Some of you might have better things to do with your time. Not me. I sat spellbound during last night’s Democratic debate. Beyond the obvious lesson that we need some adult supervision of these events, another point bugged me: The candidates were not shy about calling Bloomberg a flat-out racist. Yet they gave him a pass when he waffled about charter schools.
They nailed him on stop-and-frisk. Why give him a pass on charter school policy?
At the Washington Post this morning, I offer a few lessons from the archives. I think history gives us a better way to evaluate charter schools, one that seems to fit with today’s Democratic vibe.
The subjects that students studied, the way the day was organized, the size of classes, the kinds of supports young people received — these essential aspects of education were all different.
the department “erroneously” sent messages to more than 16,000 borrowers to pay up. Some did so voluntarily. Others had their wages garnished or tax refunds seized by the government. Ten different third-party contractors were involved in collecting the loans, and the judge’s opinion notes that the Education Department didn’t do much to make sure they followed the orders, beyond sending a few emails.
It’s rare for a judge to find a Cabinet secretary in contempt of court.
“We’re pro-life. We want criminal justice reform. We want educational equity. We want a healthy economy,” [President of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition Gabriel Salguero] told Religion News Service this week, noting that members of the faith group also feel strongly about immigration and foreign policy. “Because we’re not one-issue voters, people think if they come to us with talking points they’re gonna get us — no.”
“Kind of liberal, isn’t it?” sneered a girl at my church youth group, who would be attending the ultra-conservative Master’s College.
“I don’t think so?” I said, recalling that Westmont didn’t allow drinking, smoking, or overnight guests of the opposite sex. But I secretly wanted her to be right. I hoped that Westmont would help me deal with the panic I continually felt reading the Bible, that it would help me figure out how to be a Democrat, a feminist, and a Baptist.
As for white evangelicals’ enthusiastic embrace of the Republican Party and their overwhelming support for Donald Trump, Kidd views these trends as unfortunate but—like the Scopes Trial of the 1920s—not necessarily representative of evangelicalism as a whole. . . .[but] If evangelical theology transcends racial and political lines in ways that most other religious movements in America can’t match, shouldn’t we see clearer evidence of our racial attitudes and political stances aligning with our theology?
We have students who feel like they’re being treated like potential criminals instead of students. . . . We’ve kind of gone overboard. Not all threats are created equal.
Quadruple federal Title I funding for schools in high-poverty neighborhoods. . . .
Fund the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act at the level the federal government originally promised . . .
End federal investment in charter school expansion, ban for-profit charter schools and ensure existing charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability requirements as traditional public school districts. . . .
Reinstate Obama-era protections for transgender students under federal law that were revoked by Trump and take other steps to protect LGBTQ students and faculty.
Invest federal dollars to raise teacher pay and strengthen the bargaining power of teacher unions.
Eliminate use of standardized test scores for high-stakes decisions. . . .
Cancel student breakfast and lunch debt and provide free and nutritious school meals.
Ban the storing and selling of student data.
Expand social-emotional learning.
Offer $100 billion in grants to transform 25,000 public schools into community schools, which provide family support and health and social services to students.
“Be strong in the Chicago teachers strike … I know you are out there fighting for the future of our children. … Stay on the picket lines as long as you need to.”
it would reverse most of the major education reforms of recent decades, drive a stake through the heart of what’s left of bipartisan federal and state policy, and re-enshrine adult interests, especially those of the teachers unions, in place of children’s, while wasting immense sums of taxpayer dollars. (The total price tag is estimated at $800 billion.)
I’m not advocating for us [progressive Christians] to ignore evil and to stop seeking justice wherever we go. But our posture must be one that seeks the well-being of all people, one that aims to lovingly persuade our brothers and sisters without embracing anger, bitterness and pride.
“It’s important we don’t just talk about numbers, coefficients and rules, but stories that people can understand,” Lowe said. “Stories about how policies are contributing to economic welfare and the things that really matter to people.”
“I think social studies teachers are hesitant to teach controversial topics, past and present, due to hyperpolarization or pushback from parents,” [31-year-old teacher Chris Dier] said. “Almost all of my students will be voting in the next election; they deserve teachers who do not shy away from current events because of our partisan climate.”
Jobe [at Moody Bible Institute] sees his first job as having to “define reality.” That includes helping team members understand the institution’s identity and next steps needed to thrive. To rebuild confidence across the campus, he also attempts to engage with the basic needs of students and staff.
Reforming Liberty doesn’t mean compromising its mission. Nobody is demanding that Liberty become a Christian liberal arts school in the mold of Wheaton College or Hillsdale, or a carbon copy of a secular state school. In fact, Liberty is uniquely positioned as a popular university that could be a bona fide alternative to the overwhelmingly progressive status quo in academia.
Greetings from beautiful Madison, Wisconsin! Even though the Badgers are 6-0, people are still fighting about schools n Jesus n stuff. Here are some of the top stories to catch our attention this past week:
Despite Executive Order 13864, which directs the Department to ensure institutions promote free inquiry, you have failed to act in cases of suppression of ideas that involve the administration’s political allies, such as Liberty University. . . Given that Liberty’s violations are public and longstanding, we are left to conclude that the Department’s failure to act is deliberate and that it is only interested in enforcing free speech policies against institutions it deems unfriendly.
Professor E. David Davis called on a female student who couldn’t answer a question and jokingly asked if she was dropped on her head as a baby by her mother. . . Davis called on another female student who was also unable to answer the question. His response, a student told ABC11, was “’Well, the women are useless today. So maybe I should ask a man.’”
The speaker list alone made that clear — a Christian who’s-who of black, brown, LGBTQ and female voices. At a time when many Christian conferences have come under fire for having primarily cis-gender, straight white men on stage, Evolving Faith featured only one: Pete Enns, who, during the “Evolving Faith & Bible/Theology” session, described his own journey toward becoming an “agnostic Christian.”
Teaching is one of those weird things where everybody thinks they understand it because everybody was a student at some point, but actually doing it is different,” [MA elementary school teacher Megan] DiScicio said. “I am really tired of having people making all of the decisions in education reform and education funding who just fundamentally don’t understand what we do every day.”
While one year in the classroom might not give Warren enough experience to guide her education policy, DiSciscio is heartened by the senator’s pledge to appoint a teacher as U.S. education secretary. “It is enough experience to know the importance of choosing the right person to make those [education policy] decisions,” she said.
Though it may be lost on those with a bad case of impeachment brain, the logical implication of those two strands of research is that an increase in the percentage of students in a community who enroll in charter schools should lead to systemic gains—that is, to an overall increase in achievement across all public schools—including those in traditional public schools.
Apparently there was some news this week about a whistle blowing in Ukraine or something. In the ILYBYGTH International Offices, though, the stories below were the top ones to grab our attention:
teachers who don’t even teach math or reading receive VAM scores based on the school’s average, not what they’ve done in the classroom. They are judged on variables they can’t even influence.
The answer is not that complex. Put in place a good principal — a good leader — and let her run the school and build support. If she rates a teacher “highly effective,” the state should trust her judgment and not micromanage by wielding a flawed VAM score as a cudgel. It’s one thing to measure performance in the classroom. It’s another to use a faulty measurement that unfairly punishes some good teachers and deprives students who need them.
In 2015, a paper by Jean Decety and co-authors reported that children who were brought up religiously were less generous. The paper received a great deal of attention, and was covered by over 80 media outlets including The Economist, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and Scientific American. As it turned out, however, the paper by Decety was wrong.
Today, evangelicals should not take to social media to complain that Christian conservatism is under attack. Rather, we should grieve that our LGBTQ+ neighbors don’t feel safe on our campuses and do something about it.
The union’s demands boil down to a hashtag, #PutInWriting, which social media users have appended to statements of support for CTU and demands that the city codify certain promises in contract language. The mayor has promised and budgeted for more nurses, social workers and special education staff, but the union wants those commitments made in a legally binding contract.
She has been a staunch advocate for holding schools accountable for their test scores and graduation rates, describing that data as a tool to push for racial equity, though more recently she’s criticized “high-stakes testing.” She has also praised charter schools in her home state while pushing for greater oversight of the schools nationally, especially those run by for-profit companies.
Bad news for the Splitter-In-Chief: Trump’s divisiveness is cracking his electoral foundation. Could it bring him down in 2020? After all, it has already transformed school politics.
Here’s what we know: At 538, Daniel Cox examines Trump’s waning support among younger white evangelicals. We know white evangelical voters have always been one of Trump’s firmest pillars of support, but Trump’s style—especially his anti-immigrant furor—does not play as well with young white evangelicals as older ones.
…will immigration antagonism split Trump’s base?
As Cox writes,
Two-thirds (66 percent) of young white evangelical Christians (age 18 to 34) say that immigrants coming to the U.S. strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents, a view shared by only 32 percent of white evangelical seniors (age 65+). A majority (54 percent) of older white evangelical Christians believe that immigrants are a burden on American society.
Could Trump split his base? Could he drive away younger white evangelicals in his furious efforts to placate and mollify older white evangelicals? Hard to say. Plenty of younger white evangelicals still say they like Trump, although only a quarter of them say they like him a lot.
Trump has put an end to all that. Charter schools are now political poison for Democrats.
What’s the lesson for younger white evangelicals and the 2020 election? Just this: Trump’s horse-in-a-hospital leadership style tends to divide people. It has already revolutionized charter-school politics. It seems entirely plausible that it will drive away younger white evangelicals who don’t share their elders’ anxieties about America’s future.
Think things would slow down in August? Me, too. But turns out they didn’t. We’ve got stories this week about professors fired for breaking into student protests, the case for and against free college, the real deal with the Ark Encounter, a gruesome anniversary, the conservative evangelical response to the recent grisly mass murders, and more. Read on…
I’m not an idiot; I know that as a person who demographically ticks all the ‘oppressor boxes,’ I would have to be severely punished for opposing such a group.
Will tuition-free college heal America’s economic inequality?
Ninety-six percent of Finland’s higher education resources are public, but its attainment rate — the proportion of citizens ages 25 to 34 with a degree beyond K-12 education — is less than 45 percent, placing it 25th among OECD countries. South Korea-based higher education, on the other hand, gets about 36 percent of its funding from the government and achieves a 70 percent attainment rate, the highest among OECD countries, according to the report.
Forget science and Jesus for a second: Are the radical creationists at the Ark Encounter bringing tourist dollars in to their region?
If Ham’s post were a paper written by a University of Dayton student in one of my first-year classes, I would have written this at the bottom of the paper:
Failure to provide substantive evidence to back your claims, and a dismaying tendency to resort to ad hominem attacks. This is not acceptable for a university-level paper. Revise and resubmit.
When babies are aborted, the Christian Right rarely talks about praying for the woman who had the abortion. They rarely offer “thoughts” to the families who suffer through such a decision. Instead, they attempt to solve the problem of abortion by passing legislation, organizing grass-roots campaigns, proposing new bills and electing political candidates who will appoint federal justices who share their interpretation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Racism is Satanism in my view, because it’s the idolatry of the flesh—and a sense of superiority and dominion over other people. That can manifest itself in neo-Nazi movements in Germany, in racist memes on Facebook or in left wing anti-Semitic posts and movements around the world as well. . . . The church is not a political action committee and should never be a means to any earthly end. Church has a much bigger mission than that.
almost every instance of racial violence in 1919 began with white people organizing to attack African Americans for specific purposes: to drive them from jobs and homes, to punish or lynch them for alleged crimes or insults against whites, to block black advancement. In Chicago, for example, white gangs carried out home invasions to drive black residents from houses in previously all-white neighborhoods. To call such actions “riots” minimizes their overtly racist intent and overlooks the instigators.
Congress should pass the Stop Harmful and Abusive Telecommunications Expression Act (Stop HATE Act), a complementary piece of legislation that would identify how social media and online forums have accelerate the spread of hate speech and white supremacist ideology.
history tells us that this country, now numbering 327 million, blessed with so many resources and so much brainpower, can overwhelm a few thousand creeps and potentially violent criminals. Just as we snuffed out anarchists, fascists, and leftist radicals over the past century, so, too, can we snuff out these new evildoers.
Another widespread belief among educators is that history and non-hands-on science are inappropriate for young children. That, too, is not supported by the evidence — including the anecdotal evidence from Ms. Williams’ classroom. The fact is, history is a series of stories. And kids love stories. The same is true for science topics that don’t lend themselves to hands-on activities.
It’s a risk. Schoolmarm, after all, is a derogatory descriptor, one that was deployed against Hillary Clinton, also a former law professor, and one that flicks at the well-worn stereotype of the stern lady who can force you to recite your times table.
Sen. Warren doing her teacher thing at Penn, early 1990s.
Mayor Bill De Blasio of New York, for example, took the party’s new anti-charter vibe to an extreme. Maybe trying to distinguish himself in the crowded field, Hizzoner seemed to want to come off as the most passionate voice for public education and teachers.
Sure, all the candidates now oppose spending too much public money on charter schools, but de Blasio cranked it up a notch. As he put it,
I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize public education. I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate’ — our teachers taught us not to — but I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them.
Moreover, Mayor De Blasio tried to set up a clear us-vs-them distinction on the issue of charter schools. As we’ve seen, there has already been a party realignment on the issue of charter schools. De Blasio wanted to make it a litmus test. “Too many Republicans,” he said,
but also too many Democrats, have been cozy with the charter schools. Let’s be blunt about it. We need to hold our own party accountable, too. And no one should ask for your support, or no one should be the Democratic nominee, unless they’re willing to stand up to Wall Street and the rich people behind the charter school movement once and for all.
Will it work? Will de Blasio’s big-city public-school credentials make him a winner with Democrats?
I doubt it. Time will tell, but I don’t think we’ll see the anti-charter movement take more than a secondary role in the primary campaign. Democratic primary voters will want a “public-education” candidate, but I don’t think they’ll make it as much of a leading issue as de Blasio seems to hope.
For some reason, pundits keep missing the obvious explanation for this important partisan realignment. Writers assume that the only reason Democratic hopefuls bash charters is to please the NEA and other teachers’ unions. As Bloomburg put it,
On charter schools, the top Democrats seem intent on placating teachers’ unions at the expense of low-income families.
Another pro-charter activist warned Democrats like Beto O’Rourke that “pandering” to union interests won’t pay off in the end. “The Presidential campaign trail,” she writes,
is littered with candidates who have won the union endorsements and never made it to the White House or even the nomination. They should remind themselves that our north star in education must be what’s best for children.
Will we see candidates pandering to the NEA this afternoon? Probably. I can’t imagine many of them pushing for more charters and voucher programs in front of this crowd. But there is a bigger, more obvious reason for this; candidates aren’t simply telling the audience what it wants to hear.
Here’s the scoop: Like most education-reform ideas, charter schools could never possibly deliver on the inflated promises of advocates. As historians know—and as I’m finding more and more as I complete the research for my book about America’s first urban school-reform movement—school reform ideas tend to follow a predictable pattern. Confronted with intractable social problems, reformers and politicians glom on to a “silver-bullet” idea that promises to save education in one fell swoop.
Charter schools were never the solution to America’s social and educational problems. They are also not the problem. Some charter schools do a great job of educating children. Some don’t. Since the 1990s, however, charter schools have been unfairly touted as the Next Big Thing, the cure-all for structural problems such as poverty, inequality, racial segregation, and underfunding.
All Hufflepuffed up.
Until 2016, leaders from both parties embraced this convenient political fiction. It wasn’t the rise of union-backed teacher protests that killed it. Rather, it was the rise of Queen Betsy, the stumbling elephant in the ed-reform china shoppe. By associating charter schools with only the Trumpist wing of the GOP, Queen Betsy has forced Democratic hopefuls to swing the other way.
Do Democratic candidates hope to secure NEA votes? Sure. Will they bash charters to do so? Most likely. But the real elephant in the classroom is Queen Betsy. By making charter schools her signature issue, she has forced a widespread political realignment on the issue.
Everyone else heard it. Even way up here in the woods of upstate New York we heard it. Every political person except for the editors of the Washington Post seems to have gotten the message loud and clear. As a bi-partisan program, charter schools are dead. There’s no need for Democrats to hug the corpse. Maybe a medical analogy that invokes the late great Gene Wilder will help get the message across.
Here’s what we’re talking about: Today the editors of the Post issued a rebuke to Democratic politicians like Bernie who have turned their collective backs against charter schools. As they wrote,
We hope candidates keep in mind the polls that consistently show support for charters among black and Hispanic voters. It’s easy to oppose charters if you are well-off and live in a suburb with good schools.
The editors make a strong point. For students with no decent public schools nearby, the promise of higher-quality charter schools has always been appealing. And for that reason, political progressives have long supported the charter movement.
When the charter-school movement took off in the 1990s, it had amazing success because it managed to do what very few political ideas can do. Namely, it attracted support from left, right, and center. The idea of publicly funded schools without all the red tape of regular public schools appealed to everyone who thought that regular public schools weren’t doing the job. And that’s a lot of people.Nevertheless, historically speaking the idea of siphoning tax money away from the public-school network is a radical one, and it only held appeal as long as two factors remained true. First, large numbers of people needed to believe that public schools were in a state of desperate dysfunction. Second, people needed to believe that charters were a shared endeavor, still part of the broader vision of public education for all.
The first part is still true. At least, the WaPo editors continue to believe it. As they wrote this morning,
The most enduring — and unforgivable — civil rights offense in our country today is the consigning of so many poor, often minority children to failing schools.
The second part isn’t. At least, people don’t believe it. The obvious reason for that is the new educational sheriff in town, Betsy DeVos. Queen Betsy has become the public face of the charter school movement. Not Howard Fuller. Not Cory Booker. Not even Arne Duncan. Betsy DeVos.
And when Betsy DeVos becomes the face of charter schools, then the idea of charters takes on all the baggage of Team Trump. No Democrat wants to go to bat for charter schools anymore, you sillies, because they don’t want to buy a ticket on the Trump Train.
Consider this gruesome analogy: When would you agree to let doctors amputate your leg? Things would have to be pretty desperate, right? But if it seemed like the only way to prevent an even bigger health catastrophe, you’d go along with it. Before you did, though, you’d want to hear from a bunch of doctors and surgeons. You’d want to be convinced that the radical procedure was really necessary.
The idea of charter schools is just like that. It is a radical change to America’s public schools, and one with serious negative consequences. Funneling scarce dollars away from low-resource public schools and into charter schools is obviously no one’s first choice, but people were willing to risk it in order to get some students into better schools.
They were willing to try it, in large part, because all the experts lined up behind it. From Howard Fuller to Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee to Cory Booker, it seemed as if leaders from both parties agreed that the radical plan was the least-worst idea.
Not anymore. Secretary DeVos has managed to combine a striking ignorance about public education with a patent disregard for pressing educational issues. She has managed to unite left and right in opposition to her country-club blundering. And she has associated all her efforts with her fervent pro-charter agenda.
To drive the analogy home, it is like you are considering a radical amputation, and there’s only one doctor who tells you it’s a good idea: Dr. Frankenstein.
When the editors of the Washington Post urge Bernie and the other Democratic contenders to stay true to the charter dream, they are giving terrible advice. They are asking Democrats to stick their necks out for President Trump. They are asking Democrats to ignore the changes in ed-reform thinking of the past two years and pretend not to know which way the wind is blowing.
Should Bernie and the rest continue to support high-quality public schools for low-income people? Absolutely! But there are other ways to do it–ways besides the dead dream of charter schools. For the editors of WaPo to ask Bernie to support charter schools is like asking him to show up at a campaign rally wearing a MAGA hat.
America loves a winner…until it doesn’t. Recent moves in Texas and California against Teach For America have me wondering—has the tide turned? Is TFA joining charter schools as a school reform that used to be popular on both sides of the aisle, but is now for the GOP alone? And if so, why now? There is one obvious reason that deserves more attention.
Which side are you on, Democrats?
Here’s what we know: As SAGLRROILYBYGTH are well aware, the idea for Teach For America was to get graduates of elite colleges into low-resource schools. TFA teachers promised to teach for two years. The plan was twofold. First, founder Wendy Kopp hoped to give low-resource schools an infusion of talent and enthusiasm, even if it was only temporary. Second, by experiencing life in low-resource schools, TFA alums—the thinking went—would be better-educated themselves about the challenges of real-life schools.
The program was a big hit for a while. Back in the late 20th century, almost a fifth of Harvard grads applied. School districts offered perks to the program, hoping to attract TFA teachers. Over the years, though, TFA also generated a lot of criticism. How could five weeks of training be enough? Why should no-experience teachers be acceptable in low-resource schools?
Our most vulnerable students are getting our least trained teachers. If they’re good enough for poor, low-income schools, why aren’t they good enough for the Beverly Hillses of the world? . . . Why do low-income schools have to be the guinea pigs?
Such criticisms are nothing new. TFA has always been unpopular among the progressive crowd. But now there seems to be a new political momentum against the program. What happened? Why did TFA suddenly become politically vulnerable?
To this reporter, the political swing against TFA is part of a broader realignment of education politics. For decades now, Democrats and Republicans have agreed on market-based “reforms” of public education. Charters, vouchers, tax-savings accounts, and alternative-certification programs were embraced on both sides of the aisle.
No longer. Democratic contenders for 2020 are scrambling to disavow their charter-loving pasts. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Beto O’Rourke are all re-positioning themselves as charter skeptics, when they all enthusiastically promoted charter schools in the recent past.
The obvious culprit? The string of teacher strikes over the last two years has changed things. The strikes and protests have polarized the issue of public education. For Democrats, now, the primary goals are not to tweak TFA and charters to achieve best results, but rather to oppose any programs that stink of anti-teacher free-marketeering.
Queen Betsy held in 
I Love You but You're Going to Hell 