Random thoughts, July 12, 2016

THE TEACHER SHORTAGE AND MORE…

• Why don’t politicians who think “anyone can teach” all become teachers?

• The nationwide shortage of teachers is likely caused by media and politicians bad-mouthing public schools and public school teachers. Legislatures are trying to find ways to increase the number of teachers, but there are fewer and fewer young people going into the profession. Diane Ravitch suggests that “The best way to increase the supply of teachers is to raise salaries and reduce class sizes.”

So, I guess we’re stuck with the shortage given that our legislators don’t like spending money. We need to change our ways and make our children a priority.

• Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn said about teaching, “Anybody can do it” and claimed that teacher training programs were “the dumbest part of every college.” In his mind, it follows that “teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” That attitude along with salaries more than 20% lower than other similarly trained college graduates, might have something to do with the teacher shortage. Prospective teachers either believe what they hear, or don’t want to enter a profession whose practitioners are overworked, underpaid, and regularly insulted.

VOUCHERS: FUNDING RELIGION

• Instead of fully funding public education, legislators fund those who fill their campaign treasuries. Last school year Indiana sent nearly a quarter million BILLION dollars ($241.4 million) to private, mostly religious, schools in the form of school vouchers. But Article 1, Section 6 of the State Constitution says that “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution.” Luckily for the religious schools, the state supreme court ignored the concept of church-state separation.

• Speaking of church-state separation, here are quotes from two American politicians about the topic…

Lauren Boebert said in a speech last month,

I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.

Thomas Jefferson wrote this in 1802 — the letter that Boebert says “means nothing,”

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Does the phrase “separation of church and state” mean nothing?

NO MORE STALE IDEOLOGIES

• It seems that the Florida legislature wants to keep tabs on the number of post-secondary students and faculty who believe in a “stale ideology.” Does the new law, approved and signed by Governor DeSantis, define what a “stale ideology” is, or who decides what’s stale and what’s not? Stale colleges and universities might be punished by funding cuts. What’s next? Loyalty oaths? A Florida House Un-American Activities Committee?

Does this mean that the funding from the right-wing Charles Koch Foundation to various Florida universities (see here for example) will have to end? Does it matter that Governor DeSantis gets campaign contributions from Koch Industries?

CIVICS EDUCATION

• Sheila Kennedy wrote about the lack of civic knowledge in the United States.

America’s political culture is the most toxic it has been in my lifetime– and I’m old. There are lots of theories about how we got here—from partisan gerrymandering and residential sorting to increasing tribalism to fear generated by rapid social and technological change and exacerbated by dishonest partisan media. But our current inability to engage in productive civic conversation is also an outgrowth of declining trust in our social and political institutions—primarily government. Restoring that trust is critically important —but in order to trust government, we have to understand what it is and isn’t supposed to do.

I would add that we’ve also lost the ability to see things from the “other’s” point of view which makes coming to a reasonable compromise impossible. We have allowed ourselves to fall into a Gingrichian, all-or-nothing mentality that defines compromise as impossible. Currently, the loudest politicians in the country are those who see winning or losing as the only options. They see governing as a zero-sum game, a false dichotomy, a “my way or the highway” mentality. They don’t understand that a free society cannot function without cooperation and compromise (think traffic laws, for example). We don’t have to agree with each other, but we need to open our minds and at least listen to other points of view.

AND A COUPLE OF TRIVIAL THOUGHTS

• I love baseball…and don’t care that it’s a “slow” game. The pace of baseball gives fans time to do something that doesn’t happen often enough — engage in conversation — and specifically, engage in conversation about the game. The digital revolution has damaged our attention spans. We’re losing the ability to concentrate for an entire baseball game to social media like TikTok, Twitter, and texting. IMHO, the length and speed of a baseball game is a feature, not a bug.

• Watch your dog when you yawn…chances are he’ll yawn, too…and vice versa.

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SCOTUS Takes on Vouchers

AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE (STILL) NOT FAILING

Charter and voucher schools, while touted as panaceas for the “sorry state” of America’s education system, don’t do any better than public schools when based on similar populations of students. In fact, the so-called “sorry state” of our public education system is pretty darn good when you realize that we work to educate everyone who walks in our public school doors.

Back in 2017 Steven Singer, who blogs at Gadfly on the Wall, told us that our public schools are among the best in the world. He wrote…

Let me repeat that in no uncertain terms – America’s public schools are NOT failing. They are among the best in the world. Really!

Here’s why: the United States educates everyone. Most other countries do not.

We have made a commitment to every single child regardless of what their parents can afford to pay, regardless of their access to transportation, regardless of whether they can afford uniforms, lunch or even if they have a home. Heck! We even provide education to children who are here illegally.

Now is a good time to remind ourselves of that fact…especially after the difficult experience of “pandemic education” (or are we still “during?”).

We should also remember that private, voucher schools don’t have to accept everyone. They can pick and choose who gets to attend their school. In Indiana, more than 95% of our voucher schools are run by religious organizations. They can refuse service to religious “others”, low achievers, and students with special needs.

And they can do all that while still filling their sectarian wallets with your money…and my money…which, in the past, had been earmarked for public schools, for the common good.

In other words, when supporters say that they need vouchers so they can “choose” private schools, what they mean is, they’ll take our public education tax dollars and let private, religious schools “choose” which students get to attend. Your children might be able to attend because they’re white, they have high test scores, or they belong to the same religion. Someone else’s children, on the other hand, might not be able to attend because they are not the same religion, not white, or are more expensive to teach because they have some high-cost learning need.

Public education reflects society. The so-called “sorry state” of public education is not in our schools, it’s in our commitment to the support of the public good.

Supreme Court likely to drop school voucher bombshell

Schools in traditionally operated school districts are not allowed to violate Maine’s anti-discrimination laws, but a school run privately by a religious organization may be able to under such a ruling. The Supreme Court has in recent years laid the legal groundwork for courts to require authorizers of charter schools to allow religious organizations to be granted charters without regard to their religious status.

“The Supreme Court is just a few small steps away from transforming every charter school law in the U.S. into a private-school voucher policy,” [Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s School of Education] writes. “Further, the nation may be facing a future of religious organizations proselytizing through charter schools that have been freed from obeying anti-discrimination laws — with LGBTQ+ community members being the most likely victims.”

The particulars of the case before the Supreme Court underscore why we need to prioritize public education. When a state, Maine in this case, doesn’t support a system of public education (in direct violation of their state constitution), substituting private, religious schools, does not necessarily support the common good.

PAUL WELLSTONE ON EDUCATION

The late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone spoke to the concept of the common good when he said…(emphasis added)

That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children, including poor children, is a national disgrace. It is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination, that we do not see that meeting the most basic needs of so many of our children condemns them to lives and futures of frustration, chronic underachievement, poverty, crime and violence. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose, allied with one another in a common enterprise, tied to one another by a common bond. — 3/31/2000

The primary mission of public schools is not to teach individual students what their parents want them to learn. It’s to prepare the next generation for the task of running our society. It’s for the benefit of all of us…the common good.

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2021 Medley #10 – I’m Back Edition

New York Times and Disclosures,

First Responders, COVID-19, and why I missed a month of blogging,

Textbooks in Voucher Schools,

Keep out of my air-space,

Know your rights

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

Leonie Haimson: Columnists at NY Times Report on Gates Projects While Benefitting from Gates’ $$$

I yesterday’s post, It’s not as though we don’t know what works, I discussed an editorial in the New York Times about standardized testing and the low test scores achieved during the current (and ongoing) pandemic.

This morning, Diane Ravitch posted twice on her own blog about the New York Times and the financial conflicts of interests with some of their journalists. In the first she lets us know of the close ties between writers and both the Gates Foundation and the Aspen Institute. Readers of my blog know of Bill Gates and his foundation’s close ties to privatization. The Aspen Institute is also among the cheerleaders of privatization.

The second post, quoted below, reiterates the conflicts of interest, but also includes important information for news-reading/watching public school advocates about the Gates Foundation. This doesn’t mean that every Gates Foundation-funded organization will be pro-charter and anti-public schools. I have personally been assured by members of the Chalkbeat staff that they are not influenced by their donors. On the other hand, I still read their posts with the understanding that they get funding from not only Gates, but the Walton Family Foundation, EdChoice, and other privatizers.

In the quote below, Schwab refers to Tim Schwab, a writer for The Nation.

The Gates Foundation provides millions of dollars to many journalistic enterprises, which Schwab argued in an earlier 2020 piece helps to explain the kid glove treatment the Foundation has received over the last twenty years. The media outlets that get funding from Gates and regularly cover his education projects and investments include Chalkbeat, Hechinger Report, The 74, and Education Post, as well as K12 school reporting by NPR, Seattle Times, and others. The Foundation also helps to fund the Education Writers Association, which frequently features speakers friendly to various policies favored by Gates.

IN WHAT UNIVERSE DO FIRST RESPONDERS GO UNVACCINATED AND UNMASKED?

Cops must get vaccinated. Full stop.

I noticed this post on Fred Klonsky’s blog and it reminded me that, depending on where you live, “all city workers” — who are the subject of the Chicago Mayor’s vaccine mandate — doesn’t mean all first responders. At the same time I’ll explain why this blog went quiet for a month without any warning.

Late last spring I began to feel sick — suffice it to say that I needed minor surgery (which for someone my age means major recuperation time). I was taken to the nearby hospital by ambulance. (The following is a retelling of my spouse’s story since I can’t remember) When the two EMTs walked into our house they were unmasked. One began to work on me, and the other was peppered with questions from my panicky spouse: “Why aren’t you wearing masks?” “Are you vaccinated?” The EMT who was not tending to me put on his mask and answered that yes, he was vaccinated and vaguely reassured her. The man tending to what we assumed at the time was an emergency never answered the question, but he did don his mask.

I will assume that all the EMTs in my house (several more arrived later, masked) had recently been tested for COVID-19, but I don’t know that for sure. I am immune-compromised with several health issues, and I was and still am, susceptible to COVID-19, or any virus for that matter. Furthermore, it’s easy to see just by looking at me that I’m old enough to be seriously ill if I contracted the virus.

Masks and vaccinations should be required for all first responders…anyone who might have emergency contact with members of the community.

What could possibly be a reason that vaccination and proper medical procedure (masks, for example) should not be required for first responders, whether in a practice, or at a treatment facility or at an emergency scene, whether working with patients or sitting at the front desk, or driving the emergency truck? Other than the fact that I live in Republican, anti-science, Indiana.

Maybe Illinois isn’t that different.

[Chicago’s] Mayor Lightfoot issued the order yesterday that all city workers must be vaccinated.

The response by Fraternal Order Of Police president John Catanzara was predictable.

“We’re in America g—–n it. We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period. This ain’t Nazi f—ing Germany (where they say) ‘Step into the f—ing showers. The pills won’t hurt you.’ What the f—?”

The language of this Trump loving fascist comparing vaccination mandates to gassing Jews by the Nazis has nothing to with mandating or union bargaining.

WHAT’S IN YOUR TEXTBOOK?

Vouchers And Disinformation

Here in Indiana, and in many other private-school-voucher-allowing states, kids are learning that humans lived with dinosaurs and that slaves were immigrants…using public funds.

The textbooks reviewed by the Guardian are used in thousands of private religious schools–schools that receive tens of thousands of dollars in public funding every year. They downplay descriptions of slavery and ignore its structural consequences. The report notes that the books “frame Native Americans as lesser and blame the Black Lives Matter movement for sowing racial discord.”

As Americans fight over wildly distorted descriptions of Critical Race Theory–a manufactured culture war “wedge issue” employed by parents fighting against more inclusive and accurate history instruction- -the article correctly points out that there has been virtually no attention paid to the curricula of private schools accepting vouchers.

…The U.S. Constitution gives parents the right to choose a religious education for their children. It does not impose an obligation on taxpayers to fund that choice, and we continue to do so at our peril.

KEEP OUT OF MY AIR-SPACE

Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins

A famous quote, or groups of quotes, which in today’s world might read…

“Your liberty to not go unvaccinated and not wear a mask thereby possibly spreading COVID ends where my air-space begins.”

John B. Finch, the great constitutional amendment advocate, was wont to settle this point by a single illustration. He said, “I stand alone upon a platform. I am a tall man with long arms which I may use at my pleasure. I may even double my fist and gesticulate at my own sweet will. But if another shall step upon the platform, and in the exercise of my personal liberty I bring my fist against his face, I very soon find that my personal liberty ends where that man’s nose begins.”

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Know Your Rights! A Tale Of Two Prayer Policies, One Forced And One Free

Americans United for Separation of Church and State have issued information about the rights of students, teachers, and parents in public schools. This post and the next are some examples of what they stand for.

I was glad to be free of compulsory prayer and school-sponsored religion. And even though I knew little about the law back then, I had an instinctive understanding that it was simply wrong for public school teachers and staff, who are agents of the state, to sponsor or pressure anyone to take part in religious activity.

Yet I also knew that our school was no “religion-free zone.” One of my favorite classes was an elective I took about World Religions. The approach was strictly objective, and there was no proselytizing. This was the first time I had been exposed to the doctrines of non-Christian faiths. It was an eye-opener.

Know Your Rights! How A Fourth Grader’s Request Sparked A Classroom Lesson On Tolerance

But when the Pledge ended, the students instead started asking questions – first, to Michael, about his decision to sit, his faith and why he couldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance. And then they started asking me questions too: about the Pledge, why we do it, and what it means. After talking for 20 or 30 minutes, all of us – my students, Michael and I – had a greater understanding of what the Pledge was, why we said it and what it meant to each of us.

Dissent, in the form of religious difference or non-religion, can be scary. It can feel uncomfortable or disorderly. But that day in a class of fourth-graders, I saw how creating space for those with non-majoritarian beliefs doesn’t just protect those believers (or non-believers). It also presents us all with an opportunity to reflect on and gain a greater understanding of our own views and traditions. In other words, the rights of dissenters protect all of us. And I’m proud to work at Americans United, where through our Know Your Rights campaign and other vehicles, we protect those rights every day.

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More Money, More Privatization

INDIANA’s NEW BUDGET BILL — MORE PRIVATIZATION

The Indiana General Assembly has passed the 2021 budget bill, and once more, the Republican super-majority has done its best to line the pockets of religious schools with a large increase for unaccountable school vouchers.

This year, they have added money to the privatization piggy bank in the form of Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), a plan fraught with fraud possibilities (and actualities) that have already been tried in various states across the country. ESAs allow parents to purchase unaccountable “educational services” from essentially anyone who says, “Here, buy my educational service” with no accountability for how the money is spent. Meanwhile, public schools must account for every penny of the public dollars they spend.

In order to pacify the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) with the increase in vouchers, the legislature included a substantial pay increase for teachers. In their report, ISTA mentions the increase in vouchers without editorial comment but focuses on the pay issue. They also share the “positive” news that the ESAs, which are only for students with special needs, are funded separately from the rest of the education pot.

I’ll make a prediction right now that within five years the ESAs will be available to anyone, and will drain money from the state’s education budget just like any other voucher. This is just a “foot-in-the-door” plan like the original voucher plan was in 2011. For those who don’t remember, to qualify for a voucher in 2011 a student had to have spent at least a year in a public school (no longer required), be low-income (about $45,000, as opposed to the new $145,000 for a family of four), and attend a “failing school.”

[NOTE: “Failing school” equals a state-neglected school filled with low-income, mostly students of color, who score low on standardized tests.]

ISTA is happy over the teacher pay increases which are well-deserved. Indiana has had the slowest growth of teacher salaries in the country since 2002. The actual funding increase, however, merely brings the state budget for education up to the same level it was in 2012!

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld writes…

A budget glass half empty

While Holcomb and Republican legislative leaders are praising the budget as “transformational” and suggesting it solves Indiana’s K-12 funding woes, the truth isn’t that rosy. A preliminary analysis by Ball State economist Michael Hicks finds the budget gets Indiana’s inflation-adjusted school spending more than halfway back to where it was a decade ago, but not nearly all the way.

And the vouchers…

My main beef with the budget is that it radically expands Indiana’s already radical private school voucher program and creates a new, voucher-like K-12 education savings account program.

The positive revenue report means the voucher expansion will start this July rather than being phased in over two years. Families that make up to 300% of the limit for reduced-price school meals – about $145,000 for a family of four – will qualify for tuition vouchers worth about $5,500 per child or more.

Nearly all voucher schools are religious schools, and they are largely unregulated. They can turn away students on grounds of religion, disability, language, sexual orientation or gender identity. They can, and do, use tax dollars to teach religious dogma. They can teach that humans shared the earth with dinosaurs, enslaved people were happy, and the New Deal was a “half-way house to Communism.”

WHAT’S THE POINT?

The point is that…

• It doesn’t matter that we’re giving hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year to unaccountable schools run by churches and religious organizations.

• It doesn’t matter that the earlier promise to “save poor kids from ‘failing schools'” has morphed into providing entitlements to families that can already afford private schools.

• It doesn’t matter that private schools don’t provide a better education than public schools and voucher kids don’t get a better education (see here, here, and here).

The goal of privatization isn’t better schools for kids and communities, it’s privatization. Period.

Charles Siler, a former lobbyist for the pro-voucher Goldwater Institute, talked to Diane Ravitch and Jennifer Berkshire. He, like Ravitch, used to believe in school choice until he saw that equitable schools and improved education weren’t what the choice proponents were really after. Here he explains the goal of the Republican majorities in the various states (at around 23:40 in the video)…

Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Jennifer Berkshire and Charles Siler

The purpose isn’t to improve education by expanding school choice and giving people more opportunities, it’s to dismantle public schools.

What they’re trying to do is to implement a model of competition…telling the public schools that they need to race against charter schools and race against these private schools…then what you do is you weigh down the public schools with all these regulations and other burdens.

…then you complain about the administrative costs of all the things that you’ve burdened the public schools [with]…and talk about how inefficient they are…it’s intended to cripple the public schools so that they can’t compete.

…the most important thing to remember is that they are trying to destroy public schools and that is done by crippling them and making them ineffective as much as possible.

Privatization will continue to chip away at our public schools, year after year like it has since 2011. The privatization lobbyists have the money.

All we have are the voters.

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No Pause in Indiana’s Push for Privatization

Should we give a cheer that the Indiana Senate eased up on the offensive expansion of vouchers that the Indiana House passed in its 2021 Budget bill?

THE HOUSE VERSION

The House version gave nearly 40% of all new education money to the less than 5% of the state’s students in the form of increased voucher spending, including money for unaccountable ESAs (educational savings accounts).

It also provided an increase in voucher availability to a family of four making nearly $150,000 a year. This House plan was not the “save poor children” voucher plan that Mitch Daniels proposed ten years ago. It very definitely expanded voucher money for wealthier students.

It’s probably good that Indiana Republicans are no longer trying to pretend that their voucher program is so that “poor kids can escape from terrible schools.” Instead they’re all but admitting that public schools don’t interest them. Privatization is the goal no matter what that pesky state constitution says. At least now they’re being honest about it.

THE SENATE VERSION

The Senate still included an increase in vouchers so they’re not backing off entirely. Families of four with six figure incomes would be able to get a 90% voucher allowing their kids can enroll in mostly segregated private schools that teach creation science and that slavery was a good investment. This assumes of course, that the school will have their child since private schools can reject students for nearly any reason.

The Senate version, while not as extreme as the House, still contains a significant increase in voucher support, including a foot-in-the-door new ESA plan that lets parents use tax dollars to buy “educational” services without public oversight or accountability. Hmmm…I wonder if they might try to increase money for that in years to come?

HOUSE WILL BE “AGGRESSIVE”

The bill now goes to a conference committee where House members will try to put back what the Senate took out. Speaker of the House Todd Huston, whose campaign contributions include $35,000 from Betsy DeVos’s Hoosiers for Quality Education (see also here), said that the house will “be negotiating very aggressively” to get back what was taken out so they can satisfy their lust for privatization.

One might even think that the plan all along was for the House to propose an extreme expansion of vouchers, then have the Senate back off a bit to pacify public school advocates (and more than 170 school boards around the state), and settle on a more “modest” increase in voucher money and an ESA plan.

It’s still an increase in Indiana’s ever increasing move towards total privatization.

For Further Reading

New Indiana budget proposal scales back private school voucher expansion

After a chorus of opposition from public school districts and advocates, Indiana Senate Republicans significantly scaled back an expansion of the state’s private school voucher program under their budget proposal Thursday.

The Senate plan would not extend private school vouchers to as many middle-class families as suggested in the House budget proposal and other legislation discussed this session. It also would dramatically curtail a proposal for education savings accounts, which would give stipends to parents of children with special needs who do not attend public schools.

Senate budget would dial back voucher expansion

…the Senate budget would partially roll back the ambitious expansion of Indiana’s private school voucher program that was included in the House budget.

Like the House budget, it would create a new K-12 education savings account program, but it would limit participation and costs. Also important: It would remove a House-approved cap on the complexity index, the funding formula feature that favors districts and schools with more disadvantaged students.

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