Texas Supreme Court Supports Gov. Abbott’s Ban on Mask Mandates

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2021 //
17

Let me be clear: Any state that prevents school districts from mandating masks for students and teachers is displaying extreme indifference to human life and public health, as well as overriding local control of schools. In my view, every state should mandate masking when indoors in public spaces.

The Los Angeles Times reported that most states are leaving the mask decisions to school districts but eight Republican-led states have banned mask mandates, prohibiting districts from protecting those in their schools.

More than 30 states have left the decision up to school districts. At least 10 states, including California, plus the District of Columbia, require all students and teachers to wear masks in public schools.

But eight mostly Republican-controlled states — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Utah — have enacted laws or issued executive orders prohibiting school districts from requiring students to wear masks.

CNN reported the latest development in Texas, where the highly contagious Delta variant is filling hospitals.
The Texas Supreme Court, undoubtedly dominated by conservative governors like Abbott and Rick Perry, just endorsed Abbott’s efforts to undermine public health in schools. Why do “conservatives” take such reckless, radical actions that put the lives of students and school staff at risk?

The Texas Supreme Court sided with Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday in a ruling that temporarily blocks mask mandates recently issued in San Antonio and Dallas, though local officials said they will continue to enforce at least a portion of the mask mandates.The Texas high court granted stay orders Sunday, but previously scheduled hearings on local mask mandates in lower courts in Bexar and Dallas counties will proceed as scheduled.The ruling is the latest in a series of conflicts across the state — and the country — over mask mandates as coronavirus cases surge and schools gear up for reopening while students younger than 12 still aren’t ineligible for a Covid-19 vaccine.

Abbott issued an executive order last month that barred governmental entities, including school districts, from requiring mask wearing. Officials in Dallas and Bexar counties, which includes San Antonio, requested restraining orders against enforcement of Abbott’s order, which were granted.

Two Texas judges issue temporary restraining orders against governor’s mask mandate order Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday he appealed the lower court rulings to the Texas Supreme Court and tweeted after the court decision Sunday, “Let this ruling serve as a reminder to all ISDs and Local officials that the Governor’s order stands.”

Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, however, said the court’s ruling does not pertain to his district, even as Paxtonmentioned the Dallas ISD in his tweet. 

Categories Health, Science, Texas

UTLA Speaks Out Against “Internal” Voucher Scheme

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2021 //
19

Some members of the Los Angeles school board are proposing a stealth voucher plan. Unsurprisingly, the United Teachers of Los Angeles opposes the plan.

DeVos-funded consultant pushes internal voucher scheme in LAUSD

This fall UTLA members will be building a vision for how to use the historic infusion of funding to transform education for our students. The privatizers have their own game plan to drive more public dollars to charter operators, and it involves an internal voucher-like scheme connected to Betsy DeVos. Under Trump, Devos’s office funded a grant for an outside consultant to push a competition-based system called Student-Centered Funding in LAUSD.

Basically, funding would move with each student instead of being allocated centrally for staff and programs. It sounds like a good idea when you first hear about it — but in cities like Chicago and Denver, these formulas have led to racially disparate negative consequences, including the loss of libraries and the arts, school closures, and the undermining of school stability, particularly in Black and Brown communities.

The funding scheme was sold in Chicago as a way to achieve greater equity for Black and Brown students, but it’s done the opposite.
Former student Styles Avant-Pinkston lived through a similar scheme — called student-based budgeting in Chicago — that led to under-resourced schools being starved of support and then often shut down. Avant-Pinkston was forced to travel across town to attend a school outside of his neighborhood.


“I shouldn’t have to take a 50-minute bus ride — I should just be able to walk to a good school,” Avant-Pinkston says. “These funding schemes are an attack on kids of color and minority communities. You never hear about schools in wealthy neighborhoods shutting down — they invest in those schools. Schools can be turned around if they see value in doing that — some people just don’t see the value in communities of color. The message is clear: Student-based funding schemes shut down neighborhood schools.”

The LAUSD School Board has yet to vote on the internal voucher scheme, but a decision could come as early as this month. With a highly paid consultant leading the way, the district has fast-tracked the plan, and families and educators have been left out of the discussions and development. Even some Board members have been given little information about this monumental shift in funding.

This internal voucher scheme has destabilized community schools wherever it’s been tried and has not proven to improve student outcomes. If implemented the negative effects would be:

Marketing Over Student Needs: Students would be turned into “backpacks full of cash” and schools forced to compete for market share. With every year a hustle to protect enrollment, school principals would have to prioritize marketing over student needs.

Downward Spiral: Schools that are already struggling with inadequate resources and that serve under-resourced communities would be hit hardest. Every time a student leaves, the school would have even fewer resources to support the students who remain, triggering cuts to staff and essential programs and pushing out other families.

School Closures: Drops in enrollment lead to the closure of neighborhood schools and the destabilization of communities, particularly in Black and Brown neighborhoods. LAUSD has already been targeting small schools like Trinity Elementary in South LA for permanent closure, citing dropping enrollment figures. Closed schools are then handed over to a chapter operator. That trend will accelerate under this internal voucher scheme

Veteran Educators Pushed Aside: The scheme creates incentives to hire lower-salary educators and other staff. That’s what happened in Chicago, where principals are prioritizing hiring less expensive inexperienced teachers over the overwhelmingly Black veteran teaching staff.

Privatization on steroids: LAUSD has told the Department of Education that they plan to allow dollars to follow students to independent charter operators, a further threat to neighborhood schools and the stability of the public school system. The operational funding shift also lays the groundwork for money to eventually follow students to private or religious schools. This is why market reformers from both political parties — from Arne Duncan and Betsy DeVos to ALEC — support the formula: It is an important step down the road to achieving their longtime goal of dismantling our nation’s historic commitment to public education and freeing those dollars for the private sector.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Vouchers

John Thompson: Oklahoma Educators Go Meek Against State Mandates Banning Masks

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2021 //
16

Historian and former teacher John Thompson sat in on three different panels about the reopening of schools. He heard the concerns of leading educators and medical experts. The latter were all in favor of masking and vaccinations, but the educators were cautious about making powerful people angry.

The Oklahoma state legislature has banned mask mandates and vaccinations are out of the question. The medical experts stressed the importance of the measures that have been banned.

Legislators in states like Oklahoma are putting the lives of children, families, and communities at risk. Unnecessarily.

Categories Education Reform, Health, Oklahoma, Science

Censoring “Persepolis”

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2021 //
23

Chicago Public Schools was first to ban the popular graphic novel Persepolis,” in 2013.

The book has sold millions of copies. The author, Marjane Satrapi, was born in Iran and used the book to tell her story. Chicago school officials decided to pull the book from classrooms and school libraries, after receiving complaints that the book was not “age-appropriate.” The officials saw two pages that circulated among them. There is no indication that any of them actually read the book. The Superintendent at the time was Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was subsequently sent to prison for accepting bribes to buy services from vendors.

A graduate student asked for copies of internal emails about the decision to remove the book:

News of the ban broke on March 14, 2013, when a local education blogger got hold of an email from the principal of Lane Tech College Prep High School which informed teachers and staff that he had been directed in no uncertain terms to collect all copies of Persepolis from the school’s library and classrooms. He was given no explanation for the sudden purge, he said.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett started backpedaling later that day, after teachers and students raised objections and local media began asking questions. Byrd-Bennett revised the directive in another email to principals, saying that “we are not requesting that you remove Persepolis from your central school library.” But the book was still banned from seventh grade classrooms and “under review” for use in eighth through tenth grades. Teachers of college-level AP classes for 11th and 12th grade students would be allowed to retain the book in their curricula.

Unsurprisingly, Byrd-Bennett’s “clarification” did little to assuage the concerns of teachers and especially students, who organized a demonstration outside Lane Tech on March 15. By then, CPS was receiving national press coverage and stern rebukes from free speech groups, including CBLDF through the NCAC’s Kids’ Right to Read Project. In response to the growing furor, district spokesperson Becky Carroll claimed that “the message got lost in translation, but the bottom line is, we never sent out a directive to ban the book…. We’re not saying remove these from buildings altogether.”

Allan Singer, a professor of social studies education at Hofstra College in New York, wrote at Daily Kos about the recent decision by the Commack School Board to ban Persepolis.

He writes, in part:

The city of Persepolis was founded by Persian Emperor Darius I in 518 B.C. as a religious center and the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The Persian Empire was defeated by Alexander the Great and Greek armies about 330 B.C. and the city was burned. Today its ruins are located in southwestern Iran and are considered one of the world’s greatest archaeological sites.

Persepolis lived again in the graphic arts book Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon Graphic Library 2004) by Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi was born in Iran and grew up in the current capital city, Tehran. Her parents were leftwing political activists and after the 1979 Islamic revolution they arranged for her to move to Vienna, Austria when she was fourteen. She later returned to Iran where she studied Visual Communication and earned a Master’s Degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran. At the age of 24, Satrapi left Iran to live in France. 

Her black-and-white 341-page graphic novel Persepolis is autobiographical and recounts Satrapi’s experiences from age six to fourteen, including surviving a missile attack and learning about torture. The New York Times named it a Notable Book and Time Magazinecalled it the “Best Comix of the Year” for 2004.

Because the book includes a realistic pictorial depiction of torture and as part of the new rightwing assault on multiculturalism and anything that even suggests association with critical race theory, Persepolis is under attack and its educational supporters are threatened with retribution. At a recent Commack, New York school board meeting high school students and alumni protested against the removal of the book from 11th grade English classes. It has been an assigned text for more than a decade. Students from Islamic and South Asian backgrounds pointed out that it is the only place that someone like them appears in the entire 7-12 English Language Arts curriculum. Speakers who were also attacking Critical Race Theory demanded that Persepolis be dropped as “pornographic.”

If you want to learn more about the censorship of textbooks and books used in schools, read my book The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Knopf).

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene: What’s Wrong with For-Profit Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2021 //
23

Peter Greene writes in Forbes about the furor that erupted when House Democrats passed legislation to ban federal funding of charters managed by for-profit organizations. The charter industry and its lobbyists went bonkers, falsely claiming that the bill would prevent them from buying food from for-profit companies or hiring plumbers who work for profit.

He wrote:

The House Appropriations Committee has caused a stir with one tiny paragraph in its 198-page health, labor and education spending bill.

SEC. 314. None of the funds made available by this Act or any other Act may be awarded to a charter school that contracts with a for-profit entity to operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school.

The presence of for-profit operators in the charter school sector has long been a concern for critics, with almost all states outlawing a charter school strictly run for profit. But charter school operators have long worked a variety of loopholes, keeping the sector a highly profitable one, and most of those loopholes involve a non-profit charter school hiring a for-profit business. null

We are not talking about contracting services like school buses or cafeteria management; these kinds of side functions are frequently contracted out both in charter and public schools, but they are not the school’s primary activities.

The bill is clear and specific about targeting for-profit entities that “operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school.”

Sometimes the money comes from the real estate side of the charter business. There is such a thing as a business that specializes in charter schools and real estate. In some states, the government will help finance a real estate development if it’s a charter school, and in general developers have noted an abundance of cash. Though, as one charter real estate loan bond financier told the Wall Street Journal, “There’s a ton of capital coming into the industry. The question is: Does it know what it’s doing?” Many states have found a problem with charters that lease their buildings from their own owners as well. null

One example of a real estate operator making money from the real estate side was Carl Paladino of Buffalo. Paladino worked with charter operators via flipping properties and making “leaseback” deals, as detailed in a report from the Alliance for Quality Education. Paladino not only profited from the schools, but from investments in surrounding properties. He was not shy about any of it. On the question of making money from working with charters, the Buffalo City News quoted him: “If I didn’t, I’d be a friggin’ idiot.”

While many charters may contract out critical functions such as curriculum, the extreme cases are what are called “sweeps” contracts, in which the charter management organization (CMO) fully runs the school in exchange for as much as 95% of the revenue that comes in. A report that the Network for Public Education issued earlier this year details many of the creative ways that CMO’s turn a profit. CMO’s come in a variety of sizes, from chain operations running many schools all the way down to mom-and-pop CMOs that run a single school.

These arrangements can become convoluted. In Florida, one charter founder moved on and off the board of directors regularly to allow payments from his school to himself, and while the school was having trouble paying teachers, it was paying his company tens of thousands of dollars to license the school logo.

One could argue that outlawing for-profit charters actually made things worse, and that what would have been clear and open attempts to profit from a school are now hidden behind multiple operational layers.null

But all of this still leaves a simple question—what’s wrong with having charter schools managed, directly or indirectly, for profit?

In the rest of the article, he explains why for-profit charters are a terrrible idea.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit

Racism Flourishes in This Michigan Town

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2021 //
153

There’s been much discussion around the nation about racism. Is it persistent? Is it systematic? Is it behind us?

Read this story that appeared in the Washington Post and it should end the debate (although it won’t).

An African American man, who happens to be a veteran, brought his teenage son with him as he went house hunting with a real estate agent (also black) in Wyoming Michigan. A neighbor saw them entering the house that was for sale and called 911 to report a break in.

The police sent an armed team, who surrounded the house, entered and handcuffed the potential buyer and his young son.

Racism? Of course.

The story says:

As a police officer turned Roy Thorne around to cuff his hands behind his back, the 45-year-old father saw the same happening to his 15-year-old son.

Feelings came quickly then to Thorne, who’s Black: rage that his son was being arrested. Humiliation that the teenager had to watch his dad get handcuffed while the whole neighborhood looked on. Confusion about how viewing a house with his real estate agent on a Sunday afternoon could lead to a half-dozen police officers pointing guns at them.

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene: Federal Court Rules That Charter Schools Are Not Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2021 //
45

Peter Greene writes about a charter school in North Carolina that had a strict dress code for female students. Parents sued to overturn the rule as a violation of Title IX. They won. But then a federal appeals court reversed the ruling. The judges reasoned that charter schools are not public schools and not subject to the same laws as public schools.

He wrote:

In North Carolina, Charter Day School back in 2016 was sued by parents who objected to a dress code requiring girls to wear skirts, jumpers, or skorts. They just won that suit, sort of, but revealed something about themselves in the winning.

This is a school whose mission involves communicating through the arts and sciences. Charter Day School is part of the network of charters operated by Roger Bacon Academy, one of the charters that focuses on a “classical curriculum” in a “safe, morally strong environment,” which meant, apparently, none of those pants-wearing girls in their school (It also supposedly means things like sentence diagramming in Kindergarten and Latin in 4th grade, but then, Baker is an electrical engineer, not an educator.)You’re in trouble now, missy.

RBA is owned and operated by Baker Mitchell, Jr., and if that name seems vaguely familiar, it’s because he is one of the titans of charter profiteering. Back in 2014, Marian Wang profiled the “politically-connected businessman who celebrates the power of the free market,” and how he perfected the business of starting nonprofit charter schools and then having those schools lease their buildings, equipment, programs, etc from for-profit companies owned and operated by Baker Mitchell, Jr. That’s where the Roger Bacon Academy, a for-profit charter management company comes in.

In 2019, a federal judge passed down the ruling that any public school in the country would have expected– a dress code requiring skirts for girls is unconstitutional. The school quietly retired the item in the dress code.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Monday (Aug 9) a federal appeals court tossed out the 2019 ruling–sort of– in a 2-1 ruling.

The two judges, both Trump appointees, ruled that contrary to the assertion of the lower court, that charter schools should not be considered state actors, and are therefore not subject to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. This is yet another way for the courts to work their way around to declaring that charter schools are free to discriminate in any ways they wish. But it also makes one thing perfectly clear–

Charter schools are not public schools. They are not state actors.

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina

UTLA Endorses Vaccine Mandate

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2021 //
9

It’s good news to see teachers’ unions endorsing vaccination mandates to protect students and staff.

For Immediate Release

UTLA Board votes to support vaccine mandate for LAUSD employees

LOS ANGELES — The UTLA Board of Directors has voted overwhelmingly to support a vaccine mandate for all LAUSD employees. The UTLA Board had previously voted to not oppose a vaccine mandate. This stronger position comes as the Delta variant continues to surge in our communities and as students and staff prepare for a return to full-time, in-person learning next week.

“I am the parent of an LAUSD fifth-grader, and my family has been going through the same uncertainty and anguish as so many other families as we approach the return to school,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said. “Because of the protocols that UTLA educators and LAUSD families fought for and won, LA Unified has among the strictest COVID safety protocols in the country. But this Delta variant is unlike anything we have seen so far in this crisis — especially its impact on children — and we all need to step up to do our part to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

The current surge in COVID cases underscores why UTLA members fought so hard for mask mandates, ventilation, access to vaccines, and other safety measures for our schools. Those safety measures we negotiated include a COVID Task Force at each school, which should be doing a physical walk-through of campuses today, August 13, to note violations of safety protocols so they can be addressed before students return on Monday.

UTLA also calls on the District to actively encourage and facilitate greater access to vaccination for parents, eligible students, and the communities we serve. The District and LA County Department of Health must work together to increase outreach, vaccination clinics, and testing in communities with low vaccination rates and high transmission rates.

However, vaccines are one layer of protection. As staff and students return to school, we urge everyone to remain vigilant about all the layered mitigation strategies — from masking and ventilation to testing and tracing — needed to keep our learning spaces safe.

###

Categories Education Reform, Health, Science

Oklahoma City Defies State Ban on Masks

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2021 //
18

The state leaders of Oklahoma banned any mask mandates by school districts, showing their contempt for local control. But Oklahoma City, the state’s largest district, declared that it would defy the state and require all students and staff to wear masks. The district cares more about students than the Governor and Legislature.

Other districts in the state are following Oklahoma City’s lead.

The Tulsa school board is planning to sue the state to invalidate the masking ban.

It’s wonderful to see school districts fighting an irrational ban that endangers the lives of students and staff!

Categories Education Reform

AFT Passes Pro-Vaccine Resolution

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2021 //
24

Today the AFT Executive Council unanimously passed a resolution that supported vaccinations.

WASHINGTON—The executive council of the American Federation of Teachers last night unanimously passed a resolution guiding the union on workplace vaccination policies. The resolution is one of several passed by the board since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, designed to protect the health and safety of AFT members and the communities we serve. It was brought to the council in light of the significant change in circumstances with the delta variant and rising COVID-19 cases, infections in children(link is external), and an ongoing effort by the union to educate members and communities on the importance of vaccination.

In response to the passage, AFT President Randi Weingarten said:

“Throughout this pandemic, our No. 1 priority as a union has been to keep our members, our communities and those we serve safe. COVID is mutating, it’s spreading to kids, and vaccines remain our best defense to protect people and prevent the spread of disease; prevent hospitals from overflowing; keep our economy functioning, plus reopen—and keep open—our schools for full-time in-person learning.

“The variant and ensuing rise in cases have changed the situation: More employers are considering vaccination policies, including mandates. And while we still believe the best way to increase vaccinations is through education and voluntary adoption, we want to be in a position to work with our employers on workplace vaccination policies, including how they’re implemented—so people who need to be vaccinated can get accommodations, so everyone has access to vaccines and time to get them, and so no one is penalized for medical or religious reasons. Moving forward, we will bargain the impact of these vaccination policies.

“We believe that workplace policies should be done with working people, not to them. In fact, several of our affiliates have already worked with elected officials, school districts and other employers on vaccine or test policies. This once-in-a-generation pandemic calls for us to work together to keep people safe and put COVID-19 behind us.

“As educators, healthcare professionals and public employees, we play an important role in our communities, and the overwhelming majority of us are vaccinated. We will continue to advocate for masking, testing, and accurate science-based information about vaccinations to combat the rampant disinformation that’s literally killing American people. Vaccines work. Vaccines are safe. And vaccines save lives.”

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Categories Education Reform
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