CURMUDGUCATION: Elon Musk Buddy Ready To Fix Education And The World

CURMUDGUCATION: Elon Musk Buddy Ready To Fix Education And The World

Elon Musk Buddy Ready To Fix Education And The World

You may recall that Elon Musk started a school a few years ago, because of course he did. It was sort of a private school, sort of the most expensive homeschool project ever launched (Musk has five kids--one set of twins, and one set of triplets, so God bless him and his wife). He was single-handedly funding the thing (almost a cool half-mill a year). And now one of his buds is ready to spin it off and monetize it.

We have seen this process before--launch a boutique private super-school, then spin it off and scale it up into a branded product that provides sort-of-the-same-but-not-really educational experience for a broader range of customers. Max Ventilla, formerly of Google, tried it with Altschool, not entirely successfully. Summit Schools also followed this trajectory, looking to scale up a version of its original edu-product across the country.

Leading the investor bandwagon jumping this time is Anthony Pompliano, entrepreneur and investor and podcaster and investment letter guy, all under the name Pomp. He announced a new round of investment for this plan in his substack-- The Pomp Letter-- under the title "Fix The Education, Fix The World." So we're aiming high here.

Musk's original school was called Ad Astra, then Astra Nova, and will "this game-changing educational CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Elon Musk Buddy Ready To Fix Education And The World

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget

This week in my school district in Cleveland Heights-University Heights, Ohio, parents and public school supporters are going through a quiet ritual. People have been scrambling to write and submit legislative testimony. Some people are submitting written testimony; others are driving two and a half hours to Columbus, sitting in the hearing room and driving home in the dark. The Ohio Senate Primary and Secondary Education Committee is holding hearings on the state’s next biennial budget and considering a new—desperately needed—school funding plan that has now been folded into the budget bill, which must be passed by June 30.

What is happening is a big deal.  Last fall, a new $2 billion school funding plan was passed by the Ohio House by a vote of 87-9, but the Ohio Senate let the bill die at the end of the session. Now that plan has been folded into the state budget. The House has already passed the budget—including the Fair School Funding Plan—but the Senate is just now holding hearings. If you read some of the testimony being submitted, you might imagine what’s going on in Ohio would get coverage in the state’s big newspapers, but most of them have been bought out by Gannett-Gatehouse Media or Advance Media, companies that have reduced the number of reporters.  Right now not enough people are paying attention to a debate about whether the Legislature will repair the services our state is currently failing to provide for 1.6 million students in Ohio’s 610 public school districts at the same time the state continues to expand school vouchers at public schools’ expense.

I am going to share some of my own testimony and the testimony from others who are members of the Heights Coalition for Public Education. You can find copies of each of these documents in the Ohio Senate Education Committee’s document archive for May 4, 5, and 6.  I will date each reference.

My own testimony (May 6) summarizes the issues at stake in this particular Ohio budget CONTINUE READING: Ohio Legislature Heats Up Controversy by Making New Public School Funding Plan and Method of Funding School Vouchers All Part of the Budget | janresseger

How the Centner Academy Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers - The New York Times

How the Centner Academy Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers - The New York Times

How a Miami School Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers

The Centner Academy barred teachers newly vaccinated against the coronavirus from being near students. Some parents threatened to withdraw their children. Others clamored to enroll.

MIAMI — A fifth-grade math and science teacher peddled a bogus conspiracy theory on Wednesday to students at Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, warning them that they should not hug parents who had been vaccinated against the coronavirus for more than five seconds because they might be exposed to harmful vaccine shedding.

“Hola Mami,” one student wrote in an email to her parents from school, saying that the teacher was “telling us to stay away from you guys.”

Nearly a week before, the school had threatened teachers’ employment if they got a coronavirus vaccine before the end of the school year.

Alarmed parents frantically texted one another on WhatsApp, trying to find a way to pull their children out at the end of the term.

Inside the Centner Academy, however, “hundreds of queries from all over the world” came in for teaching positions, according to the administration. More came from people who wanted to enroll their children at the school, where tuition runs up to $30,000 a year.

The small school in Miami’s trendy Design District became a national beacon for anti-vaccination activists practically overnight last week, just as public health officials in the United States wrestled with how to overcome vaccine skepticism.

The policy barring teachers from contact with students after getting the vaccine brought a flurry of television news crews who parked outside the school for days, prompting teachers to keep children indoors for physical education and recess. Leila Centner, the school’s co-founder, who says she is not against fully tested vaccines, wrote on Instagram that the media “are trying to destroy my reputation because I went against their narrative.”

Devoted supporters cheered her on.

“We won’t let them take you down!” one of them wrote on CONTINUE READING: How the Centner Academy Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers - The New York Times

Buying into the Social Contract is Different from Buying Education with a Public Tuition Voucher in a Privatized School Marketplace | janresseger

Buying into the Social Contract is Different from Buying Education with a Public Tuition Voucher in a Privatized School Marketplace | janresseger

Buying into the Social Contract is Different from Buying Education with a Public Tuition Voucher in a Privatized School Marketplace

For a quarter of a century, Ohio has pursued the accountability-based “education reform” strategy that was formalized in the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.

Ohio holds schools accountable for raising students’ scores on high-stakes standardized tests by imposing sanctions on schools and school districts unable quickly to raise scores. Ohio identifies so-called “failing” public schools, ranks them on school district report cards, and locates privatized charter schools and voucher qualification within the boundaries of low-scoring districts.  Additionally, the state takes over so-called failing school districts and imposes Academic Distress Commissions as overseers. Ohio’s students are held back in third grade if their reading scores are too low, and high school seniors must pass exit exams to graduate.

After more than two decades of this sort of school policy, student achievement hasn’t increased and test score gaps have not closed.  Ohio is a state with eight big cities—Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Toledo, Youngstown, Akron, and Canton; lots of smaller cities and towns; Appalachian rural areas and Indiana-like rural areas; and myriad income-stratified suburbs. Just as they do across the United States, aggregate standardized test scores correlate most closely with family and neighborhood income, not with the characteristics of the public schools. In the fall of 2019, the Plain Dealer’s data wonk, Rich Exner, created a series of bar graphs to demonstrate the almost perfect correlation of school districts’ letter grades on the state school district report card with family income.

But while Ohio has punished so-called “failing” schools, it hasn’t done much to help the public schools in Ohio’s poorest communities. In profound testimony before the Ohio State Board of CONTINUE READING: Buying into the Social Contract is Different from Buying Education with a Public Tuition Voucher in a Privatized School Marketplace | janresseger

My New Band Is: The Indoctrinated Rich - My New Band Is

My New Band Is: The Indoctrinated Rich - My New Band Is

My New Band Is: The Indoctrinated Rich

On the Brearley dad, what indoctrination means in the context of education, and private schools that are segregation academies

If Bari Weiss has a post-New York Times “beat”, it’s defending rich white private school parents from the horrors of racial awareness. And credit where credit is due, she seems to have become the go-to writer on that beat for the aggrieved richies and kind of owns it now, which is what every niche reporter aspires to. 

That said, “reporter” is probably giving her too much credit since she seems willing to air the stories of her favored subjects without talking to any of the people on the other side of them. There are no comments from teachers, or administrators, or well, non-white parents. So really, it’s more like niche public relations, I suppose. But if you’re the kind of person who can afford to send your kid to a $54,000 a year school and have strong opinions about Critical Race Theory but have never read a single CRT text, Bari is the person you want to talk to. (I hope she’s willing to give me a commission on her new Substack subs for this endorsement.) 

But this column is not about Bari Weiss in particular; it’s about the parents whose grievances she’s presenting. They all have a problem with what they consider to be liberal overreach in schools, and particularly modern forms of addressing issues of race and equity, especially when they manifest in things like anti-racism training and deploy terminology that seems overly academic and abstract. 

The latest Mad Dad™ is a guy named Andrew Gutmann whose daughter went to Brearley, a famous all girls’ school in Manhattan. Gutmann wrote a letter to the entire school when he pulled her out of Brearley, because he thinks it exhibits the kind of CONTINUE READING: My New Band Is: The Indoctrinated Rich - My New Band Is

Hershey Profits Fund $17 Billion Endowment for Nonprofit School, but Board Member Says It Won’t Let Him See Financial Records — ProPublica

Hershey Profits Fund $17 Billion Endowment for Nonprofit School, but Board Member Says It Won’t Let Him See Financial Records — ProPublica

Hershey Profits Fund $17 Billion Endowment for Nonprofit School, but Board Member Says It Won’t Let Him See Financial Records

A director and alumnus of America’s wealthiest boarding school claims he had to sue the institution to see how it spends the funding it receives from sales of Hershey bars and Reese’s Pieces.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article was produced in partnership with Spotlight PA and The Philadelphia Inquirer, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

For over a year, lawyer Bob Heist, then-chairman of the Milton Hershey School’s board, says he sought internal financial records detailing the spending history of the $17 billion charity, which has a mission to educate low-income students for free.

He now says he is being denied records he needs as a board member charged with overseeing the Pennsylvania boarding school’s operations, and earlier this month he sued the school to obtain the documents. It’s an extremely unusual step for a sitting board member, taken against an extremely unusual institution: The Milton Hershey School is the wealthiest pre-college educational institution in the United States. It controls 80% of the Hershey Co. candy giant’s voting shares, and reaps profits from the sale of Hershey chocolate bars, Reese’s peanut butter cups and SkinnyPop-brand snacks sold in thousand of U.S. retail stores.

The dispute is the latest in a series of legal entanglements involving the nonprofit Milton Hershey School and the members of its governing board. Two previous financial controversies raised questions about whether the school’s spending was serving the needs of its roughly 2,100 students, as required by law and enforced by the state attorney general’s office.

The suit also raises anew questions about board oversight of the vast Milton Hershey fortune, donated by the candy company’s founder to help poor and at-risk children. For months, The Inquirer, Spotlight PA and ProPublica have investigated this and other issues, including whether school leaders and board members have fulfilled that mission to a degree commensurate with the charity’s vast resources. The publications will share their findings in upcoming stories.

For years, critics have argued that the school, and the endowment that funds it, could be spending hundreds of millions more than it does. Because of Milton Hershey’s restrictive deed on the endowment, the charity cannot dip into any of its principal, now worth $16 billion. (That’s roughly the size of the endowment of the University of Pennsylvania, which is not subject to those constraints.) It can spend the income earned from those holdings, but it only spends part of that each year and has amassed about $1 billion in unspent income. The school recently received court approval to use some of those funds to build and run six preschool centers CONTINUE READING: Hershey Profits Fund $17 Billion Endowment for Nonprofit School, but Board Member Says It Won’t Let Him See Financial Records — ProPublica

CURMUDGUCATION: SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

In South Carolina, a lawsuit filed this week seeks to obliterate the wall between church and state.

Like most such lawsuits, the federal lawsuit has been a advocacy group that specializes in such things-- you may remember the Liberty Justice Center as the folks who won the Janus case, which either was an attack on unions wrapped in the First Amendment. 

As with most such cases, the advocacy group needed to find themselves some plaintiffs to attach the case to. What's striking this time is that the plaintiffs are not some group of regular citizens-- the lawsuit-- Bishop of Charleston v. Adams  has been filed on behalf of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, plus a group of independent colleges.

The federal suit follows the South Carolina Supreme Court's rejection of Governor Henry McMaster's attempt to use CARES pandemic relief funds for private schools.

That court found the desire to hand public funds to private schools unconstitutional. So the solution is obvious--sue to have the state's constitution rewritten.

The case has a target perfect for PR purposes--the Blaine Amendment. In 1875, President Grant proposed, and Congressman James G. Blaine officially launched, a move to add a constitutional CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: SC: Lawsuit Looks For Public Dollar Pay Day For Catholic Schools

Private schools could end up with no public money if they press too hard

Private schools could end up with no public money if they press too hard

Could public money finance private-school discrimination, religion and fake history?

If states can't control what's taught with taxpayer money, the upshot could be ending charter schools and public funds for private tuition altogether.

With bills pending in more than 20 state legislatures to expand private school voucher programs, this spring could usher in the biggest transfer in funds from public schools to private schools in our nation’s history. But something more is at stake with this new round of voucher legislation: When the public pays for private schooling, will the public get to decide how taxpayer dollars are used in private settings, or will the public be forced to abandon norms as simple and fundamental as nondiscrimination?

The problem started last year when the Supreme Court held in Espinoza v. Montana that states cannot adopt blanket policies to exclude religious schools from voucher programs. The court left open the possibility that states could still place limits on what private schools do with the money. States might still prohibit them from using public money to teach religion or discriminate based on religion, race, sex, gender, sexual orientation and other protected classes.

But choice advocates argue these minimal requirements are unconstitutional, too. 

Satisfied slaves, divine intervention

This distinction is lost on a lot of states, which make no attempt to stop private schools from using public dollars to teach religion, discriminate or deliver curriculum that flies in the face of historical and scientific facts. Students in North Carolina, Florida and Indiana have tried to use their vouchers at religious schools only to be turned away because they didn't fit the CONTINUE READING: Private schools could end up with no public money if they press too hard

Florida Voucher School Hires Unqualified Teachers, Ex-Con, State Doesn’t Care | Diane Ravitch's blog

Florida Voucher School Hires Unqualified Teachers, Ex-Con, State Doesn’t Care | Diane Ravitch's blog

Florida Voucher School Hires Unqualified Teachers, Ex-Con, State Doesn’t Care

The Orlando Sentinel has been covering scandal after scandal in the voucher schools of Florida, but the Legislature doesn’t care about their scandals and is planning to take even more money from public schools to fund more private voucher schools. The Sentinel published a story about one troubled voucher school that has received over $5 million from the state since 2015 despite the fact that it hires teachers without college degrees.

Leslie Postal and Annie Martin wrote about Winners Primary School in Orange County, which recently changed its name to Providence Christian Preparatory School:

The job applicant hoped to teach fourth grade at Winners Primary School, a small private school in west Orange County. She didn’t have a college degree and her last job was at a child care center, which fired her.

“Terminated would not rehire,” read the reference check CONTINUE READING: Florida Voucher School Hires Unqualified Teachers, Ex-Con, State Doesn’t Care | Diane Ravitch's blog

In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators | Live Long and Prosper

In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators | Live Long and Prosper

In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators

Indiana is ready to add more public money to the state voucher program for private — mostly religious — schools.

House Bills 1001 and 1005 would give nearly a third of the state’s increase in education funding to the 5% (10% if you count charters) of the students who go to private schools. I had written to my local state rep, Dave Heine, but received no reply. He voted to approve the increase along with all of his Republican friends in the state House of Representatives. The bills are now before the state Senate, so I wrote my state senator, Dennis Kruse (IN-S14), and asked him to vote against increasing the vouchers.

I received responses from Senator Kruse this week. I’ll send a reply to his emails, though I doubt it will change anything. Here is what he wrote (different paragraphs are from his response on House Bill 1001 or House Bill 1005) CONTINIUE READING: In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators | Live Long and Prosper

Ed Notes Online: Outrage at Randi Grows -- Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools, NYT -- Oh, the Optics

Ed Notes Online: Outrage at Randi Grows -- Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools, NYT -- Oh, the Optics

Outrage at Randi Grows -- Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools, NYT -- Oh, the Optics

"This one is too much - good old Randi and Chuck" - Email from retired teacher

The pandemic relief bill includes $2.75 billion for private schools. How it got there is an unlikely political tale, involving Orthodox Jewish lobbying, the Senate majority leader and a teachers’ union president... NYT

Last year, Ms. Weingarten led calls to reject orders from Ms. DeVos to force public school districts to increase the amount of federal relief funding they share with private schools, beyond what the law required to help them recover.

Randi talking out of five sides of her mouth? I'm shocked there's gambling.

“We never anticipated Senate Democrats would proactively choose to push us down the slippery slope of funding private schools directly,” said Sasha Pudelski, the advocacy director at AASA, the School Superintendents Association, one of the groups that wrote letters to Congress protesting the carve-out. “The floodgates are open and now with bipartisan support, why would private schools not ask for more federal money?”

Among the Democrats who were displeased with Mr. Schumer’s reversal was Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California,

 

Oy vay, Randi. You mean those Orthodox communities with some of the highest COVID numbers in the city?  Let's reward them. 

[I know I will be called antisemitic or a self-hating Jew - one day I will talk about working in a school district where a religious CONTINUE READING: Ed Notes Online: Outrage at Randi Grows -- Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools, NYT -- Oh, the Optics

Union Leader Weingarten: Excluding Private Schools from $1.9 Trillion Relief Would Be a Shonda | The Jewish Press

Union Leader Weingarten: Excluding Private Schools from $1.9 Trillion Relief Would Be a Shonda | The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com | David Israel | 1 Nisan 5781 – March 13, 2021 | JewishPress.com

Union Leader Weingarten: Excluding Private Schools from $1.9 Trillion Relief Would Be a Shonda

The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief law, passed by the Democrats in both houses with zero Republican support, includes close to $3 billion earmarked for private schools – quite a surprise from the pro-public school Democrats. In fact, according to the NY Times, it was teachers’ union’s leader Randi Weingarten, a champion of public education, who supported Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in acknowledging that the federal government was obligated to help all schools recover from the pandemic (Schumer and a Teachers’ Union Leader Secure Billions for Private Schools).

Weingarten, a graduate of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, told the Times that “the nonwealthy kids that are in parochial schools, their families don’t have means, and they’ve gone through Covid in the same way public school kids have,” adding, “All of our children need to survive, and need to recover post-Covid, and it would be a shonda if we didn’t actually provide the emotional support and nonreligious supports that all of our children need right now and in the aftermath of this emergency.”

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According to the Times, Schumer was lobbied by the Orthodox Jewish community in New York City, which upset other Democrats, mostly public school advocates, who fought the Trump administration’s efforts to use the last two Covid-19 relief bills to help private schools. CONTINUE READING: Union Leader Weingarten: Excluding Private Schools from $1.9 Trillion Relief Would Be a Shonda | The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com | David Israel | 1 Nisan 5781 – March 13, 2021 | JewishPress.com

2021 Medley #3 – that Pesky State Constitution | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #3 – that Pesky State Constitution | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #3 – that Pesky State Constitution

HB 1005, Publicly Funded Discrimination

The Indiana House of Representatives passed HB 1005 which calls for increases in funding for voucher accepting parochial and private schools. Public schools get the leftovers.

THE INDIANA CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Article 8 Section 1

Public schools are a Constitutional mandate in Indiana. Sending tax money to private schools is not, even if the money is laundered through the parents (parents designate a school and the state sends the school the money). The Indiana Constitution says…

Knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement; and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.

2021 VOUCHER EXPANSION PASSES THE HOUSE CONTINUE READING : 2021 Medley #3 – that Pesky State Constitution | Live Long and Prosper

Through her divisive rhetoric, Education Secretary DeVos leaves a troubled legacy of her own | Salon.com

Through her divisive rhetoric, Education Secretary DeVos leaves a troubled legacy of her own | Salon.com

Through her divisive rhetoric, Education Secretary DeVos leaves a troubled legacy of her own

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has resigned. Five experts comment on the impact she had on education

Editor's note: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos resigned from her post effective Jan. 8, 2021, saying there was "no mistaking" the impact that President Donald Trump's rhetoric had on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Here, five scholars offer their views on DeVos' legacy at the federal agency she headed for four years.

Mark Hlavacik, associate professor of communication studies, University of North Texas:

In her resignation letter, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos explained that her sudden departure from the administration was motivated by President Donald Trump's incendiary words to the crowd that went on to ransack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

"There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation," she declared, "and it is the inflection point for me."

Interestingly, DeVos has a history of using some rather caustic and divisive language herself. Although she never encouraged or condoned the use of force to achieve political ends, her insulting characterizations of public educators as "sycophant[s] of the 'system'" and "Chicken Littles" will leave a troubled legacy of their own.

Much like democracy, public education is an enterprise that relies on a basic civic faith that Americans can come together as a nation and in their communities to do worthwhile things that benefit all. Traditionally, the secretary of education plays a key role as a rhetorical leader who brings the country together to face its educational challenges. But that has rarely been the case with DeVos.

As recently as October she used her position to warn that an "unholy mob" of young socialists who "hate freedom" are using a "Marxist playbook" to attack "the family." Rhetoric like that in her speech to Hillsdale College reflects an affinity for blaming that DeVos shares with her former boss.

As I have warned elsewhere, such routine blaming leaves the impression that any CONTINUE READING: Through her divisive rhetoric, Education Secretary DeVos leaves a troubled legacy of her own | Salon.com

A 50-State Analysis of PPP Funding of Charter Schools, Religious Schools, and Private Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

A 50-State Analysis of PPP Funding of Charter Schools, Religious Schools, and Private Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

A 50-State Analysis of PPP Funding of Charter Schools, Religious Schools, and Private Schools

Good Jobs First has studied the distribution of COVID relief funds in depth. It created a site called COVID Stimulus Watch. It published an article about the depth of corruption in the Trump administration, which distributed COVID relief funds.

In this post, the researchers at Good Jobs First reveal the federal funding in the Paycheck Protection Program for all 50 states, distributed to charter schools, religious schools, and private schools.

As you review the funding for your own state, please bear in mind that public schools received an average of $134,500 each. Also, public schools were not allowed to apply for PPP funding. Charter schools were, however, allowed to get a portion of the public school funding and then to apply for PPP funding as if they were small businesses.

Check out your own state. You will find that elite private schools with high tuition and large endowments received grants that often were millions of dollars.

A 50-State Analysis of PPP Funding of Charter Schools, Religious Schools, and Private Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog