Billy Townsend: Voucher Grifters, Take Mary McLeod Bethune’s Good Name Out of Your Mouths

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2021 //
19

Billy Townsend is outraged that the Florida’s voucher industry has the nerve to name its new super voucher program after one of the nation’s (and Florida’s) greatest civil rights leaders.

He writes that Mary McLeod Bethune:

…would look at Florida’s corrupt, failed, and yet lavishly-funded low income school voucher programs with disgust.

She would marvel and protest the squandered voucher billions in corporate tax shelter money and direct tax money. She would object to Doug Tuthill and Step Up for Students getting rich through massive commissions, while scamming millions of kids and building no meaningful private capacity to provide quality education to low income children — or anyone else. She would ask: how does anyone whose heavily segregated, low income voucher programs have two- and three-year drop out rates of 60 and 75 percent have a job?

Mary McLeod Bethune would look with horror at the voucher betrayal of the descendants of her first students. She would not want thousands of black Florida children chased by useless public school testing into brutally substandard, unaccredited, unsupervised, segregated “schools,” which is what Florida’s voucher programs provide. She would not want her name associated with such failure, grift, and incompetence….

Astonishingly, Step Up for Students and various Florida grifters, the people who created and maintain this colossal racist voucher grift, have made it much worse in the last year. They are now desperately trying to launder their failure and incompetence by putting Mary McLeod Bethune’s name on Florida’s disastrous new super voucher grift pot of money.

They’re trying to Bethune-wash.

But I assure you, in 2021 America, Mary McLeod Bethune would not want her good name attached to “Preparing the Way Academy” in Lakeland …

Or “A’Kelynn’s Angels Christian Academy” in Winter Haven, where the state shut down a Pre-K of the same name because it was substandard, but the voucher grift rolls on unabated….

Step Up for Students is the unelected state School Board for vouchers. But it performs no oversight — at all. It just hands out checks and pockets commission.

Last legislative session, Step Up worked closely with Florida legislators like Kelli Stargel and Gov. Ron DeSantis to destroy the well-established Gardiner and McKay voucher programs for children with disabilities. While those programs — particularly Gardiner — had some grifty problems, they also functioned a million times better than the atrocity of unsupervised grift that is Florida’s low income voucher program.

Florida’s GOP-dominated government, in its corrupt wisdom, took these functioning programs, and threw them together with low income vouchers with one giant super-voucher pot of grift.

The effect of this is to funnel tax money and tax-sheltered corporate donations away from children with disabilities and to the operators of segregated scam schools like Preparing the Way, A’kelynn’s Angels, and Endtimes Christian School of Excellence.

On top of that, Step Up has thoroughly botched implementation of the new super-voucher grift pot. Parents of kids with disabilities, who were told they would still get Gardiner and McKay-like vouchers for services, are finding Step Up is too incompetent to deliver…

William Mattox and Doug Tuthill: Critical Race Theorists

Tuthill and company want to name the super voucher pot of grift after Florida’s greatest educator and racial freedom activist. They want to use her honored memory as a shield.

Mired in a systemic meltdown entirely of their own making, reflecting their own greed and incompetence, Tuthill and Step Up are doing what they always do when they get in trouble. They’re retreating to their long-standing, hard core version of “Critical Race Theory.” It goes like this:

If you’re a parent — of any kind — who likes quality public schools or quality state-funded services for disabilities — and you don’t want resources diverted from those services so grifters can scam families of color at scale, you’re the real racist.

This CRT has worked many times for Tuthill before. It’s been the refrain of the entire Jeb Bush era. The shameless appropriation of Mary McLeod Bethune is just the latest incarnation…

Categories Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Vouchers

NH: “Moms for Liberty” Offer Cash for Catching a Teacher Teaching “Divisive Concepts”

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2021 //
118

Yes, you read that right. The astroturf Koch-funded “Moms for Liberty” is offering a $500 reward to anyone who catches a teacher teaching “divisive concepts,” which is against state law. What is a divisive concept? Maybe teaching about the First Amendment is one. Teaching about the horrors of war is another. Teaching about the effects of climate change, for sure. Teaching that vaccines save lives is another so don’t talk about polio or other diseases, certainly not coronavirus.

Randi Weingarten spoke out:

For Immediate Release
Nov. 18, 2021

Contact:
Janet Bass
                            jbass@aft.org
                            301-502-5222


Statement by AFT President Randi Weingarten on
Bounties on Heads of NH Teachers

WASHINGTON—Statement by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on a $500 bounty offered by Moms for Liberty to someone who alleges a New Hampshire teacher is teaching so-called divisive concepts and breaking the New Hampshire law called Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education:

“Putting bounties on the heads of New Hampshire teachers, much like the controversial vigilante bounties envisioned by Texas law to thwart the legal right to reproductive choice, is offensive and chilling in any context. The New Hampshire bounty effort is a result of a state law that bans something that doesn’t happen in New Hampshire or anywhere else—teaching that any group is inherently superior or inferior to another. We teach honest history and respect for all. Culture warriors offering bounties for a teacher supposedly violating the law are doing this at a time when we all need to work together. The stakes are high—unjustified accusations against teachers could cost them their teaching licenses. The clear intent is to undermine public education and scare teachers. 
 
“State Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut even set up a webpage to facilitate complaints against teachers. Perhaps Edelblut’s judgment should lead him to a different line of work. We need school leadership that believes in safe and welcoming environments, not one of fear and division. This is distracting from teachers’ focus on helping our kids thrive and excel. Teachers shouldn’t have to worry that history, literature, science or art lessons can be misconstrued and lead to a public flogging or worse. The overwhelming majority of parents support and trust their children’s teachers, value their neighborhood public school as the center of the community and are astounded by this brazen attempt to stifle learning. 

“Parents and teachers are partners in supporting children. Teachers work very hard to help our children through tough times like the pandemic and now to get them back on track. We should do everything we can to support them, not put a price on their head.”

# # #

Categories Academic Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Health, History, Ignorance, New Hampshire, New York, Stupid, Teachers and Teaching

Oklahoma: Gov. Stitt Commutes Death Sentence of Julius Jones

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2021 //
16

You probably have seen the news.

Governor Stitt released the following statement regarding his decision:

“After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’ sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”

Article 6, Section 10 of the Oklahoma Constitution gives the Governor power to grant commutations “upon such conditions and with such restrictions and limitations as the Governor may deem proper.”

Pursuant to that provision, the Governor has ordered that Jones shall not be eligible to apply for or be considered for a commutation, pardon, or parole for the remainder of his life.

Categories Oklahoma

Oklahoma: Is Gov. Stitt Pro-Life or Pro-Death?

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2021 //
10

At 4 pm today, Julius Jones will be executed unless Governor Kevin Stitt commutes his sentence. Jones insists he is innocent. The state parole board voted 3-1 to commute his sentence to life in prison.

Our friend John Thompson, historian and former teacher, was Jones’ teacher. He strongly believes he is innocent.

Whether guilty or innocent, Jones’ faces either death or life in prison.

Governor Stitt will decide whether he is pro-life or pro-death.

Categories Oklahoma

California: Big Districts Dropping Traditional Grading System

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2021 //
61

The Los Angeles Times reports that the public schools of Los Angeles and San Diego are changing the way students are graded. Critics will undoubtedly claim that this is a lowering of standards and a dumbing down of expectations, but the explanation sounds reasonable.

The article began:

A few years ago, high school teacher Joshua Moreno got fed up with his grading system, which had become a points game.

Some students accumulated so many points early on that by the end of the term they knew they didn’t need to do more work and could still get an A. Others — often those who had to work or care for family members after school — would fail to turn in their homework and fall so far behind that they would just stop trying.

“It was literally inequitable,” he said. “As a teacher you get frustrated because what you signed up for was for students to learn. And it just ended up being a conversation about points all the time.”

These days, the Alhambra High School English teacher has done away with points entirely. He no longer gives students homework and gives them multiple opportunities to improve essays and classwork. The goal is to base grades on what students are learning, and remove behavior, deadlines and how much work they do from the equation.

The changes Moreno embraced are part of a growing trend in which educators are moving away from traditional point-driven grading systems, aiming to close large academic gaps among racial, ethnic and economic groups. The trend was accelerated by the pandemic and school closures that caused troubling increases in Ds and Fs across the country and by calls to examine the role of institutionalized racism in schools in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

Los Angeles and San Diego Unified — the state’s two largest school districts, with some 660,000 students combined — have recently directed teachers to base academic grades on whether students have learned what was expected of them during a course — and not penalize them for behavior, work habits and missed deadlines. The policies encourage teachers to give students opportunities to revise essays or retake tests to show that they have met learning goals, rather than enforcing hard deadlines. 

“It’s teaching students that failure is a part of learning. We fall. We get back up. We learn from the feedback that we get,” said Alison Yoshimoto-Towery, L.A. Unified’s chief academic officer.

Traditional grading has often been used to “justify and to provide unequal educational opportunities based on a student’s race or class,” said a letter sent by Yoshimoto-Towery and Pedro A. Garcia, senior executive director of the division of instruction, to principals last month. 

“By continuing to use century-old grading practices, we inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps, rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not,” their letter said, quoting educational grading consultant Joe Feldman….

Categories Accountability, California, Competency Based Education, Education Reform

Garrison Keillor: Our House Is on Fire, Time to Act

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2021 //
11

I subscribe to Garrison Keillor’s blog and find him to be consistently interesting and often entertaining. This column is dead serious. It reminds us that we face a serious crisis that endangers us all. Human activity and negligence endangers our environment, on which we all depend. He says in his title that it’s time to talk. I say it’s time to act.

Garrison Keillor writes:

My generation, the pre-Boomers, now known as the Humors, had it pretty easy, coming of age in the afterglow of World War II, believing in perpetual prosperity and progress, much of which came true, even as rock ’n’ roll provided the pleasure of rebellion without any consequence. Great medical advances came along just as we needed them, and Medicare to pay for them. We are lucky to have been born when we were.

I see the thousands of young protesters in the streets of Glasgow bearing signs such as “I Have To Clean Up My Mess, Why Don’t You Clean Up Yours?” and “The Dinosaurs Thought They Had Time Too” and “Stop Climate Crime” and “If Not Now, When?” at the UN Climate Change Conference, where the United States and China have issued vague promises of eliminating carbon someday but without a timetable. So much for American leadership; I guess we’re waiting for Iceland or Ecuador to show the way.

The young people in the streets are aware that a time of suffering lies ahead. Science is pretty clear about the ecological impact of industrial agriculture and the rapacious destruction of forests and overfishing of the seas and the virtual disappearance of many insect species, but none of this has enough political impact to turn the ship of state. Statistics don’t move people, recognizable images do, such as the plight of a polar bear on an ice floe miles from land. We’re fond of polar bears in zoos, and if we could get a video of this bear drowning in glacial melt, it would move people. Or if Yellowstone blew up and ushered in a year of darkness. That could be the Pearl Harbor that moves our country to action.

Greta Thunberg, the 18-year-old Swedish activist who, in 2018 after Sweden’s fierce hot summer of wildfires and omens of disaster, sat outside the Swedish parliament every day to get her message across. Her message was simple: “Our house is on fire.”

Five words, not one wasted, and you could paint it on any wall and everyone would know what you mean.

Children have great power to shame the rest of us, as every parent knows, and this cause is worth their effort. It’s about the survival of our kind. Everything we love is in the balance, language, art, music, history, the art of story, dance, Eros, baseball, bird-watching, and the effect of apocalypse on the bond market would not be good.

The last Good War was won by boys who rushed to sign up, after seeing newsreels of sunken battleships in Hawaii. My hero Bob Altman was 16 and lied about his age to get into the Army Air Force and pilot a B-17 bomber in the Pacific. The children marching in Glasgow are capable of heroism, but they’ve put their faith in the conscience of politicians, not a good bet. One of the two major American political parties is in denial that global warming exists because it is devoted to an illiterate leader. That party appears likely to take over Congress in 2022 and two years later No. 45 may well become No. 47. If he does, we may have a constitutional convention at which the presidency is made a lifetime term. Meanwhile, we have a Supreme Court with a solid majority of Ayn Rand justices who deny that the state has the right to govern individual behavior. Gun control will be dead, conservation will be an individual responsibility.

I don’t see that bunch leading the country toward clean energy. So we’ll go on enduring wildfires and horrific hurricanes and drought and the melting of the arctic ice cap and nothing will change. We’re living in a tunnel and a train is approaching. Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk can move to the moon but the rest of us are earthlings.

I put my faith in scientific enterprise. Someone will come up with a way to turn plankton into something that looks like and tastes like ground beef. Someone else will figure out how to make linguine from dead leaves. Then there’ll be nuclear airliners.

People don’t like to be lectured and made to feel stupid, Mr. Science. Get busy and invent a car that runs on urine. So much gas is wasted by people driving around looking for a lavatory. This will come as a great relief.

To subscribe to Garrison Keillor and Friends Garrisonkeillor.Substack.com


Categories Environment

Los Angeles: Board Will Hear Presentation from Controversial Advocate

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2021 //
99

On Thursday, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District will hear a presentation by Margaret Roza about innovative ways to cut costs. Roza was for many years a fellow at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, a pro-school choice think tank. Now she is director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, offering advice and analyses about school finance. The Lab has many high-profile funders, including the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

Roza has been critical in her writings of class size reduction and has recommended saving money by cutting teachers’ pensions and benefits (which she called “Frozen Assets” in a 2007 paper of that name).

A decade ago, Leonie Haimson debated Roza on these topics and took issue with her view of saving money.

Roza and her associate Katherine Silberstein will address the Innovations Committee of the LAUSD board on Thursday.

They will warn the board to Beware of adding recurring costs!

Consider one-time expenses:

Stipends(e.g. for tutoring, summer school

Contractors(e.g. nurses, tutors)

One-time hazard pay

One-time summer school

Temporarily added weeks of school

Pay for family efforts

Instead of recurring expenses:

•New hires (e.g. nurses, counselors, VP, teachers, tutors)

•Base pay raises: Across-the-board % raises, COLAs

•Increased benefits

•Permanent calendar changes

•Changes to class sizes

©2021 Edunomics Lab, Georgetown University 

So, Rosa is still promoting the idea that teachers should not get increased benefits or across-the-board raises or cost-of-living expenses. She is still critical of reducing class sizes.

Is any of this innovative? It may mean saving money, but how will it improve teacher professionalism or education?

Download the pdf here.

11-18-21InnovationAgendaMaterialsWithLinksPostDownload

Categories Education Reform

Olivia Little: Unmasking “Moms for Liberty”

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2021 //
19

Olivia Little of MediaMatters for America investigated a rightwing group called “Moms for Liberty” and posted her findings online.

She writes:

Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit claiming to advocate for “parental rights,” appears to be using parents as pawns to advance a far-right agenda.

The group — which has quickly gained substantial media attention, becoming a right-wing sweetheart and mainstream spectacle — has attempted to paint itself as a grassroots entity driven entirely by passionate parents. But in reality, it benefits from right-wing funding and ties to traditional Republican political figures.

As issues related to parents, schools, and so-called “critical race theory” drive local organizing and elections, it is essential that media report on Moms for Liberty and similar groups with the appropriate context.

The Washington Post published a report on Moms for Liberty in October, framing the organization as “channeling a powerful frustration among conservative mothers.” In fact, these well-connected partisans are opportunistically manufacturing outrage and selling it to parents under the guise of empowerment.

The article not only wrongly portrays the group as a grassroots organization and suggests that it’s primarily member-funded, it also leaves out key details about the co-founders and the group’s right-wing affiliations. For example, after interviewing the vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party about his enthusiasm for the group, the Post notes that his wife is “loosely aligned with Moms for Liberty.” In reality, the group’s initial incorporation documents list her as a co-director.

Moms for Liberty has county-specific chapters across the country that target local school board meetings, school board members, administrators, and teachers. The group advocates to strip districts of protective COVID-19 measures and modify classroom curriculum to exclude the teaching of “critical race theory” (CRT) and sex education, all in the name of “parental rights.”

To learn who is funding and promoting this group, open the link. You will see some familiar names.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Fake

Anya Kamenetz: School Board Madness About Masks, Vaccines, and Race

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2021 //
17

Anya Kamenetz of NPR describes the chaos and rage enveloping many school boards as they are besieged by angry protestors. The protestors may represent a small minority of parents but their intimidating presence at school board meetings gives them an outsized voice. It’s actually astonishing that parents would shout and organize protests against public health measures meant to protect their children, family, and community.

The Poway Unified School District, in San Diego County, Calif., was planning a pretty typical school board meeting in September. They were hearing reports from their student representatives and honoring their teachers and other staff members of the year.

Because of the pandemic, the general public has been asked to join and comment via livestream.

That hasn’t stopped protesters from showing up in person.

“In the August meeting, they were pounding on the windows,” said board member Darshana Patel. “So little by little it’s been escalating — they’ve been antsy and escalating their hostility and aggression toward the board.”

In several states and districts around the country, protestors have been disrupting school board meetings. They’re opposed to mask policies. Vaccine mandates. LGBTQ rights. Sex education. Removing police from schools. Teaching about race and American history, or sometimes, anything called “diversity, equity and inclusion” or even “social-emotional learning.”

She wrote about the letter sent by the National School Boards Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking for federal help to protect school boards. She wrote her story before the NSBA withdrew its letter and apologized for sending it, after several red-state associations resigned their membership or threatened to.

She continues:

What happened — what is happening — in Poway is not an isolated incident, but it may take the cake for being “surreal,” as Patel puts it.

At the board’s Sept. 9 meeting, some protesters followed behind a visitor and got inside the building. Patel and her fellow board members decided that the best way to de-escalate the situation was to immediately adjourn the meeting.

What happened next is documented in an elaborately shot and edited video posted to YouTube:

“So we are the people,” says a man in a black baseball cap and black T-shirt. “So we can go ahead and replace the board. Let’s take a vote. Who’s willing to become the president?”

Another man steps up, wearing a T-shirt that says “Let Them Breathe,” with a yellow smiley face on it.

He gives his name as Derek Greco. The protestors vote, “Aye!” to make him the new “school board president.”

Later that night, Greco, who could not be reached for comment, posted a video to Instagram. In it, he’s breathless and sweaty. “The board vacated their seats tonight. So we then brought in a constitutionalist and we held a quorum and we voted in a new board,” he says. “You are looking at the new president of the Poway Unified School District, apparently.”

“Constitutionalism” is a far-right ideology that means, in essence, that people don’t have to recognize any laws or authorities that they don’t like beyond the Constitution itself. The video continues at a local restaurant, where Greco and some of the others who had just declared themselves the new school board explain that they then “voted” to remove Critical Race Theory from the school — though it is not being taught — and to stop requiring masks. Later, Greco and four others filed notarized oaths of office with the San Diego County Clerk.

Tools and tactics for disrupting school boards

The “election” by those protestors on Sept. 9 was in no way legitimate, county officials say, and the properly elected school board continues to run the district.

Melissa Ryan founded the consulting firm CARD Strategies, which tracks right-wing extremism. She says this kind of activity usually begins with real anger — in this case, on the part of parents, at COVID school shutdowns and restrictions like masks. But it’s not entirely grassroots and spontaneous. “The flames are being fanned by national money and resources,” she says. “It’s basically the same groups and funders that were funding the Tea Party and frankly, it’s the same tactics.”

Kamenetz names some of those groups funding the protests:

  • The Manhattan Institute, one of the most established conservative think tanks, published “Woke Schooling: A Toolkit For Concerned Parents” in June.
  • Citizens Renewing America, founded by President Trump’s former budget director Russell Vought, published a 34-page guide for activists also in June, dedicated to “combating critical race theory in your community.” The toolkit states the following: “CRT holds that racism is not just a belief held by individuals; rather, it is a system of oppression that has been built into the very structure of our society.”
  • Parents Defending Education, founded earlier this year, provides resources to activists, pursues litigation, and publishes “incident reports” on districts around the country. President Nicole Neily previously worked at the libertarian Cato Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum, another conservative group that has produced a template letter for activists challenging school mask mandates.
  • Turning Point USA, a group closely allied with Trump through its leader, Charlie Kirk, started School Board Watchlist, a website with the names and photographs of school board members around the country. They say they are “America’s only national grassroots initiative dedicated to protecting our children by exposing radical and false ideologies endorsed by school boards and pushed in the classroom.” School districts are called out for requiring masks and promoting “cultural literacy and sensitivity.”
  • The Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls an extremist hate group, has taken part in school board protests in several states.
  • The 1776 Project is a political action committee backing school board candidates nationwide who oppose antiracist curricula. They raised nearly $300,000 in the quarter ending Sept. 30, according to FEC filings.
  • PragerU is a nonprofit media company founded by the conservative radio host Dennis Prager. Last year they started an online community aimed at parents and teachers that claims 20,000 members. There are videos and books for children promoting a patriotic vision of American history and conservative heroes like Condoleezza Rice, alongside a “Parent Action Guide” for parents who want certain materials removed from classrooms, and a video documentary for parents about “the battle happening right now for the minds of our children.”

Yet another group that promotes anti-masking protests is called “Let Them Breathe,” founded by Sharon McKeeman, a California mother of four. She has raised nearly $200,000 selling smiley-face T-shirts with the logo, ”Let Them Breathe.” Or ”My Body My Choice.” (This T-shirt might also be sold at pro-abortion rallies, but that’s not what McKeeman has in mind.)

Public radio station KPBS wrote about McKeeman here. in addition to fighting masks, she is also fighting mask mandates.

Categories Education Reform

Charles Foster Johnson: Texas Governor Abbott Declares War on Public Schools and Teachers

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2021 //
43

Governor Gregg Abbott wants to win the competition to be the most immoral, dishonest, loathsome, and extremist Governor in the nation.

Pastor Charles Foster Johnson, leader of Pastors for Texas Children, called out Abbott for his latest, most disgusting ploy.

Pastor Johnson writes:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued not one but two letters this month calling for Texas public schools to “ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content.”

The first letter on Nov. 1 to the Texas Association of School Boards stated that “Texas public schools should not provide or promote pornographic or obscene materials to students,” and that “the organization’s members have an obligation to determine the extent to which such materials exist or are used in our schools and to remove any such content.”

Dan Troxel, executive director of the Texas Association of School Boards, responded in a Nov. 3 letter reminding the governor that his organization “has no regulatory authority over school districts and does not set the standards for instructional materials, including library books. Rather, we are a private, nonprofit membership organization focused on supporting school governance and providing cost-effective services to school districts.”

Charles Foster Johnson

Furthermore, Troxel took the opportunity to give the governor a civics lesson, informing him that the responsibility for the review of schoolbooks and materials belongs to the State Board of Education and the Texas Education Association — two organizations over which the governor himself has responsibility and authority. Both organizations are led by individuals appointed by Greg Abbott.

Presumably now embarrassed, but not to be outdone, Abbott then issued a second letter to the two bodies his appointees oversee, instructing them “to immediately develop statewide standards to prevent the presence of pornography and other obscene content in Texas public schools, including in school libraries.”

Instead of apologizing for his error in misidentifying the role of the Texas Association of School Boards, the governordoubled down on his attack on them, saying “Instead of addressing the concerns of parents and shielding Texas children from pornography in public schools, the Texas Association of School Boards has attempted to wash its hands clean of the issue by abdicating any and all responsibility in the matter. Given this negligence, the State of Texas now calls on you to do what the Texas Association of School Boards refuses to do.”

What is going on here? Why, after seven years of gubernatorial tenure, is Greg Abbott now launching a crusade against public school books? If the governor believed our Texas public schools were teaching objectionable material, why didn’t he address the issue years ago? Why is he only now concerned about it?

Here’s why: Greg Abbott knows it is open season on public schools in our current political climate, and he is cynical enough to capitalize on every single misconception of it.

“Greg Abbott knows it is open season on public schools in our current political climate, and he is cynical enough to capitalize on every single misconception of it.”

Abbott faces not one but two opponents in the upcoming primary elections next spring, former State Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas and former U.S. Congressman and state Republican Party chairman Allen West of Garland. Both are rightwing firebrands who constantly question Abbott’s conservative credentials and bona fides. And his own lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, continues to pressure Abbott from the far right.

Nothing like a good old-fashioned book ban to throw some red meat to his right flank.

With the rampant COVID chaos afflicting our nation at this time came opportunity for well-funded forces of confusion to wreak their havoc on our most cherished institutions, including medicine, science and education

In September 2020, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, right, listens to Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, left, during a news conference where they provided an update to Texas’ response to COVID-19. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

This is what spawned the national meltdown over so-called Critical Race Theory alleged to be taught in our public schools. When cooler heads finally prevailed, one could hardly find a K-12 public educator who knew what Critical Race Theory was, much less committed to teach it. But that didn’t prevent national fringe organizations from funding the disinformation campaign against our public schools on the basis of it.

What resulted was trumped up legislation all over the country, including Texas, that was designed to put a chilling effect on any content or curriculum that addressed complex issues of race and our country’s sordid history surrounding it. Abbott and his counterpart, Lt. Gov. Patrick, pushed such a bogus bill in Texas, and it passed.

But with the 2022 election season upon us, and with chaos and confusion on the winning ticket, why let clarity and calm prevail? Having wielded the ruse of reverse racism so effectively, Abbott reached into the demagogue’s favorite bag of tricks again and found — voila! — that old saw of adolescent sexuality as his next contraption of chaos.

“Abbott reached into the demagogue’s favorite bag of tricks again and found — voila! — that old saw of adolescent sexuality as his next contraption of chaos.”

Anyone with a lick of sense knows we have long-established and effective safeguards to prevent inappropriate content in local public schools. With such content readily available on the world wide web, child protection is one of the main responsibilities of our public educators, and they discharge this moral duty with astonishing distinction.

Pastors for Texas Children sees through this stunt. We are not amused.

To imply that our public schools are centers of pornography and our educators purveyors of smut is a devil’s lie. Greg Abbott knows it. And does it anyway.

Here is the real moral crisis: The highest office in our land advancing his political ambition on the backs of dedicated, deeply moral public school teachers, who work hard all day at low pay in the work of love for our children, most of whom are poor. It is beyond cynical. It is morally reprehensible.

The de rigueur political attack on public education is based on lies. Our children suffer from it. We must find the moral courage to stop it now.

Charles Foster Johnson is founder and executive director of Pastors for Children.

Categories Accountability, Character, Fake, Fascism, Ignorance, Lies, Propaganda, Stupid, Teachers, Texas
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