My View: There Are Not “Two Sides” on Ukraine

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2022 //
182

As regular readers know, I have received and posted several comments complaining that I don’t write posts showing “both sides” or “different sides” on Ukraine. They disapprove of my support for Ukraine and my criticism of Putin.

In some cases, the commenters have included links to articles or videos claiming that Putin had no choice but to invade Ukraine because…he felt encircled by NATO, or he needed to protect Russians in Ukraine, or Ukraine is overrun by Nazis, or some policy analyst warned that NATO’s expansion would provoke Putin. Other commenters claim that I should not post anything sympathetic to Ukraine unless I post equally sympathetic commentaries about places where the U.S. brutalized the local population or where other nations are suffering.

Let me explain. This is my blog. It is not CNN, FOX, MSNBC, or a network station. The articles I post are my choice.

My choice is to demand that Putin stop the war that he launched against Ukraine. Stop the killing of Ukrainians and Russians. Stop the targeting of civilians. Stop the bombing of civilian shelters and hospitals and evacuation routes.

I oppose this unprovoked war. Those who excuse and rationalize it are, wittingly or unwittingly, supporting the war. And they are supporting Putin. One comment, which I chose not to publish, claimed that the war was “provoked” by Ukraine. Rubbish. Another said that Ukraine is run by Nazis. Rubbish. Another said the war was created by Russophobes. More rubbish. NATO accepted ex-Soviet satellite nations because they asked to be admitted. NATO didn’t pressure them to apply. They wanted protection from Russia. Ukraine requested membership in NATO but the request was tabled, probably to avoid antagonizing Putin.

The nations of the world should have the right to choose their own government and not to be ruled by a puppet regime. Russia took a sharp turn away from democracy when Boris Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor. He has a long history of killing or imprisoning his critics and competitors. Now he has none, and he engineered passage of a law that keeps him in power until 2036. That’s almost half a century of one man rule. The usual words for such regimes are “dictatorship,” “authoritarian,” “totalitarian.”

For thirty years, the West has encouraged ties with Russia. The goal of the West was to integrate Russia into the global economy and promote healthy relations between Russia and the West. By his invasion of Ukraine, Putin severed the past thirty years of steady efforts to build ties with the West and to turn Russia into a normal nation that does not threaten its neighbors or threaten the world with nuclear war.

I will not post defenses of Putin. If you want to defend his actions, write a letter to the New York Times or the Washington Post. Or follow the tweets of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorne, and the other members of the GOP’s Putin caucus.

One man surrounded the borders of Ukraine with nearly 200,000 troops. One man lied and said he had “no intention” of invading Ukraine. One man ordered the troops and jets and warships to attack Ukraine. One man gave the order to reduce Ukrainian cities to rubble and trap civilians who had no water, no heat, no food.

Putin.

In my view, he is a megalomaniac, an imperialist, a man without a heart or a soul. He is Stalin reborn.

I will no longer post comments defending Putin’s cruel and unprovoked war. I will no longer give space to those who say he was afraid of being “encircled” by NATO. This gives him permission to invade Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, even Poland and Hungary.

I have no obligation to post “both sides.” I don’t post both sides of the campaign to privatize public schools. I don’t post both sides on issues of racism or book banning or other issues that, in my view, are clear cut.

We can debate lots of issues. But I will no longer tolerate defenses of Putin and his war of choice. Please don’t waste your time or mine by posting comments justifying Putin’s war. I will delete them, and you will go into moderation where I can delete them before they appear.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Fascism, History, International, Personal

The Intercept: Russia Is Lying About Bio-Labs in Ukraine, Say Russian Scientists

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2022 //
8

Robert Mackey of The Intercept writes that Russian scientists have debunked Russia’s claim that Ukraine has labs to produce biological weapons.

He writes:

AT CONSIDERABLE RISK to their own safety, 10 Russian biologists, including researchers who remain in Russia, have publicly accused the Russian government of lying about having proof that biological weapons were being developed in Ukrainian labs funded by the United States.

According to the biologists, documents presented to the public last week by Russia’s defense ministry as supposed evidence of covert “bioweapons labs” under Pentagon control in Ukraine actually describe relatively harmless collections of pathogens used for public health research. The comprehensive review of the documents by experts who understand both the science and the Cyrillic alphabet took on new importance on Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin cited the imaginary threat of weapons of mass destruction near Russia’s borders as a justification for the invasion of Ukraine.

Before the recent crackdown on independent media outlets in Russia, these outlandish claims from Russian defense officials — which were amplified on the global stage by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and its U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya — might have been undercut by interviews with Russian biologists who called the underlying evidence for the allegations transparently false. But because dissenting views have been repressed, and independent broadcasters shut down, Russian scientists have been forced to post their findings on social networks that are mainly blocked in Russia.

The first Russian biologist to make his analysis of the evidence widely known was Eugene Lewitin, who holds advanced degrees in biology from Moscow State University and GosNIIgenetika, a biotechnology research institute. The documents from Ukraine, Lewitin wrote in an open letter posted on Facebook and Change.org, do “not imply any development of biological weapons or even the use of particularly dangerous pathogens in the laboratories. The list of destroyed strains published by RIA Novosti and other Russian media outlets contains not a single particularly dangerous strain. The list contains only strains common to microbiological and even more so to epidemiological laboratories.”

More than 800 signatories endorsed Lewitin’s letter when it was transformed into a petition from Russian biologists urging Russian journalists to stop repeating the government’s “false, absolutely groundless and hatred-inciting statements about allegedly found evidence of the development of biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories.”

Please read the rest of the article by opening the link.

Categories Accountability, Lies

Scholars of Genocide and the Holocaust: Don’t Believe Lies and Propaganda

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2022 //
16

IZABELLA TABAROVSKY AND EUGENE FINKEL

Statement on Ukraine by scholars of genocide, Nazism and WWII

At this fateful moment we stand united with free, independent and democratic Ukraine and strongly reject the Russian government’s misuse of history to justify its own violence.

(February 28, 2022 / Jewish Journal) As we write this, the horror of war is unfolding in Ukraine. The last time Kyiv was under heavy artillery fire and saw tanks in its streets was during World War II. If anyone should know it, it’s Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is obsessed with the history of that war.

Russian propaganda has painted the Ukrainian state as Nazi and fascist ever since Russian special forces first entered Ukraine in 2014, annexing the Crimea and fomenting the conflict in the Donbas, which has smoldered for eight long years.

It was propaganda in 2014. It remains propaganda today.

This is why we came together: to protest the use of this false and destructive narrative. Among those who have signed the statement below are some of the most accomplished and celebrated scholars of World War II, Nazism, genocide and the Holocaust. If you are a scholar of this history, please consider adding your name to the list. If you are a journalist, you now have a list of experts you can turn to in order to help your readers better understand Russia’s war against Ukraine.

And if you are a consumer of the news, please share the message of this letter widely. There is no Nazi government for Moscow to root out in Kyiv. There has been no genocide of the Russian people in Ukraine. And Russian troops are not on a liberation mission. After the bloody 20th century, we should all have built enough discernment to know that war is not peace, slavery is not freedom and ignorance offers strength only to autocratic megalomaniacs who seek to exploit it for their personal agendas.

Statement by scholars of genocide, Nazism and World War II

Since Feb. 24, 2022, the armed forces of the Russian Federation have been engaged in an unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine. The attack is a continuation of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and its heavy involvement in the armed conflict in the Donbas region.

The Russian attack came in the wake of accusations by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, of crimes against humanity and genocide, allegedly committed by the Ukrainian government in the Donbas. Russian propaganda regularly presents the elected leaders of Ukraine as Nazis and fascists oppressing the local ethnic Russian population, which it claims needs to be liberated. President Putin stated that one of the goals of his “special military operation” against Ukraine is the “denazification” of the country.

We are scholars of genocide, the Holocaust and World War II. We spend our careers studying fascism and Nazism, and commemorating their victims. Many of us are actively engaged in combating contemporary heirs to these evil regimes and those who attempt to deny or cast a veil over their crimes.

We strongly reject the Russian government’s cynical abuse of the term genocide, the memory of World War II and the Holocaust, and the equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression. This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it, including Russian and Ukrainian soldiers of the Red Army.

We do not idealize the Ukrainian state and society. Like any other country, it has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups. Ukraine also ought to better confront the darker chapters of its painful and complicated history. Yet none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine. At this fateful moment we stand united with free, independent and democratic Ukraine and strongly reject the Russian government’s misuse of the history of World War II to justify its own violence.

Signatories:

Eugene Finkel, Johns Hopkins University

Izabella Tabarovsky, Washington D.C.

Aliza Luft, University of California-Los Angeles

Teresa Walch, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Jared McBride, University of California-Los Angeles

Elissa Bemporad, Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center

Andrea Ruggeri, University of Oxford

Steven Seegel, University of Texas at Austin

Jeffrey Kopstein, University of California, Irvine

Francine Hirsch, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Anna Hájková, University of Warwick

Omer Bartov, Brown University

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University and POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Christoph Dieckmann, Frankfurt am Main

Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Waitman Wade Beorn, Northumbria University

Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland

Timothy Snyder, Yale University

Jeffrey Veidlinger, University of Michigan

Hana Kubátová, Charles University

Leslie Waters, University of Texas at El Paso

Norman J.W. Goda, University of Florida

Jazmine Conteras, Goucher College

Laura J. Hilton, Muskingum University

Katarzyna Person, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw

Tarik Cyril Amar, Koc University

Sarah Grandke, Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial/denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof Hamburg

Jonathan Leader Maynard, King’s College London

Chad Gibbs, College of Charleston

Janine Holc, Loyola University Maryland

Erin Hochman, Southern Methodist University

Edin Hajdarpasic, Loyola University Chicago

David Hirsh, Goldsmiths, University of London

Richard Breitman, American University (Emeritus)

Astrid M. Eckert, Emory University

Anna Holian, Arizona State University

Uma Kumar, University of British Columbia

Frances Tanzer, Clark University

Victoria J. Barnett, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (retired)

David Seymour, City University of London

Jeff Jones, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

András Riedlmayer Harvard University (retired)

Polly Zavadivker, University of Delaware

Aviel Roshwald, Georgetown University

Anne E. Parsons, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Carole Lemee, Bordeaux University

Scott Denham, Davidson College

Emanuela Grama, Carnegie Mellon University

Christopher R. Browning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (emeritus)

Katrin Paehler, Illinois State University

Raphael Utz, Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin

Emre Sencer, Knox College

Stefan Ihrig, University of Haifa

Jeff Rutherford, Xavier University

Jason Hall, The University of Haifa

Christian Ingrao, CNRS École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, CESPRA Paris

Hannah Wilson, Nottingham Trent University

Jan Lanicek, University of New South Wales

Edward B. Westermann, Texas A&M University-San Antonio

Maris Rowe-McCulloch, University of Regina

Joanna B. Michlic, University College London

Raul Carstocea, Maynooth University

Dieter Steinert, University of Wolverhampton

Christina Morina, Universität Bielefeld

Abbey Steele, University of Amsterdam

Erika Hughes, University of Portsmouth

Lukasz Krzyzanowski, University of Warsaw

Agnieszka Wierzcholska, German Historical Institute, Paris

Martin Cüppers, University of Stuttgart

Matthew Kupfer, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

Martin Kragh, Uppsala University

Umit Kurt, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem

Meron Mendel, Frankfurt University of Applied Science, Anne Frank Center Frankfurt

Nazan Maksudyan, FU Berlin / Centre Marc Bloch

Emanuel-Marius Grec, University of Heidelberg

Khatchig Mouradian, Columbia University

Jan Zbigniew Grabowski, University of Ottawa

Dirk Moses, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Amos Goldberg, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Amber N. Nickell, Fort Hays State University

Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Wuppertal University

Thomas Kühne, Clark University

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, Appalachian State University

Amos Morris-Reich, Tel Aviv University

Volha Charnysh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stefan Cristian Ionescu, Northwestern University

Donatello Aramini, Sapienza University, Rome

Ofer Ashkenazi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Roland Clark, University of Liverpool

Mirjam Zadoff, University of Munich & Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism

John Barruzza, Syracuse University

Cristina A. Bejan, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Isabel Sawkins, University of Exeter

Benjamin Nathans, University of Pennsylvania

Norbert Frei, University of Jena

Stéfanie Prezioso, Université de Lausanne

Olindo De Napoli, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Eli Nathans, Western University

Eugenia Mihalcea, University of Haifa

Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, Purdue University

Sergei I. Zhuk, Ball State University

Paola S. Salvatori, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa – Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Antonio Ferrara, Independent Scholar

Verena Meier, Forschungsstelle Antiziganismus, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

Frédéric Bonnesoeur, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, TU Berlin

Sara Halpern, St. Olaf College

Irina Nastasa-Matei, University of Bucharest

Michal Aharony, University of Haifa

Michele Sarfatti, Fondazione CDEC Milano

Frank Schumacher, The University of Western Ontario

Thomas Weber, University of Aberdeen

Elizabeth Drummond, Loyola Marymount University

Jennifer Evans, Carleton University

Sayantani Jana, University of Southern California

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Fairfield University

Snježana Koren, University of Zagreb

Brunello Mantelli, University of Turin and University of Calabria

Carl Müller-Crepon, University of Oxford

Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, Freie Universität Berlin

Amy Sjoquist, Northwest University

Sebastian Vîrtosu, Universitatea Națională de Arte “G. Enescu”

Stanislao G. Pugliese, Hofstra University

Ronald Grigor Suny, University of Michigan

Antoinette Saxer, University of York

Alon Confino, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Corry Guttstadt, University of Hamburg

Vadim Altskan, US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Evan B. Bukey, University of Arkansas

Elliot Y Neaman, University of San Francisco

Rebecca Wittmann, University of Toronto Mississauga

Benjamin Rifkin, Hofstra University

Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland

Walter Reich, George Washington University

Jay Geller, Case Western Reserve University

Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union

Francesco Zavatti, Södertörn University

Eliyana R. Adler, The Pennsylvania State University

Laura María Niewöhner, Bielefeld University

Elena Amaya, University of California-Berkeley

Markus Roth, Fritz Bauer Institut, Frankfurt

Brandon Bloch, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Monica Osborne, The Jewish Journal

Benjamin Hett, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Volker Weiß, Independent Scholar

Manuela Consonni, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Svetlana Suveica, University of Regensburg

Izabella Tabarovsky is a researcher with the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, focusing on the politics of historical memory in the former Soviet Union.

Evgeny Finkel is a political scientist and historian at Johns Hopkins University.

This article was first published by the Jewish Journal.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Fascism, History, Lies, Propaganda

Florida: The Ignominious Failure of State Commissioner Richard Corcoran

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2022 //
16

Billy Townsend reviews the tenure of Richard Corcoran as Florida’s State Commissioner of Education. His main qualification for the job, aside from his time as chair of the education committee in the state senate, is that he loathes public schools. He once said that he wanted to see every Florida student in a charter or voucher school.

Billy Townsend details his multiple failures. Be sure to open the link and read to the end. Watch the video, where Corcoran wrestles with his son on a brick floor, then throws him into the end of the pool, with the boy’s head barely missing the concrete coping. What an educator.

Townsend writes:

Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s general leadership incompetence defines him far more than his trolling.

The Department of Education’s corrupt, ongoing institutional collapse under his three-ish years of leadership testifies to what he would have done (or will do) to any college or university foolish enough to make him a president.

Any “business” he might start that doesn’t grift public money or collect and/or spend other people’s political donations is going to fail — if he runs it.

But Corcoran did have two great talents in his short, happy public life:

  • Convincing powerful people to breathe some of their power on him.
  • Getting the weird Florida media to confuse trolling and leant power with actual power and leadership and capability.

More of the same, just with more trolling

It’s difficult to evaluate Corcoran’s record as Speaker of the House and Education Commissioner because he had no real governing goals or ideology beyond self-interest and the perception of personal dominance in the moment.

Just mesmerizing the child-like DeSantis into paying him $276K for three years is a massive personal victory for Corcoran. One has to acknowledge that.

But under Corcoran’s “leadership,” Florida continued Jeb Bush’s catastrophic, longstanding failures of student test score growth, if that’s what you care about. He continued to shovel tax money and tax-sheltered corporate money into Florida’s “Endtimes Academy” style voucher schools, ignoring the 60 percent 2-year drop out rate of our signature voucher program. And he continued to worsen Florida’s teacher and education worker capacity shortages by making education work as miserable and poorly paid as possible.

But in all that, Corcoran’s not special. He’s just a mainstream Florida leader who talks a little more trash. All of that education failure is openly tolerated and/or celebrated quietly by the private interests that actually run Florida — your Disneys and Publixes and FPLs.

Anybody else DeSantis would have appointed would have indulged the same neglect and general grifting. It’s the institutional story of the last 25 years. Until that changes, you’ll get the same institutional results.

Perhaps the DoE organization and building itselfwon’t be a rotten, corrupt cesspool with a more competent Jebbie in charge; but the Florida state system as a whole is America’s worst because institutional and governing power wants it to be. Corcoran doesn’t have much to do with that. He just looks to scavenge that reality for himself and his buddies.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida

Craig Harris: Charter Schools and Federal PPP Money: Part 2

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
5

Craig Harris of USA Today wrote a blockbuster three-part series about the charter schools that grabbed at least $1 billion in federal funds from the COVID Payroll Protection Program, passed in 2020 to help struggling small businesses stay alive and retain their employees. Today the second part was posted. Because charter schools are “technically small businesses,” about 1,000 of them applied for the forgivable loans. None of the charter schools lost revenue or laid off employees but they asked for the money anyway. Even the charter school lobbyist—the National Alliance for Public charter Schools—asked for a $680,000 loan, which was forgiven.

Harris writes in this second part about charters that knew it was wrong to ask for PPP funding when they had no need, and others did. (I can’t find the link: if any reader can, please add.)

He starts:

‘The ethical thing to do’: Why this small San Diego charter school passed on COVID PPP loans

Albert Einstein Academies, a small San Diego charter school chain, turned down a forgivable $3 million Paycheck Protection Program loan.

Story Highlights

  • Learn4Life, a charter chain, got a combined $32.7 million in PPP loans through 12 related firms.
  • California charter schools had six of the eight largest PPP loans in the U.S. among charters.
  • In Arizona, two prominent charter chains also turned down the money, saying they didn’t meet the requirements.

SAN DIEGO – The Albert Einstein Academies, which educate 1,450 students from kindergarten through eighth grade at two inner-city campuses here, could have used a forgivable loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.

Half of the middle school students and close to one-third of the elementary kids come from low-income homes and qualify for free or reduced-price lunches at the charter schools, its superintendent said.

But while the academies were eligible for up to $3 million in forgivable loans based on revenuesthat largely came from taxes, Superintendent David Sciarretta didn’t feel right about taking the money.

He said the loan program, started by Congress in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, was intended to help financially struggling small businesses stay open and avoid laying off employees.

Charters are privately operated schools that are publicly funded.

We could have always used the money. But, growing up, my mom told me: ‘If there’s food on the table and there are other folks who are hungrier than you, then you need to let them eat because they have a greater need than you do.’

Sciarretta said Einstein, whose charter school campuses are minutes from downtown, didn’t suffer financially because California continued its pre-pandemic level of public school funding during the health crisis even if enrollment declined, giving some schools additional money.He said refraining from taking the loans was “the ethical thing to do.”

“We could have always used the money,” said Sciarretta, recently awarded the 2022 Hart Vision Award Winner for California Charter Leader of the Year. “But, growing up, my mom told me: ‘If there’s food on the table and there are other folks who are hungrier than you, then you need to let them eat because they have a greater need than you do.'”

Other schools took PPP loans

That wasn’t the view of at least 268 other California charter operators, who run some of the state’s largest and wealthiest publicly funded charter chains.

Those operators had at least $335 million forgiven, a USA TODAY investigation hasfound, the most of any state with charter schools. That’s about one-third of the $1 billion in loans obtained by more than 1,100 U.S. charter schools, which educate a fraction of the nation’s children and had the loans forgiven — even though most lost no money during the pandemic.

Several of those schools also employed more than 500 workers, the limit to qualify under the program, USA TODAY found.

Kathleen Hermsmeyer, superintendent of Springs Charter Schools in Temecula, said while California didn’t cut funding, it also did not increase it for charter schools like hers that specialize in at-home, remote or hybrid learning.

Those types of charter schools,which aren’t based in classrooms, experienced significant enrollment increases because of the need for distance learning during COVID,

She said her network added 1,000 students during the pandemic and needed its nearly $9.9 million loan —the largest of any charter operator in the country. The Small Business Administration, which is in charge of the PPP program that ended last May, forgave that loan on Dec. 1.

“It was exactly what PPP was designed for — to help us provide a great quality education for our children through the most difficult years ever,” Hermsmeyer said. “We kept our programs and services, and we did not cut salaries.”

The federal government promised to forgive the loans if the money was used to keep workers on the job and to pay for pandemic-related issues.

Researchers have found the SBA has forgiven most of the loans for all industries with little auditing done to see if the money was properly used. Meanwhile, up to three-fourths of the money went into the pockets of business owners, according to a recent study.

Which charter schools near you took federal PPP money?

Search USA TODAY’s database of more than 1,100 charter schools that had Paycheck Protection Program loans totalling more than $1 billion forgiven.

California, which in 1992 became the second state to allow charter schools, had more than 1,300 of the schools and seven all-charter districts at the beginning of this school year, according to the state’s department of education. That’s roughly 11.5% of the entire public school student population in California.

The state had six of the top eight forgiven loans for charter schools in America, all in excess of $5.5 million, records show.

California Congressman Judy Chu has been highly critical of the federal oversight, saying the agency and Treasury Department prioritized speed in getting money to businesses instead of scrutiny over who needed the cash.

Learn4Life gets most PPP loans

The largest block of forgiven loans, a combined $32.7 million, went to the same address in Lancaster, California, for 12 related nonprofit companiesthat are part of Learn4Life, a charter chain whose firms reported to the IRS that they employed a combined 4,567 workers during 2019.

The loans were obtained in April and May 2020, and forgiven throughout last year, federal records show.

The combined employment would be more than nine times the threshold for obtaining a PPP loan.

Learn4Life spokeswoman Ann Abajian said the organization had 1,685 employees among its companies.

She said the discrepancy occurred because the companies had previously counted seasonal and part-time employees in their staff totals and that information was disclosed to the federal government to have the loans forgiven.

Federal tax returns for the 2019-2020 fiscal year from those 12 nonprofits, which were signed by company executives, showed the higher staffing numbers.

For example, Learn4Life’s Antelope Valley Learning Academy Inc. reported employing1,302 staff, while Western Educational Corporation and Vista Real Public Charter employed 527 and 668 people, respectively.

“Each entity — as a separate charter nonprofit, with less than 500 employees and its own independent governing board — applied with accuracy and transparency, met the criteria, and was awarded the loans and later forgiven. Proper documentation with supplemental justification and backup was presented to SBA,” Abajian said.

The chain said it used the loans to purchase and distribute 20,000 laptops and 15,000 hotspots, baby supplies for hundreds of parenting students as well as an online curriculum. In addition, the organization said its technology support desk hired more staff.

Eric Cross (middle) teaches seventh-grade science at Einstein Middle School in San Diego. The school was eligible for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, but school officials turned it down because the state of California did not cut any funding to public schools.CRAIG HARRIS

Other businesses, such as Shake Shack, also counted separate locations to qualify for a PPP loan. That publicly traded company with more than 7,000 employees and 205 restaurants in the U.S., was one of the first to get a PPP loan. However, Shake Shack returned its $10 million loan following public scrutiny.

In Arizona, prominent, successful chains Basis Charter Schools Inc. and Great Hearts Academies said they didn’t seek the loans even though their individual campuses employed fewer than 500 workers. Basis and Great Heart officials said they read the SBA rules as requiring all employees within an organization to be counted and both were too big.

Meanwhile, other California schools that had jumbo loans forgiven included Granada Hills Charter in Granada Hills ($8.5 million), Antelope Valley Learning Academy in Lancaster ($7.9 million), Summit Public Schools in Redwood City ($6.9 million), Western Educational Corporation in Lancaster ($6.2 million) and Magnolia Educational & Research Foundation in Los Angeles ($5.5 million).

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Scandal, Shame

Leonie Haimson: Eric Adams’ New School Board and a Questionable Contract

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
12

Leonie Haimson, CEO of Class Size Matters (and a board member of NPE), watches the budget of the NYS public schools like a hawk. She is constantly amazed that there is no money to reduce class sizes but plenty for other things that are less essential.

She wrote this piece for the blog:

Tomorrow, Wed. March 23 will be the second meeting of the NYC school board under our new mayor, Mayor Eric Adams. Since Mayoral control was instituted in 2002, the board has been composed of a supermajority of Mayoral appointees. At that time, it was renamed the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP)by then-Mayor Bloomberg, though according to state law it is still officially called the NYC Board of Education.

Among the Panel’s duties is to approve Department of Education contracts, with many inflated and wasteful contracts rubberstamped over the last twenty years. Only once in its history has it voted down a contract: last year, when a majority of members voted in the midst of the pandemic not to approve acontract to Pearson for the test given to four-year-old students to be admitted into NYC’s controversial gifted program.

Even though the law requires monthly meetings of the PEP, the Chancellor cancelled the January meeting, and eight new members appointed by the Mayor participated at the February meeting, though their names and contact information are still not posted on the relevant PEP page . Instead, the names that arelisted still include the eight members appointed by de Blasio, who vacated their posts at the end of December. The identitiesof the new appointees can be found in the minutes of the February meeting, though no contact information or biographies.

The ninth member who was slated to be appointed by the Mayor in February was Joe Belluck, an attorney who is also the chair of the SUNY committee that authorizes charter schools. Belluck withdrew his name right before the meeting. This waspresumably due to conflict-of-interest issues, given that charterschools take away valuable public school space through co-locations approved by the Panel, and now cost the DOE budget more than $2.6 billion dollars annually. (Full disclosure: my organization, Class Size Matters, put out a press release against Belluck’s appointment the day before he withdrew.)

The new schools Chancellor David Banks, also appointed by the Mayor, has repeatedly said he wants to save money by cutting waste and the bureaucracy. At tomorrow’s meeting, among the many contracts they will be voting upon tomorrow is one for acompany called 22nd Century Technologies, at $16.5 million per year, renewable for five years at a total of $82.5 million. The contract is listed as “Recruiting and Staffing Services for Temporary Professionals.”

This company, the contract proposal says, will be paid to hire “consultants in a wide range of disciplines across DOE schools, central offices, and/or NYCDOE Borough/Citywide offices” and will be “responsible for identifying, processing upon selection, and managing the consultants it recruits and those referred by the DOE.”

The company will charge “markup fees of 17.35% and 22.50% for DOE-referred and vendor-recruited consultants, respectively.”

There is little detail about what these consultants will actually be doing, except for that they will be “used in a wide variety of areas including special education, curriculum design and development, all of which are needed to ensure the successful execution of several temporary DOE projects or needs. “

The mention of curriculum design may relate to the Mosaic curriculum, which initially being developed by “a team of administrators and teachers … during their off hours”, according to the Daily News, but whose roll-out has been delayed.

Of the $16.5 million being paid to this company, the document says nearly half will go to “supporting work that is legally mandated specialized expertise” and “supporting stimulus projects” – which I assume means federal stimulus funds, without identifying what this expertise or these projects involve. The reason for hiring consultants, the document claims, is that “because consultants are better suited to complete short-term tasks for schools and/or offices, instead of using full-time DOE employees.”

Even if the use of consultants is advisable in this case, there is no reason why the DOE should not hire consultants directly, but instead must pay another company to hire and manage them, with a markup of 22.50% and/or 17.35%, the latter if DOEofficials recruit these consultants themselves. In any case, we can expect that the mayoral appointees will rubberstamp this contract as they have in the past, with few if any questions asked, and no discussion of larger issues.

The DOE has lost millions in fraudulent contracts since Mayoral control was instituted in 2002. Just some of them are recounted in my City Council testimony from 2011. What this testimony doesn’t include is what happened four years later.

In 2015, along with then-Public Advocate Tish James and CM Danny Dromm, we blew the whistle on a proposed $1.1 billion five year contract, renewable at $2 billion, that was supposed to be awarded Custom Computer Specialists, a computer wiring company that had been involved in a kickback scheme just a few years before. The PEP approved this contract anyway, with a vote of 10-1, but as a result of the ensuing scandal, City Hall kicked it back, and the contract was rebid and awarded to several different companies at a far reduced price of $472 million, with savings to the city of between $163 million and $627 million.

Another result of the CCS scandal was that DOE promised from then on to publicly to post all prospective contract requests for authorization at least 30 days in advance, to allow for more scrutiny by Panel members as well as to allow for improved independent oversight. As Juan Gonzalez wrote about this result in the Daily News: “Tweed will even post information on all bids on its website 30 days before the scheduled vote by the panel, and has committed to do the same with other contracts.” Yet the DOE stopped doing this in April 2020 – nearly two years ago.

According to a New York state education law passed in 2005, all school board members must receive at least six hours of training in financial oversight, accountability, and fiduciary responsibilities. There is an exception in the law for NYC, but only if as the chancellor annually certifies to the commissioner in writing that the training they provide “meets or exceeds the requirements of this section.” Yet PEP members have told me privately and been quoted in the media to say that they have received only minimal training in financial oversight – and much less than the six hours that the law requires.

I recently filed a Freedom of Information request to the State Education Department for a copy of the annual certification from the NYC Chancellor, attesting that the training provided PEP members was compliant with the law, for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021. I received a response from NYSED that they had received no such certification. This is one of the reasons in my recent testimony before the State Legislature on Mayoral control, I strongly recommended that the governance law in NYC be amended to require that the City Comptroller’s office take over this important responsibility.

The DOE has gotten in trouble before when hiring companies to manage consultants – in the case of the Ross Lanham scandal, in which Custom Computer Specialists was also involved and millions were fraudulently charged to DOE for a different computer wiring scheme, as detailed in a report from the office of Special Investigator and in the indictment by then- US Attorney Preet Bharara. This scandal apart from the money stolen cost NYC more than $100 million in federal E-rate funds. This may not happen in this case. But if the Chancellor is concerned about cutting down on waste and bureaucracy, this is a strange way to go about doing it.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, New York City

California: ALERT! Charter Insiders Infiltrate Democratic Party Platform Committee!

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
23

Sara Roos, a blogger who writes under the name “Red Queen in LA,” reports on a dangerous development in California. Charter school insiders took charge of writing the California Democratic Party’s education platform and made changes that undercut longstanding Democratic Party opposition to charter schools. Suddenly, charter schools are referred to not as privatization but as “public charter schools,” the preferred language of the charter lobby. The new language dropped the Democratic Party’s insistence that the boards of charter schools must be elected and replaced it with the requirement only that they be authorized by local school boards. A big change, among others that put the Democratic Party platform in the pocket of the charter billionaires.

Roos wrote:

What actually happened with the CA Democratic Party’s (CADEM) platform adopted Sunday (3/6/22) at its convention?

At the eleventh hour, following an eleven-hour meeting finalizing draft proposalsfor updating the 2022 CADEM platform, it came to light that one of its 23 platform “planks”, that of Education, had been tampered with by charter school (CS) industry insiders.

As a consequence, CADEM delegate and California Federation of Teachers legislative advocate, Tristan Brown, urged from the floor that fellow delegates vote “no” on the entirety of the proposed platform changes, since the rules forbade focusing on specifics to excise.

It was argued that the new language altered the hard-won, former mandate that charter school boards must be elected, because democracy demands public, elected accountability. The platform’s new language morphed this fundamental demand, requiring instead that charter schools simply be authorized and monitored by a school board. The language of conditional support was removed altogether.

On the strength of the Union recommendation by the statewide federation of teachers, and the leadership of several key caucus chairs and leaders, the final floor vote passing the platform was far shy of consensus at 57% aye (691 votes), 43% nay (510 votes). [The absolute numbers are extracted from the meeting transcript and are a little different from the poll result percentages shown to delegates via zoom].

From a convention of 3,037 elected delegates + 80 proxies, that translates to passage by just 22% (=691/3117) of total eligible voters at the convention. But the total number of delegates voting for the platform was not presented. If quorum were just reached for the vote with its 1559 members, then a bare minimum of 358, or nearly one-quarter of delegates (23% of the eligible quorum (=358/1559)), abstained from the platform vote altogether. The sum total of those failing to vote for the platform {“nay”+abstain} far outstrips those who did.

As it happens, the reality of the platform language change is far worse than what was hastily presented on the floor. And befitting their shepherding by charter school operators (including the board chair of the charter school lobbying association), these changes do very much advantage charter school operations.

The former language of bullet 23 in the K-12 Education plank conditioned circumstances for the Party’s support of charter schools on five contingencies [emphasis mine]:

  • Support only those charter schools that are managed by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement rather than supplant public education programs.

The draft language posted in advance of the convention eliminates rules for conditional support altogether. Instead conditions are replaced by definitions. The term “charter school” is redefined through use of the modifying adjective, “public”. A list of characteristics is simply inserted, absent any conditioning on support. And the long-standing federal exhortation acknowledging and specifying the fungibility of money to ‘supplement not supplant’ (ie, do not rob Peter to pay Paul), is lost:

  • Support public charter schools that are governed by not-for-profit, elected, public boards with transparent governance, have equitable admissions, adopt fair labor practices, respect labor neutrality, and supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities

The real problem came from a change inserted after the posted draft platform. Support is urged for these entities now defined not by their governance but by the circumstance of their chartering: authorization and monitoring [emphasis mine]:

  • Support public charter schools that are authorized and monitored by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black or African American, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities

The change amounts to saying “I exist therefore I am”. It asserts support of charter schools no matter what, and defines them as “public”, a characteristic denied by the courts. Reversing the stringent conditional acceptance terms delineated formerly, this incarnation accepts charter schools as the choice of the Democratic Party.

Another change instigated by the charter school lobbyist who volunteered their services to the platform committee, softens the field for two competing ballot initiatives to privatize our public schools through the use of vouchers.

Under cover of redundancy, bullet 14 that unequivocally and expressly “opposes voucher systems for schools,” is eliminated. Its declaration is diluted by sending it lower in the long list of bullet points, and combining it with Education Savings Accounts. The real problem comes in conditioning this opposition to their effect. Since charter schools are defined in the platform now as “public”, vouchers would not be found to “take away from public school funding”.

  • Oppose K-12 Education Savings Accounts, school vouchers, or any programs that would take away from public school funding;

This change was not a mere correction of duplication, it substantively prepares the field for a statewide fight about “school choice,” launched and led from the left. The platform now states that because we define charter schools as “public”, vouchers are a system we no longer oppose because they do not take money away from the public-charter entity. Just as this new platform accepts charter schools de facto, we also now fail to oppose voucher systems.

Trickiness gonna be tricky. Voters gotta be vigilant. Special, monied-interests are persistent and focused; the rest of us are harried volunteers.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Is Killing Off Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas, Nevada (Clark County). She frequently sends letters to every legislator in the state about the need to fund schools like hers adequately and the dismal failure of charter schools.

She responded to a post that featured an interview with Jennifer Berkshire, who predicted that some states would phase out public schools in the next few years.

Sullivan responded:

There would have been a time I would have said this will never happen. Public Schools are such an American Insitution. They are protected by laws.

Now I know charter schools are built to go around the laws. Our Nevada Constitution states one district one county. But charters claim they are not a district. And when necessary they are not even a school. The beauty of the EMO/CMO makes them slippery too. They are often a combination for-profit/non-profit. What law can apply to all of the above: a non-profit education.business, managed by a for-profit management corporation which can then also take advantage of all public school resources and tax advantages, while also applying for all the small business grants and money.

Nevada never got the immediate overnight conversion Elaine Wynn and her reformers wanted. That was too quick and shocking. The ASD grabbing 30 schools at a time did not work. [Elaine Wynn is chair of the state Board of Education and wife of a major casino owner.]

So neoliberals have settled for a slow and steady 5 or 6 charters a year. Along with adding to charter chains by grade level every year – 100 students here and 100 students there.

Jana Wilcox-Lavin uses the $22 million in grant money to grease wheels and find favor. Rebecca Feiden is one of the most powerful women in the state. She grants charters; She refuses charters. Rebecca gives some chance after chance after chance to start their charter business. Others, she stops dead in their tracks. They both inherited a dysfunctional and failing charter business. The Charter Authority is still mired in failing charters – failing financially, failing academically, and failing to enroll diversity. Charters in Nevada are obvious segregation and white flight. There is limited appetite to serve poor students.

Mayors in Clark County seem to think running a school is easy. The pandemic allowed them to use education money to offer micro-charters. This seems to have whet some appetites to own a district of their own.

Mayor Goodman of the City of Las Vegas wants a charter. For some unknown reason she paired up with the EMO TNTP (Michelle Rhee’s Group). She signed on the who’s who of education reform. The City of Las Vegas is now in the school business. Interestingly enough Mayor Goodman was successful at running an expensive private school. She does know education. She has zero experience running a school for diverse poor students. She is about to get a wake-up call. Cedric Creer was only voice of reason when this was discussed. He has the failing Agassi, Rainbow, and 100 Academies in his area – he warned the City Council not to go into the school business. Those charters have had few successes and much more failure. Turnover is constant both teachers and students. Mayor Goodman is about to learn that loads of donations and cash from the City of Las Vegas will not be enough if you let Michelle Rhee’s teaching hating group abuse labor. Interestingly enough, Goodman will retire and the City Council will then run this charter school.

Things I did not think were possible.

Are happening.

I thought our straight forward laws would prevent the Mayors from owning a district through their City Councils.. But charters are not in “districts”. Nor are they schools. Nor are they businesses. They become whatever they need to be to skirt the rules the rest of us live by daily. They claim it is “innovation”. Grifters do it everyday. I do not find it new.

I watched Rebecca Feiden define EMO/CMO very differently to the Nevada Legislature the other day – than she has ever defined it is a Charter Authority Meeting. Perhaps she does not even know or want to know. She was certainly snippy like legislators should already know.

I think this year, The Nevada State Public Charter School Authority will become the second largest district (yes, I know they claim they are not one, but they act like one) in Nevada. It is the size of the Reno/Washoe School District almost. And it serves mainly rich white students inside the middle of Clark County. Yes I know it has a hand full of diverse charters – those are not the norm. Yes I know there are charters in other counties. The bulk of the Nevada charters are serving rich white students inside CCSD. Creating a systematic segregation in Clark County. White Flight is obvious.

Charters segregate by religion, race, and money. They are actually tracking special education, language learning, and free and reduce lunch because those categories earn businesses more pupil center funding dollars. This tracking does not help with Mormon charters, all black or all white charters, and charter locations which are obviously limiting access.

Rebecca Feiden is focused on trying to get more free and reduced lunch children into charters. The Charter Authority is sending the charters a letter, inviting them to participate in “Weighted Lotteries” to help correct their diversity issues. All the charters are getting a “Weighted Lottery” and the Charter Authority is claiming this is a tool to diversify. Weighted Lotteries do not help at all. Especially with new charter enrollment which required diversity by law. Weighted Lotteries only go into affect if charters are full. Technically if a charter has even one spot open – the lottery is not triggered.

The irony of all this is not lost on me. CCSD is one of the most diverse districts in the United States. Yet our Nevada Charters which are predominantly EMO’d For-Profit Academica – serve the rich and white. Now Nevada Charters are spending money to attract diversity to their charters – advertising, flyers, walking door-to-door, or so they claim they tried to find a diverse child to enroll. The Tax Payer has to pay these businesses to admit a few IEP, language learners or poor children. For some perspective, my public school is 100% diverse on every and all levels – we do not try at all to add diversity. In fact

Nevada never closes a failing charter. Even charters that cannot fill out the application or meet the requirements just sue until they are finally allowed to do whatever they want. There is not remedy to stop this. $950 million in Nevada Charters and not a single soul can tell you where it is or what it was spent on.

This is why I think Jennifer Berkshire is correct. Eventually, there will be no place called public schools. There will be a selection list and rich people will be able to pay to have a teacher and school. Others will accept cash and their children will not receive anything and that will be fine because it is their “choice”. And most will meet in a charter warehouse somewhere to sit in front of a device with software teaching them. The poor will be used to privatized and receive the lesser quality of the lists.

It will be slow. CCSD has a parasite. At this rate, the Charter Authority will just keep growing and making more messes which use up more education dollars. It takes from some to give to others. And folx are just fine with allowing a corporation take everything from the disadvantaged so their own children can get ahead. The so called “progressives” are leading the charge.

It is wrong and I hope we fight it. I believe in our imperfect public schools. I see nothing the charters offer that is new. I do not see them being a remedy at all. There is some limited liability advantages for businesses – is that good use of tax dollars?

I hope I am wrong.

Logically I am just afraid Jennifer Berkshire is right.

She followed up with another comment:

Sadly CCSD and Nevada “Leadership” are TFA. They are here to stay. Having catapaulted themselves above everyone.

An example is the very powerful Rebecca Feiden who control $950 million in Nevada Education Dollars which go to Nevada Charters.

Another is Jana Wilcox-Lavin in Opportunity 180 which spreads charters and gives “grants” to them.

No one wants to be a teacher – seems there will always be an appetite to make six figures and control everyone and everything for an eduphilantrophist like Elaine Wynn.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Nevada, Privatization

Ohio: The Academic Failure of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
14

Max Londberg of the Cincinnati Enquirer conducted an investigation of the academic results of vouchers in Ohio. His findings were appalling. The legislature doesn’t care about results or evidence or facts. It wants more vouchers, more students to fall behind their peers in public schools. Meanwhile, the public schools lose funding to pay for the vouchers. The story was originally published in August 2020, and I missed it. Scores of school districts in Ohio are suing to block the expansion of vouchers, which will undermine the quality of their schools.

He begins:

Since 2018, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been shifted away from Ohio’s public schools and into private, mainly religious ones in the form of vouchers, all to enhance academic success.

Yet those same private schools mostly failed to meet the academic caliber set by their neighboring public school districts, according to a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis of nearly 2.5 million test scores from schools in more than 150 Ohio cities during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years.

The analysis found that in 88% of the cities in the analysis, a public district achieved better state testing results than those private schools with an address in the same city. A majority of the eight largest urban districts — including Akron and Canton — were among those that outperformed privates.

So Ohio shifts money from successful public schools to underperforming religious and private schools. This is stupid.

Categories Education Industry, Failure, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Propaganda Techniques to Justify Putin’s War on Ukraine

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2022 //
114

Posted on Twitter by @Ve10Ve_Ghost

Categories Propaganda
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