Trump Administration Threatens to Cancel Funding to Public Schools with DEI

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
13

Michael C. Bender reports in The New York Times that the Trump administration is threatening to cancel funding from schools that refuse to eliminate programs or courses that teach DEI. The administration has turned civil rights enforcement upside down and inside out. For decades, civil rights law meant protection of racial minorities and women, who were often targets of discrimination, exclusion, or unfair treatment. This administration worries most about the rights of white students.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon clearly doesn’t know that federal law prohibits any federal official from interfering with or trying to influence curriculum.

“20 USC 1232a: Prohibition against Federal control of education. Text contains those laws in effect on April 2, 2025

§1232a. Prohibition against Federal control of education

No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance.

What Secretary McMahon proposes is illegal.

Bender writes:

The Trump administration threatened on Thursday to withhold federal funding from public schools unless state education officials verified the elimination of all programs that it said unfairly promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a memo sent to top public education officials across the country, the Education Department said that funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students, known as Title I funding, was at risk pending compliance with the administration’s directive.

The memo included a certification letter that state and local school officials must sign and return to the department within 10 days, even as the administration has struggled to define which programs would violate its interpretation of civil rights laws. The move is the latest in a series of Education Department directives aimed at carrying out President Trump’s political agenda in the nation’s schools.

At her confirmation hearing in February, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said schools should be allowed to celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But she was more circumspect when asked whether classes that focused on Black history ran afoul of Mr. Trump’s agenda and should be banned.

“I’m not quite certain,” Ms. McMahon said, “and I’d like to look into it further.”

More recently, the Education Department said that an “assessment of school policies and programs depends on the facts and circumstances of each case.”

Programs aimed at recognizing historical events and contributions and promoting awareness would not violate the law “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination,” the department wrote.

“However, schools must consider whether any school programming discourages members of all races from attending, either by excluding or discouraging students of a particular race or races, or by creating hostile environments based on race for students who do participate,” the Education Department said.

It also noted that the Justice Department could sue for breach of contract if it found that federal funds were spent while violating civil rights laws.

The federal government accounts for about 8 percent of local school funding, but the amounts vary widely. In Mississippi, for example, about 23 percent of school funding comes from federal sources, while just 7 percent of school funding in New York comes from Washington, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant education secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal anti-discrimination requirements.”

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Injustice, Racism, Trump, Tyranny

Scott Maxwell: Florida Replaces Immigrant Labor with Child Labor

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
6

It was entirely predictable that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would create a labor shortage by driving immigrants away. Whether documented or not, immigrants are the backbone of the tourist industry and agriculture, two of the basic elements in the state’s economy. Once they were gone, who would replace them? Children. DeSantis is now promoting a reduction in child labor laws to replace the immigrant labor he criminalized. Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell describes the new Florida economy, balanced on the backs of children. Not the rich kids, but the poor kids.

Maxwell writes:

The Newsweek headline looked like satire: “Florida May Replace Immigrant Workers With Child Labor.”

Savvy Floridians know, though, that you can’t fictionalize stories more absurd than this state’s reality. And Florida lawmakers are, in fact, trying to roll back the state’s child-labor laws.

Basically, if employers in this state can’t exploit immigrants, the governor and Legislature want them to be able to legally exploit your children.

The latest proposal would allow teens to work longer hours, without breaks and even overnight shifts on school nights. Take that, Myanmar.

Up next, maybe we can emulate Burkina Faso where more than half the kids are in the labor force, some as young as 7. Now there’s a country with values.

What you’re witnessing is a real-life version of the dog that chased cars without thinking about what he’d do if he actually caught one. In this case, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s GOP legislators have fumed for years about undocumented workers without having the slightest clue about how they’d respond if those workers actually walked off Florida job sites.

So now they’re panicking and want your kids to fill the bill.

Normally, in a free-market economy, if an employer can’t find workers, it would just raise wages until people start applying. That’s how supply and demand works.

But Florida’s GOP politicians don’t want to ask their campaign donors to raise wages. They’d rather flood the market with another class of exploitable workers — teenagers.

Maybe you used to dream of your teen becoming an engineer or architect. Well, forget that Ivy League, ivory-tower fiddle-faddle. Florida’s economy needs them harvesting tomatoes and cleaning motel rooms.

In some ways, it makes sense to put our kids to work. We’re sure not educating them. Florida’s SAT scores have dropped to 47th in America. And our state’s eighth-graders just posted the lowest math and reading scores in 20 years.

So, if we’re not preparing them for higher education or high-paying jobs, we might as well get them primed for the low-wage tourism and agriculture jobs that make this state hum.

Senate Bill 918, would eliminate restrictions on how many hours 16- and 17-year-olds can work. It would end guaranteed meal breaks and also lift restrictions for kids as young as 14 who are home schooled or enrolled in virtual school. (So if you want your rugrat pulling down a paycheck, just yank ’em out of traditional school.)

The Florida Policy Institute summarized the bill by saying it would allow Florida to work teens “for unlimited hours, any time day or night, seven days per week and without breaks.”Welcome to childhood in Florida.

Not all Republicans think this is a boffo idea. Sen. Joe Gruters, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, joined Democrats in opposing the bill, saying: “I think we need to let kids be kids.”

Gruters chose his words carefully: “Let kids be kids” is a line DeSantis uses a lot, usually when he’s pushing censorship laws.

Apparently, in DeSantis’ worldview, teens aren’t mature enough to see certain drag performers, even alongside their parents — but are mature enough to work right through the night until school starts at 7 am. That’s just kids being kids.

As I’ve said before, I’m a fan of teens having jobs. I had a paper route in middle school and landed my first real job at a drugstore when I was 14 — old enough to legally sell condoms and tampons, but still immature enough to giggle about it. (Basically, if you ever entered a Revco in the 1980s,  nervous about making a purchase, I was your worst nightmare.)

But here’s the thing: I believe teens should get jobs when they and their parents want them to get jobs — not because we need to plug labor holes in our low-wage economy.

Keep in mind: DeSantis didn’t promote his roll-back-child-labor-laws ideas at a panel discussion on building teen character. He did it at panel discussion on immigration. After noting that undocumented workers provided “dirt cheap labor,” DeSantis asked: “Why do we say why we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when you know teenagers used to work at these resorts?”

This is just about swapping one exploitable labor class for another … in a state that already turns a blind eye to companies that break labor laws.

Remember Florida’s “mandatory” E-Verify law? It explicitly said that the state couldn’t even fine companies caught breaking the law until they’re caught three times. And that law-breaking employers must be given 30 days to stop breaking the law before they’re punished. What other laws work like that?

This is a state that gives companies a pass on labor-law violations and now wants to give them a younger workforce. What a dangerous combo. Even moreso when you consider GOP lawmakers also want to let businesses subvert minimum wage laws for some workers “younger than 18 years of age.”

Kids in Florida who say they have financial “hardships” can surrender even more workplace protections. Basically, the poorer you are, the more you can be exploited. So it ain’t gonna be the private, prep-school kids working farm fields and cleaning motel rooms at 3 in the morning.

DeSantis seemed particularly interested in using kids to fill the theme parks’ job needs. But the proposed rollbacks would also allow teens to work longer hours waxing floors, painting houses, stocking shelves, doing landscaping and working in fast food. Kids would still be banned from doing particularly dangerous jobs like mining or tarring roofs higher than six feet.

So teens could be asked to work overnight shifts right up until the start of a school day. That’s just “kids being kids.” But we’d draw the line at putting kids in boiler rooms and phosphate mines. A state has to have standards, after all.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Immigration

Glenn Kessler Fact-Checks Trump on Tariffs

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
8

Glenn Kessler is the fact-checker for The Washington Post. He is careful and meticulous in his research. In this post, he analyzes Trump’s statements about tariffs.

He writes:

Trump’s speech announcing a huge increase in tariffs on American trading partners was riddled with falsehoods and misleading statements on trade that he has made for years. But now they are determining policy that will increase the costs of goods for many Americans. Here’s a quick sampling, in the order in which he made them. We’re sure we missed some — and some claims still require more checking.

“For years, hardworking American citizens who were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense. But now it’s our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt.”

This is exaggerated. In Trump’s telling, the United States is a poor country, beset by outside forces. Not only does the U.S. have the largest gross domestic product in the world, but its per capita GDP is much higher than any large country. For instance, GDP per capita in the U.S. is nearly $90,000, compared with $14,000 for China, $58,000 for Germany and $36,000 for Japan.

Tariffs are in effect a tax increase, one that falls heavily on lower-income workers. Economists agree that tariffs — essentially a tax on domestic consumption — are paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, which in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products. As a matter of demand and supply elasticities, overseas producers will pay part of the tax if there are fewer goods sold to the U.S. Domestic producers in effect get a subsidy because they can raise their prices to the level imposed on importers.

Not only will tariffs be unlikely to reduce the budget deficit — especially if the economy sinks — but it’s a fantasy to suggest the national debt can be paid with tariffs.

“The United States charges other countries only a 2.4 percent tariff on motorcycles. Meanwhile, Thailand and others are charging much higher prices, like 60 percent, India charges 70 percent, Vietnam charges 75 percent, and others are even higher than that. Likewise, until today, the United States has for decades charged a 2.5 tariff. Think of that 2.5 percent on foreign-made automobiles. The European Union charges us more than 10 percent tariffs.”

Some of Trump’s numbers are suspect. India charges a 50 percent tariff on motorcycles, not 70 percent, and recently announced a cut to 40 percent. In any case, Harley-Davidson already got around that duty by assembling in India most of the motorcycles sold in the country.

While Trump highlights the low U.S. tariff on foreign cars, he ignores the fact that for more than 50 years the U.S. has imposed a 25 percent tariff on pickup trucks. That’s much higher than the European tariff on cars.

Moreover, Trump ignores that trade can be mutually beneficial. The European Union is the largest export market for the U.S., and if the Europeans retaliate, that will be a big loss for American manufacturers. International trade works in such a way that some countries dominate some markets and don’t compete as much in others. The French have trade restrictions on U.S. wine, just as the U.S. has trade restrictions on French clothing.

“Toyota sells 1 million foreign made automobiles into the United States, and General Motors sells almost none. Ford sells very little. None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries.”

This is misleading. Market forces, not trade, are a critical factor. American cars have fared poorly in Japan because the Japanese prefer smaller, more fuel-efficient models. But the Chinese like American cars, which, contrary to Trump’s claim, are allowed to be sold there. Until 2023, General Motors sold more cars in China than in the U.S., but sales have fallen because China has developed a preference for electric cars — where GM has lagged.

“Canada, by the way, imposes a 250 to 300 percent tariff on many of our dairy products. They do the first, the first can of milk, they do the first little carton of milk at a very low price. But after that it gets bad, and then it gets up to 275, 300 percent.”

Trump has forgotten he fixed this. The high dairy tariff was largely eliminated in Trump’s renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement during his first term. Now it only kicks in after the U.S. has hit a certain level of tariff-free sales in a year — which has not yet happened.

“And with countries like Canada, you know, we subsidize a lot of countries and keep them going and keep them in business. In the case of Mexico, it’s $300 billion a year. In the case of Canada, it’s close to $200 billion a year.”

These numbers are wrong. The “subsidy” to Canada supposedly includes military benefits the U.S. provides to the NATO ally, but we fact-checked this and the numbers did not add up. In 2024, the deficit in trade in goods and services with Canada was about $45 billion. The trade deficit with Mexico was about $172 billion in 2024.

“Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy, it would have been a much different story.”

This is nonsense history. The income tax was intended to shift the burden to wealthier Americans as the cost of tariffs fall mainly on lower-income people. Tax revenue was also considered a more stable source of funds. One big advocate for an income tax was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican. As for the Great Depression, many historians credit the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, signed into law in 1930, as worsening the economic slowdown because it sparked a global trade war.

“But since the very beginning of NAFTA, our country lost 90,000 factories. Think what that is — 90,000.”

The 90,000 factories statistic is dubious. The figure comes from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics, which has a tool that breaks down the data. About a third of the manufacturing establishments employ four or fewer people, which hardly makes them factories. The manufacturing establishments with more than 500 people fell from 4,535 in 2000 to 3,316 in 2022. That’s a decline of about one-quarter, but the number (1,219) is much smaller than 90,000.

“And 5 million manufacturing jobs were lost while racking up trade deficits of $19 trillion. That [North American Free Trade Agreement] was the worst trade deal ever made.”

This is mostly because of China. Trump pins the blame on NAFTA but a key factor in a decline of manufacturing was China entering the World Trade Organization The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in 2017 concluded the “net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP,” though it noted “there were worker and firm adjustment costs as the three countries adjusted to more open trade and investment among their economies.”

“Apple is going to spend $500 billion. They never spent money like that here.”

Biden got a similar deal. A few months after Biden took office, Apple pledged to invest $430 billion over five years in the U.S. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $525 billion.

“If you look at China, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in my term.”

This is false. Records maintained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed about $75 billion was raised on Chinese goods by the time Trump left office — most of which was paid by American consumers. (He also had to spend $28 billion to bail out farmers harmed by the loss of business to other countries when China retaliated.)

“They [China] never paid 10 cents to any other president, and yet they paid hundreds of billions.”

This is false. Tariffs have been collected on Chinese goods since the early days of the Republic. President George Washington signed the Tariff Act of 1789, when trade between China and the U.S. was already established. Tariffs on China generated at least $8 billion every year since 2009.



The Fact Checker is a verified signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principle

Categories Economy, Lies, Trump

Trump’s Tariffs: A Global Mess?

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
8

Yesterday after the stock market closed, Trump held a press conference to announce his much-ballyhooed tariff plan. He used the opportunity to insult other nations, as is his custom. Commentators noted that he slapped tariffs on uninhabited islands. Trump believes that the greatest period in the American economy ended in 1913, when the federal government adopted the income tax. When I was a junior in high school in high school, I learned that the enactment of a federal income tax was progressive because it reduced the vast gap between the very rich and everyone else. I also learned about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which set off a global trade war and contributed to the Great Depression. Apparently, these topics were not taught in Trump’s elite military academy. His history classes must have been taught from the perspective of the robber barons.

The Washington Post wrote:

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will impose a new 10 percent tariff on all imported goods along with higher import taxes tailored for each of about 60 countries that his advisers say maintain the largest barriers against U.S. products, in a sharp turn toward the kind of protectionism that the United States abandoned nearly a century ago.

To impose the new tariffs, the president declared a national emergency, citing the annual merchandise trade deficit that the United States has run each year since 1975.

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”

The tariff increases that the president announced had little modern precedent and would erect towering impediments to products from dozens of foreign countries, many of them poor nations that embraced exporting as a tool to escape grinding poverty….

Speaking in blunt, sometimes intemperate language, the president assailed the nation’s trading partners, including some of its closest allies, as “foreign cheaters” and “foreign scavengers” who had “ripped off Americans” for 50 years. Trump’s tone echoed the dark portrait of “American carnage” that he had sketched in his first inaugural address in 2017….

“In the short run, the effect is probably a recession. It’s going to raise the price of so many goods that can’t be made in the United States,” said economist Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. “In the long run, it’s a vision of the U.S. that is very isolated from the world.”

Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, warned that his members operate on thin profit margins and cannot absorb the tariffs. Small businesses and restaurant owners issued statements decrying their added costs.

“This is catastrophic for American families,” said Matt Priest, president of the Footwear Retailers and Distributers of America.

********************************

Daniel Dale of CNN fact-checked only a few of Trump’s outlandish statements during his press conference about his tariffs. He imposed tariffs on uninhabited islands, populated only by penguins.

Dale wrote:

President Donald Trump made a series of false claims about tariffs and trade – most of which he has made before – in the Wednesday speech in which he announced a sweeping set of global tariffs.

Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks.

Canada’s dairy tariffs

Trump correctly noted that Canada has tariffs exceeding 250% on some US dairy products. However, he falsely claimed that merely “the first little carton of milk” exported to Canada faces a “very low price,” but “then it gets up to 275, 300%.”null

In reality, Canada has guaranteed that tens of thousands of metric tons of imported US milk per year, not merely a single carton, will face zero tariffs at all; Canada conceded a certain guaranteed level of tariff-free US access to its dairy market as part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that Trump’s own first administration negotiated.

Trump also didn’t mention something the US dairy industry acknowledges: The US is not hitting its zero-tariff maximum level of exports to Canada in any category of dairy product, so the Canadian tariffs aren’t being applied; with regard to milk in particular, the US isn’t even at half of the tariff-free quota. (There is a vigorous US-Canada debate about why the US is so far from the maximum, with each country blaming the other. Regardless of who’s right, the tariffs aren’t hitting US milk.)

Trump has persistently omitted key facts about Canada’s dairy tariffs. You can read more here from a previous CNN fact check.

US trade deficit with Canada

Trump, claiming “we subsidize a lot of countries,” falsely said “it’s close to $200 billion a year” with Canada. Trump has repeatedly used this $200 billion figure to describe the US trade deficit with Canada in particular, which is actually far lower than $200 billion; official US statistics show the 2024 deficit with Canada in goods and services trade was $35.7 billion and $70.6 billion in goods trade alone.

Trump didn’t mention the trade deficit in particular this time, but even if he was intending to use the word “subsidize” more broadly, there is no basis for the claim.

Who pays tariffs

Trump repeated his frequent false claim that, because of the tariffs he imposed on China during his first term, the US “took in hundreds of billions of dollars” that “they paid.” In fact, US importers, not foreign exporters like China,make the tariff payments, andstudy after studyhas found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s first-term tariffs on China; it’s easy to findspecific examplesof companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.

Previous presidents’ tariffs on China

Trump also repeated his frequent false claim that, before his first presidency, China “never paid 10 cents to any other president” from tariffs. Aside from the fact that US importers make the tariff payments, the US was actuallygenerating billions per year in revenuefrom tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since1789. Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama,imposed additional tariffson Chinese goods.

US wealth

Touting the supposed benefits of tariffs, Trump claimed that “the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been” from 1789 to 1913, when tariffs made up a higher percentage of federal revenue before the passage of a 1913 law reestablishing the federal income tax.

Trump didn’t explain what he meant by “proportionately the wealthiest,” but by standard measures, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior. Per capita gross domestic product isnow many times higherthan it was then.

Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College economics professor who studies the history of US trade policy, said in February after Trump had made similar claims, that if Trump’s unclear comments are interpreted to be about per capita income, as “economists usually take this,” it is “obviously not true,” since “real per capita income and standards of living are so much higher today than the past. … It is nice to have indoor plumbing, running water, not outhouses, etc.”

This is only part of the article. Open the link to finish reading. Dale reviews inflation, the cost of gasoline, and other issues.

Categories Accountability, Economy, Extremism, International, Lies, Stupid, Trump

Chicago: Teachers Union Wins Landmark Agreement with School Board

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2025 //
4

After nearly a year of bargaining, the Chicago Teachers Union reached a landmark agreement with the City of Chicago and the school board. Karen Lewis, the late President of the Chicago Teachers, was a champion for the city’s children, their teachers, and the public schools. She must be smiling in heaven to see what the CTU has accomplished.

The CTU announced:

Chicago Teachers Union

NEWS ADVISORY: 
For Immediate Release

April 2, 2025

CONTACT:312-329-9100
Communications@ctulocal1.org

CTU to Hold Press Conference to Announce Results of Special House of Delegates Meeting

Union to announce results of next step to transform Chicago Public Schools after the 60+ rank and file members of the Big Bargaining Team sent tentative agreement to the House of Delegate members for approval.

What: Press conference announcing results of House of Delegates vote

Where: Chicago Teachers Union, 1901 W Carroll Ave; enter through the East entrance off Wolcott; parking will be available for camera trucks in the South lot (on Fulton)

When: Immediately following House of Delegates meeting (Meeting starts at 4:45pm and we will alert press once the media is adjourned)

Who: CTU officers, big bargaining team members, and elected delegates

In the next step toward ratifying a contract that represents a major leap forward in the process of transforming Chicago Public Schools started by CTU in 2012, the union will hold a special House of Delegates meeting on Wednesday, April 2nd. At the meeting, the elected delegates of the union will vote on whether or not the tentative agreement landed by the 60 rank and file members of the Big Bargaining Team shall be sent to the full membership for a vote as early as next week.

The union will hold a press conference immediately following the meeting to announce whether the tentative agreement that creates smaller class sizes, a historic investment in sports, grants recess students were being denied, and enshrines protections for Black history and academic freedom – among more than 150 other items – is going to a full membership vote or back to the bargaining table for improvements.

BACKGROUND

After more than eleven months of bargaining, working without a contract throughout the entire school year, and for the first time in more than 15 years of doing so without a strike or strike vote, the Chicago Teachers Union announced their big bargaining team made up of rank and file members approved a tentative agreement with Chicago Public Schools.

The tentative agreement will go to CTU’s House of Delegates Wednesday which will decide whether or not to advance it to CTU’s 30,000 members for a ratification vote. If accepted, it will represent a major leap forward in the transformation of a district that is still recovering from the gutting and financial irresponsibility carried out by Trump’s Project 2025 style efforts under Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan, Paul Vallas, and other privatization forces that closed over 200 public schools between 2002 and 2018.

Despite the efforts of right wing actors like Paul Vallas, The Liberty Justice Center, and Illinois Policy Institute, and the MAGA forces that seek to deny the investments Chicago’s students deserve, this proposed contract builds upon the past several contracts won by CTU in 2012, 2016, and 2019. It charts a new direction of investment, expansion of sustainable community and dual language schools, increased staffing, and a focus on reparatory equity to provide the educational experience Chicago students deserve no matter what neighborhood they live in.

The 2012 strike won the air conditioning that kept CPS open during the back-to-school heatwave at the beginning of the school year. 2016 established the model of 20 sustainable community schools, a program that helped to stabilize and resource schools like Dyett High School whose boy’s basketball team won the state championship this year. 2019 won social workers and nurses in every school and established the sanctuary status that protected CPS students from Trump’s federal agents earlier this year.

In 2025, some highlights of the Chicago Teachers Union contract include:

  • Doubles the number of libraries and librarians for our schools
  • Enforceable and smaller class sizes for all grade levels
  • Ensuring social workers and nurses serve students in every school, every instructional day
  • Doubles the bilingual education staffing supports for students 
  • Additional staffing, curricular and enrollment supports for Early Childhood education students and programs. 
  • Creates 215 more case manager positions district-wide to support students with disabilities. 
  • A cost of living adjustment of 17-20% compounded (tied to inflation) over the four years of the contract
  • Provide new steps that compensate veteran educators for their experience
  • Increases in prep time for clinicians, elementary and special education teachers so students arrive to classrooms ready for them
  • Expanded benefits for dental, vision, infertility and abortion care, gender-affirming care, hearing aids, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, chiropractic services
  • A more than tripling of the number of Sustainable Community Schools, from 20 to 70, over the course of the agreement. 
  • Provides CTU, CPS, City and sister agency coordination for the first time to provide housing support, section 8 vouchers, rental assistance and affordable units to CPS families in need. 
  • Enshrines 12 weeks paid parental leave, equal parental, personal illness, and supplemental leave rights for PSRPs to teachers
  • A Green Schools initiation of additional resources and collaboration to remediate lead, asbestos and mold in aging school buildings while upgrading to green energy with environmentally sustainable technology, materials and practices. 
  • Protections for academic freedom, Black history, and culturally relevant curriculum for the first time in the contract. 
  • An additional $10 million annual investment in sports programming
  • Protections for academic freedom that enshrine educators’ ability to teach Black, indigenous, and other history
  • Continuation of Sanctuary School procedures
  • A new article that creates LGBTQIA+ safe schools

See the full list of tentative agreements at https://www.ctulocal1.org/movement/contract-2024.

“Our union is bargaining for what every parent wants for their child in our school communities. It shouldn’t be a fight for children to get access to arts, sports, wrap around supports, and libraries. It’s what should already exist,” explains CTU Local 1 President Stacy Davis Gates. “We’re proud to have landed a transformative contract that turns away from decades of disinvesting in Black children and turns toward creating the world-class education system for every single student in CPS no matter their zip code. If the contract is ratified by our members, we will be one major leap forward toward the educational experience Chicago’s children and the mainly women workers who serve them in our schools deserve.”

Additional Information:

###

The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in schools funded by City of Chicago School District 299, and by extension, more than 300,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information, please visit the CTU website at www.ctulocal1.org.

Categories Chicago, Class size, Closing schools, Community Schools, Courage, Democracy, Early Childhood Education, Equity, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Justice, Students, Supporting public schools, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, Turnaround Schools, U.S. Department of Education, Union

Trump Wants to Control How Americans Vote

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2025 //
3

Dan Balz of The Washington Post writes about Trump’s executive order seeking control of elections. Trump has complained about election fraud since he won in 2016; he couldn’t believe that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, so he insisted that millions of undocumented immigrants had illegally voted. Although he set up a commission to find election fraud, it found none. When he lost in 2020, he shrieked again about a “stolen” election, but no one ever found any evidence of fraud that would change the outcome, and even his close associates disagreed with him. But after four years of lying about 2020, he recently issued an executive order to change state election laws, which are embedded in the Constitution.

Balz wrote:

Almost no part of government is immune from President Donald Trump’s thirst for power and control. Last week he signed executive orders aimed at the Smithsonian Institution, the District of Columbia and the administration of elections. No president has sought more change in more institutions more rapidly, through executive orders than Trump.

The order on elections is more than 2,500 words and at times densely written. It may have received less attention than warranted as it was issued amid the controversy over how sensitive military operational details were shared in a Signal chat group that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic.

The order is illustrative of how the president is attempting to govern, largely through dictates rather than legislation. It is rooted in Trump’s long-standing, though false, claims that the election system is rife with fraud. Its legal foundations are questionable. But like other executive orders the president has signed, it could produce chaos and change before it is fully litigated.

Trump’s reach for power overrides any ideological consistency, though there is nothing new in that. He is dismantling the Department of Education, arguing that states and local governments should run the nation’s schools (which they already do). Now he is attempting to order state and local election administrators to adopt his rules for running future elections.

The Constitution grants most power over elections to the states. When Democrats were pushing a multifaceted voting rights bill known as H.R. 1 during the administration of President Joe Biden, conservative opponents decried the measure as a federal takeover. So far, there’s been no notable public outcry on the right over the federal takeover that Trump is seeking.

“This is clearly an attempt to federalize election administration to a historic degree, as was H.R. 1,” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Certainly liberals and Democrats are going to press the federalism button really hard. And you will get probably some Republican secretaries not pressing it quite as hard, but privately, many of them are going to be pushing back.”

Another election analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid opinion described what he saw as the goal of the order: “It is to reduce turnout by people he thinks won’t vote for him,” the analyst said.

As we can see, billionaire publisher Jeff Bezos has interfered on the opinion pages, but not the news coverage.

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Lies, Trump

DOGE Aims to Privatize Federal Government Functions

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2025 //
11

Those of us who have watched the movement to privatize public education over the past 30 years have witnessed a long list of broken promises. Privately-run schools, we were told, would be more effective, more accountable, more transparent, more responsive to students and parents, and would save money!

Now we know that none of those claims were true.

Privatization, in the case of charter schools and vouchers, does not produce better results, except when the privatizers exclude the students with the greatest needs. Privatization does not save money; in fact, it’s more expensive because the business has to turn a profit. Privatization means less accountability and less transparency; lobbyists for the charter chains and voucher entities fight both accountability and transparency. Accountability and testing, it turns out, is only for public schools, not for religious and private schools. Privatization opens the way to graft, corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse.

The Washington Post wrote that the highest goal of Elon Musk’s DOGE plan is privatization of government services.

Mail delivery. Real estate. Foreign aid grants. The Trump administration is moving to privatize a sweeping number of government functions and assets — a long-standing Republican goal that’s being catalyzed by billionaire Elon Musk.

The slash-and-burn approach of Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is paving the way for a new shift to the private sector, reducing the size and power of the federal bureaucracy in a real-world test of the conservative theory — a version of which is also widely popular in Silicon Valley — that companies are better than government at saving money and responding to people’s needs.

Examples are popping up across Washington and in proposals from President Donald Trump’s allies, though the plans are at various stages of development and, in some cases, have already encountered resistance.

At the DOGE-allied General Services Administration, officials are quietly moving ahead with a push to sell hundreds of publicly owned buildings to private companies — which can then lease them back to the government, theoretically saving maintenance and upkeep costs for taxpayers, according to two people briefed on internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

At the Postal Service, whose leaders have tussled with DOGE representatives, a plan for full privatization appears to have lost steam after facing pushback and legal hurdles. But private firms are preparing for a piecemeal government effort to outsource mail and package handling and long-haul trucking routes, while off-loading leases for unprofitable post offices, according to six industry executives.

At the Interior Department, Secretary Doug Burgum has proposed allowing private developers to build on federal lands across the West. And in his first public address as treasury secretary, former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent vowed to “reprivatize the economy.”
Businesspeople and policymakers close to the administration are stepping up with additional proposals.

A Wall Street investor nominated to run the International Development Finance Corporation, a little-known foreign investment agency that works to align the private sector with U.S. foreign policy goals, has suggested redirecting a large portion of the $40 billion budget of the shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development to investors, start-ups and companies that work in developing countries.

The proposal, which was posted on X by the nominee, Ben Black, and tech investor Joe Lonsdale, is under consideration within the White House, according to a person familiar with it, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. Bloomberg first reported that the initiative was under consideration.

The military contractor Erik Prince has pushed to turn over defense and immigration enforcement functions to private security firms, at one point pitching U.S. officials on a plan to execute operations in Africa, according to three people with knowledge of the idea, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. CNN reported that Prince also has floated the use of private military contractors to carry out operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen…

Traditional Republicans have long argued that private companies can do a better job of managing government services than civil servants. But Musk and his Silicon Valley associates want to push the idea much further than the mainstream GOP. At a Morgan Stanley technology conference this month, Musk said the government should privatize “everything we possibly can.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corruption, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Musk, Elon, Privatization, Trump

Michael R. Bloomberg: Kids Are Spending Too Much Time on Laptops

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2025 //
11

Michael R. Bloomberg is a billionaire who made his fortune in technology. He produced a computer with a double screen that is called “the Bloomberg,” with each screen focused on different topics. I don’t know enough about technology to explain why this machine was a big success but it was. Bloomberg is now the most generous of the billionaire set, with the likely exception of McKenzie Scott, who has dedicated her time to giving away the fortune she got when she divorced Jeff Bezos.

Bloomberg was mayor of New York City for 12 years. When he was first elected, I was very enthusiastic about his prospects for reforming the city’s sclerotic school system but became disenchanted when I saw him adopt the “move fast and break things” mode of the tech industry and disrupt the system.

Although I was critical of his disruptive changes, I always liked the man, with whom I had several delightful conversations.

Thus it was a great surprise and delight to encounter the following article, in which he warns about the overuse of technology in the classroom:

Over the past two decades, school districts have spent billions of taxpayer dollars equipping classrooms with laptops and other devices in hopes of preparing kids for a digital future. The result? Students have fallen further behind on the skills they most need to succeed in careers: the three R’s plus a fourth — relationships.

Today, about 90% of schools provide laptops or tablets to their students. Yet as students spend more time than ever on screens, social skills are deteriorating and test scores are near historic lows. 

Just 28% of eighth graders are proficient in math and 30% in reading. For 12th graders, the numbers are similarly dismal (24% in math and 37% in reading, according to the most recently available scores). And US students have also fallen further behind their peers in other countries.

The push for laptops in classrooms came from technologists, think tanks and government officials, who imagined that the devices would allow for curricula to be tailored around student needs, empowering them to learn at their own pace and raising achievement levels. It hasn’t worked.

The push also came from another source: computer manufacturers. However well-intentioned they may be, they have a financial interest in promoting laptops in classrooms and have profited handsomely from it. 

When Google released its inexpensive, utilitarian Chromebook in 2011, the company quickly capitalized on schools’ new emphasis on computer use. Why should children learn the quadratic equation, a Google executive asked, when they can just Google the answer? Today, the same executive might ask: Why should children learn to write an essay — or even a sentence — when they can ask a chatbot to do it for them?

The answer to both questions is that mastering the three R’s is the first step toward the true goal of education: critical thinking and problem-solving.

As someone who built a company by developing a computer at the dawn of the digital age, I never believed that computers in the classroom were the cure to what ails schools. Some of the most powerful educational interactions occur when a caring, well-trained teacher can look into a student’s eyes and help them see and understand new ideas. Machines often don’t have that power.

Think back on your own education. Most of us can remember teachers who challenged and inspired us. Now imagine that you had spent less time listening to those teachers and more time staring at a screen. Would you be better or worse off today?

While moderate use of computer devices can have academic benefits, especially when they are used at home, intensive use is often correlated with diminishing performance. 

For example: A post-pandemic survey found that more than a quarter of students spend five hours of class time daily on screens, often practicing skills on games that rarely lead to mastery. At the same time, some traditionally interactive classes — art, music, foreign languages — have moved increasingly online.

Studies have found that time-tested methods of learning — such as reading and writing on a page— are superior to screen-based approaches. One reason is simply a matter of time management. As a review of two decades of academic research concluded, children using laptops are easily distracted — and distracting to their peers. As kids might say: Well, duh.

One study found it can take students up to 20 minutes to refocus after engaging in a nonacademic activity. Put another way: Playing one video game three times a day costs an hour of learning.

Some of the online diversions that students find involve disturbing and inappropriate content that slips through schools’ filters, warping developing minds. Making matters worse: Downtime in classrooms — which might have been spent reading, drawing, imagining or playing with classmates, thereby building crucial social skills — is now frittered away on screens.

By reorienting so much class time around screens, schools have unwittingly been promoting an increasingly isolated childhood experience, which has been correlated with rising anxiety and depression — and can come with tragic and even deadly consequences. 

As some school districts finally awake to the benefits of banning smartphones during school hours, they should also reconsider their policies around in-class computers, which can be as problematic as phones. For instance: Storing laptops in locked classroom carts would enable more limited, purposeful use. Schools should also provide parents more transparency about the amount of time their children are spending on devices. 

The soaring promise of technology in the classroom has failed to deliver results while imposing great costs on children and taxpayers. Superintendents, principals and teachers ought to lead the way in adopting what has become a radical idea: having students spend more classroom time picking up books and pens than powering up laptops and tablets.

Categories Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Creativity, Education Reform, Teachers, Technology, Computers

Trump Demands Nebraska Change Name of State Capitol!

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2025 //
15

Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, reported this shocking story:

President Trump stunned Nebraskans today with his demand that the state change the name of its capital, Lincoln, or lose federal funding.

“Lincoln was the original DEI president,” Trump said on his site Truth Social. “Not only did he give racial preferences to former slaves in his land grab program of forty acres and a mule. He sent the Union Army to occupy the South to prohibit most white people from voting and sponsored birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, which has been abused ever since.”

“I never really liked the guy,” Trump added. “Race relations were fine in the South until Lincoln started a totally unnecessary Civil War. If he understood real estate, he could have made a deal.”

Trump proposed that the name of the state capital be changed from Lincoln to Hayes, in honor of Rutherford B. Hayes, the president who ended Reconstruction in the corrupt Compromise of 1877. “Hayes was a truly great man,” Trump said. “He worked with leaders of both parties to prevent discrimination against white people.”

The reaction of Nebraska leaders was guarded. “We love President Trump,” said Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican. “But folks around here kind of like the name of our state capital.” In the 2024 election, Trump beat Kamala Harris in Nebraska by a margin of 59.6 to 39.1 percent.

Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, a Democrat and a graduate of Yale and Oxford, pointed to the odd timing. “This is April Fools’ Day,” she said. “This has to be a spoof.”

I just made a donation to The American Prospect to keep it thriving as a powerful voice against fascism.

Categories Extremism, Humor, Nebraska, Trump

DOGE Creates Chaos and Fear at HHS

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2025 //
3

Government Executive reports that the Secretary Of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to lay off 10,000 of the Department’s 80,000 employeees. Entire divisions will be eliminated or merged. But no one knows who will be laid off. Decisions about layoffs are being made by Elon Musk’s DOGE. Since no one knows who will be fired or why, everyone is fearful.

Government Executive writes:

The Health and Human Services Department has told its employees that 10,000 of them will soon receive layoff notices, though it has not offered any details on who will be impacted or when they will learn of their fates. 

The uncertainty has dangled over the more than 80,000 HHS employees since Thursday, when the department first announced it was planning to shed around 25% of its workforce and half of those eliminations would come through reductions in force. Leadership at individual components and offices are regularly seeking to update their employees on what is happening, according to seven individuals within HHS, though they have all said they have been fully kept out of the loop and only a small group of political leaders within HHS know the plans.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to lay off 3,500 employees, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2,400, the National Institutes of Health 1,200 and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 300, according to an HHS fact sheet. HHS did not respond to an inquiry into why the notices were delayed or when they would go out.

Several employees were told to expect RIF notices to hit inboxes on Friday. When that did not happen, they were told to expect them Friday evening or over the weekend. As of Monday afternoon, the notices have still not gone out. 

“FDA leadership doesn’t know who will be cut,” said an employee briefed on the matter. “They didn’t have any input into these cuts whatsoever.” 

Employees at CDC and NIH expressed similar messages were going out from leadership to the workforce. 

“It’s unnecessarily cruel,” said one CDC employee of the uncertainty and delays. 

A second CDC employee said they spent the entire weekend refreshing their email waiting to see if a RIF notice arrived. The employee was resigned to their fate, but wanted an answer: “Just put me out of my misery,” the staffer said. 

Prior to an “all hands” meeting at one NIH office, employees were encouraged to download their complete personnel files, current position description, pay stubs, tax documents, awards information and contact information for human resources and their supervisor in case they lost access upon being laid off. 

The department will not allow those who are subject to RIFs to be allowed back onto HHS campuses, according to two employees briefed on the matter. Some staff were told to bring their laptops homes each day in case they were laid off and not allowed back into their offices. Unlike other agencies that have gone through RIFs, which have immediately placed impacted staff on administrative leave, at least some HHS employees will be expected to work until their date of separation. 

At FDA, conversations with office directors were taking place to identify U.S. Public Health Service Commission Corps members who could escort laid off employees to their desks to collect their laptops and personal belongings. The uniformed personnel would be available for the RIF-affected staff who need to retrieve items on campus.

The RIFs are expected to take effect May 27, according to the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents much of the HHS workforce. That date could get pushed back given the delay in sending out official RIF letters, however, as agencies typically provide 60 days notice before separations take effect. 

Directors at the highest level of the component agencies have communicated “have no knowledge over what is happening,” one employee said in a sentiment echoed by those throughout the department. 

A senior HHS official said even HR at component agencies have received no information on who is being laid off or when the notices were going out, though the latest expectation was the letters would be delivered Monday. 

“Radio silence,” the official said. “It is madness!” 

Government Executive previously reported that top officials were being left out of the workforce reduction process. At NIH, for example, liaisons from the Department of Government Efficiency dictated staffing targets without input from the agency or anyone else at HHS. 

Some informal notices were beginning to trickle out Monday afternoon. CDC is planning to eliminate its entire Freedom of Information Act office, according to an impacted employee, which could create legal questions as agencies are required to maintain those functions. The official notices had not yet gone out as of Monday afternoon but all of the office’s 40 employees are expected to receive them. 

The reductions will be part of a comprehensive reorganization of HHS. The cuts will save $2 billion annually, department Secretary Robert Kennedy said last week, and HHS will go from 28 divisions throughout the department down to 15. Department-wide functions such as human resources, IT, procurement, external affairs and policy will be centralized into the Administration for Healthy America and regional offices will be slashed in half to just five.

The new AHA will fold into its structure the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. HHS will divide up the functions of the Administration for Community Living, which provides oversight of those serving older and disabled Americans, into CMS, the Administration for Children and Families and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. ASPE itself will be combined with the Agency for Health Research and Quality into the Office of Strategy.

This hurried reorganization is being imposed by the young engineers and computer geeks who work for Musk, apparently without consulting anyone who has done the work. The changes are rushed, haphazard, and carried out without the participation of those with knowledge and experience.

Please open the link to continue reading the article.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Health, Musk, Elon, Science, Trump
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