Three major religious events converge this weekend: Easter, Passover, and Ramadan.
To readers who celebrate these holy days, I send good wishes.
To those who are non-religious, I also send good wishes.
To everyone, I send my personal hope that we can share a world without war, a world of kindness, a world of plenty, a world in which we can share the bounty of a healthy earth, and a world in which everyone is respected.
Above all, in this moment, I hope that Mr. V. Putin stops his war against Ukraine. Please end the killing and destruction.
Let us together seek Peace, Joy, Freedom, Democracy, and Justice. Not just for ourselves but for everyone.
As Russia appears poised to capture Mariupol more than six weeks into the invasion, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region said Friday that while Ukrainian troops remain in control of the strategic port city, Mariupol “has been wiped off the face of the earth” by Russian forces.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor, told CNN that troops are still “courageously defending Mariupol” against the Russian forces that have bombarded the city on the Sea of Azov, leaving it in ruins.
“The enemy cannot seize Mariupol. The enemy may seize the land that Mariupol used to stand on, but the city of Mariupol is no more,” Kyrylenko said. “The city of Mariupol has been wiped off the face of the earth by the Russian Federation, by those who will never be able to restore it.”
You might think that, with teacher shortages in many districts, this would be a golden moment for Teach for America. But it is not. Gary Rubinstein, one of the original members of TFA in the early 1990s and now a career teacher in New York City, surveys the current woes of Teach for America in this post. He identifies three reasons for the downturn in TFA’s fortunes.
He begins:
Teach For America has an operating budget of $300 million. Their main responsibility is to recruit and prepare corps members to teach for a minimum of two years in low-income communities. They started in 1990 with 500 corps members. In 1991 they grew to 750 corps members. By 2005 they had 2000 corps members and they peaked in 2012 with 6000. Now, according to Chalkbeat, They are at a 17 year low, back to 2000 recruits.
Teach For America blames their recruitment woes on the pandemic, but I have been following the ups and down of this organization for over 30 years, starting when I was a corps member myself in 1991, and I have a different theory.
There are three reasons why TFA’s popularity is fading, and all three of these reasons stem from an overarching problem — arrogance. In my analysis, those three reasons are: Failure to properly train corps members, ineffective leadership, and a close alliance with a toxic and oversimplified type of education reform based on teacher bashing.
Reason #1 is: Failure to properly train corps members
At least 15 states are considering bills in the 2021-22 legislative session that would affect ways of discussing, addressing, or interacting with LGBTQ youth in schools, according to an Education Week analysis.
The bills—nearly 30 of them in all—variously take aim at school clubs for LGBTQ students, would put limitations on teachers’ and students’ use of gender pronouns, and would restrict or proscribe curriculum, instruction, and library books that feature LGBTQ themes, an Education Week analysis finds. They are only a subset of what LGBTQ-rights organizations have described as a sudden explosion of legislation aimed at LGBTQ people in 2021 and 2022.
Education Week’s analysis shows that, while few of the proposals have passed as legislative sessions come to a close, they often go far beyond Florida’s much-discussed recent legislation, which forbids certain topics in grades K-3.
The bills generally echo broader fears that educators are indoctrinating students in liberal ideas or about social justice. That discourse has fueled legislation aiming to curb how racism and race are discussed in classroom settings. In fact, Education Week found that many of the LGBTQ provisions are located in broader legislative packages that address those topics, or are otherwise styled as a “parent bill of rights.”
Quite a few of the laws take aim at transgender students in particular—a newer theme that has gathered steam in recent legislative cycles. In 2017, many states considered proposals to require trans students to use bathrooms and changing facilities that matched the sex on their birth certificates. In 2021 and 2022, lawmakers have considered restricting which sports teams trans women can play on.
The latest crop of proposals, say those who have studied them, reflects both old and new anxieties.
“Because of all the Zoom schooling, a lot of parents have had a peak into the classroom, and those that didn’t have read or seen reports that in some classrooms some very unorthodox, very liberal, LGBTQ+-type and other controversial position statements and lessons are being taught,” said Arizona Rep. John Kavanagh, who sponsored a bill in that state that would require parents to sign off on students’ decision to join an LGBTQ club at school. “I’m not saying it’s pervasive throughout the school system, but I think a lot of parents want to be assured it’s not something their students are being exposed to, if it’s controversial to the foundational beliefs of the parents.”
But in another sense, the fear driving these is older, said Chris Sanders, the executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, which advocates for LGBTQ people in that state. He pointed to the plethora of bills that address mental health screening, social-emotional survey tools, and sex education.
“One of the old accusations against our communities, and I think this fits into this, is that mental health screenings are this tool to be used to find out who might be gay, and somehow these tools might be used to help solidify people into gender identities or sexual orientations that aren’t cisgender,” he said. “It’s the old accusation of recruiting.”
Education Week has grouped legislation into several categories.
Note: We have not included bills that would outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender people, except those that specifically implicate school personnel. We have also not included bills prohibiting trans athletes from participating on school sports teams that match their gender identity; such legislation has now been passed in 12 states and introduced in many others. We have included only curriculum-related proposals that specifically mention LGBTQ students, though other, broader proposals could also lead to censorship of books and materials with LGBTQ themes.
A state with one of the lowest investments in public education in the country now has a record budget surplus. This, of course, means Tennessee could make great strides in shoring up an education budget that can best be described as severely lacking without raising taxes one dime. In fact, investing in schools with new state money would also have the added benefit of keeping local property taxes low. It’s a policymaker’s dream.
That’s why Gov. Bill Lee has announced his definitive TISA plan – Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement.
Apparently, a key element of that plan was just announced today:
While we’re on the subject, let’s examine the reality of Lee’s TISA school funding plan:
Sure, that really has nothing to do with student achievement or funding schools or anything at all related to education. It does, however, continue a trend of placing just about everything else above public schools when it comes to Lee’s priorities.
First, it does nothing to shore up the shortage of teachers needed to adequately support students now. That is, according to both TACIR and the Comptroller, Tennessee districts hire MORE teachers (11,000 more, to be exact) than the current formula funds. Guess what? TISA does nothing to change that. There is no indication that the weights will mean more teachers hired and supported by state funding.
Next, TISA does nothing to boost overall teacher pay. Sure, TISA “allows” lawmakers to earmark certain funds to give raises to “existing” teachers, but that doesn’t mean they will. Nor does it mean those raises will be significant. This year’s $125 million set aside for teacher compensation will mean what is effectively a 2-3% raise for most teachers. Based on current inflation rates and rising insurance premiums, this essentially amounts to a pay cut.
While the plan doesn’t address the shortage of teachers or teacher compensation or local costs for hiring/retaining teachers, it does raise local property taxes.
Open the link and read how Governor Lee will ingeniously raise property taxes, build a shiny new domed football stadium, and shortchange the school children of Tennessee. All while sitting on a huge surplus.
Stephanie Saul is a crack investigative reporter at the New York Times. In this story, she took a close look at Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s request to ultra conservative Hillsdale College to open 50 charter schools in Tennessee.
She begins:
With only 1,500 students on a small-town campus in southern Michigan, Hillsdale College is far from the power corridors of government and top-ranked universities.
But it has outsize influence in the conservative world, with strong ties to the Washington elite. Republican leaders frequently visit, and Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the 2016 commencement address, calling Hillsdale a “shining city on a hill” for its devotion to “liberty as an antecedent of government, not a benefit from government.”
Now the college is making new efforts to reach beyond its campus, this time with an even younger audience. The college is fighting what it calls “progressive” and “leftist academics” by expanding its footprint in the charter school world, pushing the boundaries on the use of taxpayer money for politically tinged education.
Hillsdale has ambitious plans to add to its network of classical public charter schools, which focus on “the centrality of the Western tradition.” And Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee recently invited the college to start 50 schools using public funds, including $32 million set aside for charter facilities. Hillsdale’s network currently includes 24 schools in 13 states.
Mr. Lee, a Republican, sees his new charter school expansion as part of an effort to develop what he called “informed patriotism” in Tennessee students.
“For decades, Hillsdale College has been the standard-bearer in quality curriculum and in the responsibility of preserving American liberty,” Mr. Lee told lawmakers recently. “I believe their efforts are a good fit for Tennessee.”
Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, have been more commonly promoted as alternatives to low-performing schools in urban centers. In Tennessee, they have been clustered in the state’s four biggest cities, where like other charters, they have been criticized for siphoning money and students out of more traditional public schools.
Mr. Lee’s plan envisions an expansion into suburban and rural areas where, like many Hillsdale charter schools, they would most likely enroll children who are whiter and more affluent than the average charter school pupil.
In that way, the Hillsdale schools could be something of a publicly funded off-ramp for conservative parents who think their local schools misinterpret history and push a socially progressive agenda on issues from race and diversity to sexuality and gender.
The college has also developed the “1776 Curriculum,” which sets out to portray America as “an exceptionally good country.” During a time when education has become inflamed by divisive cultural debates, Hillsdale has been criticized for its glossy spin on American history as well as its ideological tilt on topics like affirmative action. Educators and historians have also raised questions about other instruction at Hillsdale’s charter schools, citing their negative take on the New Deal and the Great Society and cursory presentation of global warming.
In that way, the Hillsdale schools could be something of a publicly funded off-ramp for conservative parents who think their local schools misinterpret history and push a socially progressive agenda on issues from race and diversity to sexuality and gender.
“I’ve been following charter schools over the last 25 years, and I’ve never seen a governor attempting to use charters in such an overtly political way,” said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “You’ve had governors who’ve encouraged the growth of charters to provide more high-quality options for parents, but it’s highly unusual to see a governor deploy the charter mechanism for admittedly political purposes.”
The article goes on at length to describe the Hillsdale curriculum, which is politically conservative , and the demographics of its charter schools, which are disproportionately white.
She adds:
The students [at Atlanta Classical Academy] are selected through a citywide lottery, but the school’s location in affluent Buckhead may deter some applicants. In a city where 73 percent of public school students are Black and 17 percent white, Atlanta Classical Academy is the mirror image: 17 percent Black and 71 percent white, according to a 2020 state report.
Overall, Hillsdale’s charter school racial demographics are close to that of the Atlanta Classical students. That is a departure from charter schools nationally, which are about 30 percent white.
“They’re catering to white families and affluent families,” said Charisse Gulosino, an associate professor of leadership and policy studies at the University of Memphis, whose research has found that students in suburban charter schools do not outperform their public school counterparts.
Not all of Hillsdale’s charter school collaborations have been successful. Hillsdale recently announced it is ending ties with Tallahassee Classical School in Florida.
The school, approved by the state despite local opposition, set out to serve a diverse student body. But two teachers interviewed by The Times said they suspected that the school was trying to jettison low-performing students, a tactic that charter schools have been accused of as a way to increase test scores.
Try to find the full story. It shows how unregulated charter schools can be turned into white flight academies teaching a Trumpian version of history and science.
Watch this short video and learn who is promoting and funding the attacks on “critical race theory.”
Very few of its critics can define CRT. Most seem to think it means teaching about racism today. They prefer to believe that racism ended with slavery. They are wrong.
Numerous states have passed laws banning the teaching of critical race theory, even though they can’t define what it is.
It’s meant to squelch all teaching about racism, past and present.
P.S.: the original post had some grammatical errors. I apologize. I wrote it on my cell phone while traveling in an Amtrak train. Forgive my poor editing.
The Network for Public Education has just released a new report that ranks the states by their commitment to their public schools and their refusal to pass laws enabling privatization of public money.
Where does your state rank?
A NEW REPORT EXPOSES THE WEAK PROTECTIONS FOR TAXPAYERS AND WEAK PROTECTIONS FOR CHILDREN IN STATE CHARTER AND VOUCHER LAWS
America’s public schools, students, and families are under a near-constant attack from political special interests looking to privatize and profit at the expense of our children. The Network for Public Education (NPE) has released its findings in its latest report “Public Schooling in America: Measuring Each States Commitment to Democratically Governed Schools.”
Researchers examined laws and regulations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to measure how well policymakers protect public funds from exploitative privatization through low-quality virtual and brick-and-mortar charter schools, environments without fully-vetted staff, and profit-centered systems. Most troubling were findings that expose how state laws allow charter and voucher schools to leave students behind, discriminating against the most vulnerable.
Diving into the world of school privatization led the report’s authors to some dark conclusions about the future of schooling in America. Reflecting on the school privatization movement, the report notes:
“It has achieved the full-throated support of the right-wing, which now controls many state legislatures. Conserving public schools and local control is no longer part of a conservative platform: destroying locally controlled public schools via privatized choice is.”
Some of the findings might surprise readers, as states like California lead the nation in charter school fraud.
“The reality is these voucher programs and charter school expansions being promoted in state capitols across the country are almost custom-designed to incentivize, legalize, and reward fraud, often coupled with minimal repercussions for misspending public funding meant for our students,” said Carol Burris, executive director of NPE.
The report notes that “the first step in stopping the privatization movement is to understand it.” To help the public understand the scope of the issue, NPE graded each state based on their willingness to turn public dollars over to privatized systems as well as the robustness of their protections against discrimination, fraud, student endangerment, corruption, transparency, and accountability.
At the top of the list are the schools where a commitment to conserving public schools and local control remains strong. Those states receiving an “A+” grade include Nebraska and North Dakota, where there are no voucher or charter school laws.
The details of what they found may be alarming to those working to hold states accountable to democratically governed schools. For example:
50% of states with voucher programs don’t require any background checks for voucher school staff in at least one voucher program
33 (73%) states don’t require charter students to be taught by certified teachers, or allow so many exceptions that any existing regulations are rendered meaningless
37 states allow entirely online charter schools that have been shown to be years behind public schools in academic progress
5 states have for-profit organizations running 30% or more of charter schools.
At the same time, the report is a celebration of those states like Nebraska and North Dakota that despite strong lobbying efforts continue to defend their public schools. Commenting on the highest-scoring states, NPE President Diane Ravitch said, “NPE salutes the states that have protected and cherished their public schools while fending off the siren call of privatization. They can and should build strong public schools that are open to the public and owned by the public.”
To view the full list of grades for each state and see how yours stands on protecting students and communities from the exploitation of privatization, view the report in its entirety here.
The Network for Public Education (NPE) was founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. Its mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students. We share information and research on vital issues that concern the future of public education. For more information, please visit: networkforpubliceducation.org
The National Education Policy Center, headed by scholar Kevin Welner, wonders why the charter lobby has been so intransigent in fighting the reasonable regulations proposed by the Biden administration. The lobbyists have falsely characterized the regulations as an attempt to “destroy” or “eliminate” charter schools, but the regulations would apply only to new charters that seek federal funding. Most charters have been funded by foundations and billionaires, not the federal government. The proposed regulations would improve the new charters.
NEPC writes:
Why is the Charter Lobby So Upset About Biden’s Proposed Regulations?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been observing the conspicuous hand-wringing among prominent charter school advocates. They’re expressing outrage that the Biden Administration is trying to rein in some past abuses and problems within the charter sector. This aggrieved reaction might make sense if the regulations were designed to harm the sector, but the proposals are in fact quite modest and will even help charters thrive in the future.
Notwithstanding these concerns, the Administration’s budget request keeps CSP funding at its historic high of $440 million. This means that the same level of federal taxpayer dollars will continue to promote the expansion of charter schooling, which is already dominant in many metropolitan areas.
But the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations do attempt to address some of these concerns, even while fully funding the program. One key proposal, for example, attempts to fulfill a Biden campaign promise to crack down on CSP funding for charters being operated by for-profit corporations.
The proposed regulations also provide additional points for applications that feature “community school” elements and for those that provide evidence of cooperation or collaborations with the local school district(s).
I
Notwithstanding some false claims to the contrary, these are all priorities—not requirements. We can anticipate that plenty of charter schools without these elements will still get CSP funding.
The above-mentioned attempt to keep CSP money away from for-profit EMOs has raised some hackles among charter school advocates, but the pushback has been relatively muted. Perhaps the advocates are feeling sanguine in trusting the ingenuity of attorneys to find loopholes and work-arounds. One more layer of shell companies or sister corporations or real estate schemes may do the trick. Or perhaps charter advocates know that these for-profits are awful poster children for their cause, so an overt public campaign might be counterproductive.
I
This is nonsense. Yes, the Community Impact statement is required, but even if the statement shows zero benefits of the proposed school to the community, the consequence is merely a loss of potential points in the scoring of the application. The provisions being attacked by the charter advocates are priorities, not requirements. They would change how a given proposal is scored and thus prioritized or ranked among different applications for CSP funding. All other things being equal, a proposal that shows how a charter school will broadly serve—and not harm—a local community will be scored higher than one that cannot make that showing. So our federal tax dollars would be more likely to support the opening of schools that are beneficial to local communities.
Yet the same $440 million would still be disbursed. The same number of new charter schools would presumably still be opened. That’s (one would assume) what the charter lobby most cares about. For the rest of us, there’s good news as well; if the Community Impact process works, the charter schools that do open will be more consistent with the long-time rhetoric of charter school advocates about how charters are a beneficial part of the overall public school system.
So why the objections? What’s the real reason the charter lobby is upset about President Biden’s proposed regulations?
My hunch is that it’s a matter of principle—the principle that they should never give an inch.
For decades, charter schools have occupied a political sweet spot, enjoying the affections of politicians from both major parties. In that position, charter advocates were fully appeased. Compromise was not needed, so it was rebuffed. Like pampered royalty who never learn to listen and empathize, the charter lobby used its political capital to shut down discussions about addressing the sorts of ongoing problems listed earlier.
Over the years, little has changed—except perhaps the effectiveness of these tactics that resist any reform of the status quo for charter policy. For many outside the charter bubble, the sense of entitlement has grown old.
That entitlement was on full display last week. The charter school lobby organized a twitter campaign against the proposed regulations. It choose to use the hashtag #BackOff. If we had a “No Whining” jar, we could have funded next year’s CSP. The advocates’ tweets repeatedly asserted that the “overregulation” would “make it nearly impossible to open new charter schools.” This was accompanied by a newspaper commentary alleging that the proposed regulations were written by “Bureaucratic Gremlins” who had “burrowed” into the federal bureaucracy—rather than just a follow-through on candidate Biden’s campaign promises.
On Fox News, a school choice advocate contended that, through the regulations, the Biden Administration was “waging war on charter schools” in order to protect “unionized government schools.” Meanwhile, two editorial boards that have long pushed for charter school growth—The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post—continued to misrepresent the regulation’s proposed priorities as requirements, labeling the regulations as “charter school sabotage” (the WSJ) and “a sneak attack on charter schools” (the Post).
The charter lobby’s never-give-an-inch strategy has long been successful in forestalling policies that might mitigate existing problems. But assuming the strategy ever was wise, it no longer is. Potential allies have become frustrated enemies. A once diverse coalition has withered away to expose a core group that appears to be the same anti-public-education and privatizing interests that have long pushed school vouchers.
This obstinacy, even when successful in its immediate aims, is counterproductive. The charter lobby is wrong to see thoughtful regulations as existential threats—or even as anything but beneficial. Reasonable public policy concerns about access, stratification and fiscal impact on students in other schools should never have been minimized or dismissed. The charter lobby should have been in the forefront in efforts to rein in fraud and abuse.
The charter sector still includes many schools that we can and should celebrate. The NEPC’s own Schools of Opportunity program has recognized severalcharterschools that exemplify how high schools can close opportunity gaps. For the charter approach to have a bright future, these are the sort of schools the CSP should prioritize—and the proposed regulations are a step in that direction.
For now, unfortunately, the charter sector as a whole continues to be under-regulated and often harmful. The Biden Administration’s proposals can help change this. They can help charter schools become a beneficial part of public school systems—a role that can be broadly embraced.
I personally decided to submit a “formal” comment. The process is easy—just fill out the quick form and include your comment. The comment window is currently scheduled to close next Monday, April 18th. NEPC Resources on Charter Schools ->
This newsletter is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org
The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu
Copyright 2022 National Education Policy Center. All rights reserved.
The National Education Policy Center School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309
Diane Ravitch's blog 