OK: Notre Dame Law School Aids Push For Catholic Charter

Earlier this year, Oklahoma State Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued an opinion about the prospect of the state approving a church-run charter school. He was reversing the opinion of his predecessor, saying that previous opinion “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion. If allowed to remain in force, I fear the opinion will be used as a basis for taxpayer-funded religious schools.”

In June, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board ignored him and approved the St. Isidore of Seville virtual charter, a cyber school that was proposed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in collaboration with the Diocese of Tulsa. It was in anticipation of this application that the virtual charter board asked the previous AG for an opinion in the first place.

As an AP report noted, “Archdiocese officials have been unequivocal that the school will promote the Catholic faith and operate according to church doctrine, including its views on sexual orientation and gender identity.” 

And just in case you wonder if the state knew what it was doing, or was trying to preserve any plausible deniability, State Superintendent Ryan Walters supported the decision:

This decision reflects months of hard work, and more importantly, the will of the people of Oklahoma. I encouraged the board to approve this monumental decision, and now the U.S.’s first religious charter school will be welcomed by my administration.

And Governor Stitt hailed it as “a win for religious liberty and education freedom in our great state.”

Meanwhile, AG Drummond called the decision “contrary to Oklahoma law and not in the best interests of taxpayers.” Furthermore, "It’s extremely disappointing that board members violated their oath in order to fund religious schools with our tax dollars. In doing so, these members have exposed themselves and the state to potential legal action that could be costly.”

To the surprise of nobody, that lawsuit was filed before summer's end with Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee and individual parents as plaintiffs in a case that has already been busy and twisty. 

The case has drawn a number of national groups to the case, including for the plaintiffs the ACLU, Americans for Separation of Church and State, and the Education Law Center. 

The defendant side is a more interesting array. Drummond, having made it clear that he believes the charter proponents are dead wrong, is not using the attorney general's office to defend them. So the school board, the state department of education, and Ryan Walters are being defended by private attorneys in Oklahoma and some other hired guns. 

Two are part of the usual array of legal shops that work to defund and dismantle public education. There's the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian advocacy group that was incorporated in 1993 by six right-wing luminaries, including Larry Burkett, Bill Bright, and James Dobson. They are supported by a host of right-wing foundations, including the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. And they oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, most all LGBTQ+ rights. Their track record is sadly successful; these are the Hobby Lobby lawsuit folks. They have a summer legal training program to get Christian law students whipped up for legal careers; Justice Amy Coney Barrett taught at it. They successfully litigated against Vermont, establishing that the state must include Catholic students in its voucher program, a sort of throat-clearing for Carson v. Makin.

There's First Liberty Institute a Christian conservative firm based in Texas, which co-took Carson v. Makin all the way to SCOTUS, as well as the case of the praying coach. 

These are to be expected; getting money away from public education and into church coffers is their thing. But you get a fuller idea of who has a lot riding on this case from the third set of lawyers-- the Notre Dame Religious Liberty  Clinic. 

Says John Meiser, director of the Religious Liberty Clinic. “By welcoming faith-based charter schools, Oklahomans uphold the freedom for all people — religious or not — to serve our communities and extend educational opportunities to all children.” The quote does not go on to explain how, exactly, how a Catholic charter school would uphold freedom for non-religious people. But that continues to be a central argument--freedom, and how churches can't be free unless they are allowed to hoover up taxpayer dollars. 

"Access to private education can be limited by affordability and proximity. The pandemic prompted us to see technology as a bridge to provide education to all,” said Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma. "That is why we have used the vast financial power of the church to lower tuition prices," he absolutely did not say. 

The Catholic Church has always been a fan of school choice. They got excited after the Espinoza decision, the Montana decision that was first to require direct transfer of taxpayer dollars to a church, and they were perfectly comfortable cozying up with then-secretary of education Betsy DeVos. In fact, while the conventional wisdom associates Trump with evangelicals, the Catholic Church was also a big Trump booster, especially if the conversation was about school vouchers. 

A Catholic charter in Oklahoma would pretty much erase the difference between charters and vouchers, and the Catholic charter in Oklahoma serves as a proof of legal concept, so this case is a good fit for the church. It is winding through various legal twists and turns (the defendants just moved to have it dismissed), but if it ends up before SCOTUS, it could represent one more reduction of the pile of rubble that now stands where the wall between church and state used to. 

ID: West Bonner's Fake Superintendent Quits. Probably.

One more chapter in the ongoing saga of Branden Durst and the West Bonner School District. If you've missed the story so far, you can find the first three chapters here, here, and here. 

The very short synopsis is this: West Bonner voters snoozed through another school board election, and so a far right majority installed itself and proceeded to hire Branden Durst, possibly the most unqualified person to ever be offered a superintendent's position with an especially wacky contract. But it was contingent on Durst receiving an emergency credential from the state, and the state said "You have got to be kidding." Meanwhile, two of the three conservatives on the five-person board were ousted in a special recall election. It looked briefly as if the remaining third could keep the board from doing anything (like firing their uncredentialed superintendent) by just refusing to show up. 

Then yesterday Durst offered his resignation, saying he would seek an exit that was "amicable and fair," two qualities that were absent from all other stages of his employment.

Durst modeled the amicable part in his resignation letter by grousing about the community members who found his hiring wildly inappropriate. Probably thinking of people like the mother who called his hiring "asinine" and said “Why on earth would you hire a mechanic to bake your wedding cake? It’s terrifying.” But Durst claimed in his Twitter-posted retirement letter:

Throughout my short tenure, I remained cognizant of the fact that not everyone in the community welcomed my hiring, and there were those who hoped to see me fail and did everything in their power to try to make that so, even if meant hurting very students they claimed to support. I was undeterred by the naysayers and their negativity only strengthened my resolve to do what needed to be done to put this district on a path toward success.

To the end, Durst remains defiantly blind to any notion that his problem might be that he has absolutely no qualifications for running a school district other than his far right ideological bent. This is MAGA brand ego material here, the idea that opposition was personal, that Only He Could Do It, and that to interfere with his rule would somehow hurt the students. 

The whole world was arrayed against him! The community and state officials threw "relentless obstacles" in his path. Sure. Every teacher has had that student who didn't do the reading, slept through class, didn't do any of the practice or homework, and then complains that they failed the test because "the teacher doesn't like me." 

But Durst is going to 'promote healing and unity within the community" by stepping aside. "It may not be entirely fair, but life rarely is." It's not clear what exactly is unfair here. It's just not fair that a man can't have a major leadership position just because he wants it, even if he has none of the qualifications for that job? 

It's worth noting that Durst didn't actually give a final date. His last day of employment "will be up to the board." That's the same board that only has three filled seats and one of them belongs to a Durst supporter. So we may not be at the final chapter of this tale yet.

The moral here is that elections have consequences, that people should not snooze through their local school board elections. Thankfully, the moral is also that when people finally wake up, they are not particularly excited about far right MAGA approaches to running their schools. That story has definitely not reached its final chapter.

ID: West Bonner Tries To Fight Back, But Fake Superintendent Still In Place

The saga of the West Bonner School District and its completely unqualified and unlicensed superintendent continues, with more twists and turns and fairly spectacular dysfunction.

The board had hired Branden Durst, a noisy political wanna-be with a checkered past and zero qualifications, to be superintendent. But his highly unusual contract depended on his procurement of an emergency superintendent certification, and the state board decided that A) he met zero of the qualifications and B) they didn't have the power to do that anyway.

Some of the story echoes other districts where a conservative group managed to commandeer the school board. People simply became complacent about board elections, not paying attention to what the board was up to, or not bothering to vote because they assumed the reasonable candidates were shoo-ins. 

In the case of West Bonner, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, yet another of those far right groups that wants to do away with public schools entirely, pounced. Dropped textbooks and a curriculum replaced with the far right Hillsdale curriculum and a defeated levy to fund things like books and salaries--those were the prelude to installing Durst as superintendent.

Now, you might think that would be the end of the story, but you'd be wrong.

About the time Durst was hired, a recall effort was under way to remove two of the most right wing board members. Despite any number of nasty tricks, the recall succeeded at the beginning of September. Those seats will be filled in November, but in the meantime, Durst and the board have tried some last minute antics, like moving to dissolve the school board at a board meeting scheduled at the last minute for a Friday evening of a three day weekend. It took a court ordered injunction to stop that nonsense.

The recall has created another problem. It leaves three board members, which means all three must be present to conduct business, and one member, the other third of the conservative coalition, decided not to attend last week's board meeting, which would have been the first since the state board said that there is "no path" for Durst to become credentialled to fill a superintendent spot. But with only two members present, the meeting was canceled for lack of a quorum.

That means, among other things, that Durst is still in the superintendent's post and that the district, not the state, will have to pay his salary. One would think he can't be superintendent on account of, you know, being unqualified and uncredentialed, but Durst has other thoughts.

But, Durst told KREM 2 he still is the superintendent.

"They don’t make the law," Durst said. "They aren’t the law. How many people could say that? That they don’t have to follow the laws of Idaho.”

The state board's action, says Durst, was "pretty discriminatory." Durst says a lot of things, although nothing about what, other than his ideological bent, qualifies him to be a school superintendent.

There's a lot riding on the next election for West Bonner, but folks are awake and paying attention now. We'll see what the next chapter holds.

ICYMI: S'more edition (9/24)

Nobody would mistake the Institute for a palace, but it has a nice back yard with room for a campfire suitable for roasting marshmallows, and September is the month. We S'mored it up last night, despite the fact that the Board of Directors doesn't actually like gooey marshmallows. That's okay. Anything that gives us the chance to stop and breathe is welcome.

Here's your reading list for the week. Remember--when you find things in this weekly compendium that you think are worth reading, please share (on whatever social media you're using these days). It's how the word gets out--one person at a time.

We must stand up to school privatizers for the sake of Wisconsin kids

Christian Phelps in the Wisconsin Examiner explains some of the unequal outcomes of the state's voucher program and the privatization of education.

Delays in state voucher funding causing problems for Northwest Florida private schools

Turns out when you expand your voucher program beyond what your money managers can handle, it creates problems for the voucher schools that pop up to take advantage of the voucher windfall.

A "Woke Agenda" Burned in Effigy by Missouri Senators

Jess Piper is one of the better known voices in the social media realm of public ed defenders these days, and now she's got a substack. Here's the story of some folks who decided to take a literal flamethrower to s pile of figurative woke agenda. Well, not just some folks. Some folks who want to be political leaders in Missouri.

The Ex-‘South Park’ Writer Taking On Moms for Liberty

Opposition to Moms for Liberty takes many forms. Here's one of the more unexpected ones.

Research Shows State School District Report Cards Do Not Measure the Quality of Public Schools

Yet another tale of research confirming what we already knew. Jan Resseger has the details.

Overhaul of Ohio's K-12 education system is unconstitutional, new lawsuit says

This is the kind of stuff that is wonky yet important, because this is how privatizers use wonky government stuff to take power and bypass democratic processes.

Children's book banned for some CMS students after parent complaints

North Carolina continues its educational descent with this story of the district where a book been pulled because, I kid you not, it shows an unwrapped crayon.

Texas teacher fired after assigning an illustrated Anne Frank book\

Meanwhile, in reading restriction news from Texas.

Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?

From the Washington Post. In South Carolina, a look at the other kinds of collateral damage that comes from turning students into little cultural narcs.

The Kids on the Night Shift

This New York Times investigative piece is heartbreaking. It also answers two questions--who actually wants undocumented immigration? and who wants to roll back child labor laws? 

The Case for Autonomy in Professional Development

Well, it's a little depressing that somehow a case must be made for letting teaching professionals control their own PD, but at least someone is making the case.

12K third graders at risk of being held back under Alabama Literacy Act, superintendent warns

Dumb law passed in 2019 goes into effect this year. How this bad policy is shaking out in Alabama. Don't miss the part where they note that the cut score will probably go up next year.

Success Academy Games U.S. News & World Report Best High School Ranking

Success Academy, New York's big charter chain, ranked near the top of US News & World Report listings this time. Gary Rubinstein explains how they did it (and why you shouldn't be impressed).

School vouchers in Pennsylvania would violate the principles of ‘public’ education

Vouchers just won't go away in Pennsylvania. Marc Stier explains why they really should.

How to Improve Public Schools: Involve ‘Outsiders’

John Merrow has had a long and distinguished career as an education reporter. Here are some thoughts about how public schools could build their base.

About that Band Director Who Got Tased

If you are connected to the marching band world, you saw the story of the marching band director who was tased by the police for having his band play after a football game. It was one of those stories that made you think, "Well, there must be more to this." Then police released video, and, well, it was worse. Nancy Flanagan, retired music teacher, takes a look.

Elsewhere this week, at the Bucks County Beacon, I put up a story focusing on Khan Academy's new AI tool for school, and at Forbes, I looked at a book that offers a new explanation of what's behind the Great DeChurching of America.

And don't forget, you can get all my stuff in your inbox courtesy of substack.

The Trouble With Single Parents

This week we're getting a barrage of reviews of The Two-Parent Privilege, a book that presents the unsurprising conclusion that having two married parents is good for kids. Here's one by Annie Lowry in The Atlantic, if you need a taste.

I have thoughts. I have done parenting three ways in my life-- two working parents, single divorced dad, and two married parents with one stay-at-home. There is no doubt that the third way is better, easier-- but the big question is why.

Two working parents had the advantage of two incomes. Neither of us had the kind of income that would have made raising two kids particularly easy. We had other advantages. My job as a teacher fir better with the kids' schedule and we lucked out with a neighbor for good child care. By the time their mother and I split, we were both making enough to operate our own household, and the kids still had the benefit of two-income support. We were also able to be amicable and put the kids first, rather than stick them in the middle of an endless battle. My ex was a good co-parent, so I didn't even have to do the harder version of single parenting. And we had the flexibility of professional careers where getting time off is not a major struggle.

Those kids grew. Putting them through college tapped my resources to the limit, but we got there. Eventually I remarried, and the Board of Directors followed. I retired when they were one. My pension gives us two incomes, but my retirement gives us the flexibility of one non-working parent, which is huge. Huge. And the CMO (Chief Marital Officer) has decent health insurance. 

Single parenting is hard. Getting kids (and yourself) where they need to be without backup is hard. Paying for everything with a single income is hard. Finding childcare is hard, and paying for it often cancels out attempts to work. Managing the mental and emotional bandwidth for yourself and your small humans is hard. Dealing with an unending parade of institutions that all assume that you can take time off and that there are two of you to manage things is hard. Even with plenty of privilege, single parenting is a big square peg in society's round hole 

Not a week goes by that I don't have the thought, "How do people without our advantages manage this?" How do people who can't just leave work deal with a suddenly sick child? How do people without decent health insurance deal with the health care issues that pop up? How do people with only two hands manage the daily grind of parent stuff? How does anyone run a home on a single income in an era in which single incomes just aren't enough? It's a lot of hard choices, a lot of choices where the best available options aren't always that great.

I mean, I know how they do this stuff, but the mind boggles at how hard some of it can be. And I live in a compact small town area where life is marginally cheaper, there's a local hospital, and it's not a big project just to get from Point A to Point B. I have tons of privilege, and the single dad thing was still rough. But married with two incomes and one stay-at-home is so much easier--so very much easier--than the other options. Child care. Getting them managed to and from school. Health care (especially appointments). Financial stuff. Food stuff. All of these things become an uphill grind when there's just one of you. 

But the most frustrating part is that it doesn't have to be this way. We have built a society around the assumption that most normal households have one working parent and one stay at home, and we have just doubled down even as reality changes (Exhibit A: A school day that is still completely out of synch with the work day. Exhibit B: literally the world's worst leave policy for parents of newborns.). 

Yes, I agree that some folks have bent over backwards to avoid saying any version of "Single parenting has a lot of disadvantages." Partly because most single parents don't want or need to hear it; as a single parent, I was pretty sure I had failed and was screwing everything up, and having someone tell me that wasn't particularly helpful. Nor are the non-zero number of persons who chose no partner over a terrible toxic partner likely to buy the notion they'd be better off with that person. And conservatives have often adopted such a scolding tone that single parent disapproval just sounds like one more way to tell poor folks, "It's your own fault you're poor."

But letting the single parent discussion become a political football, where sticking to the team orthodoxy is more important than talking about the actual issue for actual humans.

The why. The why is that we have built a society arranged around A) that hypothetical family and B) the needs of employers and businesses. 

We have built a house with doors that all have a five foot clearances, and now we're telling six foot tall people that they ought to be trying harder to fit. We've built an entire infrastructure without sidewalks on the assumption that driving is the correct moral choice, and now we deliver lectures on how people without cars should be more careful when they walk places.

So we can say that single parenting contributes to a high rate of child poverty, or we could say that the way our country handles single parenting contributes to a high rate of poverty. At a minimum, we can say both.

I don't know how we get past the premise that when people make bad choices, it's really important that they suffer for them, and attempts to ameliorate that suffering are morally wrong. I happen to agree that raising children in a stable home and partnership is the best choice. But it's not the best available choice for everyone. We can come up with systems that work for everybody, or we can stick with systems that only work well for people who are making the choices we approve of, but then we have to reckon with the results for a generation of young innocent bystanders. 

We know how to dramatically reduce child poverty--we just did it for a couple of years, on the premise that it was nobody's personal fault that they were caught in a medical disaster. Going forward, we can decide that people must suffer for the choices that supposedly made them single and/or poor, or we can help them to get to a place where options for a better life, single or married, are available and accessible. Wagging our fingers at single parents will not get us there; creating a world where they actually fit, might.

Time for Reformster Benefit Poker Again

It's a reminder that the wealthy are not like the rest of us.

Next Thursday, it will be time for the 13th Annual Take 'Em To School Poker Tournament, a night of benefit money flinging to help out Education Reform Now, 

ERN, which calls itself "a think tank and advocacy organization" is the funding arm of Democrats for Education Reform, a group beloved by hedge fundies interested in monetizing charter schools, do-founded by big time hedge fundie Whitney Tilson, who once explained where the D came from:

The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…

There was actually a big kerfluffle a few years back when Colorado Democrats made the Colorado chapter of DFER get out of the Democratic state assembly. DFER/ERN are the folks who do fun things like try to defeat local anti-reform candidates and have silly philosopher retreats to think deep thoughts about reform.

These days the CEO of both groups is Jorge Elorza, formerly mayor of Providence. He was still in office when the state took over Providence schools. DFER has shifted its message in a more social justicy direction (" We elect Democratic leaders who prioritize a high-quality equitable education for all students") with "anti-racism" and "remedying a history of systemic inequity" among their values. That still translates to big support for charter schools, with an emphasis on trying to convince Democrats that they should get with the choice program.

The big poker bash will be next Thursday in Gotham Hall. It is not nearly as star-studded as it was the last time we checked it out, but it's still not for the shallow pockets crowd.

Want to sponsor a table with ten seats plus a special guest? A Straight Flush Table costs only $100,000. For $50K you can host a Full House Table, and $30K gets you a regular table of ten. If you just want to grab a single seat for yourself, that's a mere $3K. Just want to skip the poker and have some dinner and cocktails while playing some casino games? That's a mere $250. Sadly, I will be busy that day and unable to attend. Too bad, because

This charity event is a meaningful opportunity for you to connect with corporate executives, philanthropists, financiers, and celebrities who are passionate about ERN's mission. The event will feature poker players battling for valuable prizes, such as once-in-a-lifetime experiences, exotic trips, golf outings and more. In addition to poker, guests can enjoy the silent auction, golf simulator, casino games, premium open bar, delicious food and a swag bag to take home. There are plenty of opportunities to endorse your business by setting up an area, sponsoring a table, or contributing an item to the swag bag.

Past celebrities, they note, have included a bunch of big name poker players, sports guys, U.S. Congressman Hakeen Jeffries, Billy Crudup and Kevin Pollak.

Do people pay that kind of money, some of you may ask, correctly noting that the Straight Flush Table costs more than most teachers make in a year. Well, in 2022 there was one Straight Flush sponsor, three Full House sponsors, and twenty-five table hosts. All of them were either guys who got rich shuffling money or corporations in the capital biz. They raised over $2 million.

This is the kind of thing that reminds me of the considerable imbalance between reformsters and public school defenders. Many of us are out here doing what we can on a budget of $0.00, and these guys just get together to drop a couple mill playing games for "exotic trips." All things that folks actually working in education can totally relate to.

What I'll Really Miss About Twitter

I have maintained, throughout the various stages of Musk's various spasms, that I would stick with Twitter till the last light is turned off, if for no other reason than I want to be able to see it happen and tell the story. It would not be the first social media I stuck with until it evaporated, and it probably won't be the last (oh, Cafe Utne, you were fun). 

But I doubt that I'll pay for the privilege, and as Musk hinted this week that Twitter would charge a small fee for use. Granted, what Musk says he's going to maybe might do has only a marginal connection to what will actually happen, but I'm forced to consider life without the Twitterverse.

I don't relish working through the alternatives battling for the chance to be the next Google Plus. I'm on Threads (because what better way to get over one toxic gazillionaire than by signing up for another toxic gazillionaire). I'd try Bluesky, but I've been waiting for a code since forever [Update: several helpful readers reached out, and I am now on Bluesky. Thanks! Also, I forgot Spoutible. I'm there, too.]. Contemplating signing up for Mastodon just gives me a headache. Sigh. I think I've still got ICQ software around here somewhere.

I am not a prodigious follower on Twitter; I can't imagine how people follow thousands of other people. But I still feel plugged in to a large community there. I've "met" a lot of interesting people and learned about a lot of stuff. I read an awful lot, and Twitter has been a good place to spot articles I might have missed otherwise. I've encountered an awful lot of great public education advocates, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to chat with them, or just peer over their shoulder and absorb what they have to say. 

But the thing that I expect will be irreplaceable is the chance to connect and converse and read the folks who are on various other sides of the education debates. 

I'm a huge believer in listening to and reading people with whom you disagree. Some people are serious, and some people aren't, but it is always a mistake to default to the idea that people who oppose you do so because they are either evil or stupid. Mostly they are operating from different premises, different values, or arriving at different conclusions. Understanding all of that is more useful than simply waving them all away as evil people. (Not that there aren't evil people, but I choose to live in a world in which people have to prove that they're evil).

I'm also a huge believer in primary sources. Much of our current world of political conflict runs on what a "news" source claims someone else said, which is not automatically wrong--unless someone is sculpting that characterization for a particular effect. Seeking to confirm what we already believe instead of trying to actually understand what the other person is saying is the great bane of useful communication. (Pro tip: a not serious person tell is an insistence on deliberately misunderstanding what you're saying so they can make their point).

I'm afraid that when Twitter finally collapses, folks will migrate to platforms with likeminded persons (or just no place at all) and the chance to converse and debate with persons of differing opinions will be lost, and that would be unfortunate. Writing blog posts and opinion pieces at each other is a lot like talking past each other. Not a big help. Twitter was a good place for dialog, sometimes, and I'm not sure what will replace it.

We'll see, I suppose. In the meantime, I'm @palan57 pretty much everywhere I go, and I'll be happy to see you there.