FL: Endgame In Sight; Heritage Foundation Says Yay

Governor Ron DeSantis just announced his intention for the next step in dismantling public education in Florida; he wants to expand the education savings accounts, the super-vouchers that hand parents a chunk of money on a debit card that they can spend on pretty much anything educational or education-adjacent. 

Not that this is remotely a surprise. Type Florida in the search bar at the top of this blog and look at all the many, many ways Florida's leaders have worked to dismantle public education and sell off the parts, and every step brings them closer to the far right ideal of not just privatizing education, but privatizing it in the setting of an unregulated market, removing government from any involvement in education at all. 

DeSantis made his little speech as part of a victory lap. The Heritage Foundation, a right wing organization with strong ties to every right wing operation you can think of. They've decided to start doing an annual Education Freedom Report Card, organized around the search for a state that has most perfectly realized Milton Friedman's vision of education completely managed by an unregulated free market with government providing zero public education. Friedman also imagined that such a system would be free of discrimination of any sort because, when it came to education and society in general, Friedman was a dope. But his vision has always provided a cover for all sorts of people who want to dismantle public education for all sorts of reasons. "I'm just following the natural laws of economic reality," sounds so much better than, "I don't to pay taxes to fund schools for all those poor kids."

Anyway. The first year of the Heritage Report Card produced a clear winner-- Florida. And the explanation of the report card produces a clear picture of what these folks want in general and what Florida has accomplished in particular. 

We're well into the next phase. Don't call them "reformers" or even "disruptors." Now they're just plain old dismantlers.

The Heritage crew lays out four categories of public ed dismantling.

1) Education choice. This asks how much a centrally accountable public ed system has been replaced with an open market in which parents have to pick and choose an educational program on their own. Arizona, with its universal ESAs, wins the category.

2) Regulatory freedom. How well has the government shredded any kind of accountability measures? No Common Core tests is a winner, but beyond, we're looking for no regulations at all, including the new frontier in unregulated teaching certification. The foundation calls requirements for professional certification "barriers to teaching," much like FDA regulations are barriers to selling whatever kind of cut of whatever kind of meat in whatever kind of state. Accountability is bad.

3) Transparency. This appears to refer to the degree to which anti-education groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education have gotten ahold of the levers of power, and how well the state has done at passing various teacher gag laws. 2 and 3 really capture the true spirit of the dismantlers, who argue that private education-flavored options should operate with complete opacity, accountable to nobody, but that the public education system should operate in a fishbowl, the easier to attack it for anything and everything.

4) Return on Investment. This is some top grade bullshit here, literally computing NAEP points per dollar spent, as well as factoring unfunded teacher pension liabilities (because pensions for teachers are bad and show you haven't properly de-powered your unions). 

The Heritage Foundation has embraced the culture war because it's a useful tool for creating distrust in public education. Leading dismantlist Chris Rufo said they would. Jay Greene of the Foundation said they should.  It's a tool; they'll be pro-parent just as long as it's not parents who are pro-public education.

But in the meantime, Florida is the dream. It is approaching the final form of dismantlism.

Defund public education. Undermine it financially, while also sowing distrust and undermining taxpayer support.

End the state's responsibility for providing or overseeing a decent education for every child.

Zero accountability to taxpayers.

Parents just DIY their way through an unregulated marketplace ripe for fraud and failure.

"We gave you a couple thou on a debit card. You're not our problem now. Voucher money ran out? Not our problem. Got bilked by some fraudster? Not our problem. Got left high and dry when some edu-biz closed its doors? Not our problem. Don't have the time or expertise to navigate this mess? We're sure someone has started a business that you can pay to do it for you. Are we certifying that business as qualified and legit? Ha! Now go away."

Two quotes from Kathryn Joyce's most excellent piece about the report card capture things well. First, from Andrew Spar, who has the thankless task of being president of the Florida Education association:

This amounts, Spar continued, to "the Heritage Foundation celebrating the rankings of how well you underfund public schools, how well you dismantle public schools. I don't think we should celebrate the fact that we're shortchanging kids."

And from Carol Burris, head of the Network for Public Education:

"With this report," added Burris, "the Heritage Foundation puts its values front and forward — that schooling should be a free-for-all marketplace where states spend the least possible on educating the future generation of Americans, with no regulations to preserve quality."

Florida and Arizona lead in dismantlism--that's how they ended up at the top of the Public Education Hostility Index last year. It is now easier than ever to imagine a future in which some states have an actual public education system, and others do not. 

The Free Market Is Wrong For Education (Part #1,277,652)

You may have noticed lately that the streaming industry is going through meltdown challenging transition. It's a reminder that, particularly in late stage capitalism, the free market is fundamentally incompatible with public education.

Just as cable disrupted broadcast television, streaming has disrupted cable. The less obvious part of the transition was a transition in what the business was actually about. Broadcast television are in the business of collecting eyeballs and then renting those eyeballs out to advertisers. Streaming services are in the business of selling subscriptions to customers. Except that, in this stage of the game, neither is actually in those businesses primarily--all are in the business of "creating" money for shareholders. Specifically, the business of creating ever-increasing piles of money.

But there's a problem--there is a finite number of customers in the pool, and streaming services have about reached that limit, particularly as they have proliferated. You are now an Old Fart if you can sit and regale the youngs of the days when a subscription to Netflix would let you watch pretty much everything.

The most obvious issue at the moment (other than your steadily increasing subscription costs) is the mess at Warner/HBO Max/Discovery, in which the newly combined streaming services are obliterating a ton of material. Not just canceled as in "don't make any more" but canceled as in "we have removed this material entirely from the servers." There are plenty of reasons behind this move, but this sentence pretty well sums it up:

Discovery is cutting shows from its archives and unfinished movies from HBO Max as it prepares to merge it with its sister streaming service Discovery Plus, having promised its shareholders a $3 billion cut in costs.

Meanwhile, as Washington Post reports,

Faced with a plunging stock price and worrisome subscriber loss, Netflix plans to add an advertising-supported model for a lower price and may crack down on password sharing. Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus, which can all be subscribed to in a cable-esque bundle, are raising prices after taking a more than $1 billion hit in the fiscal third quarter.

This all makes sense as long as you understand that the business of these services is not what you think it is. It is not to produce and distribute quality viewing experiences, and certainly not to provide for support to the creative people who produce all this content. The business of these businesses is to make money, and if they have to slice off pieces of their supposed primary mission, they'll do that. Sell advertising space? Cut what they pay for content to the bone? Use algorithms and data to determine what is profitable rather than what is quality? They will do all of that because--

1) You've got to keep making not just money, but more money and

2) Once the market is saturated, there's no way to do that except by playing bean counting games, cutting costs, and finding more sources of revenue.

I've repeated my law in the past: the free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing. But that's probably incomplete, because the free market also, eventually, fosters creative corner cutting, even if the corners cut affect the pursuit of what is supposed to be the business's actual mission. 

We've already heard these kinds of noise from reformsters for years. There's a whole range of initiatives that are all really directed at just one question-- isn't there a way to have a "school" without paying so much for teachers? Maybe super-sardinemasters could teach a few hundred kids at a time. Maybe replace teachers with coaches or facilitators-- even call it something fancy, like microschool. Maybe lower the requirements so that any warm body can do the job and we don't have to pay for qualifications. 

And that's before we get to the lowering of expectations. How often are we hearing the message that a school should just teach students reading and math and maybe a little history, but only enough to make them employable.

The worst tendency for the free market is to look for that sweet spot where you spend the least you can get away with without losing too much of your market share, because your real purpose is to get money to shareholders. Is this what anyone wants for the schools their child attends? Do you want to hear from a building principal at orientation, "Rest assured that we have cut every corner in our attempt to provide your child with the bare minimum required."

The free market can, and has, accomplished some great things. But its values are incompatible with a system that promises to provide a full, rich, rounded education for every single student in the country. 

Moms for Liberty Are Primed For Elections

Moms for Liberty have not been shy about their intentions. Here's co-founder Tiffany Justice on Steve Bannon's show: 

BANNON: Are we going to start taking over the school boards?

JUSTICE: Absolutely. We're going to take over the school boards, but that's not enough. Once we replace the school boards, what we need to do is we need to have search firms, that are conservative search firms, that help us to find new educational leaders, because parents are going to get in there and they're going to want to fire everyone. What else needs to happen? We need good school board training. We need lawyers to stand up in their communities and be advocates for parents and be advocates for school board members who are bucking the system. Right now, parents have no recourse within any public education district.

This is not new. It's worth remembering that there was a third co-founder, Bridget Ziegler, who has since quietly stepped back, perhaps because her husband Christian is an obvious tie to the GOP political machinery. Back in October of 2021, Christian Ziegler told the Washington Post

I have been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.

So there's no secret here. 

M4L has a different structure from traditional astro-turf groups like Parents Defending Education, which is a group of seasoned professional operatives with no real presence on the ground. M4L is more reminiscent of the Tea Party's early days--a combination of deep pockets and savvy leaders and a web of local groups of aggrieved moms. Traditional astro-turf is some folks in an office somewhere with a little has flame on a desk and the assertion that the flame is burning everywhere. The M4L/Tea Party model is about finding the places where there are sparks smoldering, and getting gasoline to those folks. 

So M4L is unloading some more election time gasoline. For example, on September 24, in Des Plaines, IL, they'll be presenting a Campaign Management Workshop to teach attendees (who will pay a nominal fee of $25) how to develop campaign strategy, research the district, conduct voter outreach, create a campaign organization and (my fave) hire and fire staff and consultants.

The workshop is being run by the Leadership Institute, an organization founded in 1979 by Morton Blackwell, a professional conservative activist.  How conservative? In 1964 he was the youngest Goldwater delegate at the GOP convention. He was a special assistant to Reagan. In 2016, he won the second Phyllis Schlafly Award for Excellence in Leadership. He's held all manner of GOP party office. The Leadership Institute has been recruiting and training conservative activists, politicians, and journalists for over 40 years. They are connected to the State Policy Network. 

M4L is feeling its oats after some victories in Florida's school board elections and they clearly have no intention of stopping there. 

Thay're advocating for their position, which is what advocacy groups do. But let this post serve as a reminder; if these folks are active in your area, they will be active in your school board elections. You may be used to quiet, sleepy school board elections in which candidates spend $50 and do little campaigning. But these are not ordinary times. These kind of conservative drives can be defeated, and have been in many places, but it takes hard work and selling your message. 

If you're looking to elect supporters of public education, be prepared. It will not be easy this time. 

TX: In God We Trust--No! Not Like That!

The problem with dumb rules is that they are hard to enforce and an invitation for people to mess with you.

Every teacher who has spent more than a year in the classroom knows that if you tell a class "I don't want to hear one more peep out of you," the next thing you will hear is "peep." And the next thing that will happen after that is you will find yourself wasting time in an argument about whether saying "meep" or "fleep" or "booger" violates the dumb rule that you just pulled out of your butt. Before you formulate a rule, make sure you've thought it through.

If there is one thing that has been consistent about people who want to get religion back into the classroom, it's that they never, ever think things through. And so we have the current time-wasting silliness in Texas.

Senator Bryan Hughes is an East Texas Republican who came up with Texas's anti-abortion bill with the clever workaround of having the public rather than law enforcement enforce it. Hughes cleverly worked that into his bill attempting to get God back in the classroom, which declared that if somebody donated an "In God We Trust" poster to a school, the school must display it in a conspicuous place. It became law, and Hughes, who had definitely not thought things through, expressed his happiness on the Twitter.

The national motto, In God We Trust, asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God. I’m encouraged to see groups like the Northwest [Austin] Republican Women and many individuals coming forward to donate these framed prints to remind future generations of the national motto.

The Christian cell phone company and election financier Patriot Mobile also chipped in some signs, saying "We are honored to be part of bringing God back into our public schools." The Yellow Rose of Texas Republican Women chipped in, and of course Moms for Liberty did, too. But then things took a turn...

Activist and artist Chaz Stevens sent along some posters with "In God We Trust"--written in Arabic. He set up a GoFundMe (you can still contribute) on which he says of the SB-797, "The law seemingly presumes these signs are written in English. Oopsie."

Others donated "In God We Trust" posters with rainbow colors. Some districts rejected the signs, immediately finding themselves in stupid meep arguments. For example, Carroll ISD rejected the not-what-we-wanted-here posters and argued that "the statute does not contemplate requiring the district to display more than one copy at a time." In this case "does not contemplate" means "does not actually say anything one way or another." Ditto for their argument that the law "does not contemplate" any language other than English.

The Carroll ISD donor, Sravan Krishna, replied, "It doesn’t say you have to stop at one, so that is your decision to stop at one. Why is more God not good? And are you saying you don’t have, like, one square feet of space in our buildings?”

The law does say that the poster must include an American flag and a state flag, and no other images or words. 

The argument that the school only has to display one poster rests on the use of "a" as in the school must display "a durable poster or framed copy." I'm not saying that Carroll ISD School Board President Cam Bryan is grasping at straws, but his argument includes calling "a" the "singular tense." Oddly enough, none of the run-up to all this donating activity included anyone saying, "Remember, we just need one poster per school."

Meanwhile, because it's Texas, someone else is threatening lawsuits against districts that put up the naughty signs, arguing "the legislature passed this law to set a good example for schoolchildren, so we are taking action to ensure schools do just that, and conspicuously display compliant posters that everyone is sure to love, equally.” So Arabic and pride flaggish posters are out because somebody will hate them? 

Even if Texas wins its dumb argument about the singular determiner, that simply opens up another dumb argument about who decides which single poster goes up, and how they decide. Is it first come, first served? Does the spot open up anew every school year? Or will school districts form a committee to select which "In God We Trust" poster is the acceptable one, and what criteria will they use, and will this then put the school in the position of deciding which God is the one allowed to be perched on their walls and does anybody on any side of this dumb argument really want that?

Conservative christianists agitating for "religious freedom" and "putting God back in the schools" always seem to forget that there is more than one faith. You can try to open up schools to access by those faiths, but access will always, by the very nature of schools, be limited, and therefor somebody will have to decide, somehow, which faiths get to have that access. The wall between church and state is meant to protect the church; break it down and you are a few short steps away from a government agency deciding which religion gets to enjoy certain privileges (and which do not). That is not good for anyone. 

We could try to have an honest conversation about that, or folks could pass dumb laws instead. Texas has made its choice. Unfortunately for them, the principle holds--make dumb rules, end up in dumb arguments. 

OK: Ryan Walters Is Bad News For Public Education

Ryan Walters may be interested in something, but it sure doesn't seem to be public education. And yet, he is poised to be Oklahoma's top education honcho. His latest egregious harassment of an educator in order to score political points should be a disqualifier all by itself, but it's only the latest rung on his ladder.

Getting started

Ryan Walters graduated from Harding University ("Faith, Learning, Living"), a private Christian university in Arkansas that didn't accept Black students until 1963. Walters graduated in 2010 with a degree in history. 

He returned to his home town of McAlester in 2011 to teach high school history, where he did well enough to be named McAlester Public Schools Teacher of the Year in 2015 and draw a finalist spot for Oklahoma's TOY award in 2016.That put him in touch with folks at the state level. In 2018 he was appointed to the Oklahoma Community Service Commission, and the next year, newly elected Governor Kevin Stitt to the Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability.

In 2019 he gave up his teaching gig to serve as the executive director of Oklahoma Achieves, the state Chamber of Commerce initiative that pulled big bucks from, among others, the Walton Family Foundation. Oklahoma Achieves would soon transform itself into Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, a "new education reform organization" that wants to give everyone "access to quality education." EKCO has been especially reluctant to provide their required IRS disclosure forms, but The Oklahoman did pry some info loose; donors include the Waltons, Yes Every Kid (a Charles Koch operation).

Walters was offered the top job for EKCO in March of 2020. In May of 2020 he went to work. March of 2020 was also the month in which President Trump signed the CARES Act, which included the Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER). Oklahoma started pulling its money out in July of 2020, feeding a chunk of that money into a voucher program that would be handled by newly created Bridge the Gap, a program funded by GEER money but operated by Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, who in turn would hire ClassWallet, the Florida-based ed voucher management company. Turns out they didn't even have to bid. 

But Walters thought he had a winner. In fact, he made an appearance at Jeb Bush's Edu-palooza in a presentation about how to launch a voucher program in just four weeks; the spot was sponsored by ClassWallet. It was such a hit that ClassWallet had him do it again for their Youtube channel in February of 2021.

Relief Fund Follies

That turned out to be a bit of a fiasco. Of the $18 million that Oklahoma collected, $10 mill went straight to vouchers and the rest went... somewhere. Oklahoma Watch ("Impact journalism in the public interest") and The Frontier did some digging and found that GEER funds were used to buy things like Christmas trees, gaming consoles, electric fireplaces, and outdoor grills. About $191,000 in federal relief funds were used to buy 548 TVs. In all, about a half a million was spent on non-school related goods.

Walters had been plenty enthusiastic about privatizing the operation of the voucher program:

“We didn’t have the government agency personnel with the background experience to do this and, quite frankly, we felt like there could be a more efficient way to do this outside our government agencies,” Walters said.

But ClassWallet has been clear that they have no intention of seeing the undercarriage of this particular bus.

 
“As a software contractor, ClassWallet had neither responsibility for, nor authority to exercise programmatic decision making with respect to the program or its associated federal funds and did not have responsibility for grant compliance,” company spokesman Henry Feintuch said in a statement.

As the Norman Transcript Editorial Board reports:

While $8 million of the money was meant to fund education resources for individual students, Walters did not set any limits or guidelines on how families could use the money — when ClassWallet asked for his thoughts on limitations, Walters gave “blanket approval” to any item a family wanted to purchase through approved vendors.

And while Governor Stitt wouldn't agree to an interview with Oklahoma Watch, his spokeswoman Carly Atchison did offer this in a written statement:

During the COVID pandemic, Governor Stitt had a duty to get federal relief funds to students and families in Oklahoma as quickly as possible and he accomplished just that.

Well, yes. He could also have dumped the money in piles in various school parking lots. That would have been quick, too.

And he wasn't all that successful. The program shut down a day early "after federal investigators and attorneys for the state discovered the company was operating on an expired contract with almost no government supervision" and Oklahoma returned $2.9 million unspent relief dollars to the feds. A federal audit gave the program lowest marks all across the board.

Failing upward for many employers

While some called for Walters to resign, he had other goals in mind. In September of 2020, Governor Stitt had announced that Walters had been appointed to fill the spot of Secretary of Education, while also declaring that the post would be an individual cabinet position. In his mid-thirties, Walters is the youngest to ever serve in the post. Now he wants to be the state superintendent of public instruction.

Through it all, there remains some question about who Walters actually works for. He's still listed as the executive director of EKCO-- a group that's devoted to agitating for privatizing education, so this is like hiring the head of a private bus company to head your public transportation system. Especially if the private company is paying him triple what the public system is paying. According to The Oklahoman (Clifton Adcock, Reese Gorman, and Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch and The Frontier have been all over this story), Walters was hired for a $100,000 salary, with a requirement that he had to be paid at least 20% higher than the second-highest paid employee. His original contract called for an option of a minimum $20K raise after the first year. Governor Stitt vetoed a bill that would have required cabinet members to disclose finances.

His salary of secretary of education from the state of Oklahoma is $40,000. The state superintendent makes $125,000, so at least the state would be on even footing with Walters' other employer. 

Strutting his right wing bona fides

It's hard to tell whether Walters is a died-in-the-right-wing-wool conservative or just an opportunist riding the prevailing political hot air (though things like this AP teaching video where he observes that Joseph McCarthy "exaggerated" offers a hint). Either way, he's been putting on quite a show. 

On his Twitter page, he likes to post videos of himself in his car objecting to liberal naughtiness. He cranks out op-eds, like this one arguing that "if our kids are taught to hate this country we will no longer be the country that God has so richly blessed." He contributed a piece to Fox News: "Listen up, teachers: stop going woke." He warned textbook publishers not to put any of that nasty CRT stuff in their books (and took flak for it). He "urged" a school district to prohibit students who were born "biological males" from using female bathrooms, claiming they had misinterpreted Title IX. As reported in the Stillwater News Press: "The US Department of Education’s rules, that your school board claims ordered this travesty, simply allowed school districts to choose their own path – and Stillwater has chosen poorly,” Walters wrote. “You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety.” He has accused Tulsa schools of "pushing pornography."

His primary opponent April Grace tried to call him out on his own teaching, saying that his lesson about the psychology of racial bias actually violated Oklahoma's Anti-CRT law. It didn't stick. Walters joined Governor Stitt in backing a massive neo-voucher bill that ultimately failed; Grace took position that the bill had too few safeguards for the use of taxpayer funds (a position that, once upon a time, conservatives would have held). Walters beat her. 

His latest target

His victory apparently has encouraged him to go negative hard right. Witness his latest activity.

Summer Boismier was a teacher at Norman High School who drew flak for covering some books in her classroom with the message "Books the state doesn't want you to read." Apparently even worse, she posted the QR code for the Brooklyn Public Libraries new eCard for teens program, which allows teens from all over the country to check out books, no matter how repressive or restrictive state or local rules they may live under.

She was suspended by the district, which said that this was about her "personal political statements" and a "political display" in the classroom. Boismier told The Gothamist 

I saw this as an opportunity for my kids who were seeing their stories hidden to skirt that directive. Nowhere in my directives did it say we can't put a QR code on a wall.

But Oklahoma school districts are on edge since the state Board of Education downgraded two districts' accreditations for allegedly violating the law. 

The district's suspension was brief, but rather than report back to work, Boismier resigned. As the Washington Post reported

She recognized the school district was in a tight spot and said she placed most of the blame on Oklahoma Republicans for fomenting what she described as a growing culture of fear, confusion and uncertainty in schools.

Amid that climate, Boismier said, she doesn’t feel like she has a place in an Oklahoma classroom.

None of that was enough for Walters. The events surrounding Boismier attracted plenty of attention, and so, Candidate Walters popped up to put his two cents in via a letter that he posted on Twitter. 

In the letter, he called for Summer Boismier (he called her out by name) to have her teaching license revoked. "Ms. Boismier's providing access to banned and pornographic material is unacceptable." Let's not get into the question of what qualifies as pornography, but let's do look at some of the books now restricted in Oklahoma. It's quite a list, but it includes I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Raisin in the Sun, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, and The Outsiders. (Make special note of that last one. S. E. Hinton was born and lives in Oklahoma, and wrote that acclaimed novel in her teens, which means if she were a teen today, she would not be allowed to read the novel that she wrote herself). But I digress.

The letter also includes this line:

There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom.

Walters, who once wrote "I will continue to teach my students the United States is the greatest nation in the world," is at least honest in saying that it's the liberal view that must be prohibited. 

Meanwhile, after Walters tweeted out her name and his non-reality-based accusations, Boismier has endured a flood of vulgarity and death threats. 

“These teachers need to be taken out and shot,” “teachers like this should not only be fired but also should be swinging from a tree,” “If Summer tried this in Afghanistan, they’d cut out her tongue for starters,” are just a minuscule fraction of the threats pouring into Summer Boismier’s inbox.

Great game here. Draw a target on someone's back and just let your followers try to make her life hell. 

Bottom line

On top of all this, Walters wants to cut all federal money going to Oklahoma schools and replace that money (about $921 million) with--well, nothing. Just be be more efficient because "I want to move us away from federal funding and move us off of federal dollars." Because, after all, "the feds have no place in our education system." So much for support for school lunches and special ed. 

But it fits with the organizations that support him, like Americans for Prosperity, Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee, and the Oklahoma 2nd Amendment Association.

An Oklahoman who cares about public education should not vote for this guy. The state school superintendent has some hefty powers in Oklahoma, including control over staffing the department, along with oversight of teacher certification, curriculum standards, school accreditation, and regulatory compliance. The office has its hands on the $2.5 billion purse strings for school funding. The superintendent chairs the state board of education. And he needs to be able to work with many constituencies. Also, it would be nice if he weren't drawing a huge salary from a private organization focused on supplanting public schools.

We'll see what happens. Rural Oklahoma has already sent a message regarding how it feels about the idea of cutting funding to local schools so that folks operating private schools can make a buck--they are not in favor. Here's hoping they will also not be in favor of the guy who really likes the idea. Here's hoping that Ryan Walters can go back to doing his real job--and only his real job--soon.

P.S. Here's that QR code for the Brooklyn Banned Books program

 

ID: Open Season On Libraries

From Idaho, we get the story of a library under siege. Two libraries found themselves in the crosshairs of a handful of local far right activists over books that it might acquire in the hypothetical future.

Idaho has had more than its share of this baloney (well, actually, the proper share anyone should have is zero) including House Bill 666 which made it possible to hold libraries liable for "the distribution of harmful materials to children." 

In Coeur d'Alene, the new librarian found herself attacked over some selections.

On a Friday afternoon in June 2022, outside my office stood a mother emphatically and disruptively conveying her concern to me, waving around Melissa by Alex Gino (formerly titled George), winner of the 2016 Stonewall Book Award. She was in my face and hollering at me, “No, actually, I think this is the time and place for this conversation,” and all I could do was stand there and recite my usual script as calmly and politely as I could manage under the circumstances: “Libraries don’t censor materials. Libraries are for everyone. As the children’s librarian, it’s my job to ensure that every child and every family in this community feels seen, heard, and represented. She was having none of it. She snatched our director’s business cards out of my shaking fingers, grabbed her children, and stormed out of the children’s library. I called my director immediately. It was the first time I’d cried to him on the phone. It was also the first time I’d wondered if I was cut out for this.

For Delaney Daly, the breaking point when she attended a Pride in the Park event. 31 armed Patriot Front members were arrested that day, apparently headed for the Pride event. Daly wondered how long it would be before guns showed up at her library. Fearing for her safety, she resigned, just ten months after she started at the job.

Kimber Glidden didn't have to wonder. The board at the Boundary County Library, where Glidden was librarian, adopted a sort of pre-emptive policy, including "Selection of materials will not be affected by any such potential disapproval, and the Boundary County Library will not place materials on 'closed shelves' or label items to protect the public from their content."

Things escalated quickly. There was a move to recall four of the five board members ("to protect children from explicit materials and grooming"). Glidden received the bulk of the harassing attention (also a new employee of the library, she had dared to join the American Library Association). She has been warned of her coming damnation, peppered with time-wasting Freedom of Information Act requests. Folks have signed up to be library volunteers, only show up armed. And Glidden's neighbor let her know that a group of armed individuals showed up at her house, looking, she believed, for Glidden. The list of crap inflicted on Glidden and the library is long.

And while the activists have repeatedly waved a list of books around that they find objectionable, Glidden and others have repeatedly pointed out a simple fact--

Not one of those books is actually in the library.

Glidden resigned from the job, effective September 10, along with this post:

“My experience and skill set made me a good fit to help the district move toward a more current and relevant business model and to implement updated policy and best practices,” she wrote in a post on social media. “However, nothing in my background could have prepared me for the political atmosphere of extremism, militant Christian fundamentalism, intimidation tactics, and threatening behavior currently being employed in the community.”

The library is facing a loss of its insurance, which may put its future in jeopardy. That certainly seems perfectly okay with some folks, for whom the whole concept of a public library that provides service for the whole public and not just the Right People--well, clearly some folks in Idaho aren't getting that at all. 

It's one more small reminder that Christian Nationalists do not believe in democracy, but instead believe that a government's legitimacy comes from its alignment with proper Biblical principles and not from the consent of the governed. That set of beliefs is always (and has always) clashed with actual American values. Right now it appears that libraries will bear part of the brunt of that clash. Wait till these people hear about the internet.

ICYMI: Labor Day 2022 Edition (9/4)

 Maybe it was that everyone else at the institute went back to school this week and I had more time to scroll, or maybe it was just a busy week. But here's a reading list for you.

Everyone

Anya Kamenetz produced this article adapted from her forthcoming book for the New York Times series "What is school for." It does a great job putting many many things in context, from the rise of public schools to the rise of the privatization movement. 

Figuring Out When to Panic About “Teacher Shortages”

Yes, it's in Education Next, but this Paul Bruno piece basically about how journalists could better cover the teacher exodus is worth a read.

How to make more teachers

Nancy Flanagan takes her own look at the teacher exodus and considers how to get more qualified folks in classrooms. 

What if Americans sour on public education

Yeah, this is not an encouraging piece. Jon Valant at Brookings does a good job of running down all the various stressors for public education right now, and what a worst case scenario could be. 

Dear Teachers

Some positive support from Dan Rather. You may want to bookmark this one to reread now and then.

Mom rips book burners at board meeting

A pretty uplifting pushback on book banning. Includes the line "The speakers speaking about what great Christians they are? Great. Go tell your pastor. Our schools are not your church."

Conservatives think education is a threat. They're right.

Paul Waldman makes the case for (a certain sort of) liberalism in schools, while reminding us what sorts of things the far right has come out against. From the Washington Post.

Unraveling the NAEP freakout

John Warner with some rational talk about the big bad NAEP scores that came out this week.

How progressives can win the war on public education

Jeff Bryant reports for The Progressive on the education panels at Netroots Nation. Some good ideas from some smart people.

LGBTQ teachers open up as their schools -- and identities -- become next front in the culture war

ABC News talks to LGBTQ teachers, including one who was driven out of the profession. 

Safe Stickers banned in Florida schools

More evidence of the chilling effect of Don't Say Gay in Emperor DeSantis's domain.

Tiptoing in Michigan

From The Bridge, a story about how Michigan teachers are trying to navigate the gag laws that haven't even passed yet, and the angry mobs pushing them.

Few families opt out of Florida school library books

Some good news, from Kelly Jensen at Bookriot. Florida families have the power to limit their kids' access to books at school, but almost nobody is actually using it.

Virginia won't ban obscene books for now

Sort of a good news-bad news story, covered by Dan Kois for Slate. A Virginia lawsuit against a couple of books has failed, but the legislator who filed it has dreams of taking it all the way to SCOTUS.

Critical race theory can help us serve others

Well, here's a new one. Johnathan Tran at Christian Century explains why Christians should embrace critical race theory as a means to help with their mission to serve. Really.

The right has long tried to impose its vision on American education

Historian and friend of the Institute Adam Laats provides some historical perspective at the Washington post. This time he takes us back to Kanahwa County, WV, in the 1970s, when conservatives thought sure they had a winning case against books with bad ideas. They did not.

The Most Powerful Moms in America Are the New Face of the Republican Party

Kiera Butler went to the Moms for Liberty convention and wrote a great profile of the group for Mother Jones. 

School district asks parents to let teachers move in as rents soar

What happens when, in places like Silicon Valley, rents get so high that teachers can't afford to live there? They leave, and school districts try desperate measures. From the Washington Post.

‘He's Got No Experience': Spotsylvania Parents Raise Questions on Superintendent Candidate

What happens when crazy pants people take over your school board? Sometimes, they throw out the superintendent and try to replace them with a buddy who has zero education experience. From Spotsylvania County.

Seven new studies on the impact of a four-day school week

From the Hechinger Report, a quick look at what we may know about the four day week for schools.

25 Quotes To Use in Your Classroom if Your District Is Banning Everything

From We Are Teachers. Not a bad little list.

Teacher Asks Students To Split Into 2 Groups To Simulate Ideal Class Size

It's The Onion.

Elsewhere, at Forbes I'm making another attempt to convince Pennsylvania people that voting for Doug Mastriano for governor is a terrible idea, especially if you care about education.