"We, the undersigned educators, refuse to lie to young people . . ."

From Valerie Strauss at WaPo:

The backlash is sparking a backlash of its own.

On Saturday, thousands of educators and others gathered virtually and in person at historic locations in more than 20 cities to make clear that they would resist efforts in at least 15 Republican-led states to restrict what teachers can say in class about racism, sexism and oppression in America.

Organized by local educators across the country in association with several social justice organizations, the National Day of Action is meant to raise public awareness about the legislation and to send a message that they will not lie to students about the country’s racist past and present.

Several thousand teachers have signed a pledge that says: “We, the undersigned educators, refuse to lie to young people about U.S. history and current events — regardless of the law.” . . .

A New Study Shows Us the Single Biggest Motivation for the Jan. 6 Rioters

                                                

If you have not seen this yet, please take a few minutes to have a view. This research hammers the final nail into the coffin of the theory that white supremacists are motivated by economic anxiety.  

It has never been the case that democracy in this country has been wide open. There [has] always been some kind of presumption that certain people are fit for self-government and certain people aren't. And that's a phrase that we don't use anymore. In fact, from the beginning, democracy and racism have been [inextricably linked, and] the notion of democracy was based on racial presumptions, about fitness for self-government for that very narrow circle in the late eighteenth century of "We the People," and that circle has been expanding over two centuries and more now. But I don't think that the presumption [is] that democracy is just something you can throw the doors open to and allow anyone to participate. And I think that's something that a lot of Americans misunderstand about their political culture.  --Mathew Jacobsen

Tennessee Outlaws Critical Race Theory in Schools on Anniversary of George Floyd's Murder

 A central tenet of critical race theory (CRT) acknowledges

. . . that racism is a normal feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions, like the legal system, that replicate racial inequality. This dismisses the idea that racist incidents are aberrations but instead are manifestations of structural and systemic racism.

Today Tennessee's GQP governor, Bill Lee, signed into law a bill that offers empirical evidence that CRT is not a theory at all but, rather, an incisive description of the factual state of affairs at the Tennessee Capitol.  

The law, which goes into effect July 1, prohibits even the mention of white privilege, male privilege, or white, male oppressors:

Among other things, Tennessee's teachers can't instruct that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”

 If teachers dare bring up the subject of racism, it is only allowed as “[i]mpartial discussion of controversial aspects of history.” No editorializing here, teachers.  After all, we know there are plenty of "very fine people on both sides." 

Penalties for breaking the new law include loss of state funding for schools or school systems.

Vouchers in FL Create Black Christian Madrassahs in Strip Malls

(AP photo: Alfredo Lee)

Although this commentary by Billy Townsend describes a seed of hope in Florida's education desert, the bigger message points to what you get with laws that allow unregulated and unaccredited private "schools" to replace public schools that have been malignantly-neglected by segregationists who want to close them.

Orlando Sentinel, May 16 

Jones High success story illustrates inadequacy of voucher schools

Six years ago, essentially zero Jones High School students took physics. Today, more than 250 do. That means 250 Orlando-area young people per year now have a better chance of becoming engineers or scientists or doctors. We should celebrate that. Physics is crucial to many educational and professional journeys. 

Unfortunately, as a recent former Polk County school board member, I know all too well the rarity of serious growth in Florida’s education capacity. Our state is steadily dismantling education capacity everywhere through its contempt for public schools and indifference to voucher-school performance. Capacity destruction drives Florida’s chronic educator shortages. 

It’s one reason Florida has among America’s worst state test score “learning rates,” according to The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. Capacity destruction particularly harms children and communities that lack capital. Quite often, these low-capital communities are also historically black communities. A thriving physics program — one that exceeds enrollment for most other wealthier schools in Florida — demonstrates real capital investment in community capacity. 

That makes the Jones physics story all the more important — and a powerful counterpoint to Florida’s failed state voucher programs, particularly the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) voucher. Like many voucher schools, the Jones enrollment of nearly 1,600 is almost entirely Black. A casual observer may see it as “segregated,” in the sense we’ve come to popularly understand segregation. 

But there is a massive difference between the Jones community-support “segregation” and the “segregation” of schools in Florida’s low-capital voucher-school marketplace. The Sentinel’s invaluable “Schools without Rules” series in 2017 documented the failures of many voucher schools and how little Florida leaders care about it. 

It also illustrated how Florida’s testing system and barbaric mass third-grade retention policies drive children into voucher schools in a disfigured conception of “choice.” But the Sentinel did not delve deeply into the extreme racial segregation of Florida’s voucher-school marketplace, as I did in Polk County. 

As of last month, the Step Up for Students voucher marketplace shows 16 Polk County voucher schools have enrollments of at least 76 percent Black children. Twelve of the 16 schools are at least 95 percent Black. Six are 100 percent Black. Not one of those schools has any accreditation. None of them have any state or local oversight. 

There is no elected board member or unelected bureaucrat to call when these schools defraud you. More than 800 Black children in Polk County attend these segregated, low-capital so-called schools at any given time. Moreover, the Urban Institute’s 2017 study of Florida’s voucher marketplace, the only recent study of its kind, found that 61 percent of voucher recipients abandon their FTC voucher within two years. 75 percent abandon the voucher within three years. That’s an extraordinary record of failure and churn. 

Voucher advocates twist themselves into knots insisting this is not a 75-percent 3-year program dropout rate. But it is. Many voucher schools resemble the worst of pre-Brown vs. Board of Education American schools — operating in strip mall storefronts with names like “Endtime Christian School of Excellence.” That is the name and description of a very real and very typical voucher school in Lake Wales. 

Yet, Florida is expanding the roughly $1 billion a year in direct tax money and corporate tax-shelter cash it spends each year to defraud black children and parents – and everyone else. Runaway voucher spending with no oversight has built zero capacity to actually provide education. That’s because money alone cannot buy education capacity; only consistent, focused effort. 

There are very few decent voucher products to buy. And decent private schools, almost without exception, do not rely on vouchers for survival or take many voucher kids. Vouchers do not cover the tuition of serious private schools, which have full-tuition paying customers and endowments and capital and accreditation. Such private schools are also very, very white. School segregation, integration and equity pose some of society’s hardest, most complex challenges. 

In my experience as a school-board member and advocate, human beings want to attend schools that reflect their communities; they want to avoid busing; they want equality — or advantage — in resources; they (often) want diversity in faculty and fellow students; and they want to be in the majority of a school population. 

People want all of this at the same time in the same school. Jones provides a far better model for addressing that challenge than vouchers. Indeed, I would not call the Jones model of schooling “segregation.” I would call it “community ownership” and Jones is literally a “Community Partnership School.” 

That means it works rigorously with the Children’s Home Society of Florida, Orange Blossom Health, and the University of Central Florida to provide “wraparound” social services and slowly, painstakingly build capacity for the Parramore/Lorna Doone community and its high school. 

Today, the Jones community school model is building capacity in physics while most of the rest of Florida is destroying it. That is a public-school accomplishment to celebrate from a model far superior to the failed voucher model state power prefers. 

Billy Townsend served on the Polk County School Board from 2016 to 2020.

 

Dear Sen. Bennet: The best way to help "high poverty schools" is to eliminate "high poverty schools."

Call me excited about the many billions of dollars that Team Biden is planning to invest in new and renewed education initiatives, from pre-K through college.  Even more exciting is the total absence (so far) of systemic efforts to bribe and/or extort states to adopt corporate policies favored by the profiteers of the education industrial complex.  It's too early to know for sure, but it looks as if these unprecedented education investments now on the horizon actually acknowledge the massive education debt owed to public institutions that have been deprived for decades of needed funds for staffing, physical plants, transportation, and instructional resources.

As these new funding streams come closer to reality, the Biden Team has also targeted child poverty, with tax credits in the Covid relief legislation that will cut child poverty almost in half. If these cuts can be made permanent, the reductions in child poverty would constitute, in themselves, the most important education reform of the past 50 years.  For as child poverty rates decrease, we may certainly expect increases in student achievement.

But old habits of thought die slowly, it seems.  For as we stand on the cusp of dramatically cutting poverty rates and addressing other structural issues that have helped preserve segregation based on race and class, some politicians remain focused on treating the symptom, rather than the disease.  

Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) offers a good example of politicians who believe that the performance, behavior, and morale problems associated with high poverty schools can be solved by using funding as both carrot and stick to "drive policy."  

This has been tried, and we know it doesn't work. James Coleman knew it didn't work in 1966 when the Coleman Report was issued and then quickly shelved by the Johnson Administration, for fear that the Report's findings would expose the shallowness of federal priorities to send more money to high poverty schools, while ignoring the structural issues that insure the continuation of poverty and inequity.  

From WaPo:

Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), a former superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, generally supports the new spending but said he would like to see some fundamental changes in the Title I formula to direct more money to high-poverty schools if the government is going to increase spending so dramatically. He’d also like to see the money used to drive policy. For instance, he said, he’d like to see schools incentivized to pay teachers at high-poverty schools more.

“It would be a shame if we spend all this money and we do it in ways that don’t transform outcomes for kids,” Bennet said. “We’ve got to change the system. I don’t believe the system works well for kids living in poverty.”

Senator Bennet, there is NO system that "works well for kids living in poverty." Poverty makes sure of that.

Scandal-Ridden TN DOE Lies to Parents about Opting Out of Tests

Andy Spears recently shared a memo from the TN Department of Education denying denying parents the right to opt out of annual state testing.  Even though the invalid, unreliable, and racist tests have never been morally defensible, they are particularly indefensible during the present pandemic. 

Tennessee's corrupt Education Commissioner and former charter school CEO, Penny Schwinn, continues to circulate a one-page lie that tells parents that opting out of state testing is prohibited by state and federal laws. Any parent receiving this ridiculous memo should ignore it and keep their children safe from these irrelevant, racist, and mideducative tests that only companies that use public education as another vast revenue stream. 

Speaking of revenue streams, Broad Center alum Penny Schwinn has an established reputation for using her office to arrange lucrative no-bid contracts for her cronies in the ed industry. Before coming to Tennessee, she was caught up in a Texas-sized scandal based on playing favorites and passing out no-bid contracts.  

Since coming to Tennessee, Schwinn has continued her corrupt practices in awarding a no-bid management contract for a school voucher program and, more recently, another multimillion dollar no-bid contract for a  company to screen results on third grade reading tests.

As Bill Lee's mentor always said, only the best people. 

Major victory over a corporate charter school chain and their trade association

 Adapted from my Twitter thread.

ON Tuesday, March 23, 2021 I got my second big win in court against a charter school corporation. It was also a major victory over their Califonria Charter Schools Association (“CCSA”) trade association, which tried to use this case to carve out immunity to the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”). I represented @DotKohlhaas in this action.

Here was my tweet from the day before, after skimming through the tentative:

TFW the tentative ruling is 80% in your favor, so you won't be arguing from a position of weakness during the hearing. 😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/SnWy8woEaH

— Robert D Skeels, JD, Esq 🔻 (@rdsathene) March 23, 2021

My first win against a corporate charter school was a year ago as third chair in a suit to overturn a wrongful expulsion of a student of color. The Partnerships to Uplift Communities (“PUC”) charter chain (of convicted felon Ref Rodriguez fame) violated that student’s due process rights. Violated isn’t a strong enough word for what they did. PUC unilaterally changed the charges at the appeals hearing and branded the child as a terrorist in his permanent record. Under the tutelage of the brilliant partners at the law firm I was a part-timer at the time (I am currently transitioning to full time there), plus sage advice from @DrPrestonGreen, we built a strong case.

It was my argument that the charter corporation never proved specific intent — a crucial element to Ed. Code § 48900.7, as well as PUC’s glaring lack of notice afforded to the student, that saw the court overturn the wrongful expulsion and give the student their life back.

This latest case was a charter trying to hide all its dirty secrets by not complying with the CPRA. The scandal-ridden The Accelerated Schools (“TAS”) charter chain’s leaders absconded when the community started pushing back and started asking questions about union busting.

Michael Kohlhaas dot org sent sent TAS several CPRA requests in 2018, which they ignored (unlawfully). A year later, I filed the petition for writ of mandate for them. Some ten months later TAS sent some records, but claimed “blanket exemptions” on a bunch of other ones.

The Accelerated Schools Sued To Compel Compliance With The California Public Records Act - My First…

As you may know I have been making requests of charter schools under the California Public Records Act for about a year…

michaelkohlhaas.org

The good folks at Michael Kohlhaas dot org documented the part when it was decided to continue with the litigation. This was for Hilda, an amazing educator, and all the other people wronged by TAS/CCSA.

In October 2020 The Accelerated Schools Produced Five GB of Records In Response To My 2019 Requests…

Remember all the way back in December 2019 when I was forced to file yet another lawsuit seeking to enforce the…

michaelkohlhaas.org

An infamous law firm that only represents lucrative, privately managed charter school corporations staked out the position that any communications with the charter school industry’s trade association — the CCSA — was subject to a range of exemptions under the CPRA.

I suppose I can’t blame them. The charter industry — long used to unaccountably spending tax dollars in total secrecy — fought tooth and nail the imposition of the CPRA and Brown Act added by Ed. Code § 47604.1(b)(2)(A). When the law took effect January 2020, charter school corporations were already looking for ways to skirt the law. At the firm I’m a junior associate at, we use the CPRA for pre-discovery work against charter corporations. Michael Kohlhaas dot org, on the other hand, has used it to expose some of the ugliest, scandalous conduct by an industry already infamous for scandal. Uncovering the vile Nick Melvoin’s sharing Los Angeles Unified School District’s (“LAUSD”) confidential legal strategies with their party-opponent in a lawsuit (the CCSA) was a blockbuster revelation enabled by the CPRA.

It Appears That Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin Revealed Confidential Attorney Client Information From…

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about an episode in January 2018 when the California Charter School Association actually…

michaelkohlhaas.org

Of course, when you start using the sunshine laws on one of the darkest and vilest industries hatched out of the neoliberal project, you’re going to expose a lot of charter school scandals. There’s so many documented here:

California Charter Schools Association - Michael Kohlhaas dot org

In January 2019 I started investigating Los Angeles charter schools using the California Public Records Act and…

michaelkohlhaas.org

Back to TAS claiming blanket exemptions. When I tried to explain the law to them, they responded: “The claim based on your legal analysis that these exemptions do not apply to the records withheld in this matter is incorrect.”

I was a little nervous going into this, but got a great deal of advice from three National Lawyers Guild attorneys who have also represented Michael Kohlhaas dot org in the past like the incomparable Matthew Strugar, Colleen Flynn, and Abenicio Cisneros. The two former helped me with procedural questions and sample pleadings. The latter provided me argument strategies for my reply brief and gave me the best authority to cite on exemptions (Golden Door Properties, LLC v. Superior Ct. of San Diego Cty., 53 Cal. App. 5th 733, 267 Cal. Rptr. 3d 32, 64 (2020), as modified on denial of reh’g (Aug. 25, 2020))(“Golden Door”). How on point was that case? The Court cited that same case three times in their minute order.

We had already prevailed since the lawsuit caused TAS to produce some records last October, but the dispute over the blanket CCSA exemptions was a proxy political battle. TAS surprisingly claimed exemptions on emails that Michael Kohlhaas dot org had obtained via CPRA from other charter school corporations that had followed the law. Weird hill to die on, but this was the CCSA trying to establish blanket exemptions. The Court ruled that every one of those emails was not exempt! A major win for us.

Also, because we caught TAS in (several) obvious lies, including one where they claimed in one pleading that only a small percentage of documents had been exempted, and then had a high-paid TAS executive claim in their sworn declaration that there were “hundreds of thousands” of records exempted. We pointed out that inconsistency, which led to the court granting our request for a privilege log. Better still, the court used Golden Door to order TAS to produce declarations for each record they claim exempt. While we didn’t get everything we put in our prayer, this was a major victory — especially in regards to the claims for blanket exemptions from the CCSA. I’m sure this isn’t the last time they’ll try this strategy, but at least we can share how to argue against it.

The final disposition will be decided in the summer, but TAS having to produce privilege logs supported by sworn declarations totally justified us continuing to litigate after the settlement offer. Let the corporate charter school industry know that they aren’t going to be able to hide their dark secrets anymore. Here’s a few excerpts from my briefs that probably didn’t sit well with the corporate charter school industry, their CCSA trade association, and their hired mercenaries. ¡La lucha continua! https://twitter.com/rdsathene/status/1375727433198936067

Lastly, huge shout-out to Michael Kohlhaas dot org. They’re doing the lord’s work. From exposing self-dealing by tax payer funded Business Improvement Districts (“BIDs”), to uncovering some extremely disturbing activities by the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”), to putting the lucrative, corporate charter school industry on notice that the sunshine laws are coming for them, to using the CPRA to protect the most vulnerable in our communities, as like I always say: “not all heroes wear capes.”

Modern Day Michael Kohlhaas Exposes Enemies of Homeless People - Invisible People

To his followers, he's known as Michael Kohlhaas. But his real name is actually Adrian Riskin, a fact that sometimes…

invisiblepeople.tv

The Best Reason Yet to Boycott Amazon

If you're from a small community whose town was damaged by big box stores and then killed off by Amazon, or if you are an environmentalist upset by Amazon trucks making delivering of toothbrushes in cardboard packaging big enough to fit a microwave, or if you believe that workers should be treated like humans and paid a livable wage unavailable to Amazon's warehouse slaves, then you may want to join me in boycotting Amazon for, yet, another reason.  From WaPo:

. . . [Amazon] has also become a publishing powerhouse — and it won’t sell downloadable versions of its more than 10,000 e-books or tens of thousands of audiobooks to libraries. That’s right, for a decade, the company that killed bookstores has been starving the reading institution that cares for kids, the needy and the curious. 

. . . . Librarians have been no match for the beast. When authors sign up with a publisher, it decides how to distribute their work. With other big publishers, selling e-books and audiobooks to libraries is part of the mix — that’s why you’re able to digitally check out bestsellers like Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land.” Amazon is the only big publisher that flat-out blocks library digital collections. Search your local library’s website, and you won’t find recent e-books by Amazon authors Kaling, Dean Koontz or Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Nor will you find downloadable audiobooks for Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime,” Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Michael Pollan’s “Caffeine.”

Did I mention how many billions of dollars Jeff Bezos has added to his wealth during the pandemic?  Huffington Post reported in January that 

Jeff Bezos could have personally paid each of Amazon’s 876,000 employees a one-off $105,000 bonus ... and still be as wealthy as he was at the beginning of the pandemic.

Biden's Awesome Plan to Vaccinate School Personnel

Please excuse me for calling Joe Biden blockheaded--I take it all back.  

Yesterday Biden announced that teachers and other school folks will be offered vaccination through participating "federal pharmacies" by the end of March.  The plan is to have one shot in all arms of all school employees who want shots by March 1. 

Snippet: Martian rover sends back breathtaking video from the Red Planet