Steve Hinnefeld: Indiana’s Fraudulent Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2022 //
8

Steve Hinnefeld writes about the very expensive and ineffectual voucher program in Indiana, which is based on a lie. On several lies, actually. The promoters of vouchers claimed that vouchers would save poor kids from failing public schools. He shows in this post that most vouchers are used by students who never attended a public school, who are not poor, and who are not getting a better education than students in public schools. The advocates said it would save money, but the cost this year is nearly a quarter billion dollars.

He writes:

Indiana awarded $241.4 million in the 2021-22 school year to pay tuition and fees for students to attend private schools. That’s 44% more than the state spent on vouchers the previous year.

The increase, detailed in a Department of Education report, isn’t surprising. The Indiana General Assembly in 2021 vastly expanded the voucher program, opening it to families near the top of the state’s income scale and making the vouchers significantly more generous.

Nearly all the 330 private schools that received voucher funding are religious schools. Some discriminate against students, families and employees because of their religion, disability status, sexual orientation or gender identity. Indiana is bankrolling bigotry.

And many of the families receiving vouchers could pay private school tuition without public assistance. Some 20% of voucher households last year had an income of $100,000 or more, well above Indiana’s median household income of about $58,000.

The voucher program, created in 2011, was sold as a way to help children from poor families opt out of “failing” public schools. Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s governor at the time and a leading voucher advocate, said students should attend a public school for two semesters to qualify, giving public schools a chance to show what they could do.

But the two-semester requirement fell by the wayside. Students now have nine pathways by which they can qualify. If a family meets the income requirement, which is laughably lax, a private school can find a way to get them vouchers.

When the program started, supporters said it wouldn’t cost anything, because, if the students didn’t have vouchers, the state would be paying for them to attend public schools. They don’t even pretend to believe that anymore. In 2021-22, 70% of voucher students had no record of having attended a public school in the state. Most voucher funding is going to families that intended all along to send their kids to private schools — and often had the means to do so.

The program initially served both low- and middle-income families. Last year, the legislature threw the door open to high-income families. Now, a family of five making $172,000 can receive vouchers worth over $5,400 on average per child. For about half of all voucher students, the award covers the full cost of tuition and fees at their private school.

Voucher participation had stalled, but with last year’s expansion, the number of voucher students exploded: 44,376 students had vouchers in 2021-22, up 24.3% from the previous year.

Over the years, Indiana’s voucher population has grown whiter and markedly less poor. Nearly 60% of voucher students are white, an overrepresentation considering the program is most pervasive in urban areas, where there are many Black and Hispanic students. Only 10.5% of voucher students are Black, compared to 13.5% of Indiana public and charter school students.

The program might still seem justifiable if Indiana private schools were academically superior. They aren’t. Researchers at the universities of Kentucky and Notre Dame found that students who received vouchers fell behind their peers who remained in public schools.

Indiana policymakers no longer care about that either. They’ve embraced the idea that parents should have complete control over their children’s schooling and the public funds that pay for it. In a world of unrestricted school choice, state money will “follow the child,” wherever that may lead. Standards, accountability and academic quality don’t matter.

The point of privatization is not to help needy students but to destroy the public schools.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Hoax, Indiana, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Wonders Why New Supe Needs $450,000 Handholding

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2022 //
23

The Philadelphia School Board hired an inexperienced school superintendent, then signed a contract to pay $450,000 to a firm to train the new superintendent. Former Nashville school board member Amy Frogge wrote an open letter to the Philadelphia school board, warning about the track record and failures of the consultant they hired.

The Philadelphia Inquirer published this editorial.

From the start, questions surrounded new Philadelphia School Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.’s readiness for one of the toughest and most important jobs in the city.

Watlington only had a little over a year of experienceas a superintendent at the Rowan-Salisbury School System, a small suburban district in North Carolina.

With 114,000 students, the Philadelphia School District is more than five times the size of Rowan-Salisbury’s 18,200 students. Philadelphia’s $3.9 billion school budget dwarfs Rowan-Salisbury’s $191 million.

Watlington spent his career in North Carolina, a right-to-work state with nonunion schools. But Philadelphia is an entrenched union city and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is known for driving hard bargains and challenging major reforms.

Now comes word that the School District hired a group of consultants to essentially help Watlington do a job for which he is paid $340,000 a year. In turn, 10 consultants are getting an eye-popping $450,000 to support Watlington and “ensure a smooth leadership transition as he begins his tenure.”

That’s some high-priced hand-holding. It is also an ominous start for Watlington, which signals he may not be ready for the big time.

More troubling, one of the lead consultants — the Tennessee-based firm Joseph & Associates — comes with a trail of controversy. The firm’s founder, Shawn Joseph, served as the superintendent of the Metro Nashville public school system for less than three years before the school board bought out his contract in 2019.

During Joseph’s tenure in Nashville, questions were raised about costlyno-bid contracts, his use of a school bus driver as his chauffeur, and a school maintenance employee doing work at Joseph’s home. After Joseph left, Tennessee education officials recommended suspending his state license for one year.

After hearing about Joseph’s consulting contract, a former Nashville school board member wrote a letter to Philadelphia school officials saying she was “deeply disturbed” by the contract and warned the district about Joseph.

Joseph’s consulting contract with the Philadelphia School District calls for him to help Watlington execute “a 100-day entry plan,” which will include a listening and learning tour of Philadelphia. So, the guy from Tennessee is going to help the guy from North Carolina find his way around Philly.

Phase two of the contract calls for Joseph’s firm to help Watlington develop and implement “a transition team process informed by the quantitative and qualitative data gathered” during the listening tour.

“So, the guy from Tennessee is going to help the guy from North Carolina find his way around Philly.”

Phase three of the contract calls for Joseph’s firm to help Watlington develop a five-year strategic plan that “will serve as the district’s road map to achieve the goals and guardrails.”

That’s all well and good, but the three-step plan amounts to little more than the basic tasks of any incoming superintendent. The existing staff at the School District should be able to show Watlington around Philadelphia and his executive team can help develop a five-year plan.

Watlington defended the $450,000 consulting contract, but it still sounds like a giant waste of taxpayers’ money. The School District should look to end this contract immediately. If Philadelphia is serious about improving educational outcomes of students, it should look to Washington, D.C., which has made impressive gains in student test scores largely by improving the quality of teachers.

If Watlington wants Joseph’s help, he can read Joseph’s book titled “The Principal’s Guide to the First 100 Days of the School Year: Creating Instructional Momentum.” It’s available on Amazon for $29.95. That’s a better deal than the $450,000 consulting contract.

By all accounts, Watlington comes across as a dedicated educator. But the Philadelphia School District needs a dynamic leader with a track record of success who can hit the ground running. Not one who requires an overpriced consultant to perform on-the-job training.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Education Industry, Nashville, Philadelphia

Ohio Lawmaker Who Wrote Bill Requiring Gun Training for Teachers Owns Gun Training Business

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2022 //
56

Laugh or cry? I report. You decide.

The Republican lawmaker who drafted the training curriculum that schools would have to follow to allow teachers in Ohio to carry guns owns a gun training business that seemingly fits all the required steps in the bill.

Ohio schools could start arming any staff member as soon as mid-fall, but the training requirement has raised concerns about the involvement of a specific senator.

Although he denies any wrongdoing, state Sen. Frank Hoagland, a Republican from Mingo Junction, is being accused by critics of drafting the bill so his business could benefit financially.

Hoagland helped with the rewrite of House Bill 99, which allows any school board in Ohio to choose to arm school staff members with up to 24 hours of training.

The senator owns a business called S.T.A.R.T., which represents Special Tactics and Rescue Training. It is a firearm training and threat management business.

While the bill was being heard in the Senate Veterans and Public Safety Committee, hundreds came to oppose the bill. Throughout the entire hearing process, more than 350 people submitted testimony against the bill, while about 19 testified in favor.

One of those who testified in support was Dinero Ciardelli, the CEO of S.T.A.R.T. He did not identify himself as being with the company, but he did not legally have to. Hoagland just so happens to be the Chair of the Senate Veterans and Public Safety Committee, so he watched his colleague testify in favor of his bill.

The story: probably not a conflict of interest. On Mars.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, For-Profit, Guns, Guns in Schools, Ohio

Bill Press: Repeal the Second Amendment

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2022 //
67

Bill Press, a former correspondent at CNN, argues that there is no way to fix the Second Amendnent. Despite the obvious political roadblocks, he believes that the only remedy for the damage caused by the Second Amendment is to repeal it. it was written, he says, to protect Southern slaveholders, who wanted to protect their right to use deadly force to suppress slave rebellions. Two Supreme Court Justices, both appointed by Republican presidents, have urged its repeal. It is now a license for civilians to own deadly military weapons. Is it politically possible now? No. If the massacres continue, public opinion may change.

He writes:

After Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Margery Stoneman Douglas, El Paso, Buffalo, Uvalde and so many others, it’s always the same.

First, shock. Then, grief. Then, a demand for action. Then, the phony claim: Too bad, but we can’t do anything about guns because of the Second Amendment. And then, nothing is done to prevent the next attack.

This time, could things be different? After the senseless assassination of 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, senators of both parties are actually talking about a compromise on guns.

But don’t hold your breath. No matter what they come up with, chances are still slim that there will be 10 Republicans willing to override the filibuster. (A total of 60 votes are needed to end a filibuster in the evenly-divided US Senate.)

Anything they agree on will probably just nibble around the edges of the gun issue. Sen. John Cornyn, the lead Republican negotiator, has already vetoed one of the most sensible proposals: raising the legal age for buying an assault weapon from 18 to 21 years…

Let’s face it. The way many judges and conservatives interpret the Second Amendment is a total con job. And, as wildly misinterpreted today, it is, for all intents and purposes, a license to kill as many people as you want with as many guns as you want.

The only effective way to deal with the Second Amendment is to repeal it — and then replace it with something that makes sense in a civilized society.

I’m hardly the first person to say that the Second Amendment has been a disaster for this country. In fact, two Supreme Court justices — justices appointed by Republican presidents — have said as much.

In a March 2018 opinion piece for the New York Times, former Justice John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by then-President Gerald Ford, wrote that Americans protesting the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School “should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment…”

And decades earlier, in 1991, former Chief Justice Warren Burger, appointed by President Richard Nixon, told the PBS Newshour: “If I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn’t be any such thing as the Second Amendment.

Burger called the Second Amendment “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Indeed, you only have to read the Second Amendment to see what a fraud it’s become. Here it is, all 27 words: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Read it again. There’s no way you can logically leap from those 27 words about the existence of a state militia to the unfettered right of any citizen to buy as many guns — and any kind of gun — that they want, without the government being able to do anything about it.

It’s clear from the wording of the Second Amendment itself that it has nothing to do with individual gun ownership; nothing to do with self-defense; and nothing to do with assault weapons. The amendment speaks, not to the rights of well-armed individual citizens, but only to citizens as members of a group, a “well regulated militia.”

And its history is well-known. The founders saw no need to mention guns in the original Constitution. As many constitutional scholars and American historians have shown, the Second Amendment was added later by James Madison as part of a deal to secure the support of Patrick Henry and other White racist Virginians for confirmation of the Constitution. Noted academic Carol Anderson, for one, describes the “anti-Blackness” that lies at the heart of the Second Amendment in her book “The Second,” as well as its “architecture of repression.”

As such, it was not about self-defense. It was, in the opinion of these historians, about reassuring White plantation owners that the new federal government would not interfere with their practice of forming White militias to patrol the South, ready to put down rebellion by disgruntled Black slaves or chase down slaves who tried to flee.

And again, the amendment has nothing to do with self-defense or allowing ownership of any kind of gun. As Stevens noted in his New York Times op-ed: “For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation.”

Two things changed that. First, a band of gun extremists took over the NRA at its 1977 annual convention in Cincinnati and changed its mission from championing the Second Amendment as the right of hunters to giving every American the right to own a gun for self-defense. The NRA proceeded, successfully, to sell that unfounded idea of self-defense to politicians and the general public.

Second, in 2008, former Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which — again for the first time in over 200 years — established the right of every American under the Second Amendment to own a gun for self-defense. And he rounded up four other votes.

However, it’s important to note that even in Heller, Scalia took pains to argue that as with other rights, those granted under the Second Amendment are not unlimited — and that governments retain the power to regulate what kind of guns, or how many, people may own.

Of course, those provisions of Heller are conveniently ignored by gun worshippers like Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who uphold the Second Amendment as reinterpreted by Scalia. That flawed reasoning allowed a Texas teenager to buy two AR-15’s on his 18th birthday, walk into an elementary school and mow down 19 students and two teachers.

We are a sick nation indeed, if we allow that idiocy to stand.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Democrats, Guns, Republicans, Safety

Mark Joseph Stern: The Most Hopeless Day of SCOTUS Term?

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2022 //
86

Mark Joseph Stern, the legal analyst for Slate, asks and answers the question: was yesterday the most hopeless day of the SCOTUS term?

Yes. Yesterday and last week demonstrated the fact that we have a Supreme Court that is completely in the grip of the far-right branch of the Republican Party. They are extremists. They have no respect for the role of the Court.

Stern writes:

No single day has better captured the current state of the Supreme Court than Thursday. At 10 a.m., the court issued a devastating assault on the Biden administration’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases in a 6–3 ruling joined by all of the court’s reactionary block. Ten minutes later, it issued a 5–4 opinion that just barely confirmed that the president, rather than a rogue judge in Texas, has authority over border policy, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh lending the lone votes preventing an absolutely insane outcome. Shortly thereafter, the court issued a bombshell orders list that tees up, for next term, one of the most important and dangerous democracy cases in American history, which asks whether state legislatures have near-unlimited authority over election laws.

The court’s most immediately lethal decisionremains Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. But do not let Dobbs distract from the onslaught that followed it. If anyone still doubted that the Supreme Court served as the nation’s chief policymaking institution after Dobbs, Thursday should put that to rest. The court is ruthlessly efficient, putting our gridlocked Congress to shame with its speedy and definitive resolution of the most pressing issues facing the country today. It does not require hourslong hearings or endless negotiations to operate. The six-justice conservative majority chooses which conflicts to prioritize, takes up cases that present them, then picks a winner, nearly always for the benefit of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

Consider the issues that SCOTUS has resolved this term—the first full term with a 6–3 conservative supermajority. The constitutional right to abortion: gone. States’ ability to limit guns in public: gone. Tribal sovereignty against state intrusion: gone. Effective constraints around separation of church and state: gone. The bar on prayer in public schools: gone. Effective enforcement of Miranda warnings: gone. The ability to sue violent border agents: gone. The Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases at power plants: gone. Vast areas of the law, established over the course of decades, washed away by a court over a few months.

There is no serious risk of another branch overriding these decisions. The squabbling among our elected representatives is, increasingly, a sideshow, with the court nudging along the decline of voters’ ability to shape their democracy. One-third of the court was appointed by a president who lost the popular vote, yet the majority evinces not a shred of caution about overriding the democratic branches or its own predecessors on the bench. It imposes Republican policies far more effectively than the Republican Party ever could. Real power in this country no longer lies in the people. It resides at the Supreme Court.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections

Texas: State Board Rejects Charters, So Charter Sponsor Buys Seats on State Board

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2022 //
11

This article in The Houston Chronicle is infuriating. The subtitle might well be, “If the state board turns you down, buy it.”

As I read it, I felt my blood was coming to a boil. This is a portrayal of tank corruption, corruption of education and corruption of the democratic process. The elected state board of education in Texas denied the charter application of four out of five charters. The charters struck back by dumping vast sums of money into the election for state board and electing hand-picked candidates to give them the approvals they wanted. As I have shown in previous posts, charter schools in Texas are generally low-performing and compare unfavorably to public schools,

The article begins:

The State Board of Education last month denied, for the third time, efforts to launch Heritage Classical Academy in Northwest Houston, a school designed as a conservative response to anti-racism, LGBT-inclusive sex education and other progressive themes in public schools.

But despite Heritage’s recent failure, its future — and that of other charter schools like it in Texas — looks bright.

The state’s fight over charter schools has bubbled slowly for decades since they were first authorized in the 1990s, with the state board standing as the main political roadblock to their expansion.

Now, as Republican lawmakers fight to restrict how teachers discuss social issues in the classroom and generally shift the education system more toward the right, their alliance with charter schools is stronger than ever.

A MOVEMENT: Trump-era rancor spills into Texas school board politics

So much so that three GOP members of the state board, who have sided with Democrats in voting against Heritage Classical Academy, won’t be therenext time — two were beaten in a primary after the family of Heritage’s board chairman donated $250,000 to a PAC supporting their opponents. The third was redistricted out of his seat by the Texas Senate.

Heritage, and other classical academies to come, can count on a more sympathetic board starting in January.

Matt Robinson, the Republican who lost his seat in redistricting — he says he had decided before then not to run for re-election anyway — called his ouster a testament to the power charter school advocates wield.

“There’s a whole pattern here of them really strongly exerting the influence that they have with our elected officials,” he said.

LIBRARY BACKLASH: Texas GOP’s book hunt mostly targets LGBT issues, not critical race theory

The pitch for classical education

Heritage is part of the Barney Charter School initiative, a national charter school movement to introduce a more conservative ideology in schools. The initiative was founded by Hillsdale College in Michigan.

The college doesn’t fund or govern schools directly, but provides curriculum and consulting. Dozens of schools have been started so far across the nation, including one in Gardendale, Texas. The schools serve nearly 15,000 students and 8,000 more on wait-lists.

Its “1776 Curriculum” for charter schools teaches that “America is an exceptionally good country” and includes comprehensive lessons about American history through a conservative lens, including descriptions of the New Deal as bad public policy and of affirmative action as “counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.”

The wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas — who reportedly lobbied to overturn the 2020 presidential election — is a former vice president at the college and ran its Washington programs.

Hillsdale is a nonsectarian Christian university with a mostly white student body that touts its role in the abolition movement of the 1800s, when Black activist Frederick Douglass spoke at the campus.

‘CRITICAL RACE THEORY’ IN SCHOOLS: Abbott signs law forbidding lessons on systemic racism

Across the country, only one Hillsdale-backed charter school serves a majority of economically disadvantaged students, and only two serve a majority of students of color, according to staff at the State Board of Education.

Heritage Classical Academy was voted down for the first time in 2020 by the board, several members said, because of the inclusion of “Brer Rabbit” books in its early grade curricula. The 19th century children’s story has been assailed by critics for promoting racist stereotypes and mimicking dialect used by African-American slaves.

The arguments for and against Heritage over the last few years have added up to more than the sum of their parts. When the board discussed it last month, conversations turned to how racism and slavery are taught, “inappropriate content in public schools,” alleged anti-Islamic Facebook posts made by a Heritage board member, the work experience of the proposed school leadership and more.

Aggressive lobbying from the Heritage board and its supporters also appears to have backfired, becoming a factor in the board’s decision this year to reject the charter.

After the board denied approval for the second time in 2021, Heritage Board Chair Stuart Saunders and his family donated more than $250,000 to a political action committee called Texans for Educational Freedom. That PAC then donate more than $500,000 to local school board races and other candidates who have promoted conservative themes in the schools.

The group donated in four State Board of Education races, including well over $100,000 total in the bids to unseat board members Sue Melton Malone and Jay Johnson, Republicans who opposed Heritage.

In their charter application filed with Texas Education Agency, Heritage reported 17 meetings with public officials ahead of the board’s decision last month, including a July 2021 meeting with TEA Commissioner Mike Morath and state Rep. Steve Toth, who penned the Legislature’s anti-critical race theory law. Signed a year ago by Gov. Greg Abbott, the law limits how public school teachers address systemic racism and the lingering impacts of slavery.

When it convenes in next year after this fall’s elections, the state board will be a more conservative body, with six new members.

“Clearly, (Saunders) was trying to use all his money to remake the SBOE, to buy it,” said Robinson, the board member from Friendswood who is losing his seat in redistricting. “When you really upset wealthy peoplethey don’t take that lightly.”

During an SBOE meeting, Robinson confronted Saunders — who is the chairman of SouthTrust Bank — saying that while Saunders’ donations were legal, they were unethical.

Saunders retorted: “Me and my family have a long history of supporting education initiatives. Part of our involvement includes a history of supporting public policy and education initiatives, and I did give some of my money to a PAC that is involved in education. Their website speaks of wanting to depoliticize the classroom, working to create strong local school boards and to root-out and eliminate sexually explicit materials that have found their way into our schools. And I support those initiatives.”

He said his son was assigned two “inappropriate” books in class, and though he confronted the school’s principal about them, only one of the books was removed from the curriculum.

Texas Ethics Commission records show that the PAC Saunders spoke of donated to SBOE races both before and after he and his family contributed money.

18,000 Texas students in classical schools

Over the last decade, the State Board of Education has generally been a chokepoint to charter school expansion. The board is given final veto power over charter applicants after they are approved by the TEA commissioner. Since 2017, TEA approved 35 schools, but the SBOE only allowed 23 to proceed.

Those who oppose charter schools typically do so because they say it weakens the structure of public education. Charter schools face less accountability than public schools, and when students flee struggling public schools for charters, the school districts lose out on the attendance-based funding they would have received from the state if the child was still a student.

“The idea of 95 percent of kids losing funding and programming and opportunities so that 5 percent can attend a private-light-school and parents aren’t paying a private school bill is just asinine to me,” said state board member Georgina Pérez, a Democrat who votes against all charter applicants.

The Republican-controlled Legislature has been pushing in the opposite direction. The last major change Republicans in Austin made to charter school law was removing the state board’s ability to approve expansions of existing charter schools, in 2013 paving the way for hundreds of new campuses. Charter enrollment has nearly doubled since, to 377,375 students (the state’s K-12 schools serve about 5 million children).

The total number of charter campuses has risen from 588 to 872.

“I always compare charter schools and how they expand to Gremlins if they eat after midnight. Tomorrow morning you’re going to wake up and you don’t know how many of them you’re going to have,” Pérez said.

There’s also an appetite particularly for “Classical” schools such as Heritage, of which there are already a number in Texas, including Aristoi Classical in Katy, the Great Hearts Texas schools, Founders Classical and Houston Classical. Their combined enrollment for the 2016-2017 school year was less than 7,500, and has more than doubled to 18,000, state data shows.

Charter school supporters and several members of the SBOE, they said they expect that another bill will be filed next year with renewed efforts to remove the state board’s authority to approve the schools, leaving the matter up to Education Commissioner Mike Morath, an appointee of Gov. Greg Abbott.

Some members of the state board added that Abbott lobbied their colleagues directly, asking them to approve Heritage’s application and other charter schools over the years.

“Historically it was, (the SBOE wasn’t) approving expansions fast enough, or enough, to keep pace with demand,” said Starlee Coleman, CEO of the Texas Charter Schools Association. “I would not be surprised one bit if a move were made to roll back the board’s authority, even farther.”

Charter school proponents point to a charter school wait-list in the state of more than 58,000 kids. They say families want more options and that public schools aren’t working for everyone. They point to data that show the large majority of charter students are children of color, and that their test scores are better than the public school averages.

“The statute is really clear about legislative intent is that there will be a robust and vibrant charter sector in Texas,” Coleman said. “if the state board can’t agree with that, then I don’t think state legislators feel very compelled to let them continue to be part of the process.”

edward.mckinley@chron.com

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Texas

The Dangerous Decision by the Supreme Court to Protect Gun Rights

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2022 //
34

The Trace, a publication devoted to stopping gun violence, assessed the Supreme Court decision striking down restrictions on gun ownership in New York. The law that was overturned has been in place for over 100 years. One thing this ruling proves: this Court doesn’t care about public safety. Despite numerous gun deaths and massacres, despite Buffalo and Uvalde, the Court relaxes restrictions on carrying guns in public. This is a Court that does not care about precedent, social stability, human life, or public safety. It will use any rationalization available to justify its extremist opinions. It is “originalist” when that suits its purposes. But not really originalist because if it were, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas would resign at once. Neither qualify to serve on the Court or even to vote by the terms of the original Constitution.

The Trace reported:

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s restrictive firearms licensing law, a decision that could transform gun ownership in New York City and affect at least five other states with similar regulations. In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority endorsed, for the first time, a constitutional right to carry a gun in self-defense outside the home.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen is the Supreme Court’s first major Second Amendment ruling since 2010, when the Court struck down Chicago’s handgun ban. Writing for the majority, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas said Americans have a two-part right to “keep” guns in their homes and “bear” them in public.

“This definition of ‘bear’ naturally encompasses public carry,” Thomas wrote. “Most gun owners do not wear a holstered pistol at their hip in their bedroom or while sitting at the dinner table.”

The scope of the decision had been anticipated following the leak in May of a draft opinion voiding federal abortion protections. Legal experts told us at the time that the apparent sidestepping of precedent in that draft document, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, could signal a similarly wide ruling in Bruen. The court did not go as far as calling into question all licensing schemes, including the 43 states that have “shall-issue” permitting laws, but it did leave the door open for potential challenges.

“Because these licensing regimes do not require applicants to show an atypical need for armed self-defense, they do not necessarily prevent ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens’ from exercising their Second Amendment right to public carry,” Thomas wrote.

“It’s going to have huge impacts because the court changed the entire standard for evaluating Second Amendment claims,” said Jake Charles, the executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. “It’s much broader than I was expecting it to be.”

The decision also rewrites the methodology federal courts use when deciding Second Amendment cases. Since 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, which established that the Second Amendment includes the right to bear arms in the home, lower courts judging contested firearms legislation have considered whether a particular law furthers the government’s interests in things like reducing crime in addition to historical precedent.

Please open the link and read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Guns, Safety

House Appropriations Committee Proposes Budget Cuts and Oversight for Federal Charter Schools Program

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2022 //
8

The subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee in charge of education has paid attention to the scandals and closures that mar the charter industry. It issued the following legislative changes for the federal Charter Schools Program for fiscal 2023:

1. A cut in appropriations from $440 million to $400 million for new charters.

2. Eliminate federal funding to for-profit EMOs (education management organizations).

3. Support the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations to provide accountability and oversight for the charter schools it funds.

4. Endorse ED proposal that new charters seeking federal funding analyze need and community impact.

5. Endorse ED proposal that new charters seeking federal funds demonstrate that they will be integrated, not segregated.

6. Note that 15% of federally funded charters either never opened or closed down before the grant ended, which shows why applicants must demonstrate need for their services.

Charter Schools Grants

The Committee recommends $400,000,000 for Charter School Program (CSP) Grants, which is $40,000,000 below the fiscal year 2022 enacted level and the fiscal year 2022 budget request.

CSP awards grants to SEAs or, if a State’s SEA chooses not to participate, to charter school developers to support the development and initial implementation of public charter schools. State Facilities Incentive Grants and Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities awards help charter schools obtain adequate school facilities. These programs work in tandem to support the development and operation of charter schools.

For-profit Entities.—The Department has long recognized the particular risks posed by for-profit education management organi- zations (EMOs). In response to a 2016 audit, the Department con- ceded to the Inspector General, ‘‘ED is well aware of the challenges and risks posed by CMOs and, in particular, EMOs, that enter into contracts to manage the day-to-day operations of charter schools that receive Federal funds. We recognize that the proliferation of charter schools with these relationships has introduced potential risks with respect to conflicts of interest, related-party trans-actions, and fiscal accountability, particularly in regard to the use of federal funds.’’ Since that initial acknowledgement by the Department regarding for-profit EMOs, the Committee has been made aware of concerning instances of criminal fraud, conflicts of interest, and inadequate transparency.

In addition, the Committee is deeply concerned that for-profit charter schools, including those run by for-profit EMOs, deliver concerning outcomes for students. A 2017 report from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes compared student performance at non-profit charters, for-profit charters, and traditional public schools and found that for-profit charters perform worse in reading, and significantly worse in math, than non-profit charters. In addition, the report found that for-profit charters per- form worse in math than traditional public schools.

That is why the Committee is strongly supportive of the Department’s proposal to prohibit Federal CSP funding from supporting for-profit EMOs through its notice published in the Federal Reg- ister on March 14, 2022 (87 Fed. Reg. 14197). The Committee in- cludes bill language codifying the prohibition to establish this precedent for fiscal year 2023 and for future years. Moving for- ward, the Committee urges the Secretary to work with Congress on efforts to fully phase out the concerning for-profit EMO sector. Such efforts could include reasonable transition periods that allow schools run by for-profit EMOs to shift to independent or nonprofit management. In the interim, the Committee is committed to con- tinuing its oversight of the for-profit EMO sector and ensuring fewer taxpayer dollars enrich for-profit EMO shareholders.

Defunct CSP Grantees.—The Committee is deeply concerned by the Department’s analysis that fifteen percent ofthe charter schools receiving CSP funding since 2001 have never opened or closed before their three-year grant period is complete, rep- resenting an unacceptable waste of at least $174,000,000 in tax- payer funds. Accordingly, the Committee is strongly supportive of the Department’s fiscal year 2022 CSP notice (87 Fed. Reg. 14197) that requires applicants to demonstrate local demand for new schools. The Committee rejects the premise that grant failure and school closure is the cost of doing business in CSP and welcomes reforms that will improve its performance.

GAO Mandate from House Report 116–450.—The Committee con- tinues to be supportive of GAO’s work on the mandate included in House Report 116–450 regarding the Department’s oversight over CSP and whether the program is being implemented effectively among grantees and subgrantees. The Committee is particularly in- terested in theissue of CSP-funded schools that eventually closed or received funds but never opened; the relationships between charter schools supported by CSP grants and charter management or- ganizations; and enrollment patterns at these schools, especially for students with disabilities. Inaddition, the Committee is interested in recommendations on potential legislative changes to the program that would reduce the potential for mismanagement and inef- fective operations.

Oversight from the Office of Inspector General.—The Committee continues to support efforts by the Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to examine grantee administration of Replication and Expansion Grants, including charter management organization grantees. The Committee also supports the OIG’s efforts to evalu- ate whether the Department adequately monitored grantees’ per- formance and uses of funds for CSP competitions.

Students with Disabilities and English Learners.—The Com- mittee encourages the Department to continue including in their evaluation of State CSP grants the extent to which State entities are utilizing the seven percent of funding received under the pro- gram to ensure that charter schools receiving CSP grants are equipped to appropriately serve students with disabilities and, by extension, prepared to become high-quality charter schools. In ad- dition, the Committee urges the Department to ensure subgrantees are equipped to meet the needs of English learners. The Committee directs the Department to provide an update on these efforts in the fiscal year 2024 Congressional Budget Justification.

Charter School Effects on School Segregation.—The Committee is concerned by findings from a 2019 Urban Institute report which concluded that growth in charter school enrollment increases the segregation of Black, Latino, and white students. To address this concern, the Committee urges the Department to give priority to applicants thatplan to use CSP funds to operate or manage char- ter schools intentionally designed to be racially and socioeconomically diverse.

The Committee is strongly supportive of proposed requirements in the Department’s fiscal year 2022 CSP notice (87 Fed. Reg. 14197) that grantees show that they will not exacerbate school seg- regation. Accordingly, the Committee urges the Department to ex- amine the merits of diversity reporting that compares demographic data ofgrantees to that of local districts. The Committee directs the Department to share its assessment of CSP diversity reporting, along with any prospective plans for implementation, in the fiscal year 2024 Congressional Budget Justification.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Segregation, U.S. Department of Education

Rolling Stone: Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That the Planet Should Burn

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2022 //
138

The Supreme Court issued a major ruling limiting the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to curb emissions from power plants. This will have a major negative effect on curbing climate change.

Rolling Stone says the Court voted to let the planet burn.

The Trump majority strikes again.

West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency stemmed from the Clean Air Act, an Obama-era law that mandated certain emissions regulations. West Virginia was one of several fossil-fuel-rich states to sue the EPA over the regulations, leading the Supreme Court to rule that the Clean Power Plan (the part of the Clean Air Act that called for emissions regulations) must be suspended until the courts could upheld its legality. The Trump administration issued its own industry-friendly plan that may have even increased emissions, but it never went into effect, either. The courts struck the Affordable Clean Energy plan down just as the former president was leaving office….

It’s now up to the Biden administration to propose a replacement. It will be severely limited in its ability to do so thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday.

Elena Kagan authored the dissenting opinion. “Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” the liberal justice wrote. “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

On the same subject: a roundup of articles about this horrible decision by David Pell of Next Draft

June 30th – The Day’s Most Fascinating News — https://wp.me/pbRvtl-7dF:

This Supreme Court wants a more religious America and after the past week of decisions, a lot more of us are praying. The latest 6-3 decision that may send even ardent atheists into the arms of the lord is one that limits “how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.” Most of the headlines I’m seeing frame this in typically narrow political terms like WaPo’s, Justices limit EPA power to combat climate change, a blow to Biden’s agenda. Hah. If only the damage were limited to one president’s agenda. Rolling Stone with the more accurate headline: Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That the Planet Should Burn. Justice Elana Kagan with the dissent. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints it- self—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision- maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening. Respectfully, I dissent.”

+ “Credit where due: the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling in West Virginia v. E.P.A. is the culmination of a five-decade effort to make sure that the federal government won’t threaten the business status quo. Lewis Powell’s famous memo, written in 1971, before he joined the Supreme Court—between the enactment of a strong Clean Air Act and a strong Clean Water Act, each with huge popular support—called on ‘businessmen’ to stand up to the tide of voices “from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians” calling for progressive change.” Bill McKibben in The New Yorker: The Supreme Court Tries to Overrule the Climate. “In essence, the ruling begins to strip away the power of agencies such as the E.P.A. to enforce policy: instead of allowing federal agencies to enforce, say, the Clean Air Act to clean the air, in this new dispensation, Congress would have to pass regulations that are much more explicit, as each new pollutant came to the fore … But, of course, the Court has also insured that ‘getting a clear statement from Congress’ to address our deepest problems is essentially impossible.”

+ NYT: The case is a crucial moment in the G.O.P. drive to tilt courts against climate action. (Um… congrats?) 

+ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “The Supreme Court has gone rogue. We are in a full-blown Constitutional crisis. Congress must act. And we must pressure Congress to act, while it still can.” In the meantime, Earth is down 6-3 in the ninth inning.

+ In another ruling issued today, Clarence Thomas suggested Covid vaccines are derived from the cells of ‘aborted children.’ (They’re not. But oh well…)

Categories Deregulation, Environment, Republicans, Trump

Betrayal! Biden Cuts a Deal with McConnell to Appoint Extremist Antti-Abortion Judge

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2022 //
92

It’s all over the media. Biden made a deal with Mitch McConnell to appoint an anti-abortion judge in Kentucky to a federal judgeship.

According to The Hill, this judge is an extremist.

President Biden plans to nominate a conservative lawyer who has represented anti-abortion causes to a federal judgeship in Kentucky, according to Rep. John Yarmuth’s (D-Ky.) office.

Chad Meredith, the attorney, has previously served as Kentucky’s solicitor general and represented a number of Kentucky’s top GOP officials in cases curbing abortion access and COVID-19 public health measures.

Meredith represented Kentucky’s then-Gov. Matt Bevin (R) in a 2019 legal battle against an abortion clinic, saying at one point that effectively eliminating access to abortion in the state would have a negligible impact on women seeking the procedure.

He also defended a 2017 state law requiring doctors to perform an ultrasound and describe the image to a patient before providing an abortion, according to the Louisville Courier Journal, which first reported the news of his pending nomination…

Meredith, who served as chief deputy general counsel under Bevin, asked a federal appeals court in 2019 to restore a state law requiring abortion clinics to have written transfer agreements with a hospital and ambulance service in case of emergency, according to the Associated Press.

The outlet reported that the law had been struck down by a federal judge who believed it would effectively eliminate the right to abortion in the state. That argument was echoed by the abortion clinic’s attorney opposing Meredith in the appeal.

Bevin said at the time that if the law “results in no abortion clinics, fantastic,” according to the Associated Press.

Meredith said if the state’s last abortion clinic shut down, the impact would be “essentially none” for women, since they would still be within 150 miles of an out-of-state clinic due to Kentucky’s geography.

Kentucky Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, said it was “very impressed” with Meredith’s work on behalf of the Bevin administration.

Call your representatives and complain. Make noise.

This is a sellout.

Categories Accountability, Biden
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