Florida: DeSantis’ Attack on Disney May Cost Orange County Taxpayers $1 Billion+

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2022 //
16

The Disney Corporation ended its silence on Governor DeSantis’ decision, with the legislature, to dissolve the special district the state created for the entertainment giant more than 50 years ago. Disney’s lawyers let the Governor know that taxpayers in nearby districts would have to pick up the costs of public services that Disney pays for, but also its bond debt of more than $1 billion.

DeSantis wanted to punish Disney for criticizing his moronic “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But Florida taxpayers will have to pay the price of the governor’s vengeance.

The Miami Herald reports the message from Disney’s lawyers.

As Florida legislators were rushing through passage of a bill to repeal the special district that governs Walt Disney World last week, they failed to notice an obscure provision in state law that says the state could not do what legislators were doing — unless the district’s bond debt was paid off.

Disney, however, noticed and quietly sent a note to its investors to show that it was confident the Legislature’s attempt to dissolve the special taxing district operating the 39-square mile parcel it owned in two counties violated the “pledge” the state made when it enacted the district in 1967, and therefore was not legal.

The result, Disney told its investors, is that it would continue to go about business as usual.

The statement, posted on the website of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board on April 21 by the Reedy Creek Improvement District, is the only public statement Disney has supplied since lawmakers unleashed their fury over the company’s vocal opposition to the “Parental Rights in Education” law, also known as the “don’t say gay” bill.

The statement, first reported by WESH 2, quotes the statute which says, in part, that the “State of Florida pledges…it will not limit or alter the rights of the District…until all such bonds together with interest thereon…are fully met and discharged…”

In essence, the state had a contractual obligation not to interfere with the district until the bond debt is paid off, said Jake Schumer, a municipal attorney in the Maitland law firm of Shepard, Smith, Kohlmyer & Hand, in an article for Bloomberg Tax posted on Tuesday and cited in a Law and Crime article.

The law passed by the Republican Legislature on a largely party-line vote, and signed into law by the Republican governor, either violates the contract clause of the Florida Constitution, or is incomplete, Schumer told the Herald/Times on Tuesday. If the Legislature wants to dismantle the Reedy Creek Improvement District, it has more work to do….

Schumer noted that the bill dissolving Reedy Creek doesn’t say what should happen to its debts, but another state law requires that by default the county assumes a district’s debt along with all of its assets when it is dissolved. “This means that theoretically, Orange and Osceola counties will inherit upward of $1 billion in bond debt,’’ he wrote in the Bloomberg Tax article….

When the state established the Reedy Creek Improvement District in 1967 as an independent taxing district controlled by Walt Disney World, it gave it the power to build roads, sewers and utilities as well as the authority to set its zoning laws, establish its police and fire departments, and regulate its construction. The district can borrow money by issuing bonds to pay for services and that infrastructure and, while Disney must also pay property taxes to Orange and Osceola counties, the state also allows the Reedy Creek Improvement District to tax itself. The current tax rate is three times higher than the maximum amount allowed by cities and counties, Schumer said….

The Orange County tax collector said:

“Orange County gets Reedy Creek’s assets, debts and obligations,’’ he said. But the cost of providing its services is $105 million a year and the cost of its debt services is $58 million a year and so if Reedy Creek is dissolved those assets and liabilities would be absorbed by Orange County’s $600 million budget, he said.

Taxpayers in Orange County won’t be thanking DeSantis for their new tax bills.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article260783972.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Florida, Funding, Justice

Gloria Nolan: Why I Quit the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2022 //
7

Gloria Nolan is a parent of children enrolled in St. Louis public schools. She recently joined the board of the Network for Public Education.

She wrote the following article, which was published in the St.Louis Post-Dispatch.

She begins:

For about three years I worked for an organization that was invested in growing the charter school movement locally and around the country. Thankfully, I moved on, and now I fully support charter school reform, such as the reforms included in the new regulations for the federal charter school program proposed by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. Here is why.

I fully began to realize what I was a part of during lunch when I had a chance to talk to the chief executive of The Opportunity Trust, Eric Scroggins. I rattled off a list of ideas I had for turning the public schools in the St. Louis district around.

That wouldn’t work, he responded. He said the objective was to burn the system down.

For Opportunity Trust and so-called reform movements like it, the key to school improvement is to replace public schools with charter schools, or public schools that act like charter schools. That is when I lost all faith in what charter proponents were selling.

And where do these charter schools go to get start-up and expansion funds? The federal Charter School Program…

The same special interest groups that promote organizations like The Opportunity Trust are fighting the very reasonable rules that [Secretary Miguel] Cardona has proposed to help clean up the mess. With a campaign of misinformation, the charter lobby led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools promotes the extreme right’s support for stopping the proposed regulations.

As a Black woman, I find it hard to believe any news outlet that promotes fearmongering about critical race theory and features an op-ed that criticizes the regulations because their frequent use of the words “diversity” and “racial” has the best interests of my children at heart…

The one regulation that the charter lobby objects to the most is the requirement to do an impact analysis to see if the school is needed or wanted by the community. Given that more than 40% of charter schools close within their first 10 years, an impact sounds like common sense to me. This particular regulation is also in line with the implementation of the City-Wide Planning Committee and its call for a moratorium on the opening of new schools. The guidelines here locally were met with strong opposition from The Opportunity Trust and its supporters.

I have been on the inside of the reform/charter school movement. Its ultimate objective is to destroy our public school system by replacing it with a system of charter and voucher schools. These new regulations will not stop that. I wish they were stronger. But at the very least they could help ensure that our federal tax dollars will be given to charter schools that have better intentions than many of the schools that are receiving Charter School Program grants now.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Missouri, Parents, St. Louis

Chris Rufo Threatens to Sue Randi Weingarten

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
90

Randi Weingarten quoted Chris Rufo’s speech at Hillsdale College, where he called for school choice to break free of public schools, one of our democratically governed local institutions.

He threatened to sue her.

His first tweet: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1518631508277297153

delete your false tweets and issue an official retraction—or I will unleash hell on you.

He’s complaining about tweets from Randi in this thread.

Here’s the entire speech from Rufo at Hillsdale – Video here

“For example, school choice– to get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust. Because in order for people to take significant action, they have to feel like they have something at stake.”

—- separately he lays out how to do this –

“And so what we’re seeing, I think, as the first step is a narrative and symbolic war against companies like Disney, for one example.

You have to be very aggressive. You have to fight on terms that you define. You have to create your own frame, your own language, and you have to be ruthless and brutal”

Randi has three things going for her:

1. She quoted Rufo’s words

2. The resources of the AFT.

3. The First Amendment

Go for it, Chris! No empty threats. Show your cards. Get woke.

Categories Freedom of Speech, School Choice

NPE Letter about Regulating Federal Charter Funds Signed by 101 Organizations

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
6

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

The letter was signed by 96 organizations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recommendations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L

Proposed Selection Criterion for CMO Grants

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

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

Recommendations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • newCAP (New Community Action Pac)
  • North Carolina Justice Center
  • Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education
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  • Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee
  • Opt Out Georgia
  • Oregon BATs
  • Oregon Save Our Schools
  • Our Children/Our Schools
  • Parents Educating Parents Inc
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  • Progressive Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party
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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, For-Profit

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

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Texas, Vouchers

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

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
36

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Every Philanthropist Were like Mackenzie Scott

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2022 //
15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that was just the beginning of her donations.

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

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

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

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Philanthropy

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

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2022 //
15

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

He writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ultican concludes:

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

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

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

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

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

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, Is Funding Rightwing Republicans

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2022 //
18

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

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

Steve Hinnefeld writes in his Indiana blog:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shameful.

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

Grumpy Old Teacher: Censoring Florida’s Math Textbooks

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2022 //
53

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

He begins:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories Censorship, Florida, Racism
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