Biden Calls for Massive Federal Response to Pandemic

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2020 //
7

Joe Biden seems to be waging a vigorous front-porch campaign.

The Washington Post reports:

WILMINGTON, Del. – Joe Biden doesn’t just want to ensure that every person in this country gets free testing for the novel coronavirus. He wants their treatment covered, too, no matter whether or how they are insured.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee also calls for adding $200 per month to the checks of everyone who collects Social Security, temporarily increasing Medicaid funding by 12 percent and expanding food stamp benefits by 15 percent.

Biden, who has mostly stayed in his house here for nearly four months, will venture out Tuesday afternoon to deliver a speech at a local school on his vision for fighting the coronavirus crisis.

As infections and hospitalizations surge, and with the United States poised to surpass 125,000 confirmed covid-19 deaths as soon as today, Biden will recall how President Trump described himself as a “wartime” leader at the start of the pandemic and then accuse him of “surrendering to the virus.”

“Americans social distanced and did their part to bend the curve, but Trump didn’t lead,” Biden plans to say, according to a preview shared by aides.

Biden will argue that the need for federal outlays to contain the worst public health crisis since 1918 and the worst economic crisis since 1933 is only growing – and he wants to guarantee emergency paid leave not just for everyone who gets covid-19 but also those who care for them – “for as long as they need to recover.”

Categories Biden, Funding, Health

California Charter Schools Collect Millions Intended for Small Businesses

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2020 //
5

The Network for Public Education has been tracking the charter schools that collected from the federal Paycheck Protectiin Program intended to help small businesses struggling to survive. The charter schools have not had any budget cuts, have lost no money, have not been struggling to pay employees, but their lobbyists get them included as eligible for the PPP funding, although public schools are not eligible.

The San Francisco Chronicle published a story about some of the charters in California that have applied for and received PPP money. You will not be surprised to see V that the Michelle Rhee-Kevin Johnson charter chain in Sacramento is among them.


WASHINGTON — Charter schools in the Bay Area received tens of millions of dollars from a federal coronavirus relief program intended for small businesses, money they say is necessary to stay afloat amid the pandemic.

The schools are alternatives to traditional public schools and are exempt from many state regulations related to class size, curriculum and teacher tenure, yet still receive state funding. Some of the Bay Area charters that got federal bailout money are also backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, and the board chairman of one school conceded that taking the aid could be an “optics issue.”

It’s the latest instance of the federal Paycheck Protection Program coming under scrutiny for giving money to businesses that fit the letter of the law, but which don’t fit the traditional notion of a small business. Among aid recipients were Shake Shack, the owner of Ruth’s Chris Steak House and the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, all of which gave back the money after it was reported that they were beneficiaries.

But some Bay Area charters say they are well within the spirit of the program. Many teach students from low-income or lesser-served communities, and they say they will accept any resource that keeps their teachers paid and schools open amid uncertainty about state education budgets.

The federal aid is in the form of low-interest loans that recipients don’t have to repay if they meet certain requirements, including keeping all their employees on the payroll. During the initial window for loan applications in May, Bay Area charter schools received funds from the program in amounts ranging from a few hundred thousand to several million dollars.

How we reported the story.

The Chronicle was approached by Parents United for Public Schools and In the Public Interest, which oppose charter schools and the privatization of education, with research they had done on schools that had received aid under the federal Paycheck Protection Program. The Chronicle then independently verified the information and conducted further research, including contacting policy makers.

The Chronicle was able to review charter boards’ meeting videos, audio recordings, minutes, documents and agendas to identify loan amounts and recipients. The Chronicle then contacted high-dollar recipients and schools named in the story to verify the information and to give them an opportunity to share their perspective on taking the low-interest federal loans.

Fourteen charter schools or chains in Oakland combined to receive roughly $20 million from the program. They included Education for Change, which runs six schools in the city and received $5.25 million, and Lighthouse Community Public Schools, which has two campuses and got $2.3 million.

Eight charter schools or chains in Santa Clara County combined to receive roughly $20 million. All but one received at least $1.5 million. Summit Public Schools, which has three schools in the county and a total of eight in the Bay Area, received $6.8 million.

At least two schools in San Francisco received loans. San Francisco Creative Arts Charter School got nearly $600,000. Envision Education’s City Arts and Tech High School also received a loan, but says the money will go to its consulting business — not the school that is supported by public funds. It did not divulge the amount it received.

And the St. Hope charter schools in Sacramento, whose board is chaired by school choice advocate Michelle Rhee and which was founded by her husband, former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, received more than $1.5 million.

Some of the loans were first publicized by Parents United for Public Schools and In the Public Interest, which oppose charter schools and the privatization of education. The Chronicle independently verified their research and conducted its own.

Traditional public schools are not eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program, and state-funded charter schools’ access to the loans raises questions among their critics about fairness.

“Because charter schools are currently receiving full funding as public schools intended to maintain employees, while at the same time receiving funding as private entities that are also intended to maintain employees, taxpayers are left covering what appears to be the same bill twice,” the groups said in a report questioning whether Oakland schools were “double dipping” on funds.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Denver: Charter Schools Collected $16 Million in Federal Aid for Small Businesses

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2020 //
5

Chalkbeat reports that charter schools in Denver collected $16 million from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, intended to help small businesses.

Across the country, charters are collecting federal money intended to save small businesses faced with economic collapse. Public schools are not eligible to get money from this program. Charter schools also receive state and local funding earmarked for public schools.

Aren’t they lucky to be both small businesses and public schools!

Denver charters knew this looked bad, so they suggested they might share future funding with the public schools.

Charter school critics nationally have balked at charters receiving federal Paycheck Protection Program funding, which is not available to traditional public schools.

But Denver charter leaders have committed to reckoning with any inequity created by the funding — a move the memo identifies as unique to Denver. Leaders said that could mean charters taking less than their share of other federal coronavirus relief funds earmarked for Denver schools, leaving more money for district-run schools.

Many charters have been unwilling to acknowledge that they have applied and received PPP money. In Denver, the charters released their federal funding at the request of a board member, Scott Baldermann.

Categories Accountability, Denver, Funding

BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court Rules Against Montana Ban on Funding Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2020 //
26

The Supreme Court just released a 5-4 decision in the case of Espinoza V. Montana that struck down a provision in the state constitution banning public funds to religious schools.

The decision seems to be narrowly tailored to say that if a state provides aid to private schools, it can’t bar aid to religious schools. I will post expert opinions on this as soon as they are available.

The many rightwing groups arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs (Espinoza) said that the ban was rooted in 19th century anti-Catholic bigotry (Blaine amendments), but Montana’s ban was enacted in 1972.

The decision will be celebrated by DeVos and other conservatives but it is not the knockout blow they were hoping for. If states don’t fund any private schools, they don’t have to fund religious schools. Conservatives were hoping to tear down Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state.” That didn’t happen.

The Los Angeles Times reported, in a story titled “Religious Schools Are Entitled to State Grants Given to Other Private Schools, Supreme Court Rules”:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states may not exclude religious schools from tuition grants that support other private schools.
The justices, by a 5-4 vote, decided that denying grants to students in church schools amounts to unconstitutional discrimination against religion.

The decision is a victory for advocates of school choice, and a setback for those favoring strict interpretation of the principle of church and state separation.

Montana, like more than 30 other states, has a long-standing state constitutional provision that forbids spending tax money to support churches and their affiliates. On that basis, the state supreme court blocked a state-sponsored scholarship program that would give grants to parents sending their children to private and parochial schools.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court struck down a Montana constitutional provision banning state aid to parochial schools, ruling that states cannot exclude religious institutions from programs benefiting nonsectarian private schools.

The program began in 2015 and provided up to $150 in tax credits for donations to scholarship funds that helped students attend private schools. State tax authorities determined that donations to religious schools didn’t qualify. Then Montana’s Supreme Court, citing a state constitutional ban on state aid to sectarian schools, struck down the whole program.

Some parents who sought to send their children to Stillwater Christian School in Kalispell, Mont., said they couldn’t afford the tuition without the program, and otherwise would have to rely on public schools.

In an appeal to the U.S Supreme Court, these challengers argued that the state constitution’s ban stems from a 19th century bias against Catholics and their parochial schools—and that the state constitution violated the federal Constitution by discriminating against church schools.

Many other states have similar restrictions, often called Blaine amendments after Rep. James Blaine (R., Maine), who unsuccessfully proposed a similar provision for the federal Constitution.

While anti-Catholic bias helped fuel the 19th century drive for Blaine amendments, Montana argued that its 1972 constitutional convention, which re-enacted the provision, had not been tainted by religious bigotry.

Conservative groups backing the Montana suit hoped it would pave the way for broader taxpayer subsidy of religious schools through vouchers and other programs, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s relaxation of the separation between church and state in recent years.

Categories Education Reform, School Choice, Separation of church and state

Why Does the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Repeatedly Lie about Vouchers in Florida?

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2020 //
12

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has three core beliefs about education.

1. Public schools are horrible.

2. Teachers’ unions are evil.

3. Non-unionized charters and vouchers are the remedy to all that ails American education.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The three highest performing states in the nation—Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey—have strong teachers’ unions. None of the non-union states are at the top of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Unions fight for adequate resources and decent salaries for teachers, in addition to fighting for teachers’ right to fair treatment on the job. The resources help their students, and the job rights help retain career teachers.

Most recently the WSJ wrote a glowing editorial about the alleged success of vouchers in Florida, one of its favorite states because its governor and legislature have diverted $3 billion from public schools to non-union charters and vouchers. The editorialists are thrilled because Florida just recently expanded its voucher program.

Most vouchers in Florida are used in religious schools, most of which are evangelical Christian schools. The voucher schools are not required to take state tests. They are not required to be accountable in any way. They are not required to hire certified teachers or principals. The voucher schools are allowed to discriminate against gay students, staff, and families. They do not have to adopt the state standards and may use the Bible as their science textbook if they wish. The Orlando Sentinel wrote a revealing series about Florida’s voucher program, called “Schools Without Rules.”

Bear in mind that the size of a voucher—less than $8,000–guarantees that it will be accepted only by low-tuition schools, not by the schools of elite families, where tuition may be as high as $35,000-40,000 a year.

Here is the text of the WSJ editorial:

The headline is “Florida’s School Choice Blowout.”

The subtitle is: “The State Expands Its Successful K-12 Scholarship Program.”

Good news from Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed the biggest private school voucher expansion in U.S. history—giving families in Democratic, union-controlled states another reason to move to the Sunshine State.

Florida established the Family Empowerment Scholarship last year for low and middle-income families. The private school vouchers run between $6,775 and $7,250 per student depending on the grade level, and 87% of recipients come from households below 185% of the federal poverty level (about $48,470 for a family of four). Most are black or Hispanic.

Vouchers had been limited to 18,000 students this year with annual growth capped at about 7,000. This wasn’t enough to meet parental demand, and there are 35,000 eligible students on scholarship waiting lists. Republicans have now quadrupled the cap on annual growth so that 28,000 more students can benefit each year. If the voucher program’s capacity exceeds demand from eligible families, the new law will increase the household-income limit (currently 300% of the poverty line) by 25% so more middle-income families can apply. In short, supply of vouchers will now automatically expand to meet demand.

As a political trade, Mr. DeSantis gave public schools $500 million for salary increases—not that this appeased the teachers unions that oppose all school choice because it forces unionized public schools to compete for students. While voucher studies have shown mixed effects on academic performance, one reason is probably that giving parents more choice forces improvements at public schools. A National Bureau of Economic Research study this year found higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism among students, especially low-income ones, who attended Florida public schools in areas where more students had access to private-school choice.

Notably, fourth-graders in Washington, D.C., and Miami-Dade in Florida showed the most improvement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores among large urban school districts since 2011. Both Florida and Washington, D.C., offer robust private-school choice and have eliminated teacher tenure. By contrast, student scores in most districts including Houston, Philadelphia and Baltimore have been flat or declined.

Jeb Bush kicked off Florida’s school choice movement two decades ago, and Rick Scott (now Senator) and Mr. DeSantis have built on his success. More than 130,000 students in Florida now receive scholarships. Florida is helping to increase social mobility and future incomes by expanding educational opportunity for all.

Here are the facts:

Florida’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a sample test of reading and mathematics in grades 4 and 8 for the nation, states, and some urban districts, have been mostly flat over the past decade. The NAEP scores don’t include voucher schools, because they are not held accountable in any way. The WSJ asserts that Florida is a great “success” story, that its fourth graders showed dramatic improvement from 2011-2019, but that is false. Why leave out the eighth graders? Could it be because the eighth grade scores in both Florida and Miami were flat?

Here are the NAEP results for 2019 in reading.

Here are the NAEP results in mathematics for 2019.

You can look at average scores over time for every state and for urban districts that asked to be tested, including Miami-Dade.

You can compare 2019 to previous years. The WSJ chose to compare 2019 to 2011, but I chose to compare 2019 to 2009. It’s not impressive for Florida or Miami no matter which year you choose.

Let’s check the progress of Florida and Miami on NAEP (public schools only):

Fourth grade reading: Scores unchanged since 2009.

Eighth grade reading: Scores unchanged since 2009.

Fourth grade mathematics: Scores unchanged since 2011 (Remember that Florida retains low-scoring third graders, which tends to inflate fourth -grade scores).

Eighth grade math: Scores unchanged from 2009-2019.

Since the WSJ refers to NAEP as evidence of Florida’s amazing performance, it’s worth noting that Florida has flat-lined for the last decade on NAEP.

We don’t know anything about the “success” of vouchers in Florida, since their students don’t take state tests or NAEP.

But we do know that rigorous voucher studies in other states—Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, the District of Columbia—have shown that voucher students lose ground compared to their peers in public schools. (See here and here and here.)

Far from “expanding opportunity,” vouchers enable children to attend low-cost schools where they abandon their civil rights protections at the door, are instructed by uncertified teachers, and are likely to fall behind academically or return to their public school. One of the unexplored issues associated with voucher schools is their high attrition rates. When voucher boosters boast about their high school graduation rate, they fail to mention the number of kids who didn’t make it to senior year. Only the elitist Wall Street Journal would think of this as a boon for children and families.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Lies, NAEP, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

D.C.: Beloved Principal Fired Because She Resisted “No Excuses” Discipline

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2020 //
7

The Relay “Graduate School of Education” was created by charter schools to train charter school teachers on test-score-raising and no-excuses discipline, while using Doug Lemov’s Bible “Teach Like a Champion.” It’s teachers mostly taught in charters.

Relay is called a graduate school, but it has no research faculty, no campus, no library, and at last review, no scholars or anyone with a doctorate.

Nonetheless, Relay has landed some contracts for professional development in districts run by corporate reformers and Broadies. The chancellor in D.C. is Lewis Ferebee, who previously led privatization efforts in Indianapolis.

In D.C., it does professional development for principals.

One principal in D.C. didn’t like Relay’s philosophy.

She was fired.

Parents were not happy.

Ceaira Richardson recited the challenges that make life in her Southeast D.C. neighborhood difficult.

Grocery options are sparse, making it tough to find fresh produce. Crime rates are higher than in other parts of the city. Keeping children safe is not always easy.

But she feels at ease at Lawrence E. Boone Elementary School, a recently modernized, light-filled campus not far from Richardson’s home. There, her three-year-old daughter is already reading. She senses teachers truly care about her child, so much so that she persuaded family members to send their children to the school.

“I told everybody, ‘Enroll in Boone. Enroll in Boone,’” Richardson said.

In recent months, Richardson and other members of the Boone community have rallied around the school’s principal, Carolyn Jackson-King, after they learned the veteran educator was fired and will not return to the position for the 2020-2021 academic year.

Teachers, parents and some D.C. lawmakers have demanded D.C. Public Schools reverse its decision. Jackson-King and her supporters say she was dismissed by the school system because she resisted teaching practices that educators at Boone felt were militaristic and racist.

“I just feel they attempted to control Black bodies,” Jackson-King said.

Ferebee had no comment.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Maybe Why Trump Was Not Briefed on Russian Plan

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2020 //
33

NPR has the story. Intelligence officials included information about the Russian determination to put a bounty on Coalition forces in his daily briefing report.

However, they made a mistake. They put the ominous story in the president’s daily intelligence briefing, which is written. The president doesn’t read. They should have given the information to Fox & Friends. Then he would have noticed.

Categories Education Reform

Congress Wants Answers about Russian Bounty-for-Bodies Allegations

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2020 //
101

The New York Times reports that members of Congress want intelligence officials to explain the claims that Russia paid a bounty to Afghan militants to kill soldiers who are American or other Coalition forces.

Trump denies that he was briefed. Is it credible that such an important development would not be transmitted to the president?

Democrats and Republicans in Congress demanded on Monday that American intelligence agencies promptly share with lawmakers what they know about a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, and threatened to retaliate against the Kremlin.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, each requested that all lawmakers be briefed on the matter and for C.I.A. and other intelligence officials to explain how President Trump was informed of intelligence collected about the plot. Mr. Trump has said he was not made aware of an intelligence assessment about the plot; officials have said that it was briefed to the highest levels of the White House and appeared in the president’s daily intelligence brief.

“Congress and the country need answers now,” Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, wrote in a letter to John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director. “Congress needs to know what the intelligence community knows about this significant threat to American troops and our allies and what options are available to hold Russia accountable.”

In the Republican-controlled Senate, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he had asked for information as well and expected to know more on the matter “in the coming days.”

“We’ve known for a long time that Putin is a thug and a murderer, and if these allegations are true, I will work with President Trump on a strong response,” he said in a statement. “My No. 1 priority is the safety of our troops. Right now, though, we need answers.”

The C.I.A. declined to comment on Ms. Pelosi’s request.

Members of Congress were caught off guard on Friday when The New York Times first reported that American intelligence had found that a Russian military intelligence unit had secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in exchange for killing American troops and their allies in Afghanistan. National Security Council officials met in March to discuss the intelligence, but the White House has taken no known action in response.

The Times further reported on Sunday that American intelligences officers and Special Operations forces in the country had informed their superiors of the suspected Russian plot as early as January, after a large amount of American cash was seized in a raid on a Taliban outpost.

American officials believed that the death of at least one U.S. service member was tied to the bounties, and they are reviewing other combat casualties in search of other potential victims, officials familiar with the matter have said.

The White House has not challenged that the intelligence assessment exists, or that the National Security Council held an interagency meeting about it in late March.

But Mr. Trump and his press secretary, Kaleigh McEnany, have both claimed that he was not briefed on the intelligence report. Mr. Trump said in a tweet late Sunday that “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me” or Vice President Mike Pence.

Lawmakers were left uncertain what to believe, and even members of Mr. Trump’s party sounded uneasy on Monday when asked about the president’s statements.

Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Trump’s tweet suggesting he had not been made aware of the reports was “a very concerning statement.”

“Anything with any hint of credibility that would endanger our service members, much less put a bounty on their lives, to me should have been briefed immediately to the commander in chief and a plan to deal with that situation,” he said.

Categories Education Reform, Trump

Chief Justice Roberts Provides Swing Vote to Strike Down Law to Ban Abortions

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2020 //
27

Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the Supreme Court’s four liberal justices to strike down a Louisiana law that would have severely restricted access to abortion.

The Washington Post reports:

The Supreme Court on Monday provided a victory for abortion rights activists, striking down a restrictive Louisiana law that would have left the state with only one abortion clinic.


Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s liberals in the 5 to 4 decision. It was a blow to conservatives who had hoped for a dramatic change in the court’s abortion jurisprudence in the first case heard by a court reinforced by President Trump’s two conservative appointees.


Instead, Roberts said the Louisiana law could not stand given the court’s 2016 decision to to overturn a similar Texas law in 2016.
“The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike,” Roberts wrote in concurring with the decision. “The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”


Roberts ‘s vote was all the more striking because he dissented in the Texas case. He said he continues “believe that the [Texas] case was wrongly decided.” But he said the question was whether to “adhere to it in the present case.”


It was perhaps the most dramatic example of Roberts’s new role as the pivotal member of the court, and indicated that while he supports restrictions on abortion, he is unready at this point to overhaul the court’s jurisprudence supporting the right of a woman to choose the procedure.

A side note: in states where protestors have refused to wear face masks, some have chanted, “My body, my choice!”

Ironic. Do the anti-maskers support abortion rights?

Categories Accountability, Health, Louisiana

Oklahoma: Dark Money Enters Primary Campaigns

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2020 //
0

Dark money—anonymous donors—are pouring money into primary campaigns. The main donor is the Oklahoma Federation of Children, the state affiliate of Betsy DeVos’ American Federation of Children. Never in history has there been a Secretary of Education with her own political PAC.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Dark Money, Oklahoma
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