covid-19; an exhaustive new study finds the drug useless.

Then there are the little everyday frauds. Just days after Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) told the world that his colleagues engage in coke-fueled orgies, Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) declared at a Trump rally that it was Trump who “caught Osama bin Laden,” record-low unemployment is at a “40-year high” and there weren’t “any wars” during Trump’s presidency. Never mind Syria and Afghanistan.

Fear

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said people like Ketanji Brown Jackson become public defenders because “their heart is with the murderers.” Cotton said Justice Robert H. Jackson “left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them.”

Republican senators used the Jackson confirmation to stir fear of minorities and vulnerable groups with manufactured crises about transgender athletes (of the 200,000 participants in women’s collegiate sports, perhaps 50 are transgender) and “critical race theory” (which isn’t taught in public schools).

Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance released an ad saying “Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

The Florida legislature approved an “election crimes” police force for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), with the potential to intimidate voters, while various GOP-led states move forward with new provisions providing residents with incentives to inform on each other.

The newly-revealed text messages of Justice Clarence Thomas’s activist wife, Ginni, show her sharing with the Trump White House her “hope” that the “Biden crime family” as well as elected officials, bureaucrats and journalists would be taken to “barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”
**
Is the GOP “a party built on fraud, fear and fascism”? Certainly, not all Republicans think this way. But too many others are subverting democracy, cavorting with white nationalists, spreading racist fears and fantasizing about extrajudicial punishment for political opponents and the media. For them, the jackboot fits

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Elections, Ethics, Fascism, Hypocrisy, Republicans

Bob Shepherd: Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum: Comic Book History

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2022 //
63

Bob Shepherd is a regular reader and commenter who has been an assessment developer, a textbook writer and editor, and a teacher, among other things.

In the following post, he reviews the Hillsdale College “1776 Curriculum,” which took its name from Donald Trump’s short-lived “1776 Commission.”

He writes:

According to the Nashville Tennessean, Governor Bill Lee, a proponent of charter schools, is planning a partnership with fundamentalist Christian Hillsdale College to open 50 new charter schools in the state. These would use the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum. Hillsdale bills itself as promoting Classical education.

I’ve just been reading through this stuff from Hillsdale, which is supposed to be a combination American History and Civics curriculum. It’s basically a guide to fundamentalist, nationalist indoctrination.

The first thing to notice about this curriculum, in comparison to existing K-12 American History and Civics programs, is that it is quite short. You can read through it in an afternoon. If your goal is to use history to indoctrinate students in a Christian fundamentalist nationalist mythology, it’s best to keep the discussion at the 50,000-foot level and deal mostly in abstract jingoism, with a few exempla thrown in. This is the sermon as textbook. If you get too much into the details, you are going to run into all kinds of messy events that don’t exemplify the mythology you are promulgating–the Mystic Massacre; the disenfranchisement at the dawn of the country of all but propertied white males; the Fort Pillow Massacre; slave auctions where trade in girls and young women was saved to the end of the day because such human property was particularly prized (guess why?) by good Christian white, male slaveowners; the Wounded Knee Massacre; a century of lynchings and Jim Crow and voter suppression and white citizens councils and the KKK and U.S. federal housing policy designed to keep black people from home ownership, the primary means by which ordinary people build generational wealth; the Eugenics and Nazi Bund movements in America; Trump furious that he couldn’t order to military to fight BLM protestors and the Border Patrol to shoot innocent asylum seekers; and so on ad nauseam.

One of the reasons why Fascism appeals to semiliterate mobs is that it makes everything simple. All complexity is burned away. And that’s just what the Hillsdale American Exceptionalism Curriculum does. (The successor to the 1930s pro-Nazi German American Bund called itself The America First Party, using the America First phrase that Dog-whistle Donald picked up for repetition at his rallies. Where was Leni Riefenstahl to film these?) This need to keep things simpler than they are is why, soon after seizing power, all Fascist governments establish complete control over publishing, the media, and schools and find pretexts for exterminating intellectuals and burning books and artwork.

The President of Hillsdale College, Larry Aarn, introduces his curriculum by saying that the purpose of education is to produce citizens, from the Latin civitas, or city, who can use language to distinguish the good from the bad, and that in history instruction, the way to do that is to concentrate on the lives of great persons. So, at the outset, everything is cleaved into “the good” on the one hand and “the bad” on the other (in other words, this is going to be a curriculum that deals in absolutes), and an avowed program of hero worship is advanced.

When you get into the heart of this comic book curriculum, you find that what its authors have done is choose a few “great” men and carefully excerpt from their writings short selections that support tenets of fundamentalist nationalism (manifest destiny, Christian religious belief, opposition to immigration, states’ rights, supply side trickle-down Laissez-faire economics, opposition to a big, bad federal government, etc.), and these become the subjects of lessons, the takeaways from which are rightwing doctrines and dogmas. So, the history of immigration becomes a few paragraphs from Alexander Hamilton saying that he is against it and accusing Jefferson, via quotations from Jefferson’s own writings, of having flip-flopped on the issue. (NB: Right-wingers only hate big government when it’s not their big government; if it’s Trump trying to bar people who practice a particular religion from the U.S., they are fine with that.)

So, this is all about replacing History and Civics education with comic book/Cub Scout-style mythologized, simplified indoctrination. (The Scouts were created by Robert Baden-Powell for the overtly stated purpose of producing young men willing to fight and die in British imperialist wars. It caught on in a big way in the United States.) Btw, for most of its history, Romans used the noun urbs to refer to the city and civis to refer to a citizen of an urbs. It was only late in Roman history, when Rome was falling apart, that a derivative of the word for citizen started being used to refer to a city itself. But if you are a proponent of education as propaganda, like Aarn, then you want to keep things simple: America good. Foreigners bad. Rome good. Barbarians bad. Classics education = learning to emulate being a true citizen of the Empire.

Doubtless, the Fascist government that the Republicans will put in place should they win both houses in the midterms and the presidency in 2024, will appropriate, in the manner presciently described by Orwell, traditional American concepts and iconography, distorted in a funhouse mirror and presented as a New, Stronger, Tougher, Truer American Exceptionalism.

Remember George Bush, Jr., aka Shrub, who ran on what he called a “kinder, gentler Conservativism” and then gave us 200,000+ Iraqi civilians dead in his illegal war, perpetrated on a false pretext and in violation of the UN Charter? In a similar manner, the Nazis appropriated ancient pictographs, used by cultures worldwide to represent the sun and lightning, and made of these abominations, and the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm proclaimed that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others [are].”

When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” goes the observation falsely attributed to Sinclair Lewis but very much in keeping with Lewis’s themes. Yup. Got that right.

He added an example:

Let me give one example of the general 1776 curriculum approach: The treatment of the disagreement about slavery between Abraham Lincoln and Stephan Douglas is presented as one against absolute moral principles attributed to Lincoln) versus the “moral relativism” attributed to Douglas. This is completely anachronistic. Lincoln, of course, famously disliked slavery but asserted that the important thing was preserving the Union, with or without slavery. Sounds pretty relativistic, doesn’t it? The takeaway from the Hillsdale treatment of this topic is that those who do not support absolute principles (e.g., like those of Christian fundamentalists) are “moral relativists,” bad people who are akin to Stephen Douglas, with his support of slavery.

This is using American history classes to teach that there is an absolute moral order in the universe, established by God, that should be enforced by the state. Note that this is in keeping with the earlier teaching, in this curriculum, that the founding principles were about natural law deriving from God. But, of course, the philosophical Deism of many of the founders was a far cry from absolutist Christian fundamentalism and is, in itself, highly debatable.

And again and again, this is how the Hillsdale Curriculum works. It takes events in American history as occasions for advancing right-wing principles–economic libertarianism, nationalism, fundamentalist religious belief, states’ rights, restrictions on immigration, etc.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fascism, History, Racism

Iowa: High School Students Are Smarter Than Legislators

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2022 //
16

High school students in several districts in Iowa have staged walkouts to protest legislation that affects their education. Students want their teachers to have the freedom to teach, and they want the freedom to learn. Iowa legislators don’t want either.

In light of recent education bills at the Iowa Legislature, whether it’s promoting vouchers for private schools or restricting what teachers are allowed to mention in class, many Iowa students are getting fed up. And they’re standing up.

Friday afternoon in Johnston, a group of close to 100 students walked out of class and stood on school grounds to talk about those bills, explain how they’re impacting Iowa students and teachers, and encourage their peers to register to vote and to elect different legislators.

“I think the biggest thing now is putting people in positions of power that actually will do the work and will care and represent the student voices that are speaking out about this,” said Waverly Zhao, a junior at Johnston High School who helped lead the walkout.

The walkout was organized by students and two student organizations, Johnston Community of Racial Equity (CORE) Club and Iowa WTF.

And Johnston was only one of several with recent walkouts. Thursday, students walked out at Ankeny and other events have been planned for public and private high schools in Ames, West Des Moines, Des Moines, and possibly Waukee. All are organized by student groups, and generally around the same issue of not having their voices heard about their educations. Students have also held walkouts in recent months in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Waterloo.

Specifically, students are calling out House File 2577, the bill that requires teachers to post every single piece of classroom material online, and Senate File 2369, the bill which allows vouchers for private schools and includes a parents’ bill of rights. Both have only passed in their chambers.

Students are also calling out House File 802, the law that prohibits so-called “divisive concepts” being taught in school, which passed last year…

HF 802 prohibited teachers from teaching “divisive concepts” and targets ideas such as systemic or institutionalized racism and sexism, and how those have shaped the way the country was built and how it functions now. Students say they’ve already seen it cause a chilling effect in their classrooms.

“As a student of color, it’s been hard enough in the district, and with the recent legislation, it’s harder to discuss racism and harder for us to combat that in schools,” said Anita Danakar, a Johnston high schooler.

For example, she said her history teacher made sure to tell students they weren’t trying to make student feel guilty when they talked about redlining in class.

Zhao said in her history and social studies classes teachers are talking less about racism and sexism so they don’t cross any lines. A history lesson she had about the 3/5ths compromise in the Constitution left most of the class confused, Zhao said, because the teacher was never quite able to explain why it existed….

Overall, the students said they want to learn about these topics in school, from a trusted source and in an environment where they can ask questions.

“This entire attitude that [says] these students are not mature enough to learn and have mature conversations in the classroom about race, gender, sexuality, to say we can’t even talk about that in an educational environment is disgusting,” said Nicholas Arick, a 17-year-old student who plans to vote in the next presidential election. “It’s saying these students don’t deserve to learn about these things, and eventually when they get out of high school, they’re be ignorant and they won’t know what they’re voting for.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Education Industry, Freedom, Ignorance, Injustice, Iowa, Lies, Privatization, Racism, Students
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