Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, reports that the Republican Governor and Legislature are determined to stop teachers from teaching about racism, sexism, and bias because such topics Dow discord and racism. This “cancel culture” at its worst. Every sentient adult who has studied American history knows that racism runs deep and strong in our history and present culture and the best way to eliminate it to confront it honestly.

Thompson writes:

As Education Week explained, across the nation, legislators are attempting to “make it harder for teachers to talk about racism, sexism, and bias in the classroom,” and directly or indirectly ban Critical Race Theory. Oklahoma passed HR 1775 banning mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling, while implicitly threatening lessons about racism.

Oklahoma provides just one example of the way public education and civil discussions are under assault. But it CONTINUE READING: Oklahoma: State Officials Say It’s “Racist” to Teach About Racism | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: More Oklahoma Charter School Scandals - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: More Oklahoma Charter School Scandals - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: More Oklahoma Charter School Scandals

John Thompson keeps a close eye on Oklahoma education shenanigans, which means he has a lot to do these days.

As the Oklahoma charter school scandals keep expanding, they provide a case study in the political dangers traditional public schools face as extreme charter advocates attack schools struggling with the COVID pandemic. Each week brings new headlines about some Market-driven charter activists, and their devotion to the law of the jungle. Others are propelled by self-righteousness, denigrating the sincerity of anyone who disagrees with them. But these attacks also show that the choice zealots’ tactics could backfire, putting their competition-driven reform experiment in jeopardy.

It is hard to tell these intertwined stories without a frustrating amount of detail, but a cartoonby Mike Allen in NonDoc.com seems to illustrate a crucial dynamic. The Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) is portrayed as a coach holding a ball which is labeled “audit.” Three players are identified as charter schools; one being Epic, the biggest target which has been accused of the greatest malfeasance, and another charter, Seeworth, which was closed due to a financial scandal, and the third being Santa Fe South, which had previously seemed to be above the political fray. The portrayal of Santa Fe South as a part of the same team, which has played fast and loose with the rules, and is threatened by an audit, foreshadows the following narrative.

In Oklahoma, the latest twist in the state’s biggest, most drawn-out scheme by Epic Charter Schools is that the State issued a new $10.5 million fine. This follows an $11.2 million fine that Epic has not paid.

The Statewide Virtual Charter School Board has scheduled a contract termination hearing for Epic One-on-One for May12-13 but now it looks like both sides could come to an CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: More Oklahoma Charter School Scandals - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: How Corporate Reform Devastated My School | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: How Corporate Reform Devastated My School | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: How Corporate Reform Devastated My School

John Thompson is an historian and a retired teacher in Oklahoma. He wrote this piece for the blog at my request.

In 2006, our John Marshall High School was enduring the worst of the five months-long, extreme meltdowns I witnessed in 18 years with the Oklahoma City Public Schools. Many days, I’d see the anarchy and the blood-splattered halls, and ask if I was dreaming. One thing that kept me sane was the discovery of education blogs, above all Deborah Meier’s and Diane Ravitch’s conversations in Bridging Differences. In a prescient example of the wisdom which grew out of their “animated conversation,” they agreed:

That a central, abiding function of public education is to educate the citizens who will preserve the essential balances of power that democracy requires, as well as to support a sufficient level of social and economic equality, without which democracy cannot long be sustained. We agreed that the ends of education–its purposes, and the trade-offs that real life requires–must be openly debated and continuously re-examined.

As Oklahoma City pulled out of the crack and gang crisis in the early 1990s, I saw a pattern that persisted for two CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: How Corporate Reform Devastated My School | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Oklahoma Takes The Economic Guardrails Off - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: Oklahoma Takes The Economic Guardrails Off - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: Oklahoma Takes The Economic Guardrails Off

John Thompson has been tracking Oklahoma shenanigans. This time, he’s watching the governor play games with poverty statistics while the legislature takes steps to further privatize the education system.

Across the nation, too many corporate school reformers are using alt facts when attacking traditional public schools as they struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, a particularly disgusting one-two punch was thrown at high-poverty Oklahoma public schools. This assault is especially deserving of fact checking. Fortunately, the Network for Public Education blog also posted a link to the Rutgers University Shanker Institute’s School Finance Indicators Database project, and its new dataset, the District Cost Database, which updates the evidence of what it would actually take to bring every district’s test scores up to the national average.

As explained by Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer, the Republican-controlled legislature and the governor rammed through a change in the school funding formula, which had cushioned districts with declining enrollments from the need to make rushed budgetary cuts. The value of such a buffer, I would add, is most clear during a crisis such as the pandemic.

But, Gov. Stitt proclaimed the new funding formula and a student transfer bill as “the most transformative education reform legislation in Oklahoma history.”

In fact, as State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister responded, “This bill removes financial safeguards meant to protect all students from the abrupt changes in the local economy. CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: Oklahoma Takes The Economic Guardrails Off - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma

The moves against public education in Oklahoma have come thick and fast, but John Thompson is here to break down this week’s worth of assaults, from an unprecedented (and probably illegal) money grab, to public officials mocking public schools on line.

In the last week, alone, Diane Ravitch and the Network for Public Education reported on efforts to advance the corporate reform agenda in Iowa,  Kentucky, Texas,  Arizona, Montana,  Florida, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Indiana. Even as public education and America as a whole is threatened by COVID-19, privatizers are doubling down on their politics of destruction.

This is an overview, with some background information, on last week’s assaults on public schools in Oklahoma.

Just before the Oklahoma State Department of Education Board (SDE) meeting, Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer tweeted, “Pretty standard agenda but I will be listening and watching the executive session items in particular.”

However, the executive session generated a “Resolution” on “the interpretation and implementation of laws regarding funding of charter schools” so charters will now receive funding from the “General Fund, the Building Fund, [and] all other Local Revenue” in CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: Public Education Under Fire In Oklahoma - Network For Public Education

John Thompson: The Debate About Reopening Should Not Be Politicized | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: The Debate About Reopening Should Not Be Politicized | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: The Debate About Reopening Should Not Be Politicized

John Thompson writes below about the ongoing confusion about whether it is safe to reopen schools. Trump and DeVos demanded that schools reopen without the resources to reopen safely. Now, the debate continues, with a mixture of science, hope, and fear. I am not a public health expert, and I offer no advice. But common sense suggests that teachers should be vaccinated first, along with other essential workers. Teaching in a room with a large group of students all day long, it seems to me, is materially different than shopping in a store where one enters and leaves within 15-20 minutes. If we expect teachers to be frontline workers, they should get the vaccinations and PPE equipment they need.

He writes:

Today we’re in a situation in regard to reopening schools that is similar and different to that of the first six months of the Covid pandemic. Then, it seemed likely that schools could reopen by the fall semester as long as we respected public health evidence, and set smart priorities, such as reopening schools not bars. But Trump and his acolytes politicized the pandemic, even leading the way to super-spreadings by holding crowded political and CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: The Debate About Reopening Should Not Be Politicized | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning” | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning” | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning”

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, reviews law professor Derek Black’s recent book, Schoolhouse Burning.

Derek Black’s new book,Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy, combines the best principles of the historical research that I was taught in the 1970s with the best of recent scholarship. Overall, the result is a surprisingly hopeful overview. Unfortunately, it offers an analysis of contemporary history which is more pessimistic.Black makes the case that at the end of the 1700s, and after the Civil War, Americans saw education as a right of citizenship. That explains why access to the 19^th century American education system was second only to that of Prussia.

In 1972, however, the Supreme Court denied that education was a fundamental right, and that contributed to today’s argument that education is a private choice, not a public good. Black reminds us that “Schools are not roads.” But, today, the outcome of the battle for public education is unclear.

Black explains that federal grants to education began in CONTINUE READING: John Thompson Reviews Derek Black’s “Schoolhouse Burning” | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything

John Thompson is a historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma. He keeps us abreast of what is happening in his home state.

He writes:

Now that Oklahoma voters rejected Gov. Kevin Stitt’s recommendations and chose to accept hundreds of millions of dollars a year of Medicaid Expansion funds, policy-makers must ask what could go wrong with Stitt’s current effort to privatize up to $2 billion in Oklahoma Medicaid services. Nondoc reports that this week:

Amid an air of confusion over its own powers and responsibilities, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority Board voted this morning to authorize financial expenditures for contracting with managed care organizations, controversial entities that take a portion of public Medicaid funding for attempting to improve care coordination, increase patient compliance and decrease overall program costs.

Several of the “five major health care associations” that opposed Stitt’s plan “referenced Oklahoma’s past managed Medicaid effort from the 1990s, which was CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: A Hilarious Novel about Life in the Classroom Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: A Hilarious Novel about Life in the Classroom Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: A Hilarious Novel about Life in the Classroom Today

Who knew that “adequate yearly progress” and “accountability” could be the subject of a comic novel? John Thompson just read that novel and he reviews it here.

Roxanna Elden’s Adequate Yearly Progress is a hilarious, satirical novel that nails the very serious truths about the real world effects of corporate school reform. Although Elden’s humor spectacularly illuminates the reformers’ often-absurd mindsets, she also reveals the good, bad, and the ugly of a diverse range of human beings.

Adequate Yearly Progress begins with Lena, a young, black, literature teacher returning to school at Brae Hill Valley High School in a high-challenge Texas neighborhood. The way she is greeted starts to reveal some of the flaws of the complex people who teach there. A colleague asked, “Don’t you read the news? Miss Phil-a-delphia?” She thus assumed that Lena comes from a city where everyone is in a hurry and no one attends church.

The news is that Nick Wallabee, a political celebrity CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: A Hilarious Novel about Life in the Classroom Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door”: A Frightening Future Ahead | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door”: A Frightening Future Ahead | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson Reviews “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door”: A Frightening Future Ahead

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, reviews historian Jack Schneider and journalist Jennifer Berkshire’s A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door. Schneider and Berkshire have collaborated on podcasts called “Have You Heard.”

Thompson writes:

The first 2/3rds of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, is an excellent history of attacks on public education. It taught me a lot; the first lesson I learned is that I was too stuck in the 2010s and was wrong to accept the common view of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as a “joke” and a “political naif.” The last 1/3^rd left me breathless as Schneider’s and Berkshire’s warnings sunk in.

A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door starts with an acknowledgement that DeVos isn’t the architect of the emerging school privatization tactics. That “radical agenda” has been decades in the making. But she represents a new assault on public education values. As Schneider and Berkshire note, accountability-driven, charter-driven, corporate reform were bad enough but they wanted to transform, not destroy public education. They wanted “some form” of public schools. DeVos’ CONTINUE READING: John Thompson Reviews “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door”: A Frightening Future Ahead | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: What Teachers Should Do When Schools Re-Open | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: What Teachers Should Do When Schools Re-Open | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: What Teachers Should Do When Schools Re-Open

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, followed the debate about what to do “after COVID,” and he shares his wisdom here.

I’ve been wrestling with two quandaries regarding post-COVID schools. Yes, in the short-run, the tactical use of digital technology has been prioritized, but the longer term priority must be human-to-human relationships. The last thing we want are 21th century schools driven by screen time. So, what can we do to recover from the pandemic which came on the heels of the corporate school reform disaster that was imposed on teachers and students?

Last spring, I timidly made suggestions but I knew that educators were overwhelmed, and it wasn’t time to be pushy about future visions of schooling. It’s unlikely that many of today’s teachers would be allowed to do so, but I used to start my inner city high school classes’ orientation week with music, poetry, and film clips like Amiri Baraka’s “The X is Black,” Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin,” and Denzel Washington in Cry Freedom, playing Steve Biko, explaining colonialism.

So, if I were still teaching high school, I’d have used CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: What Teachers Should Do When Schools Re-Open | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson in Oklahoma: Grifters Gonna Keep Grifting | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson in Oklahoma: Grifters Gonna Keep Grifting | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson in Oklahoma: Grifters Gonna Keep Grifting

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, writes often about what is happening in Oklahoma. It is often not good for public schools and teachers because of the state’s awful legislature, controlled by oil-and-gas billionaire Harold Hamm, and its Republican Governor Kevin Stitt. The best education leader in the state is state Commissioner Joy Hofmeister, who continues to protect students and teachers from political shenanigans.

Here is the latest from Thompson:

As the COVID pandemic began in Oklahoma City, before Trumpian-style pressure to reopen bars, in-person restaurants and large gatherings, and before the resistance to masks and other public health tools sparked a super-spread, it looked like the public and nonprofit sectors were uniting in a team effort to protect public health. Clearly, online charter schools had advantages over traditional public schools in providing virtual and hybrid instruction, but there was reason to hope that the corporate reform wars could be put behind us (at least in terms of local charter leaders.)

The for-profit EPIC Charter Schools wasn’t likely to change its financial and political misbehavior, but its CONTINUE READING: John Thompson in Oklahoma: Grifters Gonna Keep Grifting | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson on Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bruce Springsteen | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson on Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bruce Springsteen | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson on Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bruce Springsteen

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, shares ideas about teaching in difficult times.

My high school and GED students always loved wrestling with the ideas presented by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bruce Springsteen. I’m sure they would now agree that America needs both – Coates’ Between the World and Me, centered around Coates’ letter to 15-year-old son, and the 71-year-old Springsteen’s Letter to You. Actually we need both masterpieces and Kamilah Forbes’ HBO adaptation of Coates’ advice on how to “become conscious citizens of this beautiful and terrible world.”

Coates’ Between the World and Me tackles “the question of my life,” which is “how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream.” It focuses on the fatal police shooting of his fellow Howard University student, Prince Jones. It illustrates how “the plunder of black life was drilled into this country in its infancy and reinforced across its history, so that plunder has become an heirloom, an intelligence, a sentience, a default setting to which, likely to the end of our days, we must invariably return.”

But as Michiko Kakutani observed in his New York Times CONTINUE READING: John Thompson on Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bruce Springsteen | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: COVID and Schools in Oklahoma | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: COVID and Schools in Oklahoma | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: COVID and Schools in Oklahoma

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, is concerned about the lackadaisical responses of elected officials in his state and reliance on Big Data, not science.

The headlines could not be clearer; we’re headed for a disastrous surge in COVID-19. But many of the same public health experts who previously called for shutdowns and, recently, some top journalists are pushing the position that we should continue to reopen schools, even as they warn that community transmission of the virus continues. I am becoming more worried that some of those data-driven public health experts, who I respect, are stepping out of their lanes and giving advice to institutions, urban schools, that they may not understand, and the result could be disastrous.

The motivation is the sincere concern for children, especially the most vulnerable, who suffer from school closures.  A common meme in this debate, however, involves noneducators describing their children’s CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: COVID and Schools in Oklahoma | Diane Ravitch's blog